Bunny was widely known as the “Godmother of Title IX” for her pivotal role in the creation and implementation of that law.īunny’s accomplishments are too numerous to delineate in full, but include the following: She served as chair of the Action Committee for Federal Contract Compliance for the Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL), and was an education specialist for the Special Subcommittee on Education, Committee on Education and Labor for the U.S. It has had a significant impact on female collegiate athletics throughout its 46-year history, dramatically increasing the number of women in college sports. That act extends to athletics, sexual harassment, and employment discrimination. She began to file class action lawsuits against colleges and universities nationwide, resulting in a barrage of more than 250 lawsuits.īunny was principally known for the major role she played in the development and passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits gender discrimination against students and employees in federally-funded educational institutions from kindergarten through graduate school. Since colleges and universities, by and large, received federal funds, she had an instrument to use against educational institutions that discriminated against women. The two orders together prohibited employment discrimination in the federal government, by covered federal contractors and subcontractors, and on federally-assisted construction projects on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, or national origin. She realized that when President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11375 in 1967, amending Executive Order 11246, which he had signed in 1965, he had paved the way for her to bring lawsuits against institutions of higher education that discriminated against women. In seeking ways to attack gender discrimination at colleges and universities, Bunny had a eureka moment. And she was essentially a one-woman band. The range of her activities in one lifetime was phenomenal. You come on too strong for a woman.” For Bunny, those were fighting words, and battling discrimination in educational institutions became her lifelong passion. When she learned that she had not been considered for any of them, she asked a male colleague why. “You’re three months older than I am,” I’d say, “and you always will be.” She’d respond by saying that, in that case, I owed her some respect.īunny's passion for changing the field of education's treatment of women was spurred by her own experience in academia. In 1969, after earning a doctorate at the University of Maryland, she hoped to secure one of seven open teaching positions in her department at that university. Through the many decades that I knew Bunny, I teased her about being my senior.
My work focused on gender discrimination in employment, while Bunny specialized in gender discrimination in education.īunny and I quickly became good friends: we were both short, Jewish women both born in the same year-1928-she, in March I, in May. Its mandate at that time, which was subsequently broadened, was to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin by covered employers, employment agencies, and labor unions. When I saw that the EEOC was not vigorously implementing the sex discrimination prohibitions of the Act, I became a feminist activist and have remained one ever since. I had joined the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) on October 4, 1965, three months after it had commenced operations, as the first woman attorney in its Office of the General Counsel. Bunny was among that group of feminists, as was I. We certainly networked and shared information. Sometimes we worked alone sometimes we worked together. of the mid-1960s–feminist activists somehow got to know each other. I do not recall how or when I first met Bunny.
0 kommentar(er)
