Bear Atwood was only seventeen when she joined NOW in 1977. She faced discrimination in her career as an attorney. Bear discusses the groundbreaking role of NOW and how it has changed over the years.
“So you know, don’t wait for anyone to hand you power, seize power. Um, you know, which isn’t to say don’t respect and listen to older feminists who have experience, but don’t wait for them to, don’t wait for them to pass the torch. Jump up there take the torch.”
TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by Zhamilya Bilyalova
August 15, 2020
Transcription by Ryan Neely
[Note on COVID-19: Due to strict social distancing guidelines, this interview was hosted as a phone call and recorded using a mobile application.]
OK, I think I start it now.
It says it’s recording.
Mmhm. Ok, um, yea, and then if we, if you would like to maybe end in forty five minutes and then take a break or maybe continue later, cause I don’t know how much time it would take us for this interview.
Alright, that’s fine.
Mmhm. Ok, so I guess the first question is can you tell me a bit about your background: where you were born, where did you go to school, what was your family like? Yea.
So, I was born in New York, but my family moved thirteen times before they finally moved to a house that we stayed in then the rest of my life. Um, when I was in fifth grade. So I moved around a ton as a kid. I’m one of three girls: my older sister’s nickname is Biscuit and my younger sister’s is Beany. So we were the three B’s growing up. Um, when I was in fourth grade my parents moved the house that then they moved into, so we spent a lot of our childhood restoring an old house. And I went to Exeter my junior and senior year and then I went to Denison University which is in Granville, Ohio and then I went to Catholic University of America for law school. What else can I tell you about?
I see, yea. I’m also actually, I also have sisters.
I’m the middle child.
Oh, nice, I’m the oldest, so yea. Um, and I also remember I read somewhere you said something about your experience at Exeter that you were—cause I think, I think it was like a boy’s school before or wasn’t it? Maybe I’m—
I was there in the, in the first five years that they had girl students. So it was, you know, I mean I wasn’t there the fir—I was there like the third or fourth year that they had boarding students.
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Um, and it was definitely a formative part of my becoming a feminist (chuckles)
Yea, yea—
Because, you know the—I mean the school trea—the, the administration tried really hard, I think to integrate girls in smoothly. Um, but, you know they didn’t, I mean they couldn’t just fire faculty so they could hire women faculty. And so there were very few women faculty um, and you know, I mean they’re, they would ask us things like you know, I’d be the only girl in the class and he’s like, “Well, why don’t you give us the women’s perspective?” Like, yes I would like to speak for all women at age sixteen! (laughs) Um, you know. Or the alumni would come back and we had a morning assembly three days a week and so a lot of times we’d have an alumni speaker and they would say, “Well, I hope my education still means something now that there are girls here.” Yea, I mean, just, there was, that’s sort of underlying hostility from, from a lot of faculty—and not all faculty. Some of them were incredibly welcoming and great, but it was um, it was a tough, it was a tough road. You know, on the other hand they, they built a brand new gym just as they were admitting girls and so we had, unlike many schools, the girls had equal facilities to the boys and you know, really first class athletic facilities and access to a lot of sporting that um, that was very different from where I’d gone to public school before that. And so, I mean there were, you know there were places you could see they really tried.
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You know one of the things they did that we all laugh about now is they decided that when they redid the dorms that were gonna be girls dorms, they had to put bathtubs in. And so like, like we didn’t want bathtubs, we wanted showers. When you had to get to an eight o’ clock in the morning like really? Who had time for a bath? And so they would, but they were a couple people who would, whenever there wasn’t money for something they would say, “Well, you know we had to put those bathtubs in for the girls.” And we were always just like, “Really? Seriously?” So you know, there was, I mean it definitely, it was the first time I’d experienced the—I grew up in a household where my father had every expectations that my sisters and I would go to professional school. We didn’t know that like, it wasn’t an option to not. Even graduate school wasn’t OK with him; we had to go to professional school. And, you know I mean, we—that was really the first time I felt that level of hostility for my being there and wanting to move forward in my life and I was there—I graduated in ’77.
Mmhm.
Um, and you know, it was, I mean it was amazing to be someplace where everybody had the same expectations in terms of education for themselves that um, that I had, but we definitely, we definitely had different, different treatment from some faculty and, and definitely from alumni.
Wow, that’s so interesting. And then all the like, public schools, they were coed right?
Yes.
Mmhm, it’s just like the private schools that were um, like unique, kind of. Mmhm, yea. Um, cause I’m just—it came to my mind that also like the reason why I chose Wellesley was because of that confidence they talk about. Like when you go to school where they’re all women and they all have like, they all hold a position in power. Like, there’s no other faculty members, like, there’s a lot of older clubs like, all the presidents they’re all women that although it sounds like as, as in like superficial environment. Like at first they would tell me, “Oh, it’s not gonna prepare you well for the world,” but at the same time when I talk to alumnis—and whose, like all the people who stayed there, they would say that it gave them so much confidence that knowing that women can do anything and the, just like that sense of sisterhood also helped and um, yea, that’s why it was like very interesting to me like how would it be like to go to a women’s college. Yea, but for you—
I, I mean I, and I intentionally went to a college that had been coed for its entire existence.
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Like that was the one thing I knew I really always thought I wanted to go to Amherst, but that wasn’t an option cause Amherst was all men. And they became coed the year before I graduated from high school. And I never even applied there cause I wasn’t gonna do that again. You know, go some place and be in the early class of women. So I, I intentionally went to a school that had been coed forever. Um, cause I didn’t want to deal with that, but I did apply to some women’s colleges.
Mmhm.
Um, and I ultimately decided not to go. But for the very reasons that you talk about they, they were attractive to me.
Yea, yea, definitely. Mmhm. Ok, next (chuckles). Ok, so next question is uh, what brought you into politics and organizing?
So, um, when I was in high school and um, I was really involved in the anti-nuclear movement and um, and Exeter’s right near Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant and that one hadn’t been built yet. And so I was involved in organizing around not building new, the nuclear power plant. Um…so that was kind of my early organizing political passion, but, but it was also so clear to me that women were just, their voices weren’t heard in that movement. Um, and so I really went looking, went looking for a different place to organize. Um, and, and found it in NOW. I was only 17 when I joined NOW, so, um, so I mean I think it was a lot, my experience at Exeter that, that brought me to, that wanting to organize on women’s issues.
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And, and it was seeing women’s voices not heard in the, in the anti-nuclear movement that, that made me go looking for a different place to be an activist.
Mm, yea. So, when did you join NOW then?
So, in like 1977.
So right after your um, high school graduation?
So while I was still there.
Oh wow, so was there like a chapter at Exeter?
No. No. Absolute—no, definitely not. Um, there was—but there was a chapter in the area and I wasn’t really that active in the chapter in the area. It was hard at Exeter to be active off campus.
Yea. Mmhm.
But I was a member. Sort of what we call an at-large member. Um, yea I mean I can remember, we used to have a paper newsletter that came from the national office and I can remember, it came once a month, like waiting for that newsletter to come cause it was, you know, I mean it was just like I read every word of it.
Wow—
Um, and, and then when I went to college I became involved in a chapter that was in the local chapter, not at Denison, but the local chapter in college. And I was involved in a local chapter, pretty much everywhere after that where I lived.
Yea, yea, that’s nice. And, what was there like in the newspaper that you were so waiting for--?
So it was during the ERA ratification time. So, I definitely was, you know, wanting to know what was happening with ERA ratification and um, that was probably the place I was most, most involved was doing some of the marches for ERA in New Hampshire.
What is ERA?
Equal Rights Amendment.
Ah! Mmhm, mmhm. Ya, ya, ya, ya.
Um, and I was, I was really interested in um, I was really interested in abortion rights.
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And you know abortion was, was brand new legal. It had only been legal since ’72 and so it was, you know, was a brand new legal issue and it was an issue that my parents had talked about in a supportive way. Um, so that I kinda knew about it before I went to NOW. Um, I don’t know, it was just all so interesting.
Yea, of course.
It was just, you know what I mean? That thing you talked about earlier, these, this organization that was all women in power and talking about women’s issues and things that felt like really resonated for me.
Mmhm, definitely, yea. Um, yea of course it’s just like, for me like I know what was happening like, for example, in Kazakhstan in these years but still I’m pretty new to the U.S. so it’s interesting to hear from you like what was it like in the 70s, 80s, um, yea cause here it’s oh my gosh, we have a long way to go (laughs). So I just like, starting. Um, yea, so the third question now is when and how did you get involved with the women’s rights movement in general? Which I think you kind of mentioned already. And why did you choose to get involved? Mmhm.
So, I mean it really was, my early involved really was um, was because of what I saw at, at Exeter and because of what I saw in the anti-nuclear movement. Then I went into a Catholic Law School and I really like didn’t understand that it would be so Catholic (laughs). Um, and I went there because they had really poverty law programs and I always knew that I wanted to do, do something in law that I wasn’t gonna just go practice law. That I was gonna either work for a legal aid society or for a public defenders program. And so, um, at the end of my first year in law school I found out that I was in the top 10 percent of my class, which in law school here is a big deal.
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And uh, one of the deans who was a priest saw me right after I found out and I was really excited about it, and he was like, “Oh, yea,” he said, “I hate it when women are in the top 10 percent, you’re just gonna get married and have babies. And you’re gonna take top 10 percent jobs away from us.” And, I mean I was just like, “Seriously?” You know? You know, you know you’re telling me it’s bad that I’m in the top 10 percent? And that was, that was a really, like a, a moment of again, really wanting to be re-invigorated.
And then um, you know they taught in our criminal law class they were still teaching that abortion was a criminal offense, even though it wasn’t a criminal offense anymore in the country at that point. And, the judge who wrote the Roe V. Wade decision was related to someone in my class and would’ve come speak at our graduation, but Catholic University wouldn’t let him come speak because he’d written the Roe decision—
Wow—
And so, you know, there were just, again it was, there were a lot of sort of sexist undertones that, that had to do with the Catholic Doctrine that, that the school had and, I mean I, I really didn’t understand what that would be like when I went there. Um, but it was, it was sort of a second wave of why this, this is really important. You know, I want, I want to be a lawyer and I’m going out into a world where you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna see this kind of discrimination and that was very sobering for me.
0:15:26.8
Um, so I, you know, I mean it was—the 70s and 80s were, were a time of incredible transition. Um, and I feel sort of really lucky that I was there to see it and, and on the other hand, wish that I hadn’t had to be on the forefront of it.
Um, so you know, and then I kept sort of experiencing things like that. I went to um, New Hampshire, to a rural part of New Hampshire to work in the public defender program and there were two male attorneys and a women secretary there already. And the women secretary said to me the first day, “Don’t expect me to like you. I told them not to hire a girl.” And the male attorneys basically wouldn’t speak to me unless it was specifically about a case. I mean I went home in tears more days than not, it was really hard. The judges were um, very condescending to me. The prosecutors called me honey and sweetie. You know, it was like, it was a really, that first year was a really, really tough year. I stayed 8 years and by the time I left I was the managing attorney in the office and had hired other women attorneys and you know, had gained respect from the judges, but um, it was, you know—and at the same time I, I have found a chapter in the, in the region um, because I needed to have so—I needed to have some space that was women centered and where I could make friends that were facing the same kinds of things that I was. Um, it was, it was very—I had a baby while I was there, which was really tough. Um, I mean everyone just assumed I wouldn’t come back to work after I had a baby. Were shocked that I was gonna stay home 8 weeks and then be back and it was uh—sorry about the headphones by the way, but my speakers don’t work.
Um, so up until, yea so then through that point I just really kept hitting those walls in society that you know, I guess they stopped coming as a surprise to me but, certainly continued to be an inspiration to be involved in the women’s movement.
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Um, and it’s not as true now as it was then, but NOW was, NOW was much more cutting edge then. Um, and that was really important to me. I was, I mean I tend to be pretty radical in my thinking and did then too and NOW was much more cutting edge than it is now. I still love it. Um, and you know, and I liked NOW because it wasn’t just one issue that they focused on, um, but even from the early days they saw race as an issue. Even though they haven’t very successfully dealt with race internally. They saw race as an issue that was a feminist issue. Um, you know, they, they saw violence against women as being an important feminist issue and most of the women shelters that exist have existed for a long time, were started by NOW members. Um, they were really on the forefront of making, making political changes but also making change in very concrete ways. So, I really liked that about NOW. Um, and I really, really, really cared about abortion rights and NOW was very much on the forefront of you know, there weren’t the number of organizations that exist today that are, that are single focus and Planned Parenthood wasn’t really political then. Um, it existed, but it wasn’t really political.
Wow, mmhm, I see. Yea.
So…I think that answered your question.
Yea, definitely. Yes, uh, yea so one thing came to my mind was when you decided to study law and be a lawyer, did you particularly wanted to help—did you wanna, did you wanna help like particular people? Like women or uh, or was it just that you wanted to be a lawyer cause um, I feel there are, like, different types of issues people want to focus on. Like some of my friends are very passionate about immigration, so they want to be immigration lawyers and stuff like that. So, was there like an area you wanted to work in particular?
There was. I really wanted to, I wanted to focus my practice on helping low income people. And so, um, so I went to criminal defense for people who couldn’t afford a lawyer. Um.
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I grew up in a household where my, my dad was incredibly anti-police and really felt like people who didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer got um, really railroaded by the judicial system and so I had very early influence on that. Um, and I wanted to a trial lawyer. I wanted, you know, I, I thought the idea—I, there’s almost nothing I like better in the world than standing in front of people and talking and so I—and you know, if you go under most areas of law you don’t see a court room of a long time. So. But I really thought that people—and still think—that people are entitled to, um, entitled to have a lawyer who will zealously represent them, and I wanted to. To do that.
Yea, yea.
So I went to work of the public defenders right out of law school.
Wow, that’s amazing. Um, yea, cause all I know about being a lawyer is by watching “How To Get Away With Murder.” (Laughs)
(Laughs)
I don’t know if you have caught this TV show, and that really was so inspiring to me um and—there was one thing I was gonna say…Yea! I remember how they explained that it’s not really about like justice or how if someone is right or wrong, it’s how well you work with evidence and how you present it. So you really like have to be a great, like, mm, like public speaker and to be good at convincing, um…yea, but—
Those things are really important. They are definitely really important.
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And I, I feel like I, I learned so much in my years at the public defenders and gained so much self confidence in terms of my ability to do those things that um, that were, that really set me up for the stuff I did for the rest of my life.
Yea, definitely. Um, yea and I also think that like nowadays as I see my new like, my peers, they wanna like spread awareness and kind of help make change on social media. Like, I know during the like BLM movement earlier this summer like everyone was just reposting things um, trying to inform each other and signing petitions and all of those like little steps um, but when I watched the show I realized that lawyers and people who uh, deal with law are actually the ones that are making change. Like—it’s actually if you—do you wanna help for example, um, like immigrant children or refugees that coming from like, the Mexican border. Like if you are a lawyer to kind of like stand up for them, then you really make a change. And uh, like for us that we were signing those petitions and stuff, yea it was helpful, but just seeing lawyers like defend actual people that was like very inspiring to me in this show.
Yea, I mean the work that the immigration lawyers do is, is amazing. They’re—it’s some of the hardest work you can do as a lawyer and they’re…I mean I just, one of my close friends is an immigration lawyer and I really admire, admire her and the work that she does. And, and you know, I think lawyers can do, can, can make change two ways. They can make change by representing individual people, which I did as a public defender and um, and they can make change by doing um, what we call impact litigation. So bringing cases that will, may even make a bad law unconstitutional or well, someway affect a wide range of people. And so I did that um, later in my career. Um, both of the Southern Poverty Law Center where we had a juvenile justice project that I worked on. I was the executive director of. And then I was the legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union in Mississippi and it was all doing impact litigation. Trying to make change. Um, so I’ve done it both ways. And like it, and like doing it both ways.
Mmhm, yea. Wasn’t the one where you defended um, uh, kids that got into not jails, I think they’re called juvenile centers, is this the one that you were talking about? Where you brought the case and it affected--?
We brought, we brought a case against—well, we brought a couple cases on juvenile centers. We brought one where um, it was an all girl, it was an all girls center and uh, the girls were treated horrifically.
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It was just, I mean, shackled during the day. Or they were supposed to be in school, they would end up being shackled to their beds instead of going to school. Um, some sexual assault happening from guards and we actually got that place shut down completely um, through our litigation. And then we did some, some litigation around conditions at some of the detention centers in the state um, to try and improve the conditions. And make sure kids were actually going to school and, and getting access to counseling and things like that. Not being held in solitary confinement. You can’t believe how many juveniles are held in solitary confinement which is just a horrible thing to do to anybody, but to a kid it’s really brutal. And they’d be thrown in solitary confinement for three or four days for very minor infractions. Um, so, that was a big focus of our litigation was ending solitary confinement for kids at detention centers.
Mmhm, since they’re still like, growing um, it seems like they’re just like keep punishing them and not helping them grow into a better person.
Yea, I mean it’s a very punitive system. And we worked really hard at trying to um, trying to bring what we call, “wraparound services” into the community so that kids who did get out on probation didn’t just, didn’t just have to report to a probation officer, but they, they and their family got services to help with a lot of the things that were underlying issues for their behavior so, um, that was one of the other things we focused on.
Mmhm, yea that’s great, and do you know if that’s still happening? Like there are some still places that are not really following the rules?
Oh absolutely. Absolutely.
Yea, but there are people working on it right? Like—
There are people working on it.
Ok. Ok that’s good. I will probably read some more about it, that’s very interesting—cause I know one thing that I faced in my life is that when I try to donate um, period products to women in jails, uh they didn’t even want us to donate because I think, I was not the person who was talking to the prison, but it was another girl and she said that they almost use it as like a way of punishment. That they only gave one period product per day or something, so that was just very strange to me um, that they didn’t even want us to donate, yea.
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Are they—and, and this is not new, when I was at the public defender’s in New Hampshire in the 80s, if I was going to visit a women in the detention centers, which is where they’re held pre-trial, um, I always carried sanitary napkins in my briefcase so that if I, if, if one of them was having their period I could leave sanitary napkins for them because they didn’t have them at all. They were just using toilet paper, and so um, I mean this was definitely not a new thing.
Mm, I see. Oh my god. That’s crazy, yea. Mm, OK. OK. Let me see, what else, um…so another question would when did you get involved in NOW specifically? Oh, that, yea you said it was kind of at Exeter um, and uh, why and what was your role? Maybe, I think you were, you were first a member, then I think you were getting a role at some point, right?
So I was just really just a member while I was in high school and pretty much while I was in college and then when I went to New Hampshire in ’84 to work at the public defender program, I helped to found a chapter um, so I became a chapter activist. I, you know, helped organize things and you know, it’s hard to imagine in these days, but we had a phone tree, do you know what a phone tree is?
No (chuckles).
It’s like one p—one person wants to, you know, we need to get the word out about a, a bill or a piece of legislation. And one person calls two people and those two people have two people they’re supposed to call and those people have two people they’re supposed to call so you could the word out about the bill really fast to everyone in the chapter, if everyone makes their phone calls. So I would help organize phone trees and um, organized some, I’d get our chapter to some bigger marches um, and—but we did a lot of legislative work. Um, so. So then, um, when I le—I, I left New Hampshire in like ’91, ’92 and moved to New Jersey and um, joined the—my chapter right away. Well, actually I took the bar in New Jersey first and then I joined a chapter, cause I, all I did was study for the bar when I first got there.
Yea.
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Um, so I joined a chapter and for the first time really got involved because I was staying home—I had, my son was three and half and I hadn’t found a job yet, and so I was home with him and um, so I had for the first time the luxury of really having a lot of time to spend and um, so I got really involved with that chapter and became a chapter president and um, and then became the action vice president for NOW in New Jersey under Myra Terry and then became the president for NOW in New Jersey. Um, and then since I moved to Mississippi I’ve become the Mississippi president. And I served on the board a bunch of times, the national board. And I’ve searched on the NOW PAC a couple of times.
Wow, mmhm. And you were doing that while you were also being a lawyer at the same time?
So, I actually um, when I became president of NOW in, in um New Jersey, it was a full time paid position. It didn’t pay very well, but um, I was lucky enough to have a spouse who you know, had enough income that I didn’t have to be making a lawyer’s wages and so I did that full time for three years. And then left and went to Planned Parenthood for three years. Then left Planned Parenthood to go be the director of the division on women in New Jersey, which was a job in state government that was an appointed position by the governor. And left there to go work in the AG’s office at the division on civil rights doing civil rights investigation and um, work. So, but I stayed in the active in the chapter, just not as active um, once I, I left to go do, do other jobs again.
Yea, mhmm.
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But I was really lucky to be able to be a full time president and be able to just devote all of my time to that. That was, you know, I mean it was the most amazing job I’ve ever had.
Mmhm. That’s so interesting. Uh, did you have any, did you work on any like big cases related to women’s issues at all in your time?
So um, I had…um, I have worked on some um, when I was at Planned Parenthood. Now New Jersey had passed a parental notification law so a law saying that minors had to notify their parents before they could get an abortion, which we didn’t support and so I worked on the case that went to the um, to the New Jersey Supreme Court and overturned that law.
Wow.
Um, I worked on a lotta legislation while I was, while I was in Allen, New Jersey. Particularly around actually two things: around divorce, they were trying to pass this omnibus divorce bill that had all these different little bills in it, some of which were really terrible for women, and so we worked to defeat those bills and actually passed a couple good ones. Um, and it was also the time—and you’re not gonna know about this, cause you weren’t here—but during Bill Clinton’s time in office, they passed really bad um, welfare bills that were very draconian and very bad for women. And so we worked a lot on that and we brought a case um, they passed a law that said if you were on welfare already and you had another child that your welfare benefits wouldn’t go up to cover that child. So, there’d be no additional um, money so, so now you have you know, three children that you had to take care of on the already terrible benefits for two children.
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We really felt that that was both punishing women as well as children and so we brought a lawsuit to try and overturn that law and we were unsuccessful.
Oh my gosh, mm.
It was really um—and we actually brought it, it was an interesting case. We brought it with um, with a, a right to life group because their argument was that, in knowing that they wouldn’t get additional benefits, it would force to have abortions, and so they, or they believed. And so they were against it on those grounds, um, and so we joined forces and it was a very um, it was a very bizarre case when we would all have to be in the same room. We would all like sit as far away from each other as we could (chuckles).
(Chuckles) Mmhm, that’s so interesting, yea. And is it til this day that you don’t get more benefits when you have like a second, third child?
I don’t know if that has changed. Um, it’s changed under New Jersey law, I think, but I don’t know if the federal law has changed.
Mm, I see. Yea. Cause I don’t know why I thought maybe Hilary Clinton was kind of involved with like, healthcare for women, or am I mistaken at all? Um, yea so, I don’t know what was that. Um, ok, so let me see…so there’s two things that you said you worked on mostly was the divorce and this welfare.
Welfare reform.
Mmhm, OK. Mmhm, uh, ok another question would be have you been involved in the women’s rights movement outside of NOW?
So I was as a, as an employee at Planned Parenthood. Um, and then definitely at the ACLU when I, when I came to work for the ACLU in Mississippi. Um, I was involved in the women’s rights movement. We did—we actually did a lot of cases around um, around LGBT issues and um, but a lot of them we did in conjunction with the women’s rights project at the ACLU cause they were particularly impacting women. Um, so, um—
0:39:31.5
But the majority of my work in the feminist movement has been with NOW.
Mm, OK, I see, yea. So, ok, other question is were your family and friends supportive of your involvement in the women’s rights movement?
Yes. Very much so.
Yea, I think you also mentioned that your father always was talking to you as if you were definitely gonna do the things that a man could do.
Yea, my sisters and I always say that my father believed it was women’s work and men’s work and that his daughters would do it all. So he believed, he believed we needed to know how to clean the house and make dinner, but he also had very high expectations of us. And, and we fulfilled, my older sisters is a physician and my younger sister’s a dentist. So, I was kind of chopped liver for going to law school, he really wanted three doctors, but.
Mm, mmhm, yea. (chuckles) That’s nice. Um, ok, so another question is can you recall your proudest moment or achievement with NOW?
Hm (Pause). I think um, it was, NOW was very involved and I was very involved as a NOW person in um, getting marriage equality passed in New Jersey. So—for lesbian and gay people. So I left right after that but I think um, that was probably my biggest, my proudest moment was NOW’s involvement in that.
Ah, mmhm, yea, wow, that’s nice. Ok, so another question is how has your involvement with NOW impacted your life?
I mean, it’s so intertwined in my life.
0:41:44.9
But—you know, so I feel like in some ways I grew up in NOW. You know, it was always a part of my life through, through my late teen years and adulthood. Um, but I learned really important skills. I learned how to chair a meeting, I learned Robert’s rules [Transcriber’s Note: Robert's Rules of Order is a manual of parliamentary procedure that governs most organizations with boards of directors], I learned a lot about how to be an advocate, um, that I—all skills that I brought to the work that I’ve done. You know, I learned, I learned how to be a reader and um, and so I mean it really had a profound impact on me because it—you know, I really learned a lot of the life skills that have stood me well in my career um, um being an activist in NOW. Um, and it’s where my friends come from. You know, most of my friends are NOW activists. It’s, you know, I mean even when I’ve not been working for NOW it’s always been my, you know, my leisure time has been spent quite often doing NOW work, so it’s just, it’s been, it’s been a huge part of my life.
Yea, of course, wow, that’s amazing. Um, ok, so I have this one last like, major question I was gonna ask. So yea, I’ll just ask this. So, what advice do you have for the next generation of women?
Um, hmm. (Pause) I think it’s to…to be willing to try, to try new things. To be willing to be bold. Um, to not listen to older feminists who say, “Oh, we’ve already tried that, it didn’t work.” But try it again, different times.
0:44:08.9
You know, I think um, one of the most discouraging experiences I had in NOW was I joined this chapter where it was like five old women who probably were like the age I am now, but they seemed really old then, who sat around and smoked cigarettes and told us that that wouldn’t work. And, you know we were like, screw that, and we started our own chapter. Um, because we, we had ideas that we thought would work so you know, don’t, don’t wait for anyone to hand you power, seize power. Um, you know, which isn’t to say don’t respect and listen to older feminists who have experience, but don’t wait for them to, don’t wait for them to pass the torch. Jump up there take the torch.
Wow.
Um, and, and just be bold.
Mmhm, yea, definitely. Oh, that’s, that’s really nice, thank you. I’ll definitely take that advice. Um, and I guess I was like just trying to think of the current moment, and I know there’ve been some issues with abortion rights um, but in general it’s just becoming a little bit more difficult to notice even sexism or the ways that we’re maybe um, like my peer, like, as a boy has like more advantage than I’m—I just like sometimes can’t even notice so I don’t know if you, if you can tell me like if you notice anything happening right now that’s like, quite a like a big issue that maybe we should focus on, or maybe just you are more interested in right now because of the organization.
So um, I’m sort of, well, first of all I’m gonna push back on you a little bit and I think you need to notice when discrimination is happening because it is and, and right now is when it, is when the path starts to diverge.
0:46:21.5
You know, um, so you as a girl who were really interested in math, you were an outlier. Girls get discouraged from math early on.
Yea, definitely.
Um, and they get discouraged from math and then they don’t—(barking)—sorry about my dog. And then they don’t go into engineering and they don’t go into science and they don’t go into you know, other things. And so you don’t, you don’t necessarily when you’re in your late teens early twenties, you don’t necessarily see, “oh boys, are being treated better than me.” It’s that boys have been given a different career path and, and girls have to fight a lot harder to follow those career paths. You know, even paths like law where, where you know, there’s more women lawyers than male lawyers right now, they don’t get promoted in the same way. Um, and so they, they, they definitely get punished if they take time off to children.
Yea. Of course.
So, you know there’s a lot of stuff that pushes that, that separation that happens early, but it’s definitely still happening. It is more subtle, it is more subtle—definitely it’s more subtle. And that, I mean, and there’s been a tremendous amount of progress. Um, you know, that, but, but we should feel—as women we should feel entitled to make the same amount as men make and we’re still not. Um, and you know, and what your, what your first salary is, is gonna make a difference in how your salary goes for the rest of your life because they’re always gonna be looking at what was your last salary.
0:48:25.7
And if you don’t get that good first salary, then it’s gonna make a difference for the rest of your life in your earning power. Um, so you know in an academia women don’t get tenure the same way as men get tenure. Um, you know it, it’s still happening, it’s just not as obvious.
Yea, yea, yea, that’s kind of what I meant, and I also remember when I just got into math it was about eighth grade and I started preparing for competitions and I got into his very small team. Like, I was selected, it was super hard to get in, but it was just seven of us in the entire school and there are like two schools connected and I just remember that my coach who I like dearly loved and he was everything to me, but even he would tell me sometimes that—well not just me, but to the entire class that “Oh, I noticed that girls after tenth grade they tend to do worse in math and like, boys tend to become better,” and he would say it as like a scientific discovery. Like, yea this is what’s happening and like, expect this to happen to you as well, but it’s just so weird to me that, why he even told me that because I—maybe it’s also like my mistake that I remembered it so well, like I just, I would think about it a lot, just that maybe later I’ll become worse in math and like boys will get better, but it’s just like his kind of um, observation, it’s not true at all but I just took as a true statement because I was so little at the time.
Right, I mean and that’s what happens, girls get discouraged.
Yea, definitely.
Um, I’ll tell you another story about Exeter. My older sister went there too, she was two classes ahead of me so she was there really at the beginning of girls. And she was taking this really advanced physics class and was like, getting a C, which at Exeter is not really a bad grade, well at least it wasn’t in our time.
0:50:37.7
Um, and the professor kept saying to her, “You, you need to drop this class, this class is too hard for you. You can’t do this.” Um, and there were only a few kids in the class, like five or six kids in the class, and they were all, all the rest of them were boys. And so at her like, 25th reunion, and that really like, she almost dropped the class because she believed and at her 25th reunion they all talked about, they like she, like this group of class all kind of ha—ended up hanging out together and talked about how hard it had been and um, it turns out that she got the highest grade in the class. So even though the professor was telling her she should drop and it was too hard, she was actually doing better than any of the boys were doing. They’re like “No, he never told us to drop it. He was really supportive of us.”
Yea…
You know, I mean, that stuff just really, it has a real impact on you, I mean she, you know, like she really to this day, at 65 remembers that really well.
Yea, definitely. Yea, I just know that now you can like, look at numbers about, for example, the wage gap, there’s like a lot more data and the same thing your saying about lawyers and uh, women getting tenure and also recently I’ve been just reading more about like investing in business that is owned by women. Like there’s just so much and it’s good that now we have also good numbers, but it still, this like sexism that’s so deep inside us that I’m sometimes, I can’t notice, but I’m trying to push myself to do so. So that’s kind of also why when I wanted to go to Wellesley, because I know they’re having these type of conversations like all the time. So, yea, I’m kind of like very interested in this um, deep rooted sexism that we all have um, yea, I think that’s also important to change.
So, you asked me about what issues I’m really like, currently focused on, and there are really two. Um, one of them is sort of more an internal NOW issue and that’s that I think NOW really needs to increase its diversity and membership and leadership and so um, I’m very focused on the internal conversation about NOW increasing its leadership. Its diversity and leadership
0:53:15.6
Um, and then in the external, um, I’ve been really involved in transgender issues the last you know, five or six years and um, brought some cases while I was at the ACLU, around transgender issues. Um, and so that’s sort of the other thing that’s been a focus for me and I was, I became interested while I was in New Jersey, um, but it’s really become much more of a focus for me.
Mmhm, yea, so for the first part you mean um, then like adding other issues to feminism. I know there’s this new term like intersectional feminism and so then adding race and adding other issues together, I think that would help this movement become better. Cause that’s the—
Yea, absolutely. Yep, I agree. I mean I think, you know, and NOW has always had other, had issues. Stopping racism has always been a priority issue for NOW. Um ending violence against women. Lesbian rights, you know, we’ve ex—we’ve expanded to talk about a much broader range of sexual orientation and transgender issues, but NOW has always had the roots of intersectionality but I think it’s trying much harder to really understand intersectionality and to, and to focus on it. But, I think racial diversity where we’ve continued to fail. Um, and so that’s really important to me.
Mmhm, yea, of course. Mmhm. Ok, so I do have some other questions and I’m gonna see maybe if some of them might really help uh, whatever we’ve been talking so far. Let me see….Hm, yea because I think like right now our conversation has been pretty broad, but I already see like some topics I might, I myself found interesting and might want to focus on, so what if I try and what if we like stop right now and then I try to write and see if maybe there’s one point which I wanna like open a little bit more maybe I can just like e-mail you the question or maybe do it like a quick phone call. Uh, if like—
Sure.
--I need new information. Yea, mmhm.
Sure, that’s fine.
Mmhm, ok, I’ll write today and then I’ll let you know as soon as possible if I have any more questions.
Alright, that’s fine, take your time.
Yea, thank you so much, it’s been very interesting.
Well, it’s so nice to meet you.
Yea, you too.
And, and best of luck and school next year.
Oh yes—
It must be soon, you must be starting soon.
Mmhm, yea like at the end of August. Yea, but I’m still excited.
Well, good luck, I hope it’s a great experience for you.
Thank you, yea, and I hope you recover soon as well, with your foot.
Thank you (laughs), it’s really frustrating not being able to walk.
Yea, I, I can see, course (laughs). I’m also just staying with my grandma right and she’s also recovering, so that’s why we cannot came to this country. Yea, but ok, uh, have a good rest of day.
Alright, it’s nice to meet you, have a good day.
Good bye.
Alright, buh-bye.
0:56:51.6
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