The Committee for the Concerns of Women at Harvard and Radcliffe was formed in 1977 under the sponsorship of the Radcliffe Forum to initiate programs of interest to women and to create a clearing-house for women's issues and a university-wide women's network. This collection includes agendas, minutes, memoranda, program fliers, and questionnaires on women's issues at Harvard University and Radcliffe College, including hiring of minority and women faculty and staff, pay equity, health, staff development, and sexual harassment. Additionally there are letters protesting the closing of the Radcliffe Forum office in 1980.

AWARE was a feminist organization concerned with the status and interests of women at the State University of New York (S.U.N.Y.) and served as a link among feminist organizations on various S.U.N.Y. campuses.

In March 1970, the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) established the Special Committee on Women in Legal Education in response to petitions by women law students with "concern for equality of opportunity in legal education, including professional placement." On April 18, 1970, the Committee met in New York City and took action on the following five matters: amendment of the Articles of Association and Approved Association Policy; recruitment of women students; recruitment of women faculty; survey of women in legal education and the profession; and sponsorship of a roundtable on Women in Legal Education. Through the leadership of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Shirley R. Bysiewiez, the Committee became the Section on Women in Legal Education (SWLE) in 1973. The SWLE has actively addressed issues facing women law students and faculty, including matters of financial aid, child care, and part-time employment, and has collected and disseminated statistical data on women in legal education, established networking groups, drafted major resolutions and reports on the treatment of women in the legal profession, sponsored workshops on issues concerning women in the law, etc.

Public health official, Democratic Party worker, and lawyer, Blizard filed a charge of discrimination based on sex and age when she was denied promotion in 1972. The case was decided against her in 1979.

Susan Brownmiller is a journalist and author perhaps best known for her book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975). She attended Cornell University (1952-1954) and worked for Coronet magazine, the Albany Report, and Newsweek before resigning to aid the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in its voter registration drive in Mississippi in 1964. Brownmiller was active in the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s; she was a co-founder of the New York Radical Feminists. Her continuing interest in women's issues led her to help found Women Against Pornography in 1979. The recipient of numerous awards, Brownmiller lectures widely on rape, sexual assault, and the history of the women's movement.

Contardo sued the firm of Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith for sex discrimination. An account executive for the firm since 1972, she resigned in 1984 because of unacceptable working conditions for women. The collection consists of court documents and correspondence about Contardo's suit.

Sandi E. Cooper collected these papers because of her interest in the case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Sears, Roebuck and Company. The plaintiff charged Sears with discrimination in two main categories of employment, claiming that women were underrepresented in high-paying commission sales jobs, and that there were disparate salary rates for men and women in certain managerial and administrative positions. Sears maintained that the government's statistics did not prove discrimination, and disputed the EEOC assumption that male and female applicants were equally qualified for and interested in commission sales positions. Each side presented conflicting interpretations of women's attitudes toward work and the relative importance of workers' and employers' roles in shaping patterns of employment by sex. The case was tried in 1984 and 1985 in U.S. District Court in Chicago, and in early 1986 Judge John A. Nordberg ruled in favor of Sears.

The D.C. Area Feminist Alliance was founded in 1977 "to bring D.C. area women together to increase our effectiveness in our own women's community and in the broader Washington area community and to unite our efforts in the struggle against sexism." In 1978 they took part in the April 29 March to Stop Violence Against Women, and in May 1980 they sponsored a forum entitled Combatting Racism in the Women's Movement.

Ann Pecora Diamond earned degrees from Syracuse University (B.A. 1967) and the University of California, Los Angeles (B.S. 1976), and continued her graduate study in biology at Yale (1977-1978). She was an associate in hematology research at the Yale Medical School (1979-1984) and worked in the development office, eventually serving as associate director for stewardship (1990-1993). She unsuccessfully sued Yale for gender and age discrimination in 1993.

A member of the Clark University Sexual Harassment Task Force (1980-81), Enloe gathered these papers to document the issues and lawsuits arising from charges of sexual harassment made by sociology professor Ximena Bunster against a fellow faculty member, Sidney Peck. This collection consists of reports, memoranda, and correspondence generated by the Clark University administration and the principal figures in sexual harassment cases there, as well as court documents and clippings. There are also statements and publicity from the Boston peace movement, in which a rift had developed over the accusations against Peck, one of the movement's supporters. Also included are correspondence, press releases, and financial records of the Committee for Fairness to Ximena Bunster and letters and statements of the Committee to Support Sidney Peck.

This collection contains correspondence, notes, conference materials, printed material, etc., documenting Jean Faust's work for the National Organization for Women (NOW) at the national level as well as her work for the New York City chapter of NOW. The majority of files represent Faust's efforts, as a member of NOW and as administrative aide to New York Congressman William F. Ryan, to end the practice of gender segregated help wanted advertisements and to eliminate gender biased language from federal and New York state legislation.

Bernice (Shiner) Gera, the first woman umpire in professional baseball, was born in Ernest, Pennsylvania. In 1967 she enrolled in the Florida Baseball School, which at the time had no facilities for women, and she was forced to spend most of the six-week program living in a motel. Rejected by the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (NAPBL), Gera took the NAPBL to court and won a discrimination suit in 1972. She won a contract to work in the New York-Pennsylvania Professional Baseball League, but following a game between the Geneva Senators and the Auburn Twins she decided to resign, citing the non-cooperation of other umpires. Gera worked for the New York Mets in their community relations and promotions program from 1974 to 1979 before retiring to Florida.

Please note: Radcliffe College administrative records are closed for 50 years from date of creation except with the permission of the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Student records are closed for 80 years from the time of separation. Please contact the Library for further assistance.
This collection consists of Horner's correspondence, while she was president of Radcliffe (1972-1989), with Harvard and Radcliffe administrators and trustees, educational foundations, students, alumni/ae, parents, and Harvard faculty. There are university committee reports, surveys, and petitions from students that provide documentation of Harvard/Radcliffe institutional history, the evolving Harvard/Radcliffe relationship, and, more broadly, of U.S. women's higher education. The records illustrate women's issues of the 1970s and 1980s, such as the inequity and reform of women's athletics (crew, swimming, fencing, squash, etc.); discrimination against women in admissions; the changing status of women staff and faculty at Harvard; the development of women's studies; the participation of women in science; sexual harassment; women's experience of co-residence; and the attitudes and experiences of Radcliffe students, including African American and Native American students.

Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan received her A.B. from Vassar College in 1913 and worked towards her master's degree in chemistry at the University of Missouri. Denied the opportunity to teach chemistry and physics because she was a woman, she was inspired to join the National Woman's Party. She became a prominent figure in the picket lines in front of the White House, which led to her arrest and imprisonment in the Occoquan Workhouse, where she and other suffragists participated in a hunger strike.

Alice Kessler-Harris is considered the first historian to merge the fields of women's history and labor history in the United States. Her research interests include women and organized labor, as well as gender in the history of working people. In the mid-1980s Kessler-Harris was called to testify on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a sex discrimination case brought against Sears, Roebuck and Company. Included are files related to sex discrimination in employment, including documents from the Sears case, as well as materials relating to her teaching career at Sarah Lawrence College, Rutgers, Columbia, and Hofstra.

Joost-Gaugier studied art history at Radcliffe College (A.B. 1955, A.M. 1959) and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1973). In 1972, she was informed by Tufts University that her teaching contract would not be extended past the 1972-1973 academic year. In 1972, Joost-Gaugier brought her concerns of sex discrimination to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), believing that Tufts University was violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After an investigation, the EEOC formally charged Tufts University with sex discrimination. This case would become the EEOC's first class action suit that charged a university with sex discrimination. Ultimately, Tufts University settled the class action suit with the EEOC, Barbara Ehrlich White, and Joost-Gaugier in 1986.

A writer, college teacher, publicist, and social activist, Kantrowitz is the author of Dramatic Allegory: Lindsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (1975). She brought a sex discrimination complaint against Kent State University in 1974; an account of her case appears in Rocking the Boat: Academic Women and Academic Processes (1981).

Writer and journalist Ludtke graduated from Wellesley College. She drew national attention in 1977 when, as a reporter for Sports Illustrated, she sued Major League Baseball to gain women reporters equal access to athletes' locker rooms. She worked for CBS News and Time and held a number of fellowships at Harvard and Radcliffe (1992-1995) before publishing On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America (1997).

Feminist, lawyer, activist, and professor Catharine Alice MacKinnon earned her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1977 and her Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1987. While in law school, she organized the first course to be taught in the Yale women's studies program and conceived and worked to establish the legal argument that sexual harassment in the workplace is sex discrimination. This work grew into her first book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women (Yale, 1978). Her legal framework was adopted by the United States Supreme Court in 1986 in its first sexual harassment case, on which she was co-counsel and wrote the brief.

A college administrator and career counselor, Susanna Masters Miller worked for General Electric (GE), where she was the third woman to be accepted into its Employee Relations Management Program. While at GE she wrote Equal Opportunities for Women: A Study of the Power Generation Sales Division and the Power Transmission and Distribution Sales Division (1972) and worked on projects aimed at analyzing the problems and opportunities involved in recruiting, training, and employing women.

Dinah Levine Moché was the only woman ever to be a member of the Queensborough Community College physics department. In 1976 she filed a sex discrimination suit against Queensborough Community College and City University of New York. The New York State Division of Human Rights found "probable cause" supporting Moché's complaint. She continued her struggle for equal treatment during the 1980s and 1990s.

Pauli Murray was a civil rights and feminist activist. When she applied to Harvard Law School in 1941, her application was rejected because Harvard did not admit women. Her experiences and interests led her to many places (California, New York City, Massachusetts, Sweden, and Ghana) and through many careers: worker's rights and education, activism, writing, the law, college teaching and administration, and the Episcopal priesthood. The collection holds a number of materials related to sex discrimination in the workplace and in higher education.

The National Organization for Women is a feminist organization formed on June 30, 1966, during the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C. The Statement of Purpose declares that "the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings." At their organizing conference, participants established task forces on education, employment, the role of women in the family, women's political rights, and images of women in the media. NOW was incorporated in 1967, and local chapters were formed; by 1975 there were over 600 chapters. As membership increased, the organization addressed more issues, including a "war on poverty," the Equal Rights Amendment, child care, abortion rights, sexual harassment, women in government, women and religion, and violence against women.

The Women's Caucus at the New York Times was created in 1972 to fight discrimination against women at the newspaper. A class action suit, Boylan v. New York Times, ended in a 1978 out-of-court settlement in the women's favor. This collection concerns the successful suit of the Women's Caucus against the Times. Included are legal documents, memos, depositions, transcripts, correspondence, clippings and memorabilia; also records of meetings of the Caucus; and an audiotape (shelved separately as T-228) of a speech by Nan Robertson at a 1986 meeting of the Caucus.

The National Organization for Women Legal Defense & Education Fund (NOW LDEF; known as Legal Momentum since 2004), was one of the first legal organizations in the United States devoted solely to working for gender equality. It was established in 1970 to further women's rights through litigation and to raise funds to support legal and educational projects relating to women. NOW LDEF has focused its efforts on gaining legal rights for women in education, employment, and cases of physical abuse and sexual harassment, and changing marriage and divorce laws. It also runs larger programs, such as the Project on Equal Education Rights (PEER, 1974-1992), and the National Judicial Education Project (NJEP, 1980-ongoing). During the 1970s, it campaigned for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. In the early 1990s NOW LDEF began lobbying in Washington, D.C., for the Violence Against Women Act (passed in 1994) and also worked to pass effective legislation on topics ranging from sexual harassment to welfare.

Palmer was the thirteenth woman in the United States to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Palmer began working for the Department of State in 1955 as a clerk typist and became a Foreign Service Officer in 1960. After several ambassadors objected to her assignment to their embassies in Africa in the late 1960s, and when she was expected to act as social secretary to an ambassador's wife, she started an internal grievance procedure through the department's Equal Employment Office (EEO) charging sex discrimination. In 1969 she was notified that the EEO had found in her favor, but refused to enter the report in her personnel file. Palmer took the case to the Civil Service Commission in June 1971, which also found in her favor. The State Department then announced that sex discrimination would no longer be tolerated. Palmer's case thus provided a basis for the more conciliatory tactics of the Women's Action Organization.

The Project on the Status and Education of Women (PSEW) was the first national project concerned with achieving equity for women students, faculty, and administrators in colleges and universities. PSEW staff worked in conjunction with Congressional staff and other interested organizations and coalitions on the development and passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, mandating that educational institutions that received federal funding could not discriminate on the basis of sex. Topics addressed in this collection include sex equity in education, Title IX, women's participation in college sports, sexual harassment and assault, campus rape, affirmative action, "chilly climate" for women on campus, employment issues, and government laws and regulations regarding gender equity.

Rosalind Rosenberg was an expert witness in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC’s) lawsuit against Sears, Roebuck and Company. The EEOC charged Sears with sex discrimination, claiming that women were underrepresented in high-paying commission sales jobs, and that there were disparate salary rates for men and women in certain managerial and administrative positions. Two prominent feminist historians, Rosalind Rosenberg for Sears and Alice Kessler-Harris for the EEOC, presented conflicting interpretations of women's attitudes toward work and the relative importance of workers' and employers' roles in shaping patterns of employment by sex. The case was tried in 1984 and 1985 in U.S. District Court in Chicago; early in 1986 Judge John A. Nordberg ruled in favor of Sears. A debate, which is documented in Rosenberg's private correspondence and in published articles, ensued among historians and feminists over these conflicting historical interpretations and the role of feminists in the law courts.

A professor of anthropology at Pace College (later Pace University), Winsey charged the university with sex discrimination. The collection contains the records of Winsey's sex discrimination suit and her subsequent dispute with her lawyer and the Internal Revenue Service regarding the tax status of her damage settlement. Also included are earlier records regarding her employment at Seton Hall University in the 1950s; and correspondence, clippings, etc. concerning the American Italian Historical Association and the National Organization of Italian-American Women.

Phyllis N. Segal served as founding legal director for the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense & Education Fund (1977-1982) and subsequently as general counsel (1982-1990) and chair (1990-1994), where, among other issues, she worked for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

The Senior Faculty Caucus for Gender Equality was formed in response to remarks made in January 2005 at a conference hosted by the National Bureau of Economics by Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard University, on the subject of women's ability to excel in science.

Eileen Shanahan was a reporter for the Washinton bureau of the New York Times and a plaintiff in the sex discrimination suit filed against the Times (Boylan v. New York Times) which ended in a 1978 out-of-court settlement in favor of the plaintiffs.

A biological female who lives as a person without regard to sex, Mark Ethan Smith was born Marcia Ellen Bazer. In 1982 Smith began work as an aircraft electrician apprentice at the Naval Air Rework Facility in Alameda, California. Smith was suspended without pay in January 1984 and discharged in September of the same year. Smith subsequently filed suit against the Navy and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging unlawful discrimination. This collection includes legal files relating to Smith's discrimination case against the United States Navy Department and related legal actions, correspondence, published and unpublished writings, photographs, memorabilia, and the Foundation for Role Equity Education web site.

Jean Tepperman was a poet, teacher, writer, and secretary and the author of Not Servants Not Machines: Office Workers Speak Out (1975). This collection consists of 51 transcripts of interviews Tepperman conducted with clerical workers for her book, notes on the interviews, transcripts, questionnaires, and leaflets. Most of the interviewees are women who were employed in offices in the Boston area; they range in age from their twenties to their eighties. The interviews contain descriptions of working conditions, pay inequities, race discrimination, sexual harassment and discrimination, and union organizing efforts.

Founded in 1964 as Washington Opportunities for Women, Wider Opportunities for Women seeks to expand employment opportunities for women through information, employment training, and advocacy services. It works to overcome barriers to women's employment and economic equity, such as occupational segregation, sex stereotyped education and training, discrimination in employment practices and wages, and lack of appropriate dependent care.

Founded in 1979 by Susan Brownmiller and others, Women Against Pornography sought to educate men and women about what it saw as the essence of pornography: the degradation, objectification, and brutalization of women. To this end it offered slide shows and lectures, maintained a referral service for victims of sexual exploitation, compiled statistics, organized protests, and sponsored tours of New York City's Times Square area. WAP was disbanded in 1990. This collection includes correspondence, reports and studies, press releases, published and unpublished articles, material re:concerning pornography legislation and sex discrimination cases, and clippings.

Founded in 1978 in response to the needs and concerns of the unprecedented numbers of women entering the legal profession, the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts (WBA) is committed to the advancement of women in the profession and to the interests of women in society. It offers educational programs, mentoring, and networking opportunities, supports pro bono activities and candidates for all levels of appointments, writes amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs, and lobbies the legislature. Through its Legislative Policy Committee, the WBA has taken an active role in advocating for issues of concern to women, including domestic violence, reproductive rights, child custody, legal services, family medical leave, same-sex marriage, health care, and probate. In addition, the WBA files amicus curiae briefs in cases affecting women and their children, including cases concerning alimony, child support, domestic violence, employment, sexual harassment, gender equality, reproductive rights, and reproductive technology.

From 1980 to 1981, Yount taught "Deviance and Sex Role" courses at the University of Colorado. That same year, Yount began research for her dissertation, titled Women and Men Coal Miners: Coping with Gender Integration Underground, by conducting oral history interviews with male and female coal miners in Colorado and Utah. This collection contains audiocassettes, transcripts, conference materials, and related articles by Yount documenting the integration of women workers into three coal mines in Colorado and five coal mines in Utah during the 1970s and early 1980s. Yount's focus was the integration of women into traditionally male jobs, and her research emphasized the multiple challenges faced by the female coal miners, including sexual harassment, gender discrimination, lack of seniority in the coal mining unions, lack of appropriately-sized protective clothing, and hostility from the male miners’ wives.