8
The PCSW and a Unified Agenda for Women's Rights

By the 1960s, the political objective of equal treatment for women seemed more within reach than it had in the previous postwar years. The ambivalence over new social roles for women had abated as the family and the economy revealed not only the ability to tolerate women as permanent workers but also the need for women to assume this role. A president now held office who was committed to growth and the liberal agenda of government intervention on behalf of the social good. The internal politics of the Kennedy administration had given a particular shape to the development of a strategy of which the President's Commission on the Status of Women was the centerpiece. Sequestering the ERA allowed the commission to move toward developing a unified agenda to expand opportunities for women.

As soon as the commission inquiry began, however, it became apparent that it would not resolve the philosophic contradiction that had beset all previous efforts to improve women's opportunities outside the home. The commission took the stand that women had the right to be full-time permanent workers and to be treated as such according to their merits, but only so long as their traditional relationship to their children remained unchanged. As far as the commission was concerned, women's obligation to be the primary nurturers of children remained immutable, a critical difference between men and women as workers. This fundamental conflict between equal opportunity for women in the public realm and fulfillment of the role of traditional motherhood showed itself in the ambivalence that pervaded the commission's discussion and reports.

The inherent incongruity left the commission open to criticism from both sides. The executive order establishing the commission stressed employment aspects of women's status, reflecting the new social acceptance of women as workers. It charged the commission with "developing recommendations for overcoming discriminations in government and private employment on the basis of sex and . . . developing recommendations for services which will enable women to continue their roles as wives and mothers while making a maximum contribution to the world around them."^[1] Because of the emphasis on work problems, some accused the commission of urging mothers to leave their children and join the labor force. Following Eleanor Roosevelt's discussion of the PCSW with the president on her television show, "Prospects of Mankind," Lee Udall, wife of the secretary of the interior and the mother of six children, told a Washington Post reporter that the program "didn't do a thing to elevate the profession of motherhood."^[2] Letters to the president from the public made the same point. In response, Peterson drafted a reply affirming her conviction that motherhood was the "major role of the American woman" and her "primary responsibility."^[3] Conscious indeed of the national commitment to women as mothers, whenever the commission encountered a conflict between the roles of mother and of worker, it usually endorsed the former at the expense of the latter.

Because it supported the general view that sex roles could not fundamentally change, the commission could not reconcile the underlying contradiction between its affirmation of motherhood and the simultaneous assertion that women shared with men "the freedom to choose among different life patterns." Hyman Bookbinder, who represented the secretary of commerce on the commission, observed: "It is a fact of life—past, present, and future—that the great majority of women either choose to, or have to, devote their energies and their talents to the rearing of children and the management of homelife during at least half of their adult years." The implication of this "fact of life" for Bookbinder followed: "We should not pretend that women as a group are equal to men as a group in qualifying for participation in the world of work and in public affairs."^[4] Margaret Mealey, speaking for the National

Council of Catholic Women, of which she was executive director, cautioned that woman's nature and the well-being of her family imposed limitations on her public life.^[5] The Committee on Home and Community maintained in its report: "Over and above whatever role modern women play in the community . . . , the care of the home and the children remains their unique responsibility. No matter how much everyday tasks are shared or how equal the marriage partnership may be, the care of the children is primarily the province of the mother. This is not debatable as a philosophy. It is and will remain a fact of life."^[6] Logically, the commission also espoused a corollary belief, that the major responsibility for the family's financial support fell to the father. Given these assumptions and a stated objective of equal opportunity for working women, vice-chairman Richard Lester pointed out to the commission that it had a problem of "inconsistent justification for . . . different recommendations."^[7] The dichotomy between the primacy of traditional sex roles and the goal of equal treatment for women at work produced a tension which the commission never satisfactorily explored or resolved. No coherent intellectual argument for women's equal treatment would emerge from the president's commission.

Not only were the commission's choices limited by its unwillingness to question the sex-role structure or prevailing beliefs about the nature of women in American society, but the commission's desire to recommend proposals that would likely be endorsed by the administration, adopted, and implemented also constrained its options. Because it coveted widespread approval, the commission rejected most potentially contentious positions, from fundamental changes in the Social Security system to endorsement of the provision of birth control information. It did not intend to begin a debate over the basic principles that sustained the social order. Hyman Bookbinder pointed out facetiously that if the commission took the position that monogamy, for example, created certain problems, the publicity directed to that opinion would overwhelm all the other material in the report and cause the public to dismiss the balance of the recommendations. Convinced that even internal dissension would vitiate the strength of the suggestions, the commission

also pursued unanimity, sometimes sacrificing a majority opinion to achieve it. Both the committees and the full commission strove to produce documents acceptable to the administration, to which end Esther Peterson cleared all proposals and reports with cabinet and White House officials before their release. The President's Commission on the Status of Women very much represented a mainstream reform attempt, working for the Kennedy administration within the constraints of prevailing values and liberal politics.^[8]

Because they were working within a liberal consensus, most commission members felt no need even to articulate the principles they held in common. Commission recommendations evinced a faith in the ability to make meaningful changes without radically altering the economic or political structure. With constructive leadership, the commissioners believed, the nation progressed through time toward increasing freedom and greater equality of opportunity, to the benefit of both individuals and the society as a whole. Therefore, the commission assumed, government had the right and the duty, using "expert advice," to intervene within the private sector in order to bring about desirable goals, provide services, and assist those in need. Few of the commissioners found it necessary to define their terms, although many would no doubt have differed as to what constituted appropriate federal intervention in either the private sector or the family.

No commission member grappled with the idea that business might find a marginal female labor force efficient and economical; instead, recommendations contended that better opportunities for women would inevitably result in larger profits and increasing productivity. Many did acknowledge that women should not individually have to bear all the costs of childrearing—that industry and educational institutions should seek some accommodation to the wants of women and children. But none suggested that maternity and childrearing ranked first, with employment structured to suit those needs. With certain modifications, women would still have to fit into a male-designed world.

Within its ideological and political boundaries, however, the commission made a conscientious effort to establish as expedi-

tiously as possible a record of responsible action on behalf of women, both in the home and at work. Recommendations took note of differences in class, race, political ideology, and individual preferences, as well as some social norms it deemed inappropriate to support. The total package of recommendations resulted in a blueprint for change that, if implemented, would significantly enlarge the range of choices for American women.^[9]

Federal Employment

The president's commission began its operations by addressing employment discrimination practiced by the federal government—the obvious place to start. The nation's largest employer, it had sixty thousand women on its payroll. Moreover, the government practiced a blatant form of sex discrimination: agency heads by law could limit jobs to persons of one sex or the other. Taking steps against sex discrimination in the civil service presented few procedural problems and, because the form of discrimination was so bald, few ideological problems.

Sex discrimination in the civil service had a long history. The first women clerks had been hired specifically to provide cheap labor. In 1864 Congress enacted a law allowing the appointment of female clerks at a rate of six hundred dollars per year, half the lowest government wage. By 1870, however, with more than seven hundred women employed in federal offices in Washington, Congress passed a new provision permitting department heads to hire women to fill the regular clerkship grades and to pay them the commensurate salary. In the revised statutes, adopted the following year, this section came to read: "Women may, in the discretion of the head of any department, be appointed to any clerkship therein authorized by law, upon the same . . . conditions . . . as are prescribed for men."^[10] Although clearly intended as an authority to pay women the same rate as male clerks, the Civil Service Commission (CSC) interpreted the provision to mean that Congress had granted agency heads the absolute right to specify the preferred sex of a worker for any job. Agency heads used their prerogative almost invariably to select women for the low-paying jobs and men for the more responsible ones. In 1919 only 5 percent of new

women federal employees received salaries over $1,299, compared to 46 percent of the men. Under pressure from the Women's Bureau coalition, the CSC that year had rescinded the rule barring women from more than 60 percent of the civil service examinations, but it maintained the right of agency heads to designate sex in requesting names from the eligibles list for employment. In 1923 the Classification Act mandated equal pay for equal work regardless of sex, but the right of federal managers to hire by sex was not addressed. Finally, in 1932, just before his term was to expire, President Herbert Hoover, acting on the advice of Republican members of the National Woman's party, issued an executive order rescinding the right of agency heads to select by sex, although reserving the right to the Civil Service Commission in the case of jobs where sex represented a bona fide occupational qualification.^[11]

Although this decision pleased the National Woman's party, the Women's Bureau coalition had mixed feelings. Before the passage of the Veterans' Preference Act during the Harding administration, they too had argued for the change. But because veterans had points added to their scores automatically, women had less chance of falling among the top three eligibles from which appointments were customarily made. Therefore, the Women's Bureau preferred selection by sex, which at least gave women access to clerical positions and permitted sympathetic agency heads, like Mary Anderson, to choose women regardless of the availability of men with higher scores. The interests of each side reflected its class orientation. The NWP sought to open opportunities so that able women could move into upper-level jobs; the Women's Bureau concerned itself with the right of women to entry-level positions.^[12]

Soon after FDR became president, the Women's Bureau gained enough leverage to assure the outcome it sought. The bureau pointed out that under Hoover's executive order, appointments of women to the civil service did actually decline (although the Depression, which impelled all employers to give preference to men, probably accounted for the change at least as much). Mary Anderson asked the new president to countermand Hoover's instructions. In response, the Civil Service Commission polled women's organizations throughout the country;

with six replies in favor of restoring the previous rule and two preferring the new one, Roosevelt's attorney general ruled that Hoover's executive order had been illegal. Only Congress, he said, could rescind the power it had given agency heads to select by sex. In October 1934, to the NWP's disgust, Franklin Roosevelt reversed Hoover's directive.^[13]

The policy remained in force throughout the forties and fifties, although it had become increasingly apparent that, veterans preference or no, selection by sex consigned women to low-level jobs. In 1954 the median grade for women had been four; for men, seven (excluding postal employees). Out of every hundred women federal workers, 80 percent held jobs in grades one to five, compared to only 25 percent of the men; less than 1 percent of women served as administrators, as opposed to 9 percent of males. By 1959, the median for men had risen by two grades but remained at GS-4 for women; half of all women were found in the four lowest grades, compared with only one-fifth of the men. Even in professional positions, the median grade for women was lower than for men generally, GS-7 compared to GS-9.^[14]

Despite these facts, repeated presidential statements about the need for women in policy-making positions, and the increasing disapproval of women's organizations, neither the Democratic nor the Republican administrations of these decades took steps to limit the right of federal managers to select by sex. Complaints and appeals to the CSC and the attorney general brought the response that only Congress could revoke this authority. But when, in 1957, Representative Marguerite Stitt Church (R-Ill.) introduced a bill to amend section 165 of the Revised Statues to remove the discretion in appointments, the Civil Service Commission reacted unenthusiastically, and the bill died in committee.^[15]

The CSC had not deemed the status of women federal employees a problem. Although a 1959 federal employment survey had found that women, still one-quarter of the federal labor force, continued to be clustered in the lowest grades, the commission failed to identify discrimination as a cause of this situation. After all, it noted, more men than women were trained professionals and therefore were naturally classified in the higher grades. Yet

the Commission did concede that even in fields such as social administration, which contained as many women as men, the median grade for men was still GS-13, and that for women was GS-12. The commission suggested that still another factor might account for the disparity: the traditional employment pattern of women. Because women left the labor force to raise children, the "interruption of their careers retards their progress up the promotion ladder."^[16] Nevertheless, the commission cheerfully observed, there was still room for women at the top. Out of 575,990 women federal employees, 18 had attained positions among the 1,496 employees in grades sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, slightly over 1 percent.^[17]

In seeking to eliminate so obvious a form of sex discrimination within the civil service, the President's Commission on the Status of Women did not need to address the conflict between motherhood and equal opportunities at work, and in the presence of the Civil Service Commission it did not have to draw up formal rules regarding penalties or affirmative action. In addition, John Kennedy was already on record favoring the eradication of sex bias in the civil service. When he announced the creation of the presidential commission, Kennedy (with prompting from Peterson, Senator Philip Hart [D-Mich.], and others) had expressed his belief that the federal career service should be a "showcase" of equal opportunity in employment. He at that time instructed John Macy, chairman of the Civil Service Commission, to review policies and procedures to ensure that selection was made solely on merit without regard to sex. As president, Kennedy could execute additional PCSW recommendations on the subject without further ado.^[18]

The PCSW promptly recommended the policy change and John Kennedy promptly implemented it. Robert Kennedy reversed the ruling made by Roosevelt's attorney general, and the president put CSC chief John Macy in charge of eliminating the discriminatory practice of selecting personnel by sex. "Bona fide occupational qualification" exceptions would be few.^[19]

Merely forbidding agency heads from excluding women did not mean that more women would be hired, and no one considered penalizing executives who did not place women in upper-level jobs; nevertheless, change was visible as early as a

year later. Many agencies had appointed women to particular positions for the first time, and the CSC had instituted monitoring procedures. Although the configuration of employment did not change at once, the idea of equal opportunity for women in employment had been introduced, confirmed, and legitimated.^[20]

The president's commission also addressed, albeit cautiously, the other form of federal employment of women: presidential appointments. Although no woman representative of the Democratic National Committee sat on the commission (a fact that irritated many DNC members), the PCSW nevertheless recognized administration appointments as being worthy of attention. Still, criticism of the administration would be impolitic, so the members decided to focus on the needs for the future rather than the failures of the past. The commission's recommendation on nominations read: "Increasing consideration should continually be given to the appointment of women of demonstrated ability and political sensitivity to policy-making positions."^[21] The White House did not find the suggestion objectionable, and Dan Fenn, head of the administration's "Talent Search," met with Margaret Hickey, chairman of the commission's Committee on Federal Employment, to find a way to implement it. Fenn deplored the practice of merely supplying lists of names of women seeking positions. He therefore proposed a small committee of women who would help locate the right woman for a given job and lobby to appoint her—in short, that the president's commission perform the function India Edwards had fulfilled for Truman. But because the commission had less than one year to its conclusion, it could not assume such a responsibility. Kennedy's appointment record remained undistinguished.^[22]

Private Employment

The desire to make the civil service a "showcase" reflected in part the presidential commission's belief that private employers would emulate the federal model. But if the federal government intended to take action with regard to sex discrimination in the private sector, the guidelines of enforcement and conse-

quences of noncompliance had to be spelled out more clearly than for the civil service, where the Civil Service Commission could implement a general policy on an ad hoc basis.

Both political and philosophical considerations, however, prevented the commission from seeking to penalize business for sex discrimination. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.) proposed a fair employment practice bill in 1962 that barred discrimination based on sex as well as on race, but the NAACP and the Departments of Justice and Labor objected to including women in the bill. The House Committee on Education and Labor omitted the sex provision on the motion of Edith Green (D-Oreg.) in order to give the president's commission time to study the best methods of achieving employment equity for women. Neither the PCSW's Committee on Private Employment nor the commission as a whole believed that coercive measures would win acceptance from either the business community or Congress. In addition, because no sanctions against sex bias obtained within the federal government, it would be hard to defend punitive measures against private business for the same offense. More to the point, although they held up equal treatment as ideal, both the Committee on Private Employment and the commission, reflecting the beliefs of most Americans, regarded differential treatment in employment on the basis of sex warranted under some circumstances because of women's familial obligations.^[23]

By the time the commission began to consider the attitude of business toward women, the administration had already taken executive action with respect to racial discrimination in private employment. Shortly after assuming office, John Kennedy had issued an executive order (EO 10925) establishing the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. The order required federal contractors to agree not to discriminate on the basis of "race, creed, color or national origin" and to take affirmative action to ensure equal treatment. A second executive order, issued in June 1963, extended the initial provision to federally assisted programs receiving grants, loans, insurance, or guarantees. The possibility of including "sex" in EO 10925 had been considered, but administration drafters concluded that racial discrimination constituted enough of a burden without adding other conditions,

such as sex, age, or handicap. Moreover, ever since World War II a widespread social movement to end racial discrimination had been pressuring the government and seeking to change public attitudes—and with some success: race had become less and less a legitimate criterion for discrimination. Neither a social movement nor a coherent feminist philosophy existed to support the inclusion of a prohibition on sex-based discrimination in an executive order (or a bill, also considered) to ban racial bias in private employment.^[24]

The president's commission considered this issue a fertile field for policy initiatives, and, although sex discrimination had been omitted from the first executive order, the commission continued to view the relationship between the federal government and its contractors as the most accessible vehicle for bringing about some change in the private sector. The president could prohibit sex discrimination merely by fiat, and an executive order pertaining to contractors would protect a significant number of workers. In 1960, the federal government bought about 20 percent of all goods and services produced in the country, and the one hundred largest defense contractors employed ten million workers.^[25]

The question for the Committee on Private Employment to resolve centered on the kind of executive order to recommend. Committee member Caroline Davis, director of the Women's Division of the United Automobile Workers, strongly urged that the president ban discrimination based on sex and include penalties and machinery for enforcement. She had supported the addition of the word sex to EO 10925, and because of her defeat on this issue, she said, she had failed to win a prohibition against sex discrimination in the automobile industry contracts of 1961.^[26]

The Private Employment Committee refused to go along with her proposal, though. As committee chairman Richard Lester explained, "There are very good grounds, apparently, for discrimination against women in connection with training, promotion and upgrading in certain lines." Because women differed from men in motivation and career aspirations, and usually interrupted their work lives to raise families, the government, Lester contended, would find it difficult "to determine

the line between justified and unjustified selection of males over against females in training and promotion." Moreover, said Lester, because illegitimate sex discrimination could not at that point be specified, any executive order prohibiting it would have to depend for enforcement on "moral suasion and company consultation." The experience gained using these techniques would, he argued, permit the formulation of stronger measures later if they proved necessary.^[27]

The administration stepped in to quell the dispute. The new secretary of labor, Willard Wirtz, refused to endorse an executive order that relied on more than education and moral suasion for its enforcement. At its meeting one week later, the Committee on Private Employment, in keeping with the administration's wishes, passed a recommendation for a contract clause to be specified in an executive order: "It is the policy of the Government that there should be no discrimination against women in regard to hiring, training or promotion in employment by reason of their sex. In the performance of this contract, the contractor is requested to use his best efforts to comply with this policy in order to assure that equal employment practices for women are observed." After strenuous objections from Caroline Davis and Muriel Ferris, Senator Philip Hart's legislative assistant, the committee compromised and changed is requested to to shall .^[28]

In its report, the committee recounted its reasons for not recommending the amendment of EO 10925 and for preferring persuasion to compulsion. "The consensus," the report explained, "was that the nature of discrimination on the basis of sex and the reasons for it are so different [from race] that a separate program is necessary to eliminate barriers to the employment and advancement of women." Volunteerism would permit business managers to demonstrate that they could act without coercion, and a noncoercive program would therefore elicit more support from industry, Congress, and other groups, the committee asserted. Information could be collected "in a cooperative atmosphere" that would permit distinguishing "differentiation that is justifiable on the basis of sex from differentiation that cannot be justified." In cases of willful noncompliance, firms could conceivably be barred from federal contracts, and if more

definite penalities turned out to be necessary they could be added later.^[29] Only Caroline Ware dissented, citing experience with voluntary compliance and cases of racial discrimination.^[30]

The commission would not accept davis's proposal to add the word sex to EO 10925, which it believed meant ignoring the impact of family responsibilities on women workers and their employers, nor could it envision forcing private employers to share with women the costs of taking time out from work to raise families. Thus, despite initial protestations of the commission's planners that "prevailing institutions and work practices . . . largely shaped by and for men"^[31] limited women's chances, the commission did not propose to forbid sex discrimination. Unable to reconcile the conflict between pursuit of equality for women and endorsement of the traditional obligations of women, the commission suggested that women's interrupted work patterns might justify exclusion from on-the-job development programs—implying that women would have to continue to pay the price of lost promotions and missed wage increases for fulfilling what the commission deemed to be their appropriate roles. Further, PCSW personnel viewed with sympathy the objections of civil servants and business people who did not want to be saddled with additional burdens in getting or offering contracts for government supplies. Finally, the commission did not want to place the White House in a position where it would refuse to comply with a PCSW recommendation. The commission had been designed to enhance the president's reputation, not embarrass him. Given the nature of the dispute, political considerations dictated leaving the recommendation vague. Interested in achieving widespread endorsement of its views, the commission, in this instance as in others, attempted to arrive at positions that would not unduly inconvenience its constituents, even at the expense of working women's opportunities. It thus wound up in large measure mirroring rather than advancing the state of national opinion.^[32]

Although hardly a battle cry, the commission's statement denouncing discrimination in employment still advanced the cause of wider opportunities for women. In its report the commission called attention to the number of women employed (one worker in every three was female) and the need for their skills and their

income.^[33] It also decried women's low wages and countered the myths, such as increased absenteeism, that employers offered to justify discrimination. "Reluctance to consider women applicants on their merits," the commission declared, "results in underutilization of capacities that the economy needs and stunts the development of higher skills."^[34] The commission enunciated for the first time a federal policy censuring discrimination against women in employment by the federal government itself, by the private sector, and by state governments receiving federal grants. Although the limits to discrimination were not clearly drawn, at least, according to the commission, there ought to be some limits.^[35]

Protective Labor Legislation

The commission could not easily insist on full equality for women in hiring and training, but it was able to come closer to affirming nondiscriminatory treatment for women under protective labor laws, the coverage of which could be extended to men rather than withdrawn from women.

Because employers had always used labor laws to justify discrimination, advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment had for a long time urged that such legislation either apply to men as well as women or be eliminated. The Women's Bureau, in contrast, had traditionally maintained that protective labor laws helped the overwhelming majority of women and hurt only a few. When faced with the imminent threat of the ERA, advocates of protective labor legislation, fearing that the amendment would result not in extension but in obliteration of the labor laws, fought the amendment vigorously and defended the laws for women. With the Committee on Civil and Political Rights working on a method for achieving constitutional equality while still safeguarding protective laws for women, the Committee on Protective Labor Legislation was free to consider the laws themselves, undisturbed by the heated ERA controversy. By the 1960s many of those most committed to protective labor laws were willing to acknowledge that some of the more restrictive and rigid rules did more harm than good. It was up to the Committee on Protective Labor Legislation to determine the difference between the laws still useful

and those now antiquated and to find a way to reconcile the demand for equal opportunity for women and the expectation of special protection.

Consideration of the laws apart from the Equal Rights Amendment produced a ready accord; in most cases the Committee on Protective Labor Legislation, and the commission as a whole, concurred in principle with ERA proponents. The most desirable outcome, committee members concluded, was the extension to men of the laws in effect protecting women. However, whereas ERA adherents saw constitutional equality as causing the beneficial changes in state laws, the Committee on Protective Labor Legislation strongly believed that laws pertaining to women should remain in force until they were superseded by better laws covering men as well.

This judgment did not present any problems for the committee in most areas of discussion, which were quickly decided by consensus. At the first meeting, members endorsed the extension of minimum wage legislation with premium pay for overtime at both federal and state levels to men and women workers presently uncovered; likewise for equal pay legislation. The committee also agreed that industrial homework should be eliminated. Later the committee voted in favor of a flexible weight-lifting law pertaining to both men and women. Cash maternity benefits under disability programs and the right to maternity leave also met with approval.^[36]

The sticking point came over hours legislation. Most members concurred that state law should establish an absolute number of hours for workers, but committee member Henry David, a prominent labor historian, adamantly and successfully resisted a proposal to recommend extending prohibitions on women's hours to male workers. He contended both that the PCSW had no mandate to recommend laws for men and that proposing a limit to the number of hours men could work would elicit "howls of rage." Furthermore, David argued, hours laws for women were well established; applying them to men would raise "a whole new series of questions which we certainly are not able to deal with and on which we have seen no basic data at all."^[37] Ultimately, after David's vehement argument, the committee recommended that hours laws set a definite maximum

for women, that they be administered "flexibly," and that women in administrative, executive, and professional jobs be exempted.^[38]

Commission members greeted the committee recommendation with varying degrees of satisfaction. Margaret Hickey said she had hoped the time had come to apply these standards equally to men. Henry David explained to her the reasoning of the committee—which was in fact his own—that hours laws for men would not gain public acceptance. Hickey responded that such a consideration did not appear to be a very good reason to burden women. Many commission members, including Peterson, expressed the view that overtime pay as a deterrent might be preferable to maximums, but David argued strongly for his position, insisting that the commission was making trouble for itself on the matter and that to come out against maximum hours for women would be breaking with "a body of history which meant something and conceivably still does mean something." Sarcastically, he admitted that the original resolution did have a weakness; it was, he said, "realistic."^[39]

Faced with an apparent deadlock, Peterson had a statement drawn up before the next meeting detailing the Department of Labor's position on the issue. According to this position paper, the department desired adequate labor standards for all workers, and it judged premium pay for additional hours for both men and women as the best way to shorten the workday. The Department concluded that, where special hours laws for women represented the best attainable protection at present, they should be "maintained, strengthened and expanded."^[40] The commission adopted this position almost verbatim, adding the exemption of professional and executive women from the committee's original recommendation. Although David believed that the commission had adopted his position, this statement differed in that it spoke of maximum hours laws only as interim measures, to be eliminated when states enacted laws requiring premium pay for overtime. Hours laws constituted the only area of conflict with respect to protective labor legislation and, except for pregnancy and maternity leave, became the only kind of labor legislation about which the committee and the commission proposed differential treatment of women workers—and even

this remaining distinction was to be temporary. The gap between the Women's Bureau coalition and proponents of the ERA was growing smaller.^[41]

Taken all together, the commission's proposals on employment revealed its ambivalence toward women's roles. While continuing to endorse equality in the civil service, in private employment, and in labor law, the commission also spoke of "justifiable" discrimination and extending and strengthening hours laws for women. Recognizing that private employers were unlikely to change their behavior without federal direction, it nevertheless declined to specify the action the White House should take. Because it was caught between the fundamentally contradictory ideals of traditional womanhood and equality, the commission could not make a clear statement.

Education

The dichotomy of women's needing both equal and different treatment that ran through the commission's discussions on employment also weighed on the consideration of recommendations concerning education. The commission maintained that educational institutions needed to accommodate to the patterns of women's lives so that women who followed traditional paths could reenter the labor force when their children had grown. Educational programs had to be available in the community, through either local junior colleges or correspondence schools. Schools had a responsibility to offer part-time study, financial aid, and flexible academic and residency requirements.^[42]

But the educational establishment had another obligation as well. According to both the Committee on Education and the commission as a whole, educational institutions needed to help women prepare for their special role. "The expectation that a woman will become a wife and mother differentiates the educational requirements of girl and boy from the very beginning,"^[43] the committee report asserted. The commission cautioned that "widening the choice for women beyond their doorstep does not imply neglect of their education for responsibilities in the home." All girls and women should learn about childcare and

family relations, nutrition, family finances, and "the relation of individuals and families to society." The commission did not recommend such a program for boys and men.^[44]

Yet at the same time that the commission proposed educational programs to fortify prevailing sex roles, it also argued that education played a key role in expanding women's horizons. Counseling women, the commission contended, required special skills: "From infancy, roles held up to girls deflect talents into narrow channels. . . . Imaginative counseling can lift aspirations beyond stubbornly persistent assumptions about 'women's roles' and 'women's interests' and result in choices that have inner authenticity for their makers."^[45] But here again, the commission refused to acknowledge the underlying problem. Many of the characteristically male-dominated fields did not mesh well with the traditional roles of women. If childcare remained ultimately a female responsibility, as the commission assumed it should, fewer women could be expected to overcome the hurdles in fulfilling both the role of nurturer and that of career professional. A young woman who received both the homemaking education the commission prescribed and counseling to become a mechanical engineer had to sort out conflicting messages. Its recommendations on both employment and education disclosed the commission's vacillation between the two ideals it professed.

Financial Security

When it came to issues of family support, however, the traditional view of women as dependent ultimately took clear precedence. Consonant with its view that women had unique responsibilities with respect to families which justified differential treatment in employment, the commission also affirmed that men had to continue to fulfill traditional support obligations. The Committee on Civil and Political Rights recommended that "in view of the childbearing and homemaking functions of the wife" the husband should continue to bear the primary burden of financial support.^[46] The commission concurred in

the committee's judgment, which colored many of the commission's additional suggestions.

The Commission made no recommendation for changes in the Social Security system for women workers who paid Social Security taxes and, in many cases, received no additional awards over that which they would have gotten as wives who had not made payments. The system presumed the dependency of both wives and children on male workers and so also denied benefits even for the children of working women. The commission did, however, emphasize the need for increased payments to the widows of workers and to divorced women.^[47]

Part of the commission's reluctance to tackle these questions came from the complexity of the Social Security system and the expense of making changes in benefits.^[48] But the Committee on Social Insurance and Taxes went out of its way to affirm that it would not "be appropriate for the social insurance program to provide a benefit so that the father could stay at home to care for the child" in the event of the mother's death.^[49] Childcare, after all, was women's work. Thus, despite the assertion throughout the commission report that women worked to provide necessities for their families, the commission nevertheless failed to acknowledge that such families would continue to need the mother's income if she died—without recognizing that this omission undercut its initial premise.^[50]

Although the commission declined to explore the implications for equality in employment of leaving traditional assumptions about financial support untouched, it did acknowledge some danger in the complete economic dependency of the homemaker. Most states followed the common-law precept that income belonged to the person who earned it. Thus, in a family where the husband worked for pay and the wife did not, she had no legal right to any of the family income or property. The commission took exception to this state of affairs. Calling marriage a partnership "in which each spouse makes a different but equally important contribution," it asserted that wives should have a "legally defined substantial right in the earnings" of the husband and in the property acquired through those earnings.^[51] The implementation of the commission recommendation would mitigate the financial insecurity of full-time homemakers.

Care of Children

In fact, the commission recognized the need to offer other kinds of help to homemakers, as well as to working women. If the commission's devotion to the ideal of motherhood tempered its commitment to equality of treatment for women, its belief in free choice moderated its stand on who could care for children. The commission understood that unless women received some help in raising their children, educational and employment opportunity had little value. Moreover, as the commission repeatedly pointed out, mothers of young children did hold jobs outside the home, and these children needed supervision. Therefore, the Commission strongly endorsed an extensive day-care program.

The last time federal dollars had been allocated for day care was during World War II, and even then the provision of services had met less than 10 percent of the presumed need. The Children's Bureau, located in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), published a study in 1958 which asserted that four hundred thousand youngsters under the age of twelve lacked adequate arrangements for care; nevertheless, the Eisenhower administration opposed government funding of childcare centers. The National Conference on Day Care for Children, held in Washington in November 1960, recommended a comprehensive program of day care, supported by federal and state money, and during the 1960 campaign John Kennedy had promised his support in a letter to Elinor Guggenheimer, a founder of the day-care movement in New York State. Guggenheimer, now heading a group called the National Committee on Day Care, met with the new secretaries of HEW and Labor in 1961, and won a provision for funding in the administration bill regarding amendments to the Social Security Act. Peterson strongly supported Guggenheimer's goals of day care for children of working mothers and placed her on the Home and Community Committee.^[52]

By the time the committee gathered for its first meeting in May 1962, however, Congress was close to enacting a day-care funding law that aimed not to care for the children of mothers already at work or to give those mothers who wished to work

the opportunity to do so, but rather to force the mothers of young children into the labor force, a goal anathema to the Women's Bureau coalition reformers working with the president's commission. The Public Welfare Amendments, signed into law in July 1962, authorized money only for day care for children on public assistance and implied that the service was to be provided so that the mothers of children receiving public assistance could be forced to work for wages. Congress apparently believed that middle-class taxpayers wanted impoverished, unmarried, disproportionately black women to leave their children in the care of others and take paying jobs, although they disdained middle-class women who chose to do so themselves.^[53]

The commission usually deferred to prevailing political sentiments, but it could not do so in this case because insisting that lower-class mothers work contravened the philosophy of the Women's Bureau coalition, which expressly promoted the protection of women and children. Ideally, the commission believed, mothers should care for their young children at home regardless of class. The commission came out against using day-care services to support coercion of welfare recipients to work for wages and expressed sorrow for low income women who did leave babies in the care of others. The Committee on Home and Community declared that women with small children should not "be forced by economic necessity or the policies of welfare agencies" to seek outside employment,^[54] and the full commission labeled the practice "regrettable."^[55]

The commission declined to support day care as a coercive measure, but still it emphasized the need for such services. Both the committee and the commission maintained that day care should be available to families at all income levels, to provide for the children of mothers already working and to permit mothers who wanted to join the labor force to do so. They also contended that full-time homemakers who desired to devote a portion of their energy to the community or who had to meet other family needs should also have access to day-care facilities.^[56]

Although the provision of day-care services would help some women take advantage of the new opportunities the commission proposed, it could not completely resolve the dilemma of

reconciling family obligations and equal chances for women in the public sphere—nor did the commission intend it to. Day care could assist women, especially those who needed to work, but the final responsibility for young children lay with the mother, and the commission presumed that she would still devote a large portion of her life to childrearing. The commission believed that women's maternal functions made them different from men in both motivation and career aspirations; therefore, it could not see forcing employers to invest equally in the training of women—equality at work would have to yield to a greater imperative of motherhood. Fatherhood implied not childcare but financial support.

In all its recommendations, the commission sought to correct the clearest injustices, to remove anachronistic obstacles to women's participation in public life, to affirm the desirability of equal treatment and the unfettered expression of individual talents, and to serve obvious and unfulfilled social needs. In doing so, however, the commission also resolved to remain firmly within the framework of traditional family roles. In making this choice, the commission reflected the ambivalence of the culture it served.

The Impact of the President's Commission

The President's Commission on the Status of Women took trouble to see that interest in women's status did not end with the submission of its report. In order to monitor the implementation of its proposals, and to serve as a reminder that the problems persisted, the commission asked the president in its final proposal to appoint two continuing federal bodies: an interdepartmental committee and a citizens' advisory council to "evaluate progress made, provide counsel, and serve as a means for suggesting and stimulating action."^[57] John Kennedy established the two groups on November 1, 1963; it was the next-to-last executive order he signed.

The outlook seemed hopeful. The establishment of the president's commission had raised the expectations of those concerned about women. In her bestseller, The Feminine Mystique , published in February 1963, Betty Friedan had written: "The

very existence of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, under Eleanor Roosevelt's leadership, creates a climate where it is possible to recognize and do something about discrimination against women, in terms not only of pay but of the subtle barriers to opportunity."^[58]

Moreover, to ensure that its proposals would find a sympathetic response, the president's commission had made a sustained effort throughout its deliberations to reach out to those women's organizations that it viewed as its primary sources of support, the members of the Women's Bureau coalition. The commission had asked for the assistance of these organizations when searching for data to support its recommendations, requesting information about their experiences with protective labor legislation, their knowledge of employment and statutory discrimination, and their familiarity with court cases involving sex bias. The women's organizations reciprocated the commission's interest. Most responded to commission queries at length, many wrote articles in their newsletters, and the National Council of Catholic Women distributed sixteen thousand commission brochures. Only one organization had a less than satisfactory relationship with the commission. The National Woman's party, although it participated in every commission-related function to which it was invited, viewed the commission with justified suspicion about the Equal Rights Amendment; and for her part, Esther Peterson, who invited the NWP to all appropriate commission functions, regarded the organization as intractable.^[59]

The recalcitrance of the NWP notwithstanding, the enthusiasm of the women's associations even outside the traditional Women's Bureau coalition had resulted in the development of an entirely new set of institutions at the state level concerned with the status of women. In November 1962, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs notified Peterson that it wanted to undertake a program to encourage every governor to appoint a state commission patterned after the "excellent structure" of the president's commission. The leaders of the organization asked for a meeting with the president to get his approval of their plan, and, at Peterson's request, he complied, endorsing the proposal. The governor of the state of Washington was the first to respond to the federa-

tion's campaign; he appointed a commission in February 1963 based closely on the president's model. At the same time, he issued an executive order asking for a review of state employment regulations to ensure that they did not discriminate against women. The states of Indiana and Illinois quickly followed, as did many others, often with the assistance of the regional offices of the Women's Bureau. Although some other women's organizations resented the primary role of the BPW, during the presidential commission's lifetime ten state commissions on women were formed, and by 1967 every state had created one. The state commission movement indicated widespread national support for the president's commission; moreover, because the state commissions looked to it for their lead, they gave the parent body increased visibility and influence.^[60]

In addition to inspiring state commissions, holding meetings with women's organizations, and inviting the participation of almost two hundred citizens on its committees, the commission had enlarged its base of support through "consultations" with special interest groups. Altogether, the commission held four such consultations; three of them, "Women in the Mass Media," "Private Employment," and "New Patterns in Volunteer Work," brought in delegates from relevant organizations in an effort to explore issues and win potential allies.^[61]

Only in the fourth consultation, on the problems of Negro women, did the commission address the black woman specifically, even though it generally acknowledged in its discussions that virtually every disability affected black women more severely than white. In preparation for the consultation, the staff furnished a paper that described how pending recommendations of the president's commission, such as the extension of minimum wage laws, would assist minority women. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, special assistant to the secretary of labor, believed that the staff paper gave insufficient attention to the fact that "Negro society in America," according to his "limited understanding," was still "substantially a matriarchy," and did not address methods by which male-headed families could be established "if that is what is needed."^[62] The people attending the consultation—educators, editors of black magazines, representatives of the New York Urban League, and government offi-

cials—agreed with Moynihan that the black family was matriarchal, a situation forced on them, they said, by lack of job opportunities for black males. They therefore advocated better, black-run community programs and the inclusion of Afro-American history and culture in the elementary school curriculum to provide male models for black children. The participants also raised an objection to the idea of forcing mothers of AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) families to work. In general, the consultation revealed that black women considered racial bias, not sex discrimination, their major handicap. For the commission, the consultation provided evidence of its concern for the opinions of black leaders as well as white.^[63] But whereas the commission recognized the special hardships of black women, it rejected an analogy between discrimination based on sex and discrimination based on race, and between remedies for racism and those for sex bias.

The commission formally ended its work with the presentation of its report to the president on October 11, 1963, Eleanor Roosevelt's birthday.^[64] Press coverage of the report was widespread. The New York Times gave it front-page space, the Associated Press devoted a four-part series to it, and the "Today" show on NBC television offered a live interview with Peterson on the day of the presentation. More than one newspaper editorial observed that the commission was inconsistent in maintaining that a woman's first responsibility was to her family in the home and then expecting employers to treat her the same way they did male employees; the Wall Street Journal found the commission's proposal for day care "a tinge . . . collectivist."^[65] On the whole, however, these views were exceptional. Most women's magazines and journals of women's organizations, after summarizing the report's contents, commended it to their readers.^[66]

White House advisers concluded that, with the presentation of the commission report, the Kennedy administration had put together a worthy record on behalf of women, regardless of the number of women appointees. In preparation for the presentation ceremony, Myer Feldman recounted for the president the list of achievements. Most had proceeded from the agenda laid out in the Women's Bureau: the presidential commission's study; equal pay legislation; the ruling against discrimination in

the civil service; the elimination of a quota system for women officers in the armed forces (undertaken also at the request of the president's commission); and the extension of the Fair Labor Standards Act to include retail workers, many of whom were women. Feldman also included the establishment of a consumer advisory council, which Kennedy had pledged in his campaign, and the provision of money for day care.^[67] The administration was justified in regarding the President's Commission on the Status of Women as the jewel in its crown for women.

Constrained by its refusal to examine the conflicts in defining roles by sex, its search for unanimity, and its desire for political acceptability, the PCSW often left the hardest problems untackled and forswore the most potent solutions; nevertheless, taken all together, the recommendations of the president's commission broke new ground. Were it brought to fruition, the agenda formulated by the commission would improve opportunities for women outside the home and enhance support within it. For the first time, a federal body examined the status of women, found it wanting, and offered prescriptions for its improvement. It decreed the problem of sex discrimination legitimate, insisting that it hurt not only the individual but also the nation. In doing so, the commission responded to a social reality and a social need. Although not far ahead of public opinion, the president's commission, by openly acknowledging the validity of the quest for equal treatment, nudged public opinion along.

Commission proposals covered the range of problems observed by each of the three interest groups of women in the fifteen years since World War II and forged them into a unified agenda. Like the Women's Bureau coalition, the President's Commission on the Status of Women suggested many "specific bills for specific ills." The committee asked the federal government to assume responsibility for encouraging private employers to treat women workers equitably and requested both public and private enterprises to provide women with the chance to work part-time so that they could acquire or use their skills while at the same time meeting their family responsibilities. Both federal and state legislation, counseled the commission, should mandate minimum wages for men and women, pre-

mium pay for overtime, and equal wages for men and women performing equal work. The commission maintained that unemployment insurance coverage had to offer women better protection and that employers, trade unions, and government at all levels should unite to develop a program of maternity benefits that would remove some of the burden from women who bore all the costs of having and rearing children. The commission advocated that the federal government permit more generous tax deductions for childcare and that local, state, and federal governments finance both educational programs and skilled counseling assistance sensitive to needs of women at all stages of their lives. The commission proposed community childcare facilities, with costs shared publicly and privately, so that women might take advantage of better educational opportunities and employment possibilities. Like ERA advocates, the commission endorsed the need for an affirmation of constitutional equality for women, as well as a movement to expunge from state legal codes antiquated laws that discriminated against women, barring them, for example, from jury service or hampering their right to own or convey property or change their domicile. Following the counsel of political party women, and to ensure that the legal system would become more responsive to women's needs, the commission encouraged women, political parties, and appointing officials to see that more women participated in government. The president's commission combined and endorsed all the separate agendas, permitting the boundaries that had separated the groups before to fade into the background.

Three weeks after the submission of the report, Kennedy completed his actions on behalf of American women by creating the continuing groups the commission had recommended: the Interdepartmental Committee and the Citizens' Advisory Council on the Status of Women. In the executive order, the president declared: "Enhancement of the quality of American life, as envisioned by the Commission's report, can be accomplished only through concerted action by both public and private groups, through coordinated action within the Federal Government, and through action by States, communities, educational institutions, voluntary organizations, employers, unions,

and individual citizens."^[68] Further federal initiatives would take place under a new administration.

In her memorandum to Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg proposing the establishment of a commission on women, Esther Peterson had argued that the commission would not only block the Equal Rights Amendment, but it also would "help the nation . . . move further towards full partnership, creative use of skills, and genuine equality of opportunity." As Peterson intended, the President's Commission on the Status of Women had important implications for the politics of women's issues in the 1960s. It drew opposing interest groups together, narrowing the gap between the Women's Bureau coalition and ERA advocates; it enunciated a federal policy against sex discrimination, affirming that women, like men, had a right to paid employment; it presented a cogent set of proposals to begin the amelioration of the difficulties women faced; it built up networks of support among women's organizations and served as the model for analogous institutions on the state level; and, at its conclusion, it provided for a continuing presence at the federal level, to ensure that the consideration of the status of women would not disappear with the termination of the commission.^[69] But only indirectly did the commission foster its most important sequel: a resurgent, energetic, widespread women's movement that arose from the active politics of the 1960s.