- Good evening. Welcome to A Feminist Perspective. Last week, we announced that, on a once a month basis, we would bring you news of special interest to women. And we're having tonight the first program of this kind. Our participants are Dr. Kayla Stroop and Casey Ike. We will try to tell you the source of the news, but we want to emphasize, again, that all this information, if you'd like to order a particular publication or want further information about a news item given today, this is all available in a 220 Strong Hall or you can call the office to get specific names and addresses or additional information. So who's going to begin? Casey? - From The Spokeswoman, an independent monthly newsletter of women's news, pledging to address themselves to the critical needs of 30 million unorganized sisters, and to make their unions more responsive to the needs of women workers, 3,200 trade union women met in Chicago to organize a national Coalition of Labor Union Women. The founding conference drew women from across the country in response to a call to deal with our special concerns as unionists and women in the labor force. Delegates represented a broad spectrum of about 60 unions, including most of the nation's major industrial unions. Women of all ages were well-represented, as were minority women whose special concerns were emphasized by the conference. The proposed thrust of the new organization was threefold, organizing unorganized working women, increasing women's participation and influence at all union levels, and forcing organized labor's attention to women's issues at the workplace, equal pay, affirmative action, maternity benefits, childcare, and many others. - This is an unusually interesting development, because one of the things that we have heard so much about is that the women's movement toward equality and opportunity is very largely a middle income, middle-class, well-educated women's movement. And, of course, some of the women who attended this meeting were in that class too, because there are all kinds of unions represented there. But there has been really, for the last several years, increased interest and increased understanding on the part of women, who represent the kinds of jobs that most women are actually employed in. And many of these have been in the past, you know, pretty dead end jobs. So that for 3,200 women, union members to arrive in one place to discuss their special needs, and their relationship to unions, is indeed a breakthrough for the women's movement. - From the Lawrence Journal-World, "The head of a union of flight attendants predicts more strikes by the stewardesses unless airlines stopped viewing them as coffee, tea or milk girls. 'Like any other professional group, we're seeking career goals in our contract negotiations,' Kelly Rueck, President of the Association of Flight Attendants said today, 'The coffee tea or milk syndrome of the 1960s is long dead, but the airlines obviously haven't learned to bury it.' She said, 'The reason is that serious confrontation at the bargaining table now must take place. There have been four strikes by airline flight attendants in the past 16 months. Previously, there had been only four strikes by stewardess since 1958. Federal law requires airlines to have flight attendants on all flights. So a walkout by the stewardess will shut down an airline.' The Association, which represents 20,000 flight attendants, is now in the midst of negotiation with four major airlines. The Association also now has pending discrimination charges against 19 airlines. Three are in the courts and 16 are awaiting rulings by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 'The women's movement has had a great impact, particularly in increased awareness of our legal rights and professional goals,' says Kelly Rueck." - That's also a very interesting development. There have been a number of things in the press lately, and the kind of things involving airline stewardesses seem to have made not just the more esoteric publications that aren't available to everybody, but the public press as well. You have any theories on why the newspapers like to report things like this? - I think also because we're all affected by whether or not an airline closes down or not. And also the large amount of advertising, public advertising that the airlines do, they're third or fourth in the amount of advertising that they do. So consequently, there's a lot of public interest in this group. Along that same line from The Spokeswoman, the comments by Kathy Rueck, which are in line with this same thing that she was saying about the coffee to your milk situation, is that they are objecting to nationals. "Fly me in continentals, we'll really move our tails for you" ads, and are asking that those be withdrawn, and are asking also that the new one, proposed by National, that, "I'm going to fly you like you've never been flown before," advertisement be dropped before it's get started. So they have lots of areas in which they're very concerned right now. - And despite the fact that the airlines have claimed, or the advertising specialists have claimed that this had no sexual overtones. Wasn't there also a report somewhere of the instructions given to them as to how they were supposed to say those words. - The report in Time Magazine said that the advertising agencies were telling people to read that ad like you were standing there stark naked. So, of course, that definitely has some sexual overtones in terms of what they wanna convey by the ad. - You used to be, of course, that there were all kinds of rules for airline stewardesses. They couldn't weigh more than a certain number of pounds, and they had to cut their hair in a particular kind of way, and they had to... And the people who were on the airplanes were led to believe that they were primarily waitresses, it seems to me, and yet people who have been in danger in airlines have discovered that they have lots of other functions to serve as well. - Right. I think another thing, besides the women's movement, that's really had an impact is that the nature of the flight attendants attitude toward their job has certainly changed, because they used to be employed you know, an average length of 18 months or so. And the recent statistics indicate that the average employment is six years, and that four out of 10 of them are married, and many have children, so their approach to the job's more professional now than it used to be. So that, consequently, they're obviously more aware. - And their discovery, at some point along the line, since the law required that there be attendants there, that they had tremendous power as, as much as the mechanics and the pilots and so forth. - From The Spokeswoman, "Past, present and future women employees of the Bank of America and its subsidiaries will share $3,750,000 under a proposed consent decree in settlement of two class-action lawsuits, charging the bank with broad-based sex discrimination. Under the consent decree, the bank will create four affirmative action trusts, which will provide, training, development, and education for women employees. The trusts, which are the first of their kind to appear in a major settlement, will be administered by representatives of the bank's 32,000 women employees." - Well, that is a first, but it's certainly not... The payment of back wages is certainly not a first. We're reading this even in the commercial press, almost daily, of settlements that have been made by various enforcement agents, as the federal government, which certainly has taken the leading role in the elimination of sex discrimination and economic matters, has clarified the seriousness of its intent by bringing lawsuits against those who will not observe the law on their own. Obviously, the most important thing is, first of all, to see whether people just didn't understand, and that they're willing to correct whatever inequities exist. If they will not do it, there seems to be no hesitancy now in taking these cases to court. But the setting up of a special trust fund to make sure that this happens, and, especially, did you say administered by the women employees? - Right, it will be administered solely by the women employees, and all of the money from these trusts, every penny will go to the women. The four trusts that they did set up are management training trust, a self-development trust, and international development trust, and a women employees trust. - Okay, from the media report to women, the Women's Caucus of the Writers Guild of America has filed complaint with the Writer's Guild. As a result of a study, they ran on the underemployment of women writers. The study showed that through September, 1973, women were employed in 6.5% of the stories and major serials on TV, and 1.5% percent of the pilot films. The survey gave some very interesting figures in terms of usage of women writers and television. Approximately one half of the TV major serials employed no women writers in any of their presentations over the years of 1972 and 1973. And the most that that any show used women was about 10% of the writers were women. What I find another interesting aspect of this is that the Mary Tyler Moore show is the only show that comes close to employing women writers to any great extent. And it employs 50% of its writers as women. - Is there any evidence of where these women writers received their training? You know, are most of these people college trained or are they just people who submit something to see whether or not someone will buy it? You have any idea? - Well, I don't know, and of the things that it said in this particular report was that the women that were making these complaints in the Women's Caucus group were women that had had agents, and women who had been submitting sample scripts, so that there isn't some indication that... That one can't say there's no availability of women writers. Where the women writers come from, I do not know. - I don't know, perhaps it was like some of the other statistics we read of the schools that, for example, of colleges that graduate rather large percentages of PhDs in particular fields, and then fail to see to it that any of them are hired, almost as if the degree that they were giving was not really, very valuable. I would suspect that most of the writers received training in the same places, whether they're men or women. - I think one of the things I found very appalling about this was that a lot of these shows, being a TV watcher myself, a lot of these shows are about women. And then we have very few women writers, so that when you see a show that's about the problems of a particular woman, it's written, chances are, by a male, which is kind of interesting . - Maybe the reason that some of them are so unnatural, and that it's so difficult to identify with them. - From The Spokeswoman, "Charging that employment discrimination has continued unabated, and the relative status of women workers has significantly declined, more than 1,500 members of the National Organization For Women voted to make employment discrimination a priority issue for the coming year. Karen DeCrow of Syracuse, New York was elected new national president, and Judith Lightfoot of Atlanta was reelected chairman of the board. The conference followed a period of phenomenal growth for now, which currently numbers 40,000 members in 591 chapters across the country. During the past year, the organization has grown to a multiple office enterprise with 15 paid staff members and an operating budget of almost $300,000." - Making employment issues a primary focus is very interesting, since employment issues are the primary focus, in one way or another, of anything which deals with the problems of women, it seems to me, yeah. I'm rather surprised that that hasn't been a primary focus before. Well, I'm sure it has been a primary focus before, but this was a special emphasis that they decided to to place on it at the last convention. The numbers of people involved, considering the fact that this is an organization, the National Organization for Women, that was established in 1966, is indeed significant, since some of our organizations that have been around for 100 years have not more than double that number. In fact, there are some that don't even have that many. So it shows a tremendous interest that increasing numbers of women have, and create increasing awareness that they have of the issues that really concerned them. Do you have or have you seen some statistics on who these 40,000 members are? I believe they've published that also. That might be interesting to report sometime of who actually belongs to these organizations. - The Des Moines, Iowa chapter of the National Organization for Women has released a report charging that the Greater Des Moines United Way Fund Drive discriminates against women and the poor in its fundraising tactics and in allocating funds for charitable purposes. Charging the charitable conglomerate, one of the largest obstacles to the independence and dignity of women in Des Moines, the now report zeroes in on the United Way Fund support of recreation and youth activities, like boy scouts and girl scouts, and YMCA and YWCA, and charges that there's far more support for boys and men's programming than there is for girls and women's programming in the city. - So many of those things are done in the names of worthy causes, that it's been only recently that people have started looking at who really profits, and recreational programs, in general, people have thought so much about those, that take care of the special needs of boys, which are important, of course, in themselves, that I think what this group in Des Moines has really done is to call attention to an issue, which I believe most right thinking people would be willing to correct once they become aware of what they really are doing. - I think it's interesting, in that I never even thought about this. I never even thought to look at the funding of United Fund drives, in terms of nefarious. And I think that's what this really has done, is kind of heightened people's awareness. - 'Cause when you look at the list of things which United Funds are supporting, they're all such worthy causes, that most of us have stopped with that without really analyzing them. - From the US Commission on Civil Rights, "Three issues of major concern to women in poverty, welfare, social security and private pension plans will be examined at the US Commission on Civil Rights hearing in Chicago this month. The hearing's main purpose is to examine the relationship between sex discrimination, race discrimination, and ethnic discrimination, and the disproportionate number of women in poverty. The various welfare programs available to eligible persons are intended to provide subsistence income to those who cannot work, because of physical disability or age, or who need assistance to support dependent children. Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC, is the most controversial of these. And women had 76% of all AFDC families. Many women have little income security at retirement age, whether or not they have ever worked outside the home. And elderly women have a 25% chance of falling into poverty. As well as examining aspects of the social security act, which treat women differently from men, the Commission will look at how social security can be made more equitable, both to women in the labor market and to women working in the home. The Commission is an independent, bipartisan, fact-finding agency concerned with the rights of minorities and women. Its jurisdiction was extended to sex discrimination in 1972, and this is its first hearing on women's rights." - The Civil Rights Commission, of course, is not an enforcement agent, but has served a very useful role in making people, people in general, and the government agencies that are responsible for enforcement, aware of what the problems really are, so that it was a great advantage to women, when a short time ago, it was 1972, sex was added to the list of things, which they were supposed to investigate. And this is just one of the investigatory methods that they're apparently starting to use in the public hearing. The big advantage of the public hearing, in my opinion, is that it's possible then get down to the grassroots facts, not just great global facts, but what has happened to Mary Jones, or to the woman who is the mother, who's the head of the household, and the sole support of her family. - From Media Report to Women, "Ms. Magazine reports on its first two years. Ms. Magazine has issued an annual report showing a record year in publishing. Since its first regular issue in July of 1972, they have published a grand total of 452 riders. In addition, they have increased their circulation rate base from 350,000 to 400,000." - This is one of the new magazines that has been doing very well, when some other magazines have been going out of business. It certainly shows that they've served an extremely useful purpose, not only in giving information to people, but also in making it possible for some people, like these women writers, who have been left out of other publications, to have an opportunity to prove what they can do. This is a magazine that we would highly recommend that all women consider subscribing to. It's an extremely interesting publication. - I thought another interesting fact in this particular article was that they have been able to increase their advertising rates, and have had an increased demand for advertising space and the magazine, while other publications were decreasing in this particular area of demand. So I thought that was interesting too. - And especially in view of the fact that they don't take just any advertising, do they? - That's right. What kind of a code are they operating under? - You're asking me? I don't know. - Well they don't take anything that's derogatory to women. - Oh, well, yeah, right. - So I'm sure you will not find any of the National Airline ads of the... What is their ad? The National is... Is that the one, the "Fly me," The National, I believe, is "Fly me," - "Fly me and continentals will really move our tails for years." And the new National's, "I'm going to fly you like you've never been flown before." - I think we'll not finding any of those ads in Ms. Magazine. - I imagine they're also careful not to have advertisements from those corporations who are presently under suit for sex discrimination also. - The Spokeswoman also does not take ads. Of course, what they're advertising or jobs. But unless the job is equally open to both men and women, they will not accept it. - From the Lawrence Journal-World, "President Ford proclaiming August 26th as Women's Equality Day noted that it was the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and repeated his support for the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. 33 of the 38 states necessary for ratification have approved the Amendment." - That was the kickoff for the year on August the 26th, which is now, I believe, to be the standard, doesn't depend upon the announcement each year by the president, but has been declared a Women's Equality Day. - From the Kansas City Times, "Preliminary revisions of the Kansas statutes, which discriminate according to sex, were ordered in late August by a special legislative committee on federal and state affairs. The Committee directed the legislative staff to draw up amendments for future action, following testimony by several feminist groups and women leaders in favor of these changes. The Committee was given the charge of discerning possible discriminatory references in state law by the Legislative Coordinating Council, with the plan that those found to be discriminatory would be corrected or repealed in the next session. Several people testified at this session. Ms. Marcia Harley, legislative counsel for the Topeka chapter of The National Organization for Women, urge that the legislators revise several of the laws relating to rights of married women and ownership of property, contractual arrangements and legal suits. She also suggested that revision of three statutes, which reflect sexual bias by incorporating different age levels also be reviewed. - This was one of the sessions in which I also testified for the Women's Political Caucus and the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women. The legislature is very much to be congratulated, on the fact that they have moved ahead in this area. In anticipation of the passage of the final ratification Equal Rights Amendment, all States will have to do this, but Kansas has not waited for the ratification Equal Rights Amendment to make its laws fair. And they have really identified two different kinds of laws, one that's just openly discriminatory. You know, it was setting different age limits for men and women for certain kinds of activities or obligations, and others that are not in and of themselves discriminatory, but I would use words like man and he and his to sensibly refer to any human being, except that, as I pointed out to them, this is not the way in which women really feel about it. And I think men don't either. When they see a man, they think of a male, and when they see his as a reference to it, they presume that they are referring to males, and therefore there's less likelihood that women will make use of the law. that they would if it were clear to them that they are included in it. So I feel that the legislature is making great progress, and has every intention of bringing our laws into conformity with what the Equal Rights Amendment would require when it is ratified. And that puts us among the first of the states to do that, since we still have a good many backward states who are still arguing about whether or not there should be equality between men and women. - From the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights, "A public hearing on the adoption of rules and regulations of the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights has been scheduled for 9:00 AM, Saturday, September 14th in Room 519 South State Capitol, Topeka, Kansas. Among other issues, the rules and regulations include guidelines on discrimination because of sex. Interested parties may present views on these proposed rules and regulations, either orally and/or in writing. Copies of the rules and regulations as adopted September 15th, 1973 maybe obtained free of charge from the Commission by writing or phoning either of the commission offices. - Still in plenty of time, September the 14th, for any interested person to either listen to these public hearings in Topeka, or to express a point of view. These are the regulations for the Kansas Act Against Discrimination, as they apply to sex. So we would urge those of you, who are interested in this issue to plan to be in Topeka for these hearings. The regulations I have followed very closely, those of the EEOC on a national level, the enforcement agency for the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. We have very short time left. Do you have any announcements of special interest for this coming week? - Yes. Casey, you wanna-- - I have one announcement. - There will be a whistle-stop meeting Tuesday, September 10th at 4 o'clock PM in the Council Room in the Union, and all interested people are urged to attend. - And on Tuesday night, September 10th, at 7:30 in the Kansas Union Council Room, the KU Commission on the Status of Women will be presenting first in a series of career seminars on post-graduate decision-making. Discussion topics will include graduate schools, foreign study, professional schools, job placement, admissions, fellowships, scholarships, and so forth. So anyone interested or thinking about that particular area ought to attend that evening. - All of these are open without a charge, of course, to the public. We thank you for joining us tonight. We hope that you'll join us again next Monday night at 7:30 for A Feminist Perspective. At that time, we will be discussing the content of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the act which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex in any activities of schools and colleges, which are accepting federal funds. We'll see you again next Monday evening.