Women's Lib on Capitol Hill

...Government, and in Congress...

...I was rotated to a different Congressman's payroll each month, not a highly exceptional arrangement for "special" employes of members of Congress...

...This practice gets carried to the point where, as I observed in one office, male college interns were given research and writing jobs while the female intern was given typing and filing chores...

...The prejudices which are so imbedded in the institution itself—discrimination against women, blacks, young staff members—are magnified a hundredfold when the men of that institution legislate for the entire country...

...It came to the floor for a vote only because Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan, in conjunction with the Ad Hoc Committee and national women's organizations, created enough pressure to obtain 218 signatures on a discharge petition which forced the bill out of the Committee Judiciary without hearings...

...it is dangerous...

...The situation is no better in the Senate...

...The old assumptions are deeply entrenched in Congress, and there are urgent reasons for challenging them now...

...The accession of women to the highest positions of authority and policy-making has an urgency greater than simply satisfying individual liberties and egos...

...For a number of months the office of Representative Robert W. Kastenmeier assumed responsibility for finding a Congressional payroll with enough extra funds to take me on for that month...

...More and more women are coming to realize this...

...The apology was not in any sense a concession to manners for what he considered improper language, but to let me know that I was different from his accustomed audience, and that I constituted an obstacle to the normal flow of all-male discussion...

...Although the amendment on women's rights was effectively killed in the Senate on October 14, just before the election recess, the arguments used against it were reminiscent of the debate over women's suffrage in 1912...

...Perhaps it is hard to understand the rage of being denied access because of a quality that is immutably you— like color or sex...

...Representative Shirley Chisholm accurately described the dimensions of the movement when she said she had faced more discrimination as a woman than as a Negro...

...This hardly promotes a sense of individual achievement or confidence...

...It was literally unbelievable...

...It was the fiftieth anniversary of women's suffrage and a few Senators felt impelled to take cognizance of the date—and of the burgeoning Women's Liberation movement—by inserting appropriate statements in the Congressional Record...

...Other women on Capitol Hill who have not been there long often genuinely fear the loss of their jobs...

...Five years after the House passed a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion, it desegregated its Gentlemen's gallery...

...These practices still continue but are less common than they were...

...if women's lib wins, perhaps we all do/ " August 26 was only a beginning...

...It was a good show, but it bore no relation to reality...

...My criticism met with total incomprehension and perhaps a vague sense of hurt...

...There are ways of letting women know that they are just sitting in...

...But sixteen-hour work days for women in factories used to be part of the bargain...

...I asked when he and the Speaker had had their chat, since word had not yet seeped down to the men guarding the doors...

...When you reach the rooms where the meetings are held, only men are present, or, if there are women, their opinions are not considered important...

...The guard put up his arm to stop me as though I were about to dash through the doors...

...We have learned much in recent years about the fantasies of the men in the Pentagon, in the U.S...

...I suspect that only bringing in new energies and new forms can save the House as a meaningful institution...

...Curiously, some of the Senators and Representatives who bore the brunt of the protest were those who have been actively engaged in pressing for enactment of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S...

...Constitution which has been before Congress for forty-seven years...

...When I resigned, I submitted a memo recommending that they hire a man as their next staff assistant because they discriminated against women...

...One particularly bright spot was Senator Gaylord Nelson's office, where all fourteen women on the staff announced they would strike for the day and presented the Senator with two examples of the grievances that face women on Capitol Hill...

...These male legislators believe in "giving" women more opportunity but are affronted by the assumption of equality by those same women they regard to be inherently inferior...

...Until women participate in the struggle to change the custom of white male dominance, they will implicitly support the repression of blacks and other minorities that is the poison of our social system...

...that they are lucky to have the job...

...Congressman Kastenmeier would sometimes telephone on the last day that my name could be put on a payroll, and apologize for not having found anyone to pay my salary for that month...

...Why did that change...

...Implicit in this practice is the assumption that men are doing more important things and should not be interrupted in their work...

...Other activities on Capitol Hill by those women who did not strike were symbolic challenges to the traditional role of women...

...Chairman Wilbur Mills was dumbfounded...

...You can't go in there...

...The male intern would have learned a lot more about the office...

...By not meeting, even in the most rudimentary ways, their obligation to eliminate discrimination internally, Congressmen and Senators have set in concrete the rigid prejudices of Americans...

...It was not an easy accomplishment, as those who have had bills buried in committee well know...

...Chisholm challenged the archaic system of the power of the House Ways and Means Committee when she refused the assignment that body gave her: "I can do nothing for the people of my district on the Agriculture Committee and I will not waste my time there," the Representative from Brooklyn said...

...to do so would violate the rules of the men's club...

...ten women, seven blacks in the House...

...Female staff members went on strike August 26 in the offices of Senators Charles E. Goodell, Thomas J. Mcln-tyre, and Birch Bayh, as well as in a number of Representatives' offices...

...When the responsibility for paying me evolved to the offices of Representatives Benjamin S. Rosenthal and Abner J. Mikva, I asked why there was so little difficulty in paying a male employe who was paid under1 the same arrangement...

...Most of the women who work on Capitol Hill are poor candidates for a role in women's liberation, because they, like their employers, feel threatened by women who do not "stay in their place...

...The Congressman's wife, Arvonne Fraser, is a member and organizer of the National Organization of Women (NOW...

...By new forms and new energies, I do not mean electing white men with liberal views...

...My own experience, although I had a somewhat unusual job, was representative of much of the unconscious discrimination that is built into the system...

...Congress legislates for the entire country, and through the laws it enacts—or does not enact—it provides or eliminates means of social and institutional change...

...Women in most Congressional offices must work one Saturday each month without compensatory time off or additional wages...

...And not long ago Negroes were denied access to many public places...

...These were, however, for the most part administrative positions, essentially office housekeeping...

...The club is equipped with a dreadful restaurant but excellent (men's) gym facilities...

...She is co-editor, with Erwin Knoll, of two books: "American Militarism 1970" and "War Crimes and the American Conscience...

...It accounts for much of the senile imbecility of so many of the activities in the House of Representatives...

...I mean breaking a system which legislates on equality for women but keeps men in all the top positions on committee staffs and as legislative and administrative assistants in Congressmen's offices while women do secretarial work at low pay...

...I consulted with the Speaker, and we agreed that in this day and age, all the galleries have to be open to everybody...

...My own experience with discrimination has made me acutely aware of the damage to the personal sense of self and dignity that minorities endure...

...Otherwise I'm going to call a policeman over...

...The real issue is the value attached to one's work...

...Women's Lib on Capitol Hill by JUDITH NIES McFADDEN "The important thing is that we are spending this time together considering the larger implications of a movement that some call 'feminist9 but should more accurately be called humanist...

...When I was participating in meetings, one Congressman would frequently use the word "fuck," and after each usage would look in my direction, apologize, and continue...

...My incident occurred in August...

...Almost everything that gets done in the House is accomplished by small groups of old men who are as isolated from campuses, ghettos, farms, factories, tenements^—isolated from the everyday occupations and preoccupations of most Americans—as are the crew members of a submarine...

...The day had been taken, by the women...

...The wearing of pant suits by some was no small matter to men who insist that women belong in skirts...

...You go back to the galleries," he drawled, "and I promise you, you will have absolutely no trouble being admitted to whatever gallery you want...

...There is no guarantee that women will be less corruptible than men in politics, but more women in Congress could do an enormous amount to revitalize an antiquated institution...

...Males are always in drag, in a sense, even if they're in the Pentagon, always constantly elaborating these highly mythical structures...

...Senators Hugh Scott and Mike Mansfield, minority and majority leaders, received the petitions on the Capitol steps at the close of the teach-in...

...House approval of the amendment on August 10 deserved attention as an indicator of what might be the potential power of an organized women's movement...

...The Doorkeeper, a man called "Fish-bait" Miller, might have stepped out of Alice in Wonderland or Alice's Restaurant...

...Much—although certainly not all—of what I have observed on Capitol Hill is unconscious discrimination and it is insidious and destructive...

...They have this fantastic panoply that males create...

...Even enlightened lawmakers are victims of the machismo that permeates Congress as it does all the dominant institutions of American life...

...Reading through the hearings on women's suffrage (House Judiciary Committee, 62nd Congress, March 1912) one finds the same tender concern for "wives, mothers and housewives," distinguished from female citizens, as was found in 1970 in the Senate...

...The teach-in was a result of previous work done by Val Fleischauer and other members of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Equal Rights Amendment and of NOW...

...George Brown, Jr., Phillip Burton, John Conyers, Jr., Robert C. Eckhardt, Don Edwards, Donald M. Fraser, Robert W. Kastenmeier, Abner J. Mikva, Benjamin S. Rosenthal, William F. Ryan) I worked on special projects generally concentrating on military spending and defense policy...

...The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to un-learn...

...The full brunt of discrimination in Congress does not fall on female staff workers, but on Congresswomen and women who would be Congresswomen...

...The standard answer when this practice is questioned is that secretaries know about the Saturday duty when they take the job—it is part of the bargain...

...My assessment is based on a year and a half as a special assistant to ten liberal Congressmen in the House of Representatives...

...The underlying purpose of all our projects was to probe the dynamics of policy-making in America and find the pressure points by which fundamental changes could be brought about in national policy...

...The House maintained its "Gentlemen's" spectator gallery until the summer of 1969, as I learned when I tried to enter it with two male colleagues...

...The August 26 teach-in concentrated on strategy fo* Senate action and included literature, a full analysis of the bill, speakers (topics were "Capitol Hill Can't Help Us But Madison Avenue Might" and "Move to the Back of the University Bus, Ma'am"), and circulation of petitions for signatures supporting Senate passage...

...As you go through the offices, the receptionists and secretaries are women...

...Government—with seals and all the wings and eagles...

...The two complaints presented to Senator Nelson apply to almost every Congressional office...

...In a curious way, Lionel Tiger, author of Men in Groups and an opponent of women's liberation, pinpointed the need for the women's lib movement to succeed...

...No woman can rise to leadership in the House or Senate...

...a movement that is an integral part of rescuing this country from its old, expensive patterns of elitism, racism, and violence...

...Perhaps emulating her example, a majority of the women on Fraser's staff did not report to work on August 26, and one, Valerie Fleischauer, organized a teach-in on the Equal Rights Amendment in the Senate caucus room...

...Men, he said, "can only operate in fantasy structures—like the Pentagon and like the U.S...

...One office that was particularly active on the House side was Representative Don Fraser's...

...I suggested to him that Daniel Webster had been dead for quite a while now and I was wondering who was making the rules...

...The things females do, of course, is break them, which is why it's a very desirable thing, often, to have females in the structure to laugh at the funny men in their Shriner's costumes...

...Most discriminatory attitudes are unconscious...

...The other practice cited by Senator Nelson's staff is the custom of assigning rush projects—clipping, collating, typing, or whatever—to the women regardless of whatever other duties they might be performing...

...They are, for the most part, the Uncle Toms who say, "Oh, my Congressman has been so good to me I couldn't possibly strike...

...More revealing, perhaps, was the reaction of the Congressmen to whom I described the incident: a little amusement, a little sympathy, but no real understanding of my outrage...

...No woman can rise to leadership in the House or Senate . • ." "I don't care about that/' the guard said angrily...

...They are told that secretaries are a dime a dozen...

...Not long ago nearly all Negroes were paid low salaries and denied raises because, so went the cliche, "they live differently...

...Of the ten Representatives' offices with which I had the most direct contact, and which I therefore knew best, four had women in executive positions...

...No ladies allowed...

...When I objected and suggested that they both be given filing, typing, research, and writing, the girl was switched to a research project rather than have the male type...

...Newspapers reported that the Senator had given them the day off, but this was not true...

...The concern of Senator Sam Ervin for the "special" labor, health, domestic relations laws affecting women recalls the testimony of Secretary of State Thomas Bayard in 1912: "There never was a greater mistake, there never was a falser fact stated than that the women of America need any protection further than the love born to them by their fellow countrymen...

...Representative Rosenthal explained that paying a man was a different matter...

...I have overheard conversations in which Congresswomen were evaluated solely on the basis of their assumed sexual performance, not on their intellectual or legislative abilities...

...There was a reliable report of a bra hung on Senator Jacob Javits' office doorknob...

...in the Speaker's chair like Ichabod Crane, Majority Leader Carl Albert hustling to and fro like a tiny stage manager, and Armed Services Committee Chairman Mendel Rivers at the microphone hoarsely intoning a defense of granting unrequested submarines to Nationalist China, I had a wistful sense that I was viewing the end of the old tent circuses...

...Throughout all but the last month of my employment I received a salary substantially lower than had been paid to my male predecessor three years earlier...

...And while they may have occasionally solicited the views of militant blacks, those of women were viewed with suspicion and hostility...

...But when the demands for a raise were granted and an across-the-board salary increase was voted for all Government employes (including the Civil Service and Congressmen's employes on Capitol Hill) I did not receive a raise...

...I just didn't understand what you were driving at in that business about sex," one told me later...

...The proposed amendment had languished in the House Judiciary Committee for twenty-two years...

...Once, when I said I would have to take out a bank loan for my expenses, he asked, "Isn't your husband working anymore...

...I rarely encountered women in the day-to-day work of Congress whose jobs involved working out legislation, developing strategy on procedures, lining up speeches...

...They don't need as much money as we do...

...I started quoting passages of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to the effect that a segregated gallery was illegal...

...Do not imperil the advantages they have...

...Why, I guess it was in June," he answered...

...Patriotism means obedience, age means wisdom, woman means submission, black means inferior —these are preconceptions imbedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there!3 From the commencement address by Gloria Steinem at Vassar College in June, 1970...

...Much more discriminatory than the amount of salary was the method of payment...

...Cafeteria workers in the Senate went on strike this year to obtain the minimum wage paid restaurant workers in the District of Columbia...

...As project followed project, I realized that a basic consensus among the Congressmen and many of the eminent experts they invited to advise them (all male except for the noted philosopher-historian Hannah Arendt) seemed to be a belief that fundamental changes could be effected without disturbing any of the social and cultural patterns that buttress the old order...

...To me Congress seems like a large old-fashioned men's club with stultifying rules of behavior...

...If you want to do anything about it, you have to talk to the Doorkeeper...

...To quote Gloria Steinem again, "If women's lib wins, perhaps we all do...

...On one occasion, as I eyed a floor debate with John McCormack sitting JUDITH NIES McFADDEN recently served as special assistant to ten liberal Representatives on Capitol Hill...

...People who are aware how corrosive discrimination is—both to the perpetrator and the object—try not to discriminate once they understand the source of their own attitudes...

...Congresswomen, even if they cared to, cannot share in cloakroom stories of others' sexual promiscuities...

...An almost all-white, almost all-male Congress is not simply irrelevant...

...I mean breaking a system which enacts civil rights laws for the nation but keeps all the menial jobs in the kitchens and cafeterias of the Capitol for blacks...

...The Congressmen subsequently decided to hire a man, I learned, because they felt the job required more "toughness" than a woman would possess...

...You have to go down to one of the other galleries," he said, pointing the way...

...Women and Negroes are admitted to the club only on special occasions and in small numbers only: (one woman, one black in the Senate...

...If Lionel Tiger is right—and given the state of our military adventures I, for one, am prepared to say that he is—women have more to do than "laugh at the funny men in their Shriner's costumes...

...This dates back to the time of Daniel Webster, and no ladies can sit in the Gentlemen's gallery...

...that ten people are waiting to take their place...

...And it didn't matter whether or not they were paid on time...

...Half the time it was touch and go whether or not I would be paid...

...The day was August 26, 1970...

...Men work on Saturdays, but they do so by choice, and they receive much higher salaries...

...More to the point, dozens of women employed in Congressional offices took a small step toward joining the movement for women's rights by confronting their employers with their grievances and backing their stand by going on strike that day...

...There was just not the sense of urgency in my case...

...So it was a great surprise to find a new spirit on Capitol Hill on August 26...

...We are filled with the Popular Wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up...

...I added that "by some members there is a need to degrade professional competence on the basis of sex...

...Only Representatives Don Edwards of California and John Con-yers of Michigan had women assigned to legislative responsibilities...

...It was not quite a business-as-usual day on Capitol Hill...

...August 26, the day of Women's Strike for Equality, was an important event in the growth of self-consciousness in American women, and I respect the response of women who work for members of Congress...

...Anything that challenges cherished assumptions about politics and sex is bound to be perceived as immensely threatening by those who hold those assumptions...

...When the postal workers struck last February for higher wages, I helped arrange a press conference at which a number of Congressmen spoke out in favor of the postal workers' demands...

...Pins with the strike symbol (a clenched fist encircled by the biological symbol for female) were seen here and there...