Schenken Suzanne O’Dea. From Suffrage to the Senate: An Encyclopedia of American Women in Politics (2 Volumes)

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See also Cable Acts; Congress, Women in

References Breckenridge, Women in the Twentieth Century (1933); H. W.

Wilson, Current Biography: Who’s News and Why, 1944 (1944); Tolchin,

Women in Congress: 1917–1976 (1976).

520 Owen Rohde, Ruth Bryan

Park, Maud Wood (1871–1955)

First president of the League of Women Voters, Maud Wood Park led the

congressional lobbying effort of the National American Woman Suffrage

Association (NAWSA) from 1917 to 1919. As chair of NAWSA’s Congres-

sional Committee, Park’s task was to obtain congressional approval of the

woman suffrage amendment. She trained volunteers who visited Wash-

ington, D.C., to lobby their congressional representatives, coordinated

the lobbying effort, managed an extensive set of biographical and per-

sonal information about each member of Congress, and developed

strategies for the amendment’s passage. Because the United States had

entered World War I and Congress had decided to debate only war-

related measures, Parks sought to have a special committee on woman

suffrage created as a way to circumvent the limit. Using social contacts

and the political network she had developed, Parks got her committee,

which favorably reported a woman suffrage amendment. The U.S. House

of Representatives approved it in 1918, but the Senate did not approve it

that session. In 1919 both chambers passed the amendment, and it was

ratified in 1920.

In 1919, Park agreed to accept the presidency of the League of Women

Voters (LWV), the organization that NAWSA president Carrie Chapman

Catt had proposed to succeed NAWSA. Park traveled the country lecturing

and recruiting members for the league, helped develop its legislative

agenda, and led the organization during its formative years, serving as

president from 1920 to 1924. In addition to her league responsibilities,

521

Park helped organize and was head of the Women’s Joint Congressional

Committee, a lobbying coalition that passed the Sheppard-Towner Ma-

ternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921 and the Cable Act of 1922.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Park graduated from Radcliffe Col-

lege in 1898.

See also Cable Acts; Catt, Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman; League of Women

Voters; National American Woman Suffrage Association; Nineteenth

Amendment; Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921;

Suffrage; Women’s Joint Congressional Committee

References Park, The Front Door Lobby (1960); Sicherman and Green, eds.,

Notable American Women: The Modern Period (1980).

Parks, Rosa Louise McCauley

(b. 1913)

Called “the first lady of civil rights”and “the

mother of the freedom movement,” Rosa

Parks helped launch the modern civil rights

movement in the 1950s by refusing to relin-

quish her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama,

city bus to a white man. Her refusal to com-

ply with the city’s bus segregation laws pro-

vided a catalyst for a bus boycott that lasted

381 days and a U.S. Supreme Court deci-

sion that bus segregation was illegal.

Parks’s visible work in civil rights be-

gan in 1943, when she became secretary of

the Montgomery affiliate of the National

Association for the Advancement of Col-

ored People (NAACP). She attempted to

tion was denied, as it was in 1944. She re-

ceived her certificate to vote in 1945. In addition to her NAACP work,

Parks belonged to the Montgomery (Alabama) Voters League, and in the

summer of 1955 she had attended civil rights workshops. Acutely aware of

segregation and offended by it, she avoided using segregated facilities

whenever she could.

On 1 December 1955, she was riding home from her job as an assis-

tant tailor and was seated in the first row of seats designated for blacks.

When the white section filled and another white rider got on the bus, the

bus driver asked the four black people sitting in that first row of the black

section to move to give the seat to the white man. Three of them submit-

ted. Parks refused. She later recollected:

522 Parks, Rosa Louise McCauley

Rosa Parks, the woman

who sparked the civil

rights movement for

refusing to give up

her seat on a bus in

Montgomery, Alabama,

in 1955, received the

Congressional Medal

of Honor in 1999

(Courtesy: National

Archives)

After so many years of oppression and being a victim of the

mistreatment that my people suffered, not giving up my seat—

and whatever I had to face after not giving it up—was not im-

portant. I did not feel any fear at sitting in the seat I was sitting

in. All I felt was tired. Tired of being pushed around....Tired

of the Jim Crow laws. Tired of being oppressed. I was just plain

tired.

Arrested, jailed, convicted, and fined $10, Parks refused to pay the fine and

appealed her case.

The Women’s Political Council, a local civil rights organization, had

been looking for an opportunity to challenge bus segregation, and Parks’s

arrest provided the opportunity. On 2 December, the council distributed

more than 52,000 flyers calling for a one-day bus boycott on the day of

Parks’s trial. More than 7,000 African Americans responded by gathering

at the Holt Street Baptist Church, which led to the formation of the Mont-

gomery Improvement Association, the group that helped launch Martin

Luther King, Jr.’s national leadership. The bus boycott that followed

helped galvanize the civil rights movement and ended when the U.S.

Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that segregated bus seating

was unconstitutional.

By that time, Parks had lost her job, but she has said that she had no

proof that she lost her job because of the boycott. She moved to Detroit,

remained involved in the civil rights movement, and continued to support

herself by working as a seamstress. In 1965, she joined Congressman John

Conyers’s staff.

Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, Rosa Parks left high school to care for

her seriously ill mother and worked as a housekeeper and a seamstress.

She received her high school diploma in 1934. She wrote her autobiogra-

phy, Rosa Parks: My Story, in 1992. She continues to speak around the

country and to raise money for the National Association for the Advance-

ment of Colored People.

See also Civil Rights Movement, Women in the; National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People, Women in the

References H. W. Wilson, Current Biography Yearbook, 1989 (1989); Parks, Quiet

Strength (1994).

Patterson, Elizabeth Johnston (b. 1939)

Democrat Elizabeth Patterson of South Carolina served in the U.S. House

of Representatives from 3 January 1987 to 3 January 1993. Patterson’s po-

litical experience began when she was a young girl working on her father

Olin D. Johnston’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1945 and continued

through 1965. Patterson’s first political office was on the Spartanburg

Patterson, Elizabeth Johnston 523

County Council, where she served from 1975 to 1976. She then served in

the South Carolina Senate from 1979 to 1986.

A fiscal conservative, Patterson worked to reduce the federal budget

deficit, supported a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the

American flag, worked for veterans’ concerns, and opposed the Family and

Medical Leave Act of 1993. She chaired the Congressional Textile Caucus

and the Conservative Democratic Forum’s Budget Reform Task Force. De-

feated in 1992, she became director of continuing education for Converse

College and an adjunct professor at Spartanburg Methodist College.

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Patterson graduated from Co-

lumbia College in 1961 and attended graduate school at the University of

South Carolina for a year. She worked for the Peace Corps from 1962 to

1964 and for VISTA from 1965 to 1967, was a Head Start coordinator

from 1967 to 1968, and held a job as a congressional staff assistant from

1969 to 1970.

See also Congress, Women in; Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993; State

Legislatures, Women in

References Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America 1992 (1991); Office of

the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, Women in Congress, 1917–1990

(1991).

Paul, Alice (1885–1977)

American militant suffrage leader Alice Paul introduced controversial and

confrontational strategies to the U.S. campaign for woman suffrage,

founded the National Woman’s Party, and proposed the first Equal Rights

Amendment. She began her political activism in England and Scotland,

where she lived from 1907 to 1910, working with mother-and-daughter

British suffragists Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. From them, she

learned the strategies that characterized her efforts in the U.S. woman suf-

frage campaign, including the use of civil disobedience to generate pub-

licity for a cause. Arrested seven times and jailed three times for her suf-

frage activities, she went on hunger strikes each time she was incarcerated.

During one of the hunger strikes, officials force-fed her using a nasal tube

twice a day for four weeks, a painful and bloody process.

When Paul returned to the United States in 1910, she joined the Na-

tional American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). From the time

that Paul became involved in the U.S. suffrage movement, she and

NAWSA’s leaders differed in their perceptions of effective strategies to pass

the woman suffrage amendment. NAWSA focused on passing state con-

stitutional amendments and placed less emphasis on its Congressional

Committee, a group that was allotted a budget of only $10 a year. NAWSA

was successful in gaining the introduction of the amendment every ses-

524 Paul, Alice

sion but was unable to move it out of committee. In addition, NAWSA

leaders resisted public demonstrations, believing in a more reserved ap-

proach. Paul believed that state campaigns would take too long and were

an inefficient use of resources. She firmly believed in a federal amendment

and organized demonstrations, parades, and other events to attract pub-

licity and place the amendment before the public.

In 1912, Paul accepted the chair of NAWSA’s Congressional Com-

mittee with the understanding that NAWSA would not allocate any funds

to the committee. She planned a massive suffrage parade in Washington,

D.C., raised funds to pay for it, and invited women across the country to

Paul, Alice 525

Alice Paul, radical

leader of the

National Woman’s

Party and tireless

advocate of the Equal

Rights Amendment,

1920 (Library of

Congress)

participate. She scheduled the event for 3 March 1913, the day President-

elect Woodrow Wilson was to arrive in the city and the day before his in-

auguration. Twenty-six floats, ten bands, five squadrons of cavalry, six

chariots, and approximately 8,000 women marched by 500,000 spectators,

who chose to watch the suffragists instead of Wilson’s arrival in the city.

When the crowd became unruly and moved into the parade route, the po-

lice did not protect the marchers, and 200 people were treated for injuries.

Press coverage of the parade and the subsequent Senate investigation of

the police superintendent renewed interest in the Congressional Commit-

tee and the amendment.

A month after the parade, conflicts between Paul and NAWSA devel-

oped over money. Paul’s success raising money led some NAWSA leaders

to suggest that Paul should give some of it to the larger organization be-

cause they felt that donors were confused about which group they had

contributed to. Paul solved the problem by creating the Congressional

Union (CU), a separate organization that was affiliated with NAWSA, to

raise money for the Congressional Committee’s projects. She continued to

chair the Congressional Committee, and conflict persisted. Late in 1913,

NAWSA leaders told Paul she could chair the Congressional Committee

or the CU but not both. Paul chose the Congressional Union. Because

NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw viewed the CU as a threat to her

organization, the CU was not permitted to remain a NAWSA auxiliary. In

1914, Paul left NAWSA and continued to lead the CU.

Paul had brought the idea of marches and parades to the United

States from her experience in England. She also used the British suffragists’

strategy of placing responsibility on the political party in power, regardless

of individual members’ support for suffrage. By organizing women voters

in suffrage states to oppose Democratic candidates in the 1914 elections,

she made suffrage an issue in several states. The CU took credit for defeat-

ing five Democrats and contributing to the defeat of twenty-three more.

In 1916, Paul formed the Woman’s Party and repeated the strategy.

As the United States prepared to enter World War I, Paul and her fol-

lowers remained steadfast in their focus on suffrage. Although many suf-

fragists opposed the war, only Paul supported Wyoming congresswoman

Jeannette Rankin’s vote against declaring war. Early in 1917, Paul and her

followers started picketing outside the White House. After several months,

police began to arrest the pickets for obstructing traffic but would then re-

lease them. As the pickets continued, they were arrested, tried, found guilty,

and fined. Those who refused to pay the fines were jailed for a few days.

When Paul was arrested in an October 1917 demonstration, however, she

was sentenced to seven months at a women’s prison, where she went on a

hunger strike. Force-fed, she was separated from other prisoners and

526 Paul, Alice

placed in a psychiatric ward and denied visitors, mail, and messages.

Protests over her treatment led to her release within a month.

The Nineteenth Amendment granting woman suffrage became part

of the U.S. Constitution on 26 August 1920. Paul’s contributions to the

suffrage campaign include attracting publicity to the amendment through

the marches, parades, and pickets she organized and by making the

amendment an issue in the 1914 and 1916 elections. President of NAWSA

Carrie Chapman Catt, however, has generally received primary credit for

the amendment’s passage in Congress and its ratification by the states,

with Paul’s role receiving considerably less attention.

In 1921, Paul transformed the Woman’s Party into the National

Woman’s Party (NWP), which had as its sole purpose the passage and rat-

ification of a federal equal rights amendment. Sometimes referred to as

the Lucretia Mott Amendment, it read: “Men and women shall have equal

rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdic-

tion.” Initially, the amendment was opposed by virtually every women’s

organization in the country. Paul and the NWP, however, worked for the

amendment for the next fifty years. They succeeded in getting the amend-

ment introduced in every session of Congress beginning in 1923. When

Congress passed the amendment in 1972, it was the result of work done

by the modern feminist movement. Paul worked for its ratification until

1974, when ill health prevented her from continuing. The amendment

failed because it was three states short of the thirty-eight needed for rati-

fication when the final deadline arrived in 1982.

Paul also worked on the international level. She led the creation of

the World Woman’s Party in 1938 and served as its founding president. In-

tended to unite American, Asian, and European feminists, the potential

for the World Woman’s Party was lost when World II began. She later

fought for the inclusion of sex equality in the preamble to the United Na-

tions Charter. In 1977, Paul said:“The thing I think that was the most use-

ful I ever did was having a part in getting the vote for all the women, be-

cause that was a big transformation for the country to have one-half the

country enfranchised.”

Born in Moorestown, New Jersey, Alice Paul graduated from Swarth-

more College in 1905 and earned her master of arts degree in 1907 and

her doctoral degree in 1912, both from the University of Pennsylvania.

She also held three law degrees.

See also Catt, Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman; Congressional Union; Equal

Rights Amendment; National American Woman Suffrage Association; National

Consumers League; National Woman’s Party; Nineteenth Amendment; Protec-

tive Legislation; Rankin, Jeannette Pickering; Shaw, Anna Howard; Suffrage;

Women’s Bureau; Women’s Trade Union League

Paul, Alice 527

References Lunardini, From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the

National Woman’s Party (1986); New York Times, 4 November 1975, 10 January

1977.

Pay Equity

Pay equity, sometimes called “comparable worth” or “fair pay,” is a method

for determining wages so as to overcome traditional gender and racial bi-

ases that result, on average, in female workers earning less than male

workers and minority workers earning less than white workers. The wage

gap for women has ranged from 56.6 percent of men’s earnings in 1973 to

73.8 percent in 1996, although there has not been a steady increase. In

1997, white women earned about 75 percent of men’s earnings, African

American women earned about 67 percent, Asian American women

earned about 80 percent, and Latinas earned about 58 percent. In a 1994

survey conducted by the Women’s Bureau, over a quarter of a million U.S.

women said that their top priority was “improving pay scales.”

Following the passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act, many thought that

the differences between women’s and men’s pay would significantly di-

minish. When it became clear that the act would not close the wage gap,

other reasons for its persistence were examined. Pay discrimination con-

tinues despite state and federal policies against it, and women tend to

work in traditionally undervalued jobs and cluster in a few job categories:

clerical, teaching, service work, and nursing. The more that an occupation

is dominated by women or people of color, the greater the wage gap be-

tween people in that occupation and men in general.

One approach used to achieve pay equity is comparable worth, a

method for evaluating jobs that uses a point system to rate the skill, effort,

responsibility, and working conditions of each job; totals the points; and

establishes the job’s relative worth. Seniority, merit, quantity of work, and

quality of work continue to differentiate individuals’ wages within equiv-

alent job classifications. Some states and municipalities have implemented

comparable worth programs, even though the approach has not received

support at the federal level. The Equal Employment Opportunity Com-

mission concluded that Congress had not authorized it to implement

comparable worth programs, and the courts have not made a definitive

decision on the issue.

In the 1990s, pay equity or fair pay proposals gained renewed vitality

as groups supporting the issue began to identify pay equity as a working

family issue instead of exclusively a women’s issue. Several organizations

made pay equity a legislative priority, including the Coalition of Labor

Union Women, National Committee on Pay Equity, and American Feder-

ation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations. In addition, the

528 Pay Equity