03-04-95 Women of Achievement and Herstory

      Event 03-04-1933, Frances Perkins sworn in as Secretary of Labor
to become the first woman to serve in the cabinet of a US President. 
      Perkins had conducted an influential survey of New York's notorious
Hell's Kitchen district while completing work on her master's degree from
Columbia.   
      In 1918 she received an appointment to New York State's Industrial
Commission and named to head the board in 1926 and remained head of the
board when Franklin Delano Roosevelt became governor.  (She had been an
eye-witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 that killed 146 workers,
mostly young girls who jumped out of third and fourth story windows
rather than be burned alive.  The management had locked exit doors that
the women could have used to escape to prevent stealing.)
      Her nomination of Secretary of Labor in 1933 was vehemently opposed
by Republicans who said the job should have gone to a man and all during
her administration she was violently opposed by Republicans and
conservatives both because she was a woman and pro-labor.
      She was instrumental in writing many acts for reform including the
Social Security Act (1935), and the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938), as well
as early legislation actions which were aimed at halting the Great
Depression. She reorganized the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the
Women's Bureau.]
      She was known to have opposed several actions regarding women's
rights including the ERA, but some see it as a defense against revelations
regarding her personal life as a lesbian.  
      She had been influenced early in life by Florence Kelley and worked
at Jane Addams' Hull House.  She was acquainted, although not known to
be particularly close to Eleanor Roosevelt before her appointment to FDR's
cabinet through the noted Heterodoxy network in New York City to which
many of the prominent women of the day were either members or friends
of members.  
      She resigned her cabinet post in 1945 after the death of Franklin
Roosevelt and served in the Civil Service Commission under President
Harry Truman.  

Anniversaries 03-04 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

      B. 03-04-1781, Rebecca Gratz, devoted most of her life to improving
the conditions for women and children. Her methods served as models for
future reforms. Sir Walter Scott modeled Rebecca in _Ivanhoe_ after her.

      Event 03-04-1917, Jeannette Rankin, becomes the first woman to serve
in the US Congress. Montana women had the vote several years before the
1920 Federal amendment. 

      Event 03-04-1969, a NOW attorney lifts a typewriter weighing more
than 30 pounds that secretaries were required to move and torpedoes the
weight requirements that barred women from higher paying non-traditional
jobs in _Weeks v Southern Bell_.

      Event 03-04-1986, Christine Craft, lost a U.S. Supreme Court decision
to reinstate a $325,000 judgment in her lengthy suit against a TV company
that had fired her because she was "too unattractive, too old and not
deferential enough to men."  She had won the decision but an appeals
courts threw out the money award.  Only Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
voted to reinstate the judgment.


      >> (C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there weren't
notable and effective women throughout history.  They were always there,
but historians failed to note them in our histories so that each generation
of women has had to reinvent themselves.