[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 89 (Tuesday, June 17, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H5460-H5465]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HISTORY OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 2003, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms.
Norton) is recognized for 60 minutes.
General Leave
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks
on the subject of my special order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia?
There was no objection.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will remain at the lectern,
I am pleased to yield to the gentleman.
Mr. BALLANCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to
me.
Mr. Speaker, all of these women share one great quality, whether they
are helping educate our youth, building houses for our families,
creating jobs for our workers, or representing the people in the public
arena. They all lead. These women are but a few women leaders from the
congressional district that I represent.
I want to close by saying that there are so many other women that I
could call on and mention in my remarks, but I know my time is short.
I do want to mention Joyce Dickens, president and CEO of the Rocky
Mountain Edgecombe Community Development Commission and Andrea Harris,
of Vance County, president of the Institute for Minority Economic
Development. These and so many other women are blazing trails all over
North Carolina and showing that women are great leaders, not only in
North Carolina, but more particularly, in the First Congressional
District.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks, and I
know that the women of his district very much appreciate the kind of
attention he is paying to their accomplishments, in particular, and I
know that his predecessor would have taken great joy in his remarks.
Nobody could be more deserving of his remarks than Eva Clayton, and I
thank him for taking the time to come to this floor during this special
order when we are, in fact, looking closely at women's issues and
women's rights.
First, in recognition of a former trailblazer and Representative
Martha Griffiths. Martha Griffiths served in this House at a time when
very few women darkened the doors of the House of Representatives, and
she died April 22 at 91. Issues that we take for granted today were put
on the map by Martha Griffiths so that as we celebrate her life and
think of her passing, it seemed to me altogether fitting that we
remember that much that women are grateful for today began with and owe
to the extraordinary work of Representative Martha Griffiths of the
State of Michigan, for it was Martha Griffiths who led the fight to add
sex to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and of course, for me,
that one gets to be personal since it became my great honor during the
Carter years to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The notion that in the beginning sex was not even included as a form
of discrimination can perhaps give us some appreciation for what it
meant to have one good woman in the House of Representatives, along
with a few others, and many men who supported her.
[[Page H5461]]
Of course, the 1964 Civil Rights Act that Martha Griffiths championed
had a great deal more than Title VII in it. We remember Title VII
because it is Title VII that bars discrimination in employment, and
that has brought so many women equality in search for work and in the
workplace, but the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination based
on sex also in public education, and I will have something to say about
that in a moment because it relates to Title IX in public
accommodations, in federally-assisted programs, and every day and every
minute, women benefit from all of these sections of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 which is remembered principally because it was African
Americans marching in the streets to finally get enforcement of the
14th amendment that led the way to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but race
was not the only status protected in the 1964 Act.
Religion, national origin also have been, in our country, subjects of
great discrimination, and they also are protected in the 1964 Civil
Rights Act. I say protected but it is important to understand that
everybody's protected. We cannot discriminate against a white man
because he is a white man, and we cannot discriminate against a black
woman because she is a black woman. These particular groups had, in
fact, borne the brunt of discrimination but the Civil Rights Act of
1964 protects each and every American.
{time} 1945
We owe the work that got us there to Martha Griffiths.
Martha Griffiths also championed the Equal Pay Act and was one of the
principal leaders that gave us the great Equal Pay Act that simply
means if a man and a woman are sitting in the same workplace, you
cannot pay one less than the other because of their gender. But perhaps
Martha Griffiths is remembered most for having single-handedly revived
the Equal Rights Amendment, which was only three States short of
becoming an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
A word on who this great woman was. She was the daughter of a
mailman, born in Michigan, attended its public schools, and went to the
University of Michigan Law School and graduated in 1940. You can
imagine a woman graduating from law school in 1940. The very fact that
she went to law school says something about her determination and her
character, because we are talking about a time when women in law school
were as scarce as hens teeth. Undaunted, she practiced law with a very
famous governor, G. Mennen Williams, ``Soapy'' Williams, a Governor of
Michigan, along with her husband.
She served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 1948 to
1952. She was elected as a judge. And she served 10 terms right here in
the House of Representatives. She was the first woman ever to serve on
the Committee on Ways and Means. She left the House to become
Lieutenant Governor of the State of Michigan.
Here is a woman whose distinguished career just by virtue of the
titles she has held would win her places in the history books, but
Martha Griffiths was not looking for a place there because of titles.
I do want to tell the story of the addition of sex to title 7 of the
1964 Civil Rights Act. Representative Smith, Congressman from the Deep
South, introduced it with such levity that he brought the House down.
In introducing the notion of adding sex to the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
he said he had received a letter from a woman who complained that the
1960 census had reported, now here I am quoting him, ``2,661,000 extra
females and asking that he introduce legislation to remedy the shortage
of men for women to marry.''
Well, I mean, apparently, this House lit up so that they had to call
for order, the laughter reverberated such throughout the House. And
what did Mr. Smith say? And I quote him again: ``I read the letter just
to illustrate that women have some real grievances.''
That is the atmosphere in which Representative Martha Griffiths had
to somehow rally herself to respond. She rose in this House and pointed
out that the laughter of the men of the House, or at least some of
them, at the introduction of the amendment only underscored women's
second class citizenship. A woman who thought well on her feet. Every
woman in the House, except one, supported the amendment.
And, by the way, that was in defiance of the party discipline. The
Democrats at that time did not favor, not until final passage, the
addition of sex because women were protected by protective legislation
in factories so they could take some time out to sit down and to have
rest periods, to have breaks, for example, that men did not have. And
they did not want to give that up, most of them under union contracts
that had been won. But, hey, you cannot want equality and then want
breaks. And, ultimately, the breaks went and the equality has come more
and more ever since.
The passage in the House of title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act came
after the passage of the Equal Pay Act. I must say that the early 1960s
were a very good time for women, and it was Congresswoman Griffiths who
led the fight in this House for passage of the Equal Pay Act.
We are now at the 40th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act; and it seems
to me we ought to celebrate how far we have come, since you could with
impunity sit in the same factory, in the same office, in the same law
firm and have nothing to say if a man was paid more than you, as a
woman, was paid. However, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms.
DeLauro) and a number of other women and men in the House have
introduced a very modest bill that would update the Equal Pay Act. It
is called the Paycheck Fairness Act, and I hope every Member will go on
the Paycheck Fairness Act, particularly during this 40th year of the
passage of the act.
There are some updates that need to happen. For example, sex, but not
national origin or race, are included in the Equal Pay Act.
Fortunately, title 7 does allow a person to pursue unequal pay under
title 7, if not the Equal Pay Act. A person can be punished by firing
for telling what her salary is. That kind of sanction needs to be
barred.
These are quite modest additions, and I would hope that this year the
House would regard them as such and would pass the Paycheck Fairness
Act. I had a more extensive bill, called the Fair Pay Act, Senator Tom
Harkin has introduced it in the Senate, that would update title 7 of
the 1964 Civil Rights Act so that jobs with the same skill, effort and
responsibility, but not comparable, could be the subject of a title 7
claim if one could show that men and women were paid differently.
Now, the reason for this is perfectly apparent. If you are a
probation officer and your wife is a social worker, guess who gets paid
more? The probation officer. The point here is that we ought to look to
see not whether it is the same job, but whether the content, the basic
content of those jobs is equal; and that is what my bill would do. It
would bring the Equal Pay Act into the 21st century.
The pay problems of most women today really do not come from sitting
next to somebody who is a male who earns more than you do. It comes
from sex segregation in jobs that women do. Two-thirds of white women
and three-quarters of black women work in just three areas: clerical,
sales, and factory jobs. And many of those jobs are molded to gender
rather than to the job to be performed. My bill would say you have to
look at the job to see if it is comparable to the job of a male. And if
it is, in skill, effort, and responsibility, then it has to be paid
comparably.
Without this kind of change, we are seeing the great so-called
women's professions abandoned: teaching, nursing. Where are they going?
They have gone where the pay is. And the pay is not in those jobs,
because very often a teacher or nurse will find a man who has nowhere
near the same skills making more money. So what happens then, of
course, is people leave the profession. And we are in very deep trouble
when those professions are abandoned. We had to pass a special bill
last year to try to encourage more women to go into nursing.
Look at what has happened to the teaching profession. Even people who
go into teaching often leave the profession. The same happens to
nursing. Why do men not come into teaching and nursing? Because, of
course, the pay is not what they expect. The way to do this is to look
closely at these
[[Page H5462]]
jobs to make sure that inequality is not occurring or say good-bye to
men or women who will enter these jobs.
By the way, what I am talking about is not as radical at it may seem.
Twenty States have adjusted wages for women, raising the pay for
teachers, nurses, clerical workers, librarians, and other female-
dominated jobs that paid less simply by doing their own studies of the
skill, effort and responsibility. If State governments can do this, I
cannot be talking about something that is far out. What is far out is
imagining an America where social work, teaching, and nursing are
systematically abandoned. And that is what is happening today almost
entirely because of pay.
The pay problem is structural. It is chronic. Look at what women have
done. Women were told, look, go to school, get as much education as
men, and that will take care of it. Well, girls are nothing but good
little girls, and I will be darned if they did not go out and do just
that. Women now earn 55 percent of college degrees. Men get something
like 45 percent. They achieve 65 percent of the 3.5 GPAs.
Now, I do not relish this kind of inequality. I think the reason,
very frankly, are the boys are out playing sports and girls are hitting
the books. I do not like that a lot, but it certainly has not shown up
in the paycheck. Doing so well in school, getting all of this advanced
training simply has not paid off. That is why you hear women talking
about equal pay. It still has not been achieved even under the Equal
Pay Act.
An example in the private sector that was recently brought to my
attention is one of a brand name famous retail outlet in our country,
Wal-Mart, where women there make an average of $1.16 per hour less than
men.
We still need equal pay. We need to update the Equal Pay Act. We need
to face the fact that when you have had this kind of inequality for the
millennia, since human time, it takes enforcement of the law and it
takes updating of the law.
This has become one of the great issues of the American family. The
interesting thing about polling, is if you poll Americans, what are
your top issues, equal pay keeps coming up near the top. You say how
come if we are polling men and women, equal pay keeps landing up there
in the stratosphere? I think I know why. In two- parent homes, almost
always now, even in families that have very young children, both people
go out to work. The male member of the household and the female member
of the household are not unlikely to have been together in college, for
example, or in high school. Suppose they went to the same junior
college and graduated, both having done reasonably well. They hit the
workplace and he instantly made more money than she does. And she is a
drag on the family income. How come? They both went to college; they
did well, yet she does not earn anywhere near as much money as he does.
That is why it has become a family issue. That is why equal pay keeps
registering when we give the American people a list of 10 issues and
ask them to write the ones that mean something to them. Equal pay keeps
hitting much higher, very high often within the first three of that
family's sight. We better listen to them.
In this Special Order, where we are focusing on women, I do not want
to leave the impression that women are looking only to so-called
women's issues. I have just said that equal pay has become a major
family issue in our country, as both parents go out to work, as the
number of female heads of households grows astronomically. I want to
look for a moment at the tax cut and what it does for women or does not
do for women.
{time} 2000
I think we need to lay this out as people decide what does this do
for us. We hear about things like the tax cut in such gross terms that
even if you are a tax lawyer, it is difficult to figure out what it
means. For women, reduction of taxes on dividends, we are told that
will help seniors because they are investments, reduce the dividends,
greater return for them. Let me see, less than one-quarter of older
Americans live in a family that receives any dividend income. Now, who
knows what that dividend income is. But less than a quarter receive any
dividend income.
That is of all older Americans. Only one-fifth of older women live in
a family that receives any dividend income, and that is 20 percent. If
we are looking at women of color who receive stock dividends, we are
looking at 6 percent of black and Hispanic elderly living in families
that receive dividend income. So much for women and the tax cut.
When we look at where at least some of the funds in the tax cut might
have gone to benefit women, we probably should start with the
uninsured, because uninsured women are far more likely to postpone
everything. They postpone the care they need today, they skip all of
the services like mammograms, they only go to doctors when they have
advanced disease. Latina and African American women are 2 to 3 times
more likely to be uninsured than white women, but if we had used the
tax cut package, we could have insured 33 million of uninsured
Americans with incomes below 300 percent of the Federal poverty level.
Most of those people are women, often women with children.
If we look at the tax cut in terms of Social Security, and that is
often the way the tax cut is positioned, think about women. It is women
who have not been in the workforce who go in late so they do not have
the pensions and the savings and the investments. They rely more on
Social Security, far more than men do. Over 80 percent of unmarried
elderly African American and Hispanic women get half their income from
Social Security. So if you took the 75-year cost of the tax cut, we
could erase the entire 75 year shortfall in Social Security three times
over and secure Social Security for the baby boom generation and future
generations. We are going to be judged where our values were, and I
always thought they were with Social Security, and I do not believe
that is true anymore, at least with many in this House.
Another important issue with women has been domestic violence. I
remember how we fought in this House and achieved a very important
bipartisan consensus on domestic violence. We have a million and a half
women assaulted by some partner each year. They have to go to shelters.
They need residential shelters, services for their children, but we are
able to handle only 1 of 5 women who needs somebody to take them in
from an abusive partner. With just $6 billion or 15 percent of the tax
cut, we would have had shelter and transitional services for these
women and their children. I do not know how Members can continue to
talk about women and children and then wipe away all of the funds that
they need to do what it is that we are talking about.
The Congressional Black Caucus today just had a very informative
internal hearing on Head Start. I was very pleased to participate in
that hearing because of the witnesses that came forward, one of them
from a center in the District of Columbia where children emerge, and it
is a bilingual center, the Beaumont Center, where children emerge
literally bilingual. I asked the question and was assured that these
children speaking only Spanish or Vietnamese or some other language
emerge at kindergarten able to speak English, and that is what concerns
me most, because that is when the brain is most pliable and people can
earn language most easily. At that age, a child can learn more than one
language, so these children do emerge bilingual. Head Start, I cannot
say enough about it, but we are very concerned that it will be block
granted and disposed of, because we know what happens to block grants:
States steal from the block grants, often for people far better off
than the block granted people. For the amount of tax cut, we could get
to where everyone wants to get in providing Head Start for every
eligible child.
Women continue to be the major guardians of our children, so when, in
fact, we make the kinds of decisions we have been making on Head Start,
we are taking money right out of the hands of children and not just
their mothers.
I want to move on to title 9. Sometimes we forget since we talk about
title 9 often in terms of sports, sometimes we forget title 9 covers
all of education, and what it has wrought in approaching education
equality is nothing short of historic.
[[Page H5463]]
In the year that the bill was signed, that was 1972, women earned
only 7 percent of all law degrees. By that time I was out of law
school. I graduated in 1964, and women were still earning only 7
percent. That is called tokenism. That is not representation in the
profession. I have to tell if somebody went to law school and took the
bar, it is not a profession that one would expect women not to enter.
That was in 1972, 7 percent. Fast forward to 1997, no longer 7
percent, 44 percent, approaching half. Before I came to Congress, I was
a full-time tenured professor of law at Georgetown University Law
Center. I joke, although it is not entirely a joke, that I continue to
teach one course there a year. The House does allow a Member to teach
but not to do virtually anything else outside of the House. I joke that
I continue to teach because one thing I want to do is keep my tenure
because it was harder to get tenure than it was to get elected, and
there is a lot of truth in that.
But the fact is that I look at my classes, and I teach one course
every year, and I am astounded. Not only are the classes often evenly
divided, sometimes there are more women than men. In my wildest
imagination, that is not what I foresaw for my profession, not when I
was in law school.
Let us look at medical school. There were always a greater proportion
of women in medical school, not a lot, because if we look at 1977, and
that is 5 years after title 9, only 9 percent of all medical degrees
were awarded to women. By 1997, 41 percent of the people graduating
from medical school were women. This is the pattern in higher education
for women. Looking at Ph.D.s, 1997, a quarter of the Ph.D.s went to
women. Today 41 percent of Ph.D.s go to women.
Where we hear about title 9 most today, where we do not see this kind
of progress, although we see considerable progress, is in athletics;
and that has become somehow controversial. There are 32,000 women
athletes playing intercollegiately in 1972, and 150,000 today. I would
have never thought about intercollegiate athletics, not only because I
am unathletic, but because it was not a girl thing to do. It is very
important that athletics are open to women, not only for its own sake,
but also because of what it means for how women can view where they can
go in the world in other pursuits as well.
There were virtually no athletic scholarships for women in 1972, and
today there are 10,000 scholarships for women athletes. There has been
a lot of progress there. One would think that where there was this kind
of progress, we would leave it alone. There is a lot of stuff to study
in this House and in this country, but the fact is we just finished a
very controversial, polarizing study, commission on title 9. I could
think of a thousand commissions to set up where we see negative
progress. The last thing I would spend any time on is title 9; but why,
because some wrestlers said they were losing out to women who were in
fact given title 9 funds.
Give us a break. Thanks to women who protested this commission's
work, not a lot has happened, but the commission's bias was astounding.
Normally these commissions give the appearance of being open. There was
one hearing, and not all sides were heard. There was no indication of
continued discrimination against women in sports, no talk about how,
for example, men's football and basketball really eat up the money from
wrestling. It is somehow the fact that a few more women are playing
intercollegiate ball that takes from the men.
Mr. Speaker, I want Members to know what happened on June 13. A
district court threw out a lawsuit by a coalition of wrestlers who
argued that title 9 requires quotas of female athletes that have
resulted in discrimination against men.
{time} 2015
The judge said nonsense. He said that the wrestlers failed to show
that title IX caused their teams to be dropped. Let us look for the
causal effect here. If they do not have a wrestling team now, what is
the reason? And this judge found, hey, you cannot even show that if
title IX had not been there at all, they would not have dropped the
wrestling team. Why in the world do we not ask schools, is it really
necessary to pump such large amounts of money into basketball and
football? I will grant you that there is reason to put a lot of money
there, but if you have got some wealth to share, do not take it from
the wrestlers who then blame it on the women. Take a little bit from
basketball and football. I do not think either of those sports, given
the rah-rah spirit they have and the alumni they draw, are going to
suffer from it.
The commission was certainly a very bad idea. There was a minority
report by two commissioners who refused to sign the commission's report
because of its detrimental possible effects on women. Then Secretary
Paige said, fine, we have a unanimous report now. I mean, wait a
minute. This is America. We do not do things that way. We acknowledge
that there are differences, the majority rules; but we do not say,
okay, we have a unanimous report and those people who did not sign
simply are not counted at all.
Scandalously, some of the recommendations here hark back to the old
days of discrimination. For example, the notion of the use of an
interest survey to determine the level of interest women and men have
in various sports. What? That builds discrimination on top of
discrimination. The reason that girls like me did not have an interest
in sports is we were literally taught that a smart girl did not do
sports. Now of course that you do not have an interest in sports is why
you should not have sports. That is like in the days before title VII
saying, let us ask the clients in this law firm whether they would in
fact continue to do business with us if we had a black lawyer as a
partner. That is exactly what that is like. Or a retail outlet saying,
let us not hire this Hispanic person because we do not think people
would like to be served by a Hispanic person in this store. I thought
we called that discrimination. We do not ask people whether or not they
should be given equal treatment in the provision of athletics based on
whether they are interested or not. We say, look, if you are not
interested, you do not have to do it; but we are not to condition your
ability to participate in athletics on a survey as to how many of your
gender are interested. That simply compounds the discrimination we are
trying to escape. Profit from our own exclusion.
Since title VII, the opportunities for both men and women have
increased, but the number of opportunities for women athletes, and,
remember, there are more women than men in college, the number of
opportunities for women athletes has yet to reach what it was for men
before 1972. We need a commission all right. We need a commission to
help us get to equal opportunity in athletics quicker than we have
done. We need to pat ourselves on the back for how far we have gone and
then move further.
I want to say a word about choice. When President Clinton was in the
White House, I remember press conferences where women came forward to
make the American people understand the notion of late-term abortions.
Women came forward and spoke, gave testimony, some of the most moving
testimony I have heard, about how their lives or their fertility had
been saved by a late-term abortion.
We are going to have next week, or I am certain before recess we will
have another spectacle. President Bush is going to invite anti-choice
zealots into the White House to sign a bill taking away a woman's right
to end a pregnancy not in the last weeks of pregnancy, but from 13
weeks on. That is how that bill reads. That is how a, almost exactly
worded bill or worded in almost the same way was read by the Supreme
Court. I am hoping that the Supreme Court will save us. Based on my own
reading of the prior opinions of the Court, I believe they will; but it
is a human tragedy that we have not been able to reach a compromise and
that we now have a bill that would disallow the ending of pregnancies
in the very last month or so.
The third trimester is already covered by Roe v. Wade, but because
the procedure described in the bill is also used in the second
trimester, I am certain it is unconstitutional, although nobody can
presage what the Court will do. But I do know this, that no one is
thinking about the health exception that Roe v. Wade has in it. That is
the kind of response to women's reproductive needs we are seeing in
this administration. Tragically, we see that we
[[Page H5464]]
are trying to carry these notions abroad where they are not wanted and
where people have their own set of values. Why in the world were we at
a U.N. population conference objecting to the very phrase
``reproductive rights''? What? Wanting it stricken. Why did we object
to the words ``reproductive health services''? Representatives of the
administration, of the State Department among U.S. delegates? Do
reproductive rights necessarily mean abortion? Not the last time I
heard. It is a very broad phrase. But the whole notion of trying to
rewrite not only the English language here but rewrite the language for
the world does seem to me to go beyond our writ and our right.
There are some women in here who are trying to restore the funds that
we have now cut off from the United Nations population fund, funds
that, of course, were meant only for birth control and contraception;
and we have ourselves indicated that those funds will not be available
to organizations which do not forswear using other funds for abortion.
What this will result in in maternal deaths and the deaths of children
will be on us.
Finally, let me say a word about poor women. We passed a TANF bill
here. It has not been passed in the Senate yet. I can only hope that it
will be thoroughly revised. Every State and the District of Columbia
allows some of the time that a woman on TANF, some of the time for work
to be spent in some form of postsecondary education. This is seen as an
allowable work-related activity. In this House, however, no State would
be allowed this flexibility so that a woman, for example, could work
part-time and go to college part-time. Why not? Do you want women to
get off of TANF and be on minimum-wage jobs for the rest of their
natural lives? We want to make sure she is going to school, that she is
pursuing a degree or some form of higher education. But why is that not
exactly what we should be encouraging? It is almost impossible for poor
women under the TANF bill we passed to have enough time available
beyond weekly work-related requirements to do anything else, because we
have increased the work-hour requirements to 40 per week and then
limited what counts as work. What we were trying to do, I thought, was
to make people less poor, not simply get them off TANF.
The final straw here was what we did just last week, in essentially
killing the child care credit for poor women, poor families. Those are
families that earn between $10,000 and $26,000 a year, including
military families. By adding on the cost of child care for so many
higher-income families, essentially we stabbed the bill in the back,
knowing full well that the Senate required that the poor families be
paid for and that if you add families of over $200,000, for example, I
would love to see it, I would love to have universal child care, we do
not have it, but knowing that if you added them, that would kill the
bill, that is what this House did.
By the way, the House did not try to hide it. I will not call the
House dishonest on this one. Member after Member was clear, said it to
the press, said it on the floor, these people do not pay Federal income
taxes; therefore, they should get no tax relief. The last time I heard,
they were paying a greater share of their income in payroll taxes than
most of us pay in income taxes. For the life of me, I do not understand
why a child care credit, because that is all this is, it is a child
care credit, it is for the child, would not be precisely what we want
these families to have.
I give my friend Tom DeLay, and he is a friend, he and I wrote a bill
together for family court in the District of Columbia, Tom never does
hide where he stands. He said, ``It ain't going to happen. There are a
lot of things more important than that.'' That is a quote. You know
what, he was right. It is not going to happen. The child tax credit is
probably dead, killed in this House after the Senate tried to revive
it.
Mr. Speaker, what I have tried to do in memory of Representative
Martha Griffiths was simply to call the roll on some of the women's
rights issues of special currency today. See, that is where Martha
Griffiths would be. She would not be talking about the great feats of
yesterday. She would be moving on. I wanted us to remember where these
rights came from and that they came in a House where there were but a
shallow number of women and a few good men, enough to pass the bill,
indeed, without whom no bill could have been passed, who were
determined that equality would apply to their wives, to their
daughters, to their aunts, and to their mothers.
{time} 2030
It is important that we know where this came from because it did not
come from a House where, what do we have today, 63 women and a lot of
men, Democrat and Republican, who respect and vote for women's rights
and vote on women's issues as one might expect any civilized, advanced
Nation to do. We have got a lot of that today. But in order to place
the true value on where we have come in 40 years, it did seem to me one
way to do this was to recognize the life of Representative Martha
Griffiths, who had to stay on this floor and remind people that their
laughter at the addition or the proposal to add sex to title VII of the
1964 Civil Rights Act simply underlined the second class status of
women when women are not first class citizens yet, but nobody can doubt
that they are on their way to being exactly that.
There are some ways in which we do not have consensus. I have named
some of them. I have named more of them on which we do. There is one in
which I hope we will gather consensus soon. H. Con. Res. 130, the Equal
Access in Membership Resolution is pending in the House, and its
operative words say, and I cite this because this ought to be an easy
one, and yet it is one that is not done, it says no Member of Congress,
justice or judge of the United States or political appointee in the
executive branch of the Government, should belong to a club that
discriminates on the bases that have been named, and my colleagues know
what they are, gender, race, et cetera. Come on, everybody. It even
respects the right of free association because it does not say no
Member must belong. It says no Member should belong. Can we not get at
least that passed in the House?
And, remember, we are talking about a Member of Congress, a justice
or a judge of the United States or political appointee of the United
States of America, that if on is one of those, one is to forego
belonging to a club that does not allow Jews and blacks and women in,
Hispanics in. Is that too much to ask this late in the day? Hey, look,
one can. All this resolution says is the House says one should not. It
is because one gives the appearance of not being a fair person.
I hope that we will pass this resolution, this one we might have
expected to pass during the height of the civil rights movement. We are
all officials. It seems to me we want to give the appearance of
fairness, and one way to do it is in the way we live our lives.
I hope that if I have done nothing else, I have pointed out not only
our progress but our problems that we have both and that together we
have come a very long way, and together we can get the rest of the way.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my salute to a
remarkable woman and former Member of the U.S. House of
Representatives, Martha W. Griffiths.
As a pioneering political activist woman, her life was a string of
first. In 1953 she was appointed as the first female Detroit Recorder's
Court judge; the following year, she was the first Democratic woman
elected to Congress from Michigan; she was the first woman to serve on
the Ways and Means Committee; she was the first woman lieutenant
governor of Michigan.
Martha Griffiths passed away at the age of 91, just this past April
and remains a legend in Michigan and National politics. She's been
called a ``legendary feminist'' and ``one of the most effective women's
rights lawmakers of her time.'' Her reputation was well-earned. She was
effective because she was as tough as any of her formidable opponents
and she had a sharp intellect. At home she campaigned block-by-block,
taking a small group of women to visit other women at home during the
day to discuss political issues. She was just as methodical, strategic
and persistent in Washington. Her work was richly rewarded with the
inclusion of gender discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
by the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. These efforts
were watersheds in the progress of women's rights in America. From
them, a multitude of Supreme Court decisions and Federal Laws have
flowed in support of women.
[[Page H5465]]
Martha's progressive politics encompassed much more than women's
rights, however. She was concerned about the welfare of all Americans.
In the 1970's, she recognized the need for reforming our health system
to provide universal health coverage and became an original co-sponsor
of the landmark Kennedy-Griffiths Bill; she worked on regulating
pension funds, closing tax loopholes and conducted a massive study of
welfare, resulting in major overhauls to the system.
Martha Griffiths was, at once, ahead of her time and just right for
her time. Her contributions to the evolution of human rights and
dignity in this nation will be always remembered.
Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker and Congresswoman Norton, thank you for the
opportunity to support women's issues and to acknowledge the
contributions of former Michigan Congresswoman Martha Griffiths to the
cause of equal rights for women.
As the U.S. Representative from Michigan's 1st District, I am
particularly proud of the example set by this dynamic, fiery woman, who
was elected to the U.S. House in 1954 and served here for twenty years,
including a term as the first woman on the House Ways and Means
Committee.
Before her service in the U.S. House, Martha Griffiths served from
1949 to 1952 in the Michigan House, followed by two years as the first
woman Detroit Recorder's Court judge.
Martha Griffiths was still in Congress when I began my career in
public service as a police officer in Escanaba, Michigan in 1972. By
the time she re-entered public life as Michigan's first elected female
Lieutenant Governor in 1982, I was serving as a Michigan State Trooper.
In all that time, and later when I was elected to the Michigan State
House of Representatives, I had Martha Griffith's example to follow.
While she was one of America's greatest women leaders, she was also
at the top of the list of consummate politicians and public servants of
either gender.
In her work reinvigorating the fight to pass the Equal Rights
amendment and in adding language banning sex discrimination in the 1964
Civil Rights Act, Martha Griffiths set the stage for later generations
of women in politics.
My own wife Laurie, who is the elected mayor of our hometown of
Menominee, is one of the thousands of women who benefited from Martha
Griffiths' trailblazing work in politics and public life.
Martha Griffiths added influential roles in business to her resume
after she retired from the U.S. House, serving on five major corporate
boards, including two--Chrysler Corporation and Consumers Power
Company--which had up to that time been all male.
A Detroit Free Press editorial on the occasion of Martha's death
April 24 of this year summed it up beautifully.
The Free Press said, ``Her very presence wielded power, especially
when accompanied by her famously sharp tongue. Of course, her unabashed
willingness to go toe-to-toe with the good old boys drew some
detractors. An old man once wrote to Griffiths telling her to leave the
political stage. `All you've ever done is succeed in making women more
insolent,' he wrote.''
What this aging gentleman referred to as insolence we now applaud as
assertiveness in such political leaders as Representative Nancy Pelosi,
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and the many women in state and
local elected office like my partner in life Laurie. The thousands upon
thousands of women who have climbed higher in business, community
service and government in recent decades are also beneficiaries of
Martha's efforts.
I do not have daughters.
But should I be lucky enough to have a daughter-in-law or
granddaughters, I will be more than proud if they emulate even some of
the self confidence, intelligence, perseverance and fierce effort that
Martha Griffiths brought to all her causes.
We can best honor her legacy by continuing to work for equal pay and
equal opportunity in the work force, continued support for widows and
heads of households in Social Security and pension benefits, labor
rights and a refusal to accept sex discrimination in any form.
I am happy to pledge my efforts to those goals.
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this celebration of
women's issues and Martha Griffiths' contributions to those causes.
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the
extraordinary life of former Congresswoman, and my dear friend, Martha
Griffiths. Martha was the matriarch of Michigan politics and one of the
nation's greatest advocates for women's rights.
She grew up as the daughter of a rural mail carrier in Pierce City,
Missouri, where she excelled in the art of debate. Her intelligence and
strong spirit carried her all the way from Missouri to the steps of the
University of Michigan Law School where she and her husband became the
first couple to graduate together in 1940. After graduating from the
University of Michigan Law School, she and her husband founded the law
firm Griffiths & Griffiths in 1946.
With a top notch law school education and the creation of a
successful law firm under her belt, Martha decided to run for a seat in
the Michigan State House, and like everything else she did, she
succeeded. Martha Griffiths was one of two women who held a seat in the
Michigan House from 1949-1952.
In 1954, Martha Griffiths was the first woman elected to serve the
great state of Michigan in Congress, where she held the seat for 20
years. While in Congress, she became the first woman to sit on the
powerful Ways and Means Committee, she served on the Joint Economic
Committee and she was Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Fiscal
Policy.
During her tenure in Congress, Martha built her career fighting for
equal rights for women. She fought to ensure the protections for women
in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination in
voting, public education, employment, public accommodations, and
federally assisted programs. In 1970, she stalked the halls of Congress
to obtain 218 signatures needed to file a discharge petition to demand
that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which had languished in a House
committee for 47 years, be heard by the full Congress. Congress
overwhelmingly approved the ERA in 1972. Unfortunately, it was ratified
by only 35 states, three short of the number needed to add it to the
U.S. Constitution.
She continued spearheading women's rights as Michigan's first female
lieutenant governor in 1982. She also served on five corporate boards,
two that had been all male and she was the only woman to serve in all
three branches of government in Michigan.
In addition to her great accomplishments for women's rights, Martha
was also the driving force in helping me obtain my seat on the
prestigious House Judiciary Committee. Being an advocate for civil
rights herself, she saw the great importance of having an African
American on the very Committee that handles many important issues,
including civil rights. As a freshman in the House, having Martha
Griffiths as a mentor and a friend was invaluable.
Without the leadership, strength and courage of Martha Griffiths,
women would not be where they are today and neither would I. Mr.
Speaker, I would like to give special thanks to Congresswoman Eleanor
Holmes Norton for bringing this tribute to the floor. A tribute to a
woman of such stature is long overdue.
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