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rights movement and with it the demand for woman suffrage. In addition

to political rights, Mott believed that professional opportunities should be

opened to women. For example, despite the opposition of the American

Medical Association, she worked to help women obtain training and gain

acceptance as doctors.

By the 1850s, Mott had become a national figure, widely known and

respected for her work in the abolitionist movement and as a minister. She

continued to advocate boycotting products made by slaves as the best way

to end slavery. In the 1860s, she opposed the Civil War, as she opposed all

war. President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did

not alter her view of the war, nor did it appeal to her as a first step toward

ending slavery because it only freed slaves in areas controlled by Confed-

erates, areas over which the Union government had no control.

After the Civil War and the introduction of the Fourteenth Amend-

ment, Mott joined feminists in opposing it. The amendment included the

word male in its definition of citizens, outraging Stanton and others who

believed that it would make woman suffrage even more difficult to obtain.

Although Mott opposed the amendment’s wording, she did not focus

great attention on it. Instead, she became an advocate for peace, preach-

ing against war and working with the Universal Peace Movement.

See also Abolitionist Movement, Women in the; Fourteenth Amendment;

Seneca Falls Convention; Stanton, Elizabeth Cady; Suffrage

References Bacon, Valiant Friend: The Life of Lucretia Mott (1980).

Ms. Foundation for Women

Founded in 1972, the Ms. Foundation for Women (MFW) is a national,

multi-issue, public women’s fund that works to change public conscious-

ness, the law, philanthropy, and social policy. By directing its resources to

projects that endeavor to overcome racial, class, age, disability, sexual ori-

entation, and cultural barriers, MFW supports women’s and girls’ efforts

to govern their own lives and influence the world around them. The foun-

dation may be best known for Take Our Daughters to Work Day, an an-

nual public education program begun in 1993.

The Ms. Foundation for Women was established because at the time

there were no foundations that gave money to women as a category.

Founded the same year as Ms. magazine, the foundation’s funding was to

come from the magazine’s profits, but the magazine struggled financially

and did not produce the anticipated revenues. In 1973, Marlo Thomas

created an NBC-TV special, Free to Be . . . You and Me to benefit the foun-

dation, and other fund-raising projects followed.

In 1984, Marie Wilson joined the foundation as its president, and un-

der her leadership, the foundation has expanded its financial resources

Ms. Foundation for Women 455

and its programs. The annual budget has grown from $400,000 to $6.2

million since 1984. In addition, Wilson established an endowment fund

for the foundation and raised $10 million for it.

The foundation’s program areas include support for groups that seek

economic justice and that foster economic development through job cre-

ation, constituency building, public policy advocacy, welfare reform, pay

equity, child care, and related projects. In the area of women’s health and

safety, the foundation supports programs that address gender bias in

health care; protect reproductive rights; and increase resources to end do-

mestic violence, incest, child sexual abuse, rape, and sexual assault and ha-

rassment. The foundation makes grants to leadership programs for girls

and young women, including those related to improving girls’ health;

ending violence against girls; creating nonsexist, nonviolent curricula;

and reducing teen pregnancy rates.

In 1993, MFW created Take Our Daughters to Work Day to focus the

attention of policymakers, the media, and the general public on the needs

and concerns of girls. Held on the fourth Thursday in April, Take Our

Daughters to Work Day encourages employers to permit girls ages nine to

fifteen to spend the day at work with a parent or other adult. The project,

which has involved companies across the country, has been more success-

ful than its creators imagined, involving millions of girls and adults, with

some employers offering special programs for the girls and the adults they

accompany. The President’s Interagency Council on Women, for example,

sponsors Take Our Daughters to Work Day, providing opportunities for

high school students to meet federal officials, including Secretary of State

Madeleine Albright and others.

See also Abortion; Domestic Violence; Ms. Magazine; Rape; Sexual Harassment

References www.ms.foundation.org.

Ms. Magazine

Founded in 1972 by Gloria Steinem, Ms. magazine quickly gained the loy-

alty of many women in the developing feminist movement and attracted

the criticism of many other feminists who objected to its moderate tone.

Steinem once called it the “how-to magazine for the liberated human fe-

male—not how to make jelly, but how to seize control of your life.”

Ms. has its roots in the Women’s Action Alliance, which was created

by Steinem to help women at the grassroots level fight the barriers in their

lives. Women responded to the alliance with inquiries and requests,

prompting Steinem to start a newsletter as a way of communicating with

the large number of women wanting more information. Plans for a mod-

est newsletter evolved into a magazine format that Steinem believed had

potential for success independent of the alliance.

456 Ms. Magazine

A trial edition of Ms. appeared as a supplement in the 20 December

1971 edition of New York magazine, and in the spring of 1972, the preview

issue was published. The magazine received more than 20,000 letters in re-

sponse to the preview issue, giving Steinem and publisher Pat Carbine

hope for its success and confidence in proceeding. The first regular issue

was published in July 1972.

The magazine quickly became part of the feminist movement and a

source for women seeking new ways to understand and interpret the

world around them. It served as a catalyst, a communication tool between

feminists, and a guide for many women. Some of its articles became fa-

mous among feminists. For example, Jane O’Reilly wrote a piece about the

“clicks” in a feminist’s mind that connect seemingly innocuous statements

with the sexism that underlies them.

Although readership grew, advertising revenues did not keep pace

with the magazine’s costs. Some advertisers feared the controversial edito-

rial material, others demanded articles about their products, and still oth-

ers questioned whether women purchased their products. Ms. sales staff

worked to convince advertisers that women purchased cars, stereos, and

other consumer items, but marketers believed that women’s purchases

were limited to cosmetics, clothing, and domestic household items. Fi-

nancial difficulties resulted in the sale of Ms. to an Australian media firm

in 1987. The magazine underwent various transformations and was

owned by other groups until 1998, when Steinem and others purchased it.

Published bimonthly, it no longer has any advertising and features inter-

national and national women’s news, investigative reports, personal nar-

ratives, fiction, poetry, and humor.

See also Feminist Movement; Ms. Foundation for Women; Steinem, Gloria

Marie

References Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem

(1996).

Muller v. Oregon (1908)

In 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Muller v. Oregon that dis-

criminating on the basis of sex in employment and in state policies was

constitutional. The case challenged a 1903 Oregon law that limited the

number of hours that women could work in factories, mechanical estab-

lishments, and laundries to ten hours a day. The policy was one of many

that social reformers had worked to pass to protect female and child la-

borers from the health hazards and dangers in the workplace.

In Lochner v. New York, the Court had rejected a New York law that

limited the number of hours that laborers in bakeries could work on the

basis that it was an illegitimate use of the state’s police power and an ar-

Muller v. Oregon 457

bitrary interference in the right to contract. The Court explained that the

Oregon law differed in that it applied only to women.

In this case, Carl Muller, a laundry operator, required a female em-

ployee to work more than ten hours a day, and for breaking the ten-hour

limit, he was tried, convicted, and fined. He appealed, basing his argu-

ments on the Lochner decision.

The State of Oregon received significant assistance in its defense from

Louis Brandeis (later a Supreme Court justice) and Josephine Goldmark,

who was active in the National Consumers League, an organization that

supported protective legislation for workers. Goldmark researched and

Brandeis wrote a brief that featured the innovation of offering anecdotal

and statistical evidence that supported the arguments relating to women’s

health and the state’s interest in protecting it. Of the 104 pages in the brief,

only two dealt with legal precedents and logic; the social and economic in-

formation formed the balance. Known as the Brandeis brief, it changed le-

gal procedures before the Court.

The Court upheld the Oregon law, explaining that when a woman

stands on her feet day after day, it “tends to [have] injurious effects upon

the body, and as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the

physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and

care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.”

See also Employment Discrimination; Progressive Party, Women in the;

Protective Legislation

References Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908).

Murray, Patty Johns (b. 1950)

Democrat Patty Murray of Washington entered the U.S. Senate on 5 Janu-

ary 1993. Murray’s motivation to run for the U.S. Senate came from

watching U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas’s confirmation

hearings on television. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s treatment of

Anita Hill during the hearings outraged Murray and convinced her to run

for the Senate. As she campaigned, she described herself as a “mom in ten-

nis shoes,” creating a distinction between herself and her primary and gen-

eral election opponents, whom she characterized as Washington insiders.

When the Senate debated the question of issuing a subpoena for the

personal diaries of Republican senator Robert Packwood, who was ac-

cused of sexual harassment, Senator Murray argued that the Senate’s fo-

cus needed to be on a substantive discussion of sexual harassment. She

warned against sending U.S. women a message that said: “If you are ha-

rassed, keep quiet, say nothing; the cards are stacked against your ever

winning.”

458 Murray, Patty Johns

Senator Murray has supported family leave legislation, health care re-

form, tax relief for the middle class, reproductive rights, and reinvestment

in the infrastructure. She passed legislation making surplus government

computers available to schools and has worked to connect schools to the

Internet, protect and rebuild salmon runs, and provide assistance to vet-

erans. She won reelection to the Senate in a tight race in 1998.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Patty Murray earned her bachelor of arts

degree in recreational therapy from Washington State University in 1972.

She entered politics when she organized 12,000 Washington state families

to save state funding for preschool programs. From 1977 to 1984, she was

a parent volunteer at the Shoreline Community Cooperative School, and

she was a parent education instructor at Shoreline Community College

from 1984 to 1987. Murray also served on the Shoreline School District

board of directors from 1983 to 1989. Lobbying the state legislature for ed-

ucation and environmental issues in the mid-1980s convinced Murray to

run for the state Senate, where she served from 1989 to 1993.

See also Congress, Women in; Hill, Anita Faye; Sexual Harassment; State

Legislatures, Women in

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1994 (1993); H. W.

Wilson, Current Biography Yearbook, 1994 (1994); www.senate.gov/~murray/

bio2.html.

Murray, Pauli (1910–1985)

A leader in the civil rights and women’s rights movements, African Amer-

ican lawyer Pauli Murray played pivotal roles in the President’s Commis-

sion on the Status of Women and the inclusion of sex in Title VII of the

Murray, Pauli 459

Senator Patty

Murray (D-WA),

whose campaign

slogan was “the mom

in tennis shoes,” was

a keynote speaker at

the Democratic

National Convention,

1996 (Corbis/Wally

McNam)

1964 Civil Rights Act. Part of an informal underground network of

women in the early 1960s, Murray was a founding member of the Na-

tional Organization for Women.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Murray grew up in Durham, North

Carolina, having moved there following her mother’s death, and was

raised by an aunt and her maternal grandparents. She graduated from

Hunter College in 1933, earned her law degree from Howard University

Law School in 1944, and her master of law degree from Boalt Hall of Law

at the University of California at Berkeley in 1945. She earned her doctor

of juridical science degree from Yale Law School in 1965, the first African

American to receive the degree. She received her master of divinity degree

from the General Theological Seminary in 1976.

Murray began protesting racial segregation when she was a child,

walking several miles to school rather than ride the city’s segregated buses,

and as a young adult she refused to attend a segregated college for her un-

dergraduate work. In 1938, she applied to the graduate school of the Uni-

versity of North Carolina, which had never admitted an African American

student. Denied admission because of her race, she considered suing the

university, but leaders in the black community counseled against it, and

she accepted the defeat. Her attempt, however, received wide publicity, and

other African American students began applying to southern universities.

In 1951, several black students gained admission to the University of North

Carolina’s Law School, actions that Murray saw as evidence of her role as a

pioneer in the struggle for equality of opportunity in higher education.

In 1940, Murray and a friend were arrested and charged with disor-

derly conduct for refusing to sit on a broken seat in a Greyhound bus.

Jailed for three days, they were found guilty and fined. She lost the case on

appeal, but she later wrote that the experience “convinced me that creative

nonviolent resistance could be a powerful weapon in the struggle for hu-

man dignity.” These and other civil rights experiences led Murray to law

school. While attending law school, Murray helped integrate two Wash-

ington, D.C., restaurants through sit-ins.

It was also during this time that she became conscious of sex bias,

which she labeled “Jane Crow.” She encountered it more fully after receiv-

ing her law degree, when she won a fellowship for graduate study at Har-

vard University. After the announcement that she was to receive it, the fel-

lowship was withdrawn because of her gender. She instead attended Boalt

Hall of Law.

Before the modern feminist movement emerged, Murray partici-

pated in one of the catalysts that prompted it, serving on the Committee

on Civil and Political Rights of the 1961 President’s Commission on the

Status of Women. Among the committee members there was disagree-

460 Murray, Pauli

ment on the Equal Rights Amendment, with some of the members

strongly supporting it and others equally adamant in their rejection of it.

At the committee’s request, Murray prepared a memo, “A Proposal to Re-

examine the Applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment to State Laws

and Practices Which Discriminate on the Basis of Sex Per Se,” which con-

sidered the Fourteenth Amendment as an alternative to the Equal Rights

Amendment. The memo provided the means for negotiating a compro-

mise that urged litigation under the Fourteenth Amendment without re-

jecting the possibility that an Equal Rights Amendment could be neces-

sary. In addition, through her work on the committee, Murray became

part of an informal network of feminists that developed as the commis-

sioners and committee members discovered common interests.

After the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Civil Rights Act of

1964 with a prohibition against sex discrimination in employment (in Ti-

tle VII), the U.S. Senate considered removing sex from the protected clas-

sifications. Murray wrote a memorandum supporting the inclusion of sex

in the bill. The memo was widely distributed, particularly among senators,

and was crucial to the Senate’s retaining sex in the bill. She later worked to

encourage the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, created by

the act, to enforce its provisions. Her efforts included coauthoring a law re-

view article on Title VII showing that it and the Fifth and Fourteenth

Amendments could be interpreted to give women equal rights.

Murray’s life took another direction after she ministered to a dying

friend. Because of the experience, Murray felt called to the service of the

church. After graduating from General Theological Seminary, she was or-

dained to the Holy Order of the Deacons of the Episcopal Church, USA.

In 1977, she was ordained an Episcopal priest, the first black woman or-

dained in that denomination.

Murray’s first book, States’ Laws on Race and Color (1951), became an

important resource for civil rights lawyers fighting segregation laws. Her

second book, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family (1956), was a

biography of her grandparents that established a new genre of American

literature: the African American family history. In 1960, she went to Ghana

to teach, and while there, she coauthored The Constitution and Govern-

ment of Ghana (1961). Murray’s autobiography, Song in a Weary Throat:

An American Pilgrimage, was published posthumously in 1987.

See also Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII; Civil Rights Movement, Women in

the; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Equal Rights Amendment;

National Organization for Women; President’s Commission on the Status of

Wom en

References Murray, Song in a Weary Throat (1987).

Murray, Pauli 461

Myers, Margaret Jane (Dee Dee) (b. 1961)

The first woman and the youngest person to serve as White House press

secretary, Dee Dee Myers held the post from 1993 to 1994. She entered

politics in 1984 as a volunteer in Democratic presidential candidate Wal-

ter Mondale’s 1984 campaign, performing menial tasks, but ended the

campaign as assistant press secretary for California. Deputy press secre-

tary for Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley from 1985 to 1988, she was also

California press secretary for Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential cam-

paign and spokeswoman for Dianne Feinstein’s 1990 unsuccessful cam-

paign for governor of California. Her job as press secretary for Bill Clin-

ton’s 1992 presidential campaign was made unusually difficult by reports

that Clinton had had extramarital affairs and by unfavorable stories about

the reasons he had avoided the draft.

Born in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, Myers was given her nickname

“Dee Dee” by an older sister. She earned her bachelor of science degree at

Santa Clara University in 1983. After leaving the White House, Myers was

a television talk show cohost.

References H. W. Wilson, Current Biography Yearbook, 1994 (1994).

Myrick, Sue (b. 1941)

Republican Sue Myrick of North Carolina entered the U.S. House of Rep-

resentatives on 3 January 1995. Congresswoman Myrick has supported

“comp time,” in which employees do not receive overtime wages but re-

ceive time off from their job instead. She explained: “Comp time is pro-

family, proworker, and when we really think about it, a prochild approach

to provide relief to the hard-working men and women across our nation

462 Myers, Margaret Jane (Dee Dee)

Representative Sue

Myrick (R-NC) at a

press conference with

other first-year

Republican Congress

members on the

Capitol steps after

clashes with Repre-

sentatives Newt

Gingrich (R-GA) and

John Kasich (R-OH)

over budget issues,

1995 (Associated

Press AP)

who struggle daily to support their families.” Myrick’s priorities include

streamlining government bureaucracy, privatizing many components of

the federal government, and cutting the federal budget deficit.

Born in Tiffin, Ohio, Sue Myrick attended Heidelberg College from

1959 to 1960. She is the former president and chief executive officer of

Myrick Advertising and Myrick Enterprises. Myrick served on the Char-

lotte City Council from 1983 to 1985 and was mayor from 1987 to 1991,

years in which she was active in the U.S. Conference of Mayors. She also

served on President George Bush’s Affordable Housing Commission and

the Strengthening America Commission.