"What Women Wanted": Arkansas Women's Commissions and the ERA

Abstract

AN IMPORTANT BUT OFTEN OVERLOOKED ELEMENT of women's movements of late twentieth century is women's commission. Broadly defined as a government-appointed task force charged with studying improving status of first such unit established in United States was a Kennedy administration initiative: President's Commission on Status of Women (PCSW).1 Chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, PCSW was officially in operation from 1961 to 1963 in 1965 produced a much-publicized report of findings policy recommendations titled American Women.2 The more lasting legacy of PSCW, however, was role it played in stimulating wave of local women's agencies that sprouted throughout U.S. in 1960s 1970s. Together with National Federation of Business Professional Women's Clubs (BPW) U.S. Women's Bureau, PCSW pursued a vigorous, fruitful, campaign to persuade states to establish their own advisory commissions.3 Michigan was first to establish its own women's commission in 1962. Washington, Indiana, Illinois quickly followed suit, movement burgeoned. By end of life of Kennedy commission in 1963, ten counterparts had been established. By 1967, all fifty states, District of Columbia, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico had created women's agencies. Arkansas established its first women's commission in January of 1964 under Governor Orval Faubus. Its task, like President's Commission on Status of Women that spawned it, was to explore social, political, economic legal problems of women, but on level.5 Issuing its first report in mid-November of 1965, commission focused on women's economic educational needs. The report expressed concern, for example, about the low wages earned by limited jobs available to them, pay discrimination in some fields between men women wage earners. Greater encouragement for women to attend college vocational schools, more generous tax breaks for widows (and widowers) left with children to tend to, an increased minimum wage, more stringent laws regulating employers of domestic help were among commission's recommended remedies.6 Though retained commission through end of his administration, unit received little attention was not credited with any discernible change in status of Arkansas women. The title of an Arkansas Gazette article about a Novemher 15, 1966 commission meeting attended by governor is illuminating: Faubus Lavishes Praise on Women, Statistics Don't.?7 Another women's commission was established under administration of Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, state's first post-Reconstruction Republican chief executive. Again charged with studying state labor laws on employment wages of differences in legal treatment of men women with regard to political, civil property rights practices in education, government employment family relations, unit was chaired by immediate past president of Arkansas Federation of Republican Women, Leona Troxell.8 In February of 1968, forty-two women men, including four female members of legislature (Senator Dorathy Allen Representatives Vada Sheid, Bernice Kizer, Gladys Martin Oglesby), were appointed to serve on commission.9 Jeane Lambie, who was not a member of Rockefeller commission but was asked by its members to chair a committee on employment issues, recalled that unit's main project was a report on women in government, conclusions of which were disheartening. Single mothers were living together, she said, and pooling all their resources to live. Rockefeller became very interested in study, it was, in Lambie's view, a central reason governor pushed for increased employees' salaries during his administration. …