Levenstein - Homemakers and Postwar Feminism

"Don't Agonize, Organize!
": The Displaced Homemakers Campaign and the Contested

Goals of Postwar Feminism
Author(s): Lisa Levenstein
Source: The Journal of American History , March 2014, Vol. 100, No. 4 (March 2014), pp.
1114-1138
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American
Historians
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"Don t Agonize, Organize!": The
Displaced Homemakers Campaign
and the Contested Goals of
Postwar Feminism
Lisa Levenstein
In 1976 "a shocking, real-life story" in the Ladies Home Journal drew attention to a
hidden crisis threatening the nations wives and mothers. The tragedy that confronted
recently widowed fifty-three-year-old Dorothy Hill had "implications for every woman,"
the magazine reported. For thirty years Mrs. Hill had lived securely and comfortably,
raising her children and supporting her husbands career. Her life changed dramatically
after her husband died of stomach cancer. Within months of the funeral, Mrs. Hill had
exhausted her savings account. She did not qualify for benefits from her husband s pen-
sion or Social Security because her children were grown, her husband had died before
retirement age, and she had not yet reached age sixty. Everyone seemed to assume that
Mrs. Hill would join the growing numbers of women entering the labor force, but no
one wanted to hire a middle-aged housewife without relevant skills or experience. Sud-
denly, Mrs. Hills decision to devote her life to her family seemed misguided. "Twenty,
30 years ago, [women like Mrs. Hill] made a deal, entered into the contract," the Ladies
Home Journal explained. "I'll stay home and you support me. ... It was supposed to be
a fine thing for women to do - arguably, the only thing." Yet in recent years "change has
begun. The roles are shifting." Longtime homemakers were finding themselves "caught
in the middle; the pedestal has been jerked out from under them, without warning."1
Mrs. Hill turned to the women's movement. Tish Sommers, the chair of the National
Organization for Women (now) Task Force on Older Women, had opened a job center
nearby that catered to older women. The center was part of an ambitious national cam-
paign launched by Sommers to draw attention to the struggles of those she called "dis-
placed homemakers" - middle-aged divorced or widowed housewives. The Ladies Home
Journal urged its readers to get involved in Sommer ss campaign to pass a federal bill
Lisa Levenstein is an associate professor of history at University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

For financial support, which enabled me to complete the research for this article, I thank the Schlesinger Li-
brary at Harvard University, the University of Southern California, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
(uncg), and the uncg Women's and Gender Studies Program. I am grateful to the many people who offered valu-
able feedback at several different stages: Eileen Boris, Jason Brent, Laura Edwards, Benjamin Filene, Linda Gordon,
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Temma Kaplan, Elana Levine, Nancy MacLean, Grey Osterud, David Peterson del Mar, Ra-
chel Seidman, Lisa Tetrault, members of the "Future of the 1970s" seminar at Duke University, and those review-
ers for the JAH who remained anonymous. For superb research assistance, heartfelt thanks to Isabell Moore, Nego
Crosson, and Kimberly Proctor. Thanks also to all of the people I worked with at the JAH, especially Ed Linenthal
and editorial assistant Rachel E. Coleman.
Readers may contact Levenstein at [email protected].
1 Cynthia Gorney, "The Discarding of Mrs. Hill," Ladies Home Journal, 93 (Feb. 1976), 58-64, esp. 58, 62.
doi: 10.1093/jahist/jau007
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians.
AJI rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].
1114 The Journal of American History March 2014

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Displaced Homemakers Campaign and Postwar Feminism 1115
providing services to help these women enter the labor force. By 1980 this grassroots
campaign had convinced the federal government and thirty states to pass legislation as-
sisting displaced homemakers; promoted changes to Social Security and divorce laws to
recognize the economic value of women's household labor; and established the National
Displaced Homemakers Network, which coordinated four hundred programs serving
women in need.2
The displaced homemakers campaign represented a pivotal moment in the history of

the modern women's movement in which feminists sought to shine a spotlight on the
economic value of housework and the concerns of middle-aged housewives. Drawing
attention to the ways ageism combined with sexism to limit women's opportunities, dis-
placed homemaker advocates convinced thousands of older women to demand public
recognition of their unpaid labor in the home and to lobby for programs to meet their
needs. At times operating under the auspices of now but also functioning independently,
this campaign stood at the forefront of a significant strand of 1970s feminism focused on
securing social policies that recognized the economic value of housework. With feminists
publicizing the contributions of housewives, national and local media followed the issue,
state legislatures engaged in spirited debates, and federal politicians sought to change
programs such as Social Security to acknowledge the importance of women's household
labor.
By the early 1980s, feminist activism on behalf of housewives had largely faded from
public view. Sommers had envisioned that her campaign would help attract to feminism
women of an older generation who did not typically see a place for themselves in the
women's movement, but other activists had different priorities. Those who sought race
and class inclusivity within the movement faulted the displaced homemakers campaign
for contributing to the stigmatization of welfare recipients and excluding poor women
and minorities. At the same time, now, the largest membership-based explicitly feminist
organization in the nation, began to focus almost exclusively on the campaign to add an
equal rights amendment (era) to the U.S. Constitution and became more hierarchical
and less amenable to independent activism among members. Both the conflicts over race
and now's narrowing agenda helped clear space for the conservative lawyer, writer, and
grassroots activist Phyllis Schlafly to take control of the public debate. Recognizing the
strides feminists had made in their appeals to homemakers, Schlafly co-opted and mis-
represented their arguments. Depicting the women's movement as "anti-homemaker," she
claimed that feminists wanted to take away the special rights that homemakers enjoyed
and force all wives and mothers into the labor force.3
So successful was Schlafly in reframing the debate that we have largely forgotten that
feminists ever tried to advocate on housewives' behalf. The rich new literature on the
1 Ibid, y 62. For another example of a women's magazine urging readers to become involved in the displaced
homemakers campaign, see Harriet Jackson Scampa, "How Three Homemakers Found New Lives," McCall's, 105
(Feb. 1978), 89. On the successes of this grassroots campaign, see Barbara H. Vinick, The Displaced Homemaker: A
State-of-the-Art Review (Wellesley, 1980), 4, 7; and Carolyn Taylor O'Brien and Demetra Smith Nightingale, Pro-
grams for Displaced Homemakers in the 1980s (Washington, 1985), v.
3 Katherine Turk, "Out of the Revolution, into the Mainstream: Employment Activism in the now Sears Cam-
paign and the Growing Pains of Liberal Feminism," Journal of American History, 97 (Sept. 2010), 399^423. Other
studies of now include Maryann Barakso, Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for
Women (Ithaca, 2004); and Stephanie Gilmore, Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America (New

93.19.19.120 on Wed, 16 Nov 2022 19:05:32 UTC
women's movement in the 1970s has emphasized its capaciousness,

ranging agenda that included consciousness-raising groups and rape crisi
as campaigns for child care, jobs, reproductive justice, and welfare right
arship has largely overlooked displaced homemakers and the feminist ac
ing household labor. As a result, we have missed the ways that internal
women's movement s goals and constituency, combined with a virulent c
position, redirected feminism away from a vision that was elitist but al
sistence on putting a price on women's labor in the home.4
"Don't Agonize, Organize!" proclaimed Tish Sommers, the magnetic f

placed homemakers campaign and its most prominent public face. So
term displaced homemakers in 1974 while working with the San Francis
for Older Women project, an employment and advocacy service she h
oped. Sommers described displaced homemakers as "middle-aged and
had lost their unpaid jobs as homemakers through death, divorce, se
donment, and who needed to find jobs and build new lives in a largel
society that seldom recognized or valued their skills and experience." Wh
at the severity of the term displaced, Sommers believed that it correctl
dire situations housewives confronted. She drew a direct analogy betwee
sons "forcibly exiled" through social upheaval or war and a generation of
ibly exiled' . . . from a role, occupation, dependency status, and a livelih
York, 2012). On conservative attacks on feminists as antihomemaker, see Matthew D. Las

Values," in Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, ed. Bruce J. Schulm
(Cambridge, Mass., 2008), 13-28. The displaced homemakers campaign sheds new light o
undergirding such rhetoric, suggesting that conservatives were sometimes responding not t
homemakers but to the significant feminist advocacy on housewives' behalf.
lhe displaced homemakers campaign is touched on in Kuth Rosen, lhe world òpLit U
Women's Movement Changed America (New York, 2000), 272-73. For the campaign leade
memories, see Laurie Shields, Displaced Homemakerś: Organizing for a New Life (New Y
Patricia Huckle, Tish Sommers, Activist, and the Founding of the Older Women's League (Kn
Much recent work on feminism in the 1970s and 1980s challenges ideas of it as a white midd
Becky Thompson, "Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism
28 (Summer 2002), 336-60; Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and
ments in America's Second Wave (New York, 2004); Kimberly Springer, Living for the Revolut
ganizations, 1968-1980 (Durham, N.C., 2005); Anne Valk, Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Fe
eration in Washington, D.C. (Urbana, 2010); Stephanie Gilmore, ed., Feminist Coalitions: H
Second-Wave Feminism in the United States (Urbana, 2008); Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gor
Dispatches from the Women's Liberation Movement (New York, 2000); Premilla Nadasen, "Exp
ies of the Women's Movement: Black Feminism and the Struggle for Welfare Rights," Fem
mer 2002), 271-301; Jennifer Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Move
Winifred Breines, The Trouble between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in
(New York, 2006); Serena Mayeri, Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights
Mass., 201 1); Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and
America (Princeton, 2004); Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the Ame
bridge, Mass., 2006); Anne Enke, Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Femin
N.C., 2007); Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chican
2011); Jael Silliman et al., Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Jus
2004); and Kathleen A. Laughlin et al., "Is It Time to Jump Ship? Historians Rethink the W
nist Formations, 22 (Spring 2010), 76-135.
5 On "Don't Agonize, Organize!" see Huckle, Tish Sommers, 185, 195; and Rosen, World
slogan plays on early twentieth-century labor activist Joe Hill s instructions to his comrade

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The predicaments of displaced homemakers became a pressing issue because their

numbers had increased significantly, reflecting the rising divorce rate and the growing
"longevity gap" - created by women's tendency to live longer than men. Between 1950
and 1975, while the U.S. population increased by 42 percent, the number of widows
grew by 45 percent and the number of divorcées rose by 223 percent. By 1977, the U.S.
census documented approximately 10 million widows and 4 million divorcees. Estimates
of the number of displaced homemakers ranged from 2 to 7 million. The U.S. Depart-
ment of Labor settled on a figure of 4 million, and Sommers identified an additional 1 5
million women as having the potential to become displaced.6
Displaced homemakers confronted one of the most profound transformations in
cultural expectations for white middle-class women in U.S. history: the decline of the
family-wage ideal prescribing a male breadwinner and female homemaker. This ideal had
never accurately reflected life for many U.S. women, especially those not part of the ur-
ban middle class and those who did not marry. However, in the 1970s, the number of
women who depended solely on a male breadwinner declined precipitously. Each year,
more than 1 million mothers on average joined the labor force, with the greatest percent-
age increase occurring among women with children under the age of six. By the end of
the decade, over half of all white, black, and Latina women held jobs, and fewer than
one-quarter of all U.S. households had a breadwinner father and full-time mother. Public
commentators described displaced homemakers as "a generation of women on whom the
rules have been changed" and who were "caught between yesterday s pedestal and tomor-
row s self-sufficiency."7
One of the reasons divorced homemakers faced difficulties supporting themselves was
that they rarely received alimony. In 1978 the U.S. Department of Labor found that
only 14 percent of divorcées collected alimony and nearly half of them did not receive
wood not to mourn his death but to organize. Left-wing activists took up this phrase in their repeated proclama-
tions: "Don't Mourn - Organize!" Melvyn Dubofsky, "Big Bill" Haywood (Manchester, 1987), 85. OnTish Som-
mersi creation and description of the term displaced homemakers, see Cindy Marano and Alice Quinlan, "From
Baltimore to Pittsburgh and Beyond," 1982, pp. 4-5, folder 50, box 7, Tish Sommers Papers, 1970-1985 (San
Diego State University Special Collections and University Archives, San Diego, Calif.). On Sommers's comparison
of displaced homemakers to forcibly exiled people, see Shields, Displaced Homemakers, ix.
"Historical U.S. Population Growth by Year, 1900-1998," Facts and Figures, Negative Population Growth,
http://www.npg.org/facts/us_historical_pops.htm; U.S. Congress, Senate, Subcommittee on Employment, Pover-
ty, and Migratory Labor of the Committee on Human Resources, To Provide for the Establishment of Multipurpose
Service Centers for Displaced Homemakers, and for Other Purposes, 95 Cong., 1 sess., Sept. 12, 13, 1977, pp. 2, 54;
Barbara Gamarekian, "Displaced Homemakers: Some Action in Congress," New York Times, Sept. 13, 1977, p. 41;
Myra MacPherson, "Hill Unit Examines Plight of Widows and Divorcees; ťlhe New Poor,'" Washington Post, Sept.
13, 1977, p. A3; Barbara J. Katz, "Displaced Homemaker," National Observer, Oct. 11, 1975, clipping, folder 22,
box 7, Sommers Papers; Shields, Displaced Homemakers, x.
7 Janet L. Norwood, "New Approaches to Statistics on the Family," Monthly Labor Review, 100 (July 1977),
31-32; Elizabeth Waiden et al., "Working Mothers in the 1970s: A Look at the Statistics," ibid., 102 (Oct. 1979),
40, 43; Linda Burnham, "Has Poverty Been Feminized in Black America?," in For Crying Out Loud: Women and
Poverty in the United States, ed. Rochelle Lefkowitz and Anna Withorn (New York, 1986), 76; Howard Hayghe,
"Working Mothers Reach Record Numbers in 1984," Monthly Labor Review, 107 (Dec. 1984), 31-34. On the fam-
ily wage, see Nancy MacLean, "Postwar Women's History: The 'Second Wave' or the Decline of the Family Wage?,"
in A Companion to Post- 1945 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig (Maiden, 2002), 235-59;
Marisa Chappell, The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America (Philadelphia, 2009); and Ali-
son Lefkovitz, "The Problem of Marriage in the Era of Women's Liberation" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago,
2010). On public commentators' descriptions of displaced homemakers, see "Of Women, Knights, and Horses,"
Time, Jan. 1, 1979, p. 64; and National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, "The era and the
Older Woman," folder 22, box 162, Series XXXIV: era Ratification, 1959-1982, National Organization for Wom-
en Records (Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.).

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1118 The Journal of American History March 20 1 4
the full amount regularly. While alimony had never been awarded very w
the 1970s judges' interpretation of its purpose changed in response to the inc
ence of mothers in the labor force. Once considered a lifelong commitm
husbands made to their ex-wives that ended only upon women's remarriage, a
creasingly became a temporary transitional payment intended to help div
self-sufficient. This shift was partly a response to states' adoption of no-faul
in the 1970s, which diminished the ability of women to secure permane
compensation for mens mistreatment or philandering. It also signaled th
the approximately seventy-five divorced mens groups in the United States, w
that women's pursuit of alimony was bankrupting ex-husbands. Most fundam
decline in permanent alimony reflected the unraveling of the ideal of the fam
the resulting expectation that divorced women would join other women in pr
themselves through employment.8
Just as divorce settlements often failed to adequately support displaced hom
so too did the Social Security system. Many widowed housewives reporte
prised to find that they could not collect pensions based on their husbands' in
they turned sixty. Divorced women could not access any portion of their
benefits unless they had been married for at least twenty years. With health in
to their husbands' jobs, many displaced homemakers lost medical coverag
divorced. Some women turned to Aid to Families with Dependent Childre
welfare program for single parents. However, most middle-aged and older
ineligible for afdc because the program required beneficiaries to have children
eighteen living at home.9
Unable to secure much government support, many displaced homemaker
joining the labor force. Yet even writing a resume was a daunting task for re
and divorcees who had spent their lives caring for their families and lacked r
perience. Margaret Harraison, a California divorcee, described being in "a state
after her thirty-eight-year marriage ended: "I had never worked. I had no sk
displaced homemakers had never held jobs; others had once been employed
earlier. "Looking for work was a disaster," Harraison explained. "I did some ba
75 cents an hour. And I went to several job placement agencies. One couns
8Lefkovitz, "Problem of Marriage in the Era of Women's Liberation," 94-117. On alimony, se

National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, "... To Form a Mor
. . Justice for American Women. ; Report of the National Commission on the Observance of Internati
(Washington, 1976), 102; Committee on Human Resources, To Provide for the Establishment of Mul
Centers for Displaced Homemakers, and for Other Purposes, 54-55; and "Economic Consequences
Support and the Feminization of Poverty," New Jersey Statewide Conference on Child Support Enf
9, 1982, folder 5, box 309, Subseries J: Other Projects, 1980-2004, Series X: National Judicial Ed
1977-2008, Records of the now Legal Defense and Education Fund, 1968-2008 (Schlesinger Libr
rights, see Sharon Johnson, "Divorced Fathers Organizing to Bolster Role in Children's Lives," New Y
1, 1977, p. 37; "ADAM," flyer, 1970, folder 53, box 1, Sommers Papers; Mary Ann Seawell, "Divo
Custody Dilemma and Fight for Change," Palo Alto Times, Dec. 30, 1970, sec. 2, p. 9; Mildred H
vorced Fathers Union," San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle, June 6, 1977, p. WT10; Max Gunt
nity of Crippled Men," New York Times Magazine, Sept. 18, 1965, pp. 34-35, 142, 144, 146; Dan
"Father Knows Best," New York Times, June 24, 1975, p. 33; and Roger Williams, "Alimony: The
Psychology Today, 1 1 (July 1977), 70-72, 75-77, 92. On no-fault divorce, see also Herbert Jacob, Si
The Transformation of Divorce Law in the United States (Chicago, 1988), 2-3; and Herma Hill Ka
Difference: A Perspective on No-Fault Divorce and Its Aftermath," University of Cincinnati Law Re
1987), 1-90.
9Gomey, "Discarding of Mrs. Hill," 58, 60.

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she hated to have to say it but that they just dont want older women on the job market."
A fifty-six-year-old widow confirmed: "Nobody wants [to hire] you. Its worse than hell
to feel rejection."10
In her media appearances, Sommers made it seem as though she shared displaced
homemakers' struggles. Her divorce at fifty-seven left her too young to qualify for Social
Security, and a history of breast cancer prevented her from acquiring health insurance in
her own name. However, as with some other feminist spokespersons of her generation,
including Betty Friedan, this public persona elided a significant background in left-wing
and antiracist politics. Born in 1914 to an upper-class father and working-class mother,
Letitia Innes spent her youth pursuing a career in dance, a passion that led her to spend
three years studying in Germany. In 1936, sobered by the spread of fascism, she returned
to the United States and joined the Communist party because of its strong antifascist
stance. While pursuing an undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los An-
geles, Innes became part of the left-wing Popular Front and studied theories of grassroots
activism and social change. During World War II she put theory into action, working for
the parks department in East Los Angeles serving poor whites, African Americans, and
Mexican Americans in some of the first racially integrated public housing in the coun-
try. In 1947, while working full-time for Henry Wallaces third-party presidential cam-
paign, Innes met Joe Sommers, a fellow left-wing activist who became her husband in
1949. Committed radicals who sought to create change during an intense period of anti-
communism, the Sommerses went underground for five years, working for racial justice
through the Communist party in the Deep South. In 1957, when this life became too
stressful, they moved to Wisconsin, where Joe attended graduate school, they adopted a
son, and Tish became a housewife. The Sommer ses lived comfortably thanks to $250,000
that Tish inherited from her mother. After Joe found a job at the University of Washing-
ton in 1960, they moved across the country to Seattle. Five years later, bored with her
life as a full-time mother and inspired by the burgeoning civil rights movement, Tish re-
turned to antiracist activism, organizing volunteers for War on Poverty after-school pro-
grams for low-income black youth.11
In the late 1 960s Sommers discovered feminism. This was a time when the disparate
and diverse array of activists who made up the women's movement were building na-
tional organizations such as now and beginning to work at the local level to address sex-
ism, racism, and class discrimination in public policy and everyday life. At first Sommers
bridged her long-standing concerns about racial inequality with her growing interest in
feminist politics by working for welfare rights. Yet over time she began to focus on issues
of concern to white middle-class women like herself. Moving in circles with other left-
wing social activists, she grappled with the implications of her new commitments. "How
easy it is to forget about racism," she reflected self-critically after a conversation with a
10 On Margaret Harraison, see Beverly Cederberg, "Displaced as Homemaker, She Builds New Life," Valley
News, Aug. 22, 1976, p. 4. On the 56-year-old widow, see Katz, "Displaced Homemaker."
11 Huckle, Tish Sommers , 22-90, 135-43, 151-63. On links between women's activism in the Communist
party and later feminist organizing, see Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of! he Feminine Mystique:
The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst, 1998); Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American
Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation (Baltimore, 2001); Erik S. McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom:
Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Durham, N.C., 2011); Dayo F. Gore,
Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War (New York, 20 1 1); and Gerda Lerner,
Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (Philadelphia, 2002).

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1 120 The Journal of American History March 2014
Tish Sommers (center) worked in East Los Angeles on Henry Wallace's

dential campaign. Her participation in postwar left-wing politics laid the g
for her embrace of feminism in the 1970s. Courtesy Special Collections and
Archives, San Diego State University Library and Information Access, Tish Somm
box 31.
black activist in 1970, "Living in my white ghetto, involved with the woman issue with
largely middle-class whites, becoming more and more aware of the parallels but not the
differences of the two caste systems ... I have moved backward on the race question."12
In 1971 Sommers began the chapter of her life that would lead to the displaced home-
makers campaign. After years of growing apart, she and Joe divorced and she moved to
Berkeley, a hotbed of feminist organizing. Living frugally but comfortably on her inheri-
tance, Sommers joined the Berkeley chapter of now, a primarily white but socioeconom-
ically diverse group committed to participatory democracy and consciousness raising.
Sommers was elected to the national board of now and began to carve out a niche for
herself as an expert on women and aging. She assumed the position of chair of the now
Task Force on Older Women and started to write and speak about the intersection of age-
ism and sexism, trying to educate other feminists and the public about what she believed
was a neglected yet crucially important axis of women's oppression. Sommers's personal
stationery and business cards from this period poked fun at stereotypes of older women
by featuring a picture of a witch astride a flying broom. The caption read: "Me, retire? Ive
just begun to fly!"13
I2Huckle, Tish Sommers, 165.

13 Ibid., 166-70, 176-77. On local now chapters, see Gilmore, Groundswell; and Turk, Out of the Revolution,
into the Mainstream." Sommers did not acknowledge a connection with the radical feminist group witch (Wom-
en's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell).

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Sommers coupled her growing interest in aging with attention to feminist analyses of
the economic value of housework. These theories were developed most fully by the Marx-
ist-feminist International Wages for Housework Campaign, which identified housework
and other care work as productive labor, essential to mens success in the labor force and
generative for the entire economy. In the late 1960s and early 1970s such ideas were pres-
ent in many strands of the women's movement, including now. From a very early stage,
now proposed a broad set of policies that defined women's unpaid labor as economically
valuable and deserving of public recognition and support. In 1968, two years after now s
founding, the group s resolutions demanded amendments to the Social Security Act that
would provide pensions to homemakers as individuals rather than as their husbands' de-
pendents and would reduce from twenty to ten the minimum number of years a divorced
woman needed to be married to claim a portion of her ex-husband's retirement benefits.
Over the next ten years now committees devoted to homemakers' rights and to marriage
and divorce demanded provisions such as a government guarantee of health and accident
insurance to divorced women, a mandate ensuring that if one spouse worked outside the
home the other was legally entitled to half of the earned income, unemployment insur-
ance for homemakers, the inclusion of housework in the gross national product, the revi-
sion of welfare laws to enable low-income mothers to stay home and care for their chil-
dren full-time, and divorce policies mandating equitable division of marital property and
assets between spouses regardless of their earnings.14
Over time, Sommers drew connections between feminist analyses of housework and
her vision for the Task Force on Older Women. In her work with Jobs for Older Women,
she met many recent widows and divorcees who faced difficulties finding jobs after de-
cades spent homemaking. She began to view these women's struggles to support them-
selves as a reflection not only of the age discrimination older women faced in the labor
force but also of policy makers' refusal to acknowledge the economic and soćial value of
housework. Witnessing firsthand how ageism combined with sexism to limit women's op-
portunities, she expressed frustration that politicians and the public passionately debated
the struggles of African Americans and other minority groups but seemed not to notice
or care about these problems confronting millions of middle-aged women. Sommers had
long believed that "finding an issue" was an "essential ingredient" for enacting meaningful
social change. In discovering displaced homemakers, she had found her cause.15
In 1974 sixty-year-old Sommers laid the groundwork for a national grassroots cam-
paign to secure public policies supporting displaced homemakers. While she received
limited financial support from now, she directed the campaign herself and became its
public face. Sommers enlisted Barbara Dudley, a twenty-seven-year-old feminist attorney,
to draft the California Displaced Homemakers Act, which affirmed the economic value
14 National Organization for Women, "History and Statement of Policy of the Task Force on Marriage, Divorce,
and Family Relations," [1972], folder 44, box 47, Subseries C: Individual Task Forces and Committees, Series XIII:
Task Forces and Conference Implementation Committees, National Organization for Women Records; Betty Berry,
"Report of now-N.Y. Marriage and Divorce Committee," [1970], folder 53, box 1, Sommers Papers; National now
Marriage and Divorce Committee Newsletter, 1 (no. 1, 1972), ibid. ; Detroit now, Newsletter (Aug. 1973), folder 23,
box 30, Subseries B: Correspondence, Series VIII: Public Information Office, National Organization for Women
Records; Tish Sommers and Laurie Shields to Eleanor Smeal, April 27, 1977, folder 38, box 46, Subseries C: Indi-
vidual Task Forces and Committees, Series XIII: Task Forces and Conference Implementation Committees, ibid. In
1978 now encapsulated its proposals to treat women's unpaid labor as economically valuable in "now Homemaker
Bill of Rights," Oct. 1978, folder 41, box 89, Series XI: National Action Center Subject Files, ibid.
15Huclde, Tish Sommers , 185, 190. Sommers to Pat Shaw, Oct. 14, 1970, folder 9, box 5, Sommers Papers.

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A 1973 greeting card announces the services of the Women's Action Training C
Oakland, California. Tish Sommerss work with this organization in the early 19
alert her to the problems faced by job-seeking older women. Courtesy bulbul (Gen
and Special Collections and University Archives, San Diego State University Library
mation Access , Tish Sommers Papers , box 32.
of housework and provided funding for displaced homemaker service centers that would
offer programs to help older women enter the labor force. After submitting the bill to the
California legislature, Sommers and Dudley traveled to Washington, D.C., where they
met with the staff of Rep. Yvonne B. Burke, the first African American woman from Cali-
fornia elected to the House of Representatives and a strong advocate for civil rights and
womens rights. In 1975 Burke expressed her support for the campaign by filing the first
federal bill calling for services for displaced homemakers. The bill also called for a study
of the feasibility of bringing displaced homemakers into programs for wage earners such
as unemployment insurance. One congressional aide explained, "The philosophical thrust
of [the] bill is to get housewifery defined as labor. . . . We hope to get out of it a recogni-
tion by the Federal Government that being a housewife is indeed work and deserves the
same kind of rewards as any other kind of work."16
In 1975 Sommers met the woman who would become her most important collabora-
tor: fifty-five-year-old Laurie Shields, a recently widowed homemaker with a background
in advertising who had turned to the Jobs for Older Women project for assistance. A
lifelong Democrat, Shields did not consider herself a feminist, but Sommers believed
she had great potential and convinced her to become a major player in the emerging dis-
placed homemakers campaign. Shields assumed the leadership of the Alliance for Dis-
placed Homemakers, an organization she and Sommers created in 1975 to lobby for the
passage of state and federal legislation. The fledgling groups first goal was the passage of
the California Displaced Homemakers Act. With the help of local now chapters, Young
Women's Christian Associations, and church women's groups, Sommers and Shields trav-
eled across the state explaining the plight of displaced homemakers, outlining the goals of
16 Shields, Displaced Homemakers, 35; Katz, "Displaced Homemaker."

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Displaced Homemakers Campaign and Postwar Feminism 1 123
Tish Sommers (center) with Laurie Shields looking on (left) addresses a displaced
homemakers campaign meeting circa 1976. Courtesy Special Collections and Uni-
versity Archives , San Diego State University Library and Information Access, Tish
Sommers Papers, box 32.
the act, organizing letter-writing campaigns in the districts of legislators serving on com-
mittees crucial to the bill s passage, and putting intense pressure on Gov. Jerry Brown,
who initially opposed the measure. The bill passed in 1975, providing funding for the na-
tions first pilot center for displaced homemakers at Mills College in Oakland.17
After hearing about the California bill, women in the Maryland, Florida, and Oregon
state legislatures filed similar measures, and Sommers and Shields worked to support
their efforts and stimulate others. The two agreed on a division of labor: Shields traveled
the country meeting with women's groups and speaking with reporters while Sommers
remained in California helping launch the Mills College center and responding to the
growing number of requests for information from the national media, grassroots feminist
organizations, and ordinary women.18
Shields s itinerary took her to major cities in thirty states, traveling across the country
in her "tennies," which she chose for comfort "but also as a not so subtle protest against
the notion that little old ladies in tennis shoes are flaky." Her personal story, charisma,
and warmth struck a chord with a range of audiences. She described herself as a "late-
blooming feminist . . . someone who always thought of myself as Mrs. Arthur Shields."
This persona helped her bridge the gap between the young public face of the women's
movement and older women who did not identify with feminism. During her tour,
Shields emphasized the broad appeal of the displaced homemakers campaign, informing
17 Shields, Displaced Homemakers , 47-62.

18 Marano and Quinlan, "From Baltimore to Pittsburgh and Beyond," 5-6; Shields, Displaced Homemakers,
48-49.

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audiences that financial support for her travels came not just from now but
coalition of groups that included Church Women United and the Presbyteria
ed Methodist churches.19
Sommers and Shields generated extensive media interest in displaced
At every stop in her tour, Shields spoke with local television and newspa
creating an enormous amount of publicity. Prominent national newspape
the drama in the story of disaster confronting women who had "played
scrubbing kitchen floors and children's faces, neatly folding their identity i
husbands laundry, serving milk and cookies in the afternoon and böeuf bour
night." Sympathetic accounts of the campaign were published in mass-circul
en's magazines and the major national news outlets: Newsweek, Time , U
World Report , the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New Y
California, the opening of the Mills College center brought a "flood of camer
reporters." An appearance by Sommers and Shields on the Phil Donahue
thousands of letters.20
Similar to the way Betty Friedans Feminine Mystique put a name to p
acknowledged problems confronting married middle-class mothers, the displ
makers campaign offered language and analysis that helped middle-aged
widowed housewives identify and understand their struggles. Shields sou
the word" and "let women know they are not alone" by reaching out to mill
en who "could not and did not define their problem - they just went on
with hurt not knowing what to do." Fifty-four-year-old Mildred Thomas fr
said that she felt like "God had answered my prayers" when she learned of t
Charlotte Stewart, a Texas divorcee, explained: "I thought I was the only one
country this ever happened to. It was like a bomb exploding in the midst
were all unable to cope."21
19 Shields, Displaced Homemakers, xii, 39-46; Laurie Shields, "Displaced Homemakers Action
July 27, 1976, folder 5, box 24, Sommers Papers; "Of Women, Knights, and Horses"; Laurie Sh
Did It: Displaced Homemakers Win New Laws," Women's Agenda (Sept. 1977), 9-10. On the br
displaced homemakers campaign, see Jess Town, "'Old Girls' Unite," Sun-Herald Daily Living, Apri
ping, folder 34, box 7, Sommers Papers; and Lois Haase, "Displaced Women Organize to Get Jo
tonio Express, June 2, 1976, clipping, ibid.
20 For the quotation on playing by the rules, see Emily Greenspan, "Work Begins at 35," New Y
zine, July 6, 1980, p. 21. Marano and Quinlan, "From Baltimore to Pittsburgh and Beyond," 6.
makers," Newsweek, Aug. 23, 1976, p. 61; "Of Women, Knights, and Horses"; "When Women o
Thrown onto the Job Market," U.S. News and World Report, Sept. 26, 1977, pp. 55-56; Marlene
Displaced Homemakers," Los Angeles Times View, part IV, Sept. 18, 1975, pp. 1, 4, box 7, folder
pers; Myra MacPherson, "Hill Unit Examines Plight of Widows and Divorcees"; "Millions of Div
ows Become 'Displaced Homemakers,'" New York Times, Jan. 1, 1978, p. 26. On the opening of
center, see Aileen C. Hernandez and Associates, "First Quarterly Report: Evaluation of the Disp
Center, Inc., September 1976-November 30, 1976," p. 10, folder 7, box 7, Sommers Papers. For loc
for example, Mary Rothschild, "Help for the Homemaker on Her Own," Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
p. D3, clipping, folder 34, ibid.' and other clippings, ibid. Sommers to Barbara B. Young, Oct. 23, 1
box 7, Sommers Papers; Marano and Quinlan, "From Baltimore to Pittsburgh and Beyond," 6. N
twice aired Who Remembers Mama ? an hour-long film highlighting divorced displaced homemak
bers Mama?, prod. Cyn this Salzman Mondell and Allen Mondell, dir. Allen Mondell (pbs, 197
Deakin, "The Displaced Homemaker: There's New Hope for Americas No. 1 Lady-in-Distress," Dy
12 (Jan. 1977), 28.
21 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York, 1963). For the spread the word and le
quotations, see Carolyn Bengtson, "Reality Hard Blow for Shields," Austin Citizen, May 31, 197
er 34, box 7, Sommers Papers. They "could not and did not define their problem" quotation is
Shields. See Mary Just, "Older, but Not Old Enough, Women in Exile," Aberdeen (sd) American

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Whereas Friedan told housewives to find meaningful forms of work, Sommers and
Shields urged them to organize. Drawing on the left-wing theories about social action
that she had long practiced, Sommers described successfully convincing older women
who had never been involved in politics to engage in the process of "writing to legislators,
of organizing small groups, [and] of soliciting support from organizations of all kinds." In
this way, she maintained, they would become "effective citizen participants. ... no longer
victims, but healers of societal wrongs." Shields echoed the call, urging women to join
"the old girls movement" and use their "post-menopausal zest" to let legislators know that
displaced homemakers needed help. One divorcée described her work on the campaign
as transformative. She told a newspaper reporter that she went from "sheer panic" after
her husband left to feeling hopeful because "women throughout the country are pulling
together to make housework recognized for its dollar value." 22
Displaced homemaker advocates joined other feminists in making the economic value
of women's household labor an integral part of public discourse. During the 1970s femi-
nist publications such as Ms. magazine ran pieces exploring "the value of housework" and
now frequently drew attention to its Homemakers Bill of Rights. Feminist scholars held
a national conference examining the importance of housework, and the International
Women's Year Convention in Houston paid significant attention to the needs and labor
of housewives. Such efforts by feminists influenced the mainstream media, which increas-
ingly described housework as "productive and important," similar to a full-time job, and
deserving of financial recognition. The Social Security Administration released a report on
the Economic Value of a Housewife, and the National Federation of Business and Pro-
fessional Women reported that economists had "estimated the value of the homemaker s
work to be anywhere from $8,400 to $13,364 a year." The Democratic representative Bel-
la Abzug of New York described housewives as "working women without a weekly pay-
check," and in the U.S. Senate the Democrat Birch Bayh pointed out the contradictions
of a "society [that] preaches and praises the benefits of motherhood and the household"
but does not have policies that recognize the economic value of homemakers' labor.23
1976, clipping, ibid. Mildred R. Thomas to Sommers, Feb. 17, 1975, folder 15, box 5, ibid. Vivian Castleberry,
"Deserted Wives Organize," Dallas Times Herald May 31, 1976, clipping, folder 34, box 7, ibid. On older women's
response to displaced homemaker advocates' articulation of their problems, see also Rae André, Homemakers: The
Forgotten Workers (Chicago, 1981), 188.
22 For the "writing to legislators" quotation, see Vinick, Displaced Homemaker, 3. For the "effective citizen partic-
ipants" quotation, see Sommers to Nan, March 11, 1975, folder 15, box 5, Sommers Papers. For the "the old girls'
club" quotation, see Jane Menninga, "Displaced Plight Common Malady," Daily Oklahoman, June 3, 1976, clip-
ping, folder 34, box 7, ibid. For the "post-menopausal zest" quotation, see "Husbandless Housewives Find Help,"
Spokesman-Review, June 23, 1976, clipping, ibid. For the "sheer panic" and "women throughout the country" quo-
tations, see Castleberry, "Deserted Wives Organize."
23 National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, The Spirit of Houston: The First
National Women's Conference (Washington, 1978), 57-59; Sommers and Shields to Smeal, April 27, 1977, folder
38, box 46, Subseries C: Individual Task Forces and Committees, Series XIII: Task Forces and Conference Imple-
mentation Committees, National Organization for Women Records; Amy Swerdlow, ed., Feminist Perspectives on
Housework and Child Care, Transcript of a Conference Sponsored by Sarah Lawrence College Women's Studies Program,
Oct. 22, 1977 (Bronxville, 1978); Ann Crittenden Scott, "The Value of Housework: For Love or Money," Ms., 1
(July 1972), 56-59. For media descriptions of housework, see Gorney, "Discarding of Mrs. Hill," 60; and Shelley
Smokin, "When a Homemaker Loses Her Job," WorkingWoman, 4 (July 1979), 17-19. See also Ann Foote Cahn,
"Benefits for Housewives," Women's Day, May 19, 1978, pp. 24-26, 162, clipping, folder 22, box 5, Sommers Pa-
pers. On public discussions of homemakers' economic contributions, see also Lefkovitz, "Problem of Marriage in
the Era of Women's Liberation," 258-64. For the Social Security Administration report, see Wendyce H. Brody,
Economic Value of a Housewife (Washington, 1975). For economists' estimations of the value of homemakers' work,
see ibid., 160; and "Tunney, Burke Bills Pending: Aid for Displaced Homemakers," Los Angeles Times View, Sept.

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M-tC M-ŚJ M-tC

SOCIAL SOCIAL SOCIAL
SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY
BUREAU BUREAU ^BUREAU

"BUT I DID WORK. I WASHED "LADY, IT'S NOT WORK "BUT IT WASN'T MUCH FUN!"
3,244,084 DISHES, MADE
43,859 MEALS AND WASHED' IF YOU'RE NQT PAID FOR IT"
24, 891 SOCKS AND..."
A 1974 cartoon pokes fun at the Social Security systems negation of the economic
work. Feminists lobbied to reform the system so that full-time housewives receiv
for the labor they performed in the home. Courtesy bulbul ( Gen Guracar); and Sc
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
One of the signature 1970s feminist campaigns that drew attention to the economic
contributions of homemakers focused on reforming Social Security. Displaced home-
maker advocates joined this effort, at times partnering with now and other feminist orga-
nizations and at other times working on parallel tracks. Sommers played a major role in
framing the debate, emphasizing that gender inequities in Social Security grants stemmed
both from the fact that women earned much less than men and from the ways the system
penalized them for years they spent raising children rather than holding jobs. If econo-
mists calculated the costs of the tasks a homemaker regularly performed, "her annual
earnings would be well over $12,000," Sommers argued. "Yet her services, extolled to the
skies annually on Mother s Day, don t even rate a Social Security card."24
In 1975, in response to the "tide of questioning and criticism related to sex discrimina-
tion under Social Security," the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging created a Task
Force on Women and Social Security. The task force grappled with the issues Sommers
and many other feminist organizations had been working on for several years. One set of
concerns centered on middle-class married women who had held jobs but never received
benefits in their own names because they qualified for more money based on their status
18, 1975, clipping, folder 22, box 7, Sommers Papers. On Bella Abzug, see Judy Klemesrud, "'Obsolete' Divorce
Laws Assailed at now Conference Here," New York Times , Jan. 21, 1974, p. 32. On Birch Bayh, see Committee on
Human Resources, To Provide for the Establishment of Multipurpose Service Centers for Displaced Homemakers, and for
Other Purposes, 54. See also Nancy Thompson, press release, June 26, 1979, box 87, folder 54, Subseries A: Nancy
Thompson, Series X: National Action Center Press Office, National Organization for Women Records; and Tish
Sommers and Laurie Shields, "Displaced Homemakers: 'Forced Retirement' Leaves Many Penniless," Civil Rights
Digest, 10 (Winter 1978), 34.
24 Tish Sommers, Social Security: Whos Secure?, Equal Rights Monitor, 2 (Aug. 1976), 8, 9, 13, 14, esp. 13.
On the roots of Social Security's gender inequities, see Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and
the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-century America (New York, 2001), 1 17-69.

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as dependents of husbands who earned much larger salaries. The task force also consid-
ered an issue more germane to displaced homemaker advocates' agenda: the fact that a
divorced woman could not qualify for a wife's or widows benefits unless she had been
married for at least twenty years. It also studied the "widows' gap" confronted by women
in their forties and fifties who could not draw benefits between the time their children left
home and when they turned sixty. Feminist ideas permeated the task force's deliberations.
One proposal defined unpaid household labor as covered work, providing homemakers
with benefits in their own name in recognition of the economic value of the work they
performed for their families.25
The feminist influence on the Social Security debate was made abundantly clear in So-
cial Security and the Changing Roles of Men and Women, a 323-page report issued in 1979
by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (hew). The report evaluated
several different strategies for reforming the system. One proposal offered a flat-rate bene-
fit to all Americans regardless of marital or employment status, ensuring that homemakers
would receive a small monthly stipend. Under that plan, those who had held jobs would
qualify for an additional tier of benefits. The proposal that received the most attention,
however, was "earnings sharing," which divided the total annual earnings of a married
couple and credited half to each spouse upon death, divorce, or retirement. This proposal
provided homemakers with income in their own names, a major feminist goal. Yet it drew
criticism from feminists because it reduced benefit levels for couples dependent on one
wage earner. Under the existing system, these couples received benefits based on 150 per-
cent of the breadwinners' annual earnings. The hew earnings-sharing proposal afforded
them grants based on 100 percent of men's salaries. Illustrating the importance of home-
makers to the feminist Social Security campaign, women's rights advocates maintained
that while they supported the principle of earnings sharing, any proposal adopted by the
government should not result in a decrease in benefits for housewives and their families.26
For over a decade, members of Congress considered feminist proposals to reform the
Social Security system but never arrived at a full-scale solution that satisfied all of the
stakeholders. Still, piecemeal changes signaled new ways of conceptualizing women's roles
in families that drew directly on feminist ideas about the economic value of household
labor. By 1979 Congress had reduced from twenty to ten the number of years a divorced
woman had to be married to be eligible for social security benefits. It had also eliminated
the "widow's penalty," which had stipulated that if a widow remarried she lost her eligi-
bility for her deceased husband's benefits. Both of these policy changes bore the mark of
25 U.S. Congress, Senate, Special Committee on Aging, Task Force on Women and Social Security, Women and
Social Security: Adapting to a New Era (Washington, 1975), iii-iv. On earlier efforts at reform, see Task Force on
Older Women, "Women and Social Security," [n.d.], folder 44, box 210, Subseries B: Task Force Publications, Se-
ries XLII: Publications, National Organization for Women Records; and Joint Statement of Barbara Jordan and
Martha Griffiths, "Social Security for Homemakers," Feb. 6, 1974, folder 41, box 89, Series XI: National Action
Center Subject Files, ibid. For Republican women's position, see "The Issue: Social Security," Republican Women's
Task Force (June 1976), 2, Republican Women's Task Force folder, box 37, Women's Organizations File, 1974-76,
Patricia Lindh and Jeanne Holm Files, 1974-77 (Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, Mich.), available
at Archives Unbound.
26 U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Social Security and the Changing Roles of Men and Wom-
en (Washington, 1979); Nancy Thompson, June 26, 1979, press release, folder 54, box 87, Subseries A: Nancy
Thompson, Series X: National Action Center Press Office, National Organization for Women Records; National
Organization for Women, "How to Refute the Eagle Forum (Right-Wing) Propaganda on Social Security," Oct.
25, 1979, ibid.

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feminists' insistence that women had a right to compensation for the year
performing unpaid labor in the home and helping their husbands succ
workplace.27
A related feminist campaign underscoring the economic contributions of homemakers
focused on unforeseen financial implications of states' rapid adoption of no-fault divorce
laws. When fault had been part of divorce negotiations, women whose husbands had had
affairs could sometimes demand favorable setdements. The shift to no-fault divorce took
away this bargaining power at the same time that the decline of the family-wage ideal
led many judges to insist that women support themselves through employment. "Older
women are the real victims of no fault divorce," observed Shields in 1977, "It is legalized
desertion." Feminists criticized judges for failing to acknowledge the economic contri-
butions women had made to their households and for assuming that homemakers who
lacked recent employment experience could find jobs that would enable them to maintain
their current standard of living. Sommers explained that when judges told homemak-
ers to "go out and get a job" they did not consider "that the over-fifty ex-homemaker is
psychologically in no shape to seek a job or hold one, or that employers dont want her
anyway." Developing arguments later expressed in the scholar Lenore Weitzman's influ-
ential The Divorce Revolution (1985), feminists emphasized that homemakers experienced
a significant decline in their standard of living after divorce while divorced men s finan-
cial situations improved. (Weitzman calculated a 73 percent drop in mothers' standard
of living while fathers enjoyed a 42 percent increase.) Challenging portrayals by divorced
men's organizations of women as "alimony drones" who unfairly capitalized on men's sala-
ries and lived luxuriously, they pointed out that only 1 5 percent of divorced women were
granted alimony and that less than half of those collected it, because of the high rate of
men's noncompliance. Indeed, only 44 percent of divorced mothers even received child
support, and less than half of those women collected it regularly.28
In the 1970s feminists employed a range of strategies to address these disparities. Dis-
placed homemaker advocates publicized housewives' raw deal in divorce settlements,
27 On why earnings sharing never came to fruition, see Jane L. Ross and Melinda M. Upp, "Treatment of Wom-
en in the U.S. Social Security System, 1970-1988," Social Security Bulletin, 56 (Fall 1993), 56-67. U.S. Congress,
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Retirement Income and Employment of the Select Committee on
Aging, National Policy Proposals Affecting Midlife Women. , 96 Cong., 1 sess., May 7, 8, 1979, p. 234; National Orga-
nization for Women, "History and Statement of Policy of the Task Force on Marriage, Divorce, and Family Rela-
tions," folder 18, box 210, Subseries B: Task Force Publications, Series XLII: Publications, National Organization
for Women Records.
28 For an earlier conversation about divorce, see Betty Berry, Report of now-N.Y. Marriage and Divorce Com-
mittee," [1970], folder 53, box 1, Sommers Papers. For an account that argues that feminists did not pay enough
attention to divorce, see Herbert Jacob, "Women and Divorce Reform," in Women, Politics, and Change, ed. Lou-
ise A. Tilly and Patricia Gurin (New York, 1990), 482-502. For Sheildss quotations, see Jean Tyson, "Displaced
Homemakers: Millions of Women Forced to Work," [1976], clipping from an Adanta newspaper, folder 34, box 7,
Sommers Papers. Tish Sommers, "Moving from the Letter to the Spirit of Equality," testimony to Joint Committee
on Legal Equality, Santa Barbara, Feb. 27, 1976, folder 42, box 5, ibid. Lenore J. Weitzman, The Divorce Revolu-
tion: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America (New York, 1985), xii.
"Economic Consequences of Divorce"; National Judicial Education Program to Promote Equality for Women and
Men in the Courts, The Economic Consequences of Divorce: Background for Judges Who Set and Enforce Support Awards
(1985), folder 6, box 309, Subseries J: Other Projects, 1980-2004, Series X: National Judicial Education Program,
1977-2008, Records of the now Legal Defense and Education Fund; Pamela Bujarski-Greene, "Starting Over: A
Guide for the Displaced Homemaker," Family Circle, July 19, 1978, p. 14; Committee on Human Resources, To
Provide for the Establishment of Multipurpose Service Centers for Displaced Homemakers, 54-55.

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while grassroots feminist groups published self-help books for women facing divorce. Na-
tional organizations lobbied for the enforcement of child support, and local now chapters
organized support groups, protests, and legal forums on behalf of women facing divorce.
Nows Legal Defense and Education Fund worked to change practices in courtrooms,
writing manuals for judges and running seminars that emphasized the need to give larger
alimony awards for longer periods and to provide child support payments that reflected
the actual costs of child rearing.29
On the state level, feminist ideas and activism reshaped many laws governing property
distribution in divorce. Prior to the 1970s most states distributed property based on legal
ownership and monetary contributions, meaning that property held in a mans name or
bought with his earnings belonged to him. At most, a wife could usually gain access to
one-third of her ex-husbands holdings. During the 1970s and 1980s, however, a grow-
ing number of states began to recognize "marital property" belonging to both husband
and wife regardless of title or the spouses respective financial contributions. Many stat-
utes mandated that judges count a homemakers nonmonetary contributions on par with
a wage earner s salary and divide property equally. With the family-wage ideal declining
rapidly, judges rarely granted alimony for life, but alimony itself did not fall by the way-
side as completely as mens groups had hoped.30
Yet what looked equitable on paper did not in practice solve many women's problems.
Women still tended to earn much less than men, especially if they had spent the majority
of their adult lives as full-time homemakers. This gender wage gap meant that for both
spouses to maintain a similar standard of living after divorce, most ex- wives needed to re-
ceive more than half of the marital property and more substantial and continuing alimo-
ny payments than judges tended to award. Sommers pointed to these persistent problems
when she observed that "divorce law reform . . . has been more successful in improving
the letter than the substance of equality."31
With Social Security and divorce settlements providing insufficient support, displaced
homemaker advocates created centers to help integrate older women into the labor force.
29 Women in Transition, Inc., Women in Transition: A Feminist Handbook on Separation and Divorce (New York,
1975); "Economic Consequences of Divorce"; Norma J. Wilder, National Judicial Education Program to Promote
Equality for Women and Men in the Courts, "Judicial Discretion: Does Sex Make a Difference?," 1981, folder 6,
box 310, Subseries J: Other Projects, 1980-2004, Series X: National Judicial Education Program, 1977-2008, Rec-
ords of the now Legal Defense and Éducation Fund; League of Women Voters of New Jersey, "Bergen County Di-
vorce Study," 1979, folder 5, box 309, ibid.' "Chapters Start Divorce Groups," now National Task Force Marriage,
Divorce, and Family Relations Newsletter, 3 (Spring 1974), 1; "Mothers and Children Trick or Treat for Support
Payments," ibid., 3 (Fall-Winter 1974), 1; Klemesrud, "'Obsolete' Divorce Laws Assailed at N.O.W. Conference
Here"; Wisconsin Governors Commission on the Status of Women, Real Women, Real Lives: Marriage, Divorce,
Widowhood (Madison, 1978); Citizen Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Recognition of Economic Contri-
bution of Homemakers and Protection of Children in Divorce Law and Practice (Washington, D.C. 1974); National
Commission Meeting - Jan. 15, 1976, (l)-(3) folder, box 28, National Commission for International Women's
Year-1 974-76, Lindh and Holm Files, available at Archives Unbound.
30 Jacob, Silent Revolution, 2, 85, 125. The eight states with community property laws had different histories of
property distribution. See ibid., 113. On feminist divorce activism, see Lefkovitz, "Problem of Marriage in the Era
of Women's Liberation," 164-76; and Martha L. Fineman, "Implementing Equality: Ideology, Contradiction and
Social Change; A Study of Rhetoric and Results in the Regulation of the Consequences of Divorce," Wisconsin Law
Review, 789 (1983), 789-886.
3 Tish Sommers, Epilogue, in Displaced Homemakers, by Shields, 214; Fineman, Implementing Equality, '
838-87; Jacob, Silent Revolution, 156-57, 159-64; Rosalyn B. Bell, "Alimony and the Financially Dependent
Spouse in Montgomery County, Maryland," Family Law Quarterly, 22 (Fall 1988), 225-318. On the importance of
new divorce laws, see Lefkovitz, "Problem of Marriage in the Era of Women's Liberation," 165- 76.

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Sommers made the establishment of these centers a priority from the b

campaign, modeling them on her prior advocacy work connecting older
geted services designed to help them develop skills and find jobs. Dis
centers promoted these kinds of services while offering women counsel
groups. Many centers also provided women with part-time work to help
dence and experience. Sommers encouraged women who wanted to get in
campaign to lobby for resources to establish centers in their own comm
women's groups had helped convince legislatures in twenty-eight states
displaced homemakers centers.32
With state-level activism well underway, Sommers and Shields turn
stage in 1 977. They were heartened by feminist education advocates
ing for the inclusion of services for displaced homemakers in the 19
the Vocational Education Act. At stake in 1 977 were identical "Disp
Acts," bills filed by Representative Burke and Senator Bayh calling for t
of at least fifty service centers for displaced homemakers across the cou
many legislators had publicly expressed concern for displaced homem
curing passage of these bills proved difficult in face of soaring inflation
unemployment, and a public backlash against welfare that made man
of spending money on new social programs. The Republican senator
Utah gave voice to those who sought to discredit services for displac
linking them with the stigmatized afdc program. Hatch suggested that d
maker programs would "not be operated any better than the present we
With many legislators claiming to support the cause but refusing to v
advocates took the provisions of the Displaced Homemakers Acts and
as part of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (ceta), f
that funded job programs for the economically disadvantaged, unemp
employed. Because this proposal did not involve the creation of a new pr
more palatable to many federal politicians. In October 1978 the displ
campaign claimed victory as the language of the ceta reauthorization ide
homemakers as a group facing particular disadvantages in the labor mark
$5 million for programs to meet their needs. Feminists noted that $5 m
tance compared to the $4 billion Congress spent on job programs targ
ertheless, the legislation helped inspire women's groups across the count
dreds of new centers and establish the National Displaced Homemakers N
as a clearinghouse for information and referrals. Serving as an umbrella
helped connect programs throughout the country, the Displaced Hom
replaced the Alliance for Displaced Homemakers, which had focused main
32 Shields, Displaced Homemakers, 64.

33 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Employme
Committee on Education and Labor, 101 Cong., 1 sess., Sept. 28, 1989, pp. 53-54; Vinick,
6; Marano and Quinlan, "From Baltimore to Pittsburgh and Beyond," 7. For the displaced
fore Congress, see Committee on Human Resources, To Provide for the Establishment of Mult
for Displaced Homemakers, 112-13, 115, esp. 21. On the discrediting of government socia
ing them with welfare, see Lisa Levenstein and Jennifer Mittelstadt, "How Public Sector Wo
Queens: The Shadow of Welfare in Postwar U.S. Politics," paper delivered at the conferenc
Crises: A Conference of Labor; Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas," Georgeto
ington, D.C., Sept. 23, 201 1 (in Lisa Levensteins possession).

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for the passage of legislation. Many advocates envisioned the federal commitment serving
as an important foundation that they could build on in the future.34
As Sommers worked to achieve federal legislation, the displaced homemakers cam-
paign became entangled in the dissension within the women's movement over feminisms
goals and constituency. During the 1970s and 1980s, multiracial feminist organizing
grew in strength, engaging issues such as forced sterilization and police brutality that were
of critical importance to African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian Ameri-
can communities. These groups also exerted pressure on mainstream women's organiza-
tions to adopt more inclusive platforms. Noting that the displaced homemakers cam-
paign did not represent the interests of the least privileged women, some argued that poor
women's work inside the home was just as economically valuable as middle-class women's
labor and just as deserving of public recognition and support. Those who focused their
activism on the predicament of welfare recipients demanded government benefits that ad-
equately compensated poor women for the labor they performed in their homes.35
In a climate of severe antiwelfare backlash, displaced homemaker advocates often tried
to distance themselves from feminist antiracist and antipoverty activism. That decision
was revealed most explicitly when, during the fight to secure federal legislation, advocates
tried to assuage politicians' concerns about creating a new welfare program by distin-
guishing displaced homemakers from afdc recipients and arguing that the former were
particularly deserving of assistance. For example, when testifying before Congress, Illinois
Republican state representative and now member Susan Catania warned: "The alterna-
tive [to displaced homemaker legislation] is to add these women to the welfare rolls, an
alternative that destroys self-respect and is a burden to the State. This type of woman is
not looking for a handout, but rather the kind of help that will help her to help herself."36
Such rhetoric enraged antipoverty and welfare rights activists, who described the dis-
placed homemakers campaign as "opportunistic," a "sham," and emblematic of "how
poor women get short shrift from the women's movement." Insisting that the struggles of
all single women needed attention, they faulted the displaced homemakers campaign for
designating a specific group of older women from middle-class backgrounds as particu-
larly deserving of assistance. Beulah Sanders, a black activist prominent in the Nation-
al Welfare Rights Organization, explained: "The women's movement is trying to avoid
34 Marano and Quinlan, "From Baltimore to Pittsburgh and Beyond," 7, 10-11. Vinick, Displaced Homemak-
er, 5; André, Homemakers , 204. For displaced homemakers in the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act
(ceta) Amendments, see Comprehensive Employment and Training Act Amendments of 1978, Hearings before the Sub-
committee on Employment Opportunities of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Ninety-
Fifth Congress, Second Session, on H.R. 11086 (Washington, 1978), 1, 3, 18, 31-33, 87.
n Un multiracial feminism, see Ihompson, Multiracial Feminism. For other examples or nonwhite feminist
organizing, see Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism; Springer, Living for the Revolution; Nadasen, "Expanding the
Boundaries of the Women's Movement"; Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement; Breines,
Trouble between Us ; Mayeri, Reasoning from Race ; MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough, 1 17-54; and Blackwell, ¡Chi-
cana Power! On welfare rights and household labor, see Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Move-
ment in the United States (New York, 2005), 167, 232; and Chappell, War on Welfare, 175-76.
36 Committee on Human Resources, To Provide for the Establishment of Multipurpose Service Centers for Displaced
Homemakers, 49, 50. (Emphasis added.) Joyce Bates to Alexis Herman, Dec. 14, 1978, Women - Displaced Home-
makers folder, Records of Domestic Policy Staff - Elizabeth Abramovitz, box 24, Carter Presidential Papers (Jimmy
Carter Library and Museum, Atlanta, Ga.); U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Hearing before the Subcommit-
tee on Equal Opportunities of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Ninety-Fourth Congress,
Second Session on H.R. 10272 (Washington, 1976), 10; Kathleen Kautzer, "Growing Numbers, Growing Force:
Older Women Organize," in For Crying Out Loud, ed. Leftkowitz and Withorn, 145-64.

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dealing with poor Third World women, as usual, by creating this new ca
placed homemakers. . . . They are creating a constituency of middle-class
with whom they can relate most comfortably, but how many minority wom
any benefits?" Milan Chong of New York Working Women charged: "You can
displaced homemakers without talking about . . . poor women. ... All alon
have been in this situation and the women's movement has never dealt with
middle-class women are in similar situations, they've created a whole new ca
excludes us."37
For Sommers, these critiques missed the mark. In her eyes, women who r
lic assistance had the welfare rights movement to advocate on their behalf,
and minority women could count on support from various branches of the w
civil rights movements. She had created the displaced homemakers camp
because other social movements did not address the struggles facing the
bers of older women from middle-class backgrounds who had lost their
port. Sommers 's goal in launching the displaced homemakers campaign was
all women equally but to ensure that this particular group of women was no
Sommers's focus on housewives from middle-class backgrounds became
contentious when displaced homemaker advocates made decisions about h
resources. Alexis Herman, the director of the Women's Bureau of the Depart
bor, pushed for an official definition of displaced homemakers that included
cipients at risk of losing their benefits after their children turned eighteen
became "displaced" not because they lost support from a man but because th
port from the state. Most displaced homemaker centers used Herman's defin
ing their eligibility requirements, and a few centers served significant numbe
recipients. However, with the demand for assistance far outpacing the availa
Sommers and Shields tried to draw a line when federal officials propose
that gave low-income women priority in obtaining services. Milo Smith, the
the flagship Mills College center, described her commitment to targeting
women who Tall between the cracks' of existing public assistance progra
chronically poor women and welfare recipients. "Our main thrust has been p
she explained, "We want to catch them before they fall on their knees." Sim
played out when Sommers and Shields unsuccessfully tried to secure pro
federal bill specifying that women over forty who had been out of the work
gest should receive priority. Their lobbying led to a significant disagreem
president Eleanor Smeal, who viewed such age restrictions as a form of
against younger women, many of whom were single mothers. Smeal feared t
for age restrictions would compromise now's efforts to represent the concer
constituency of U.S. women.38
37 Jill Nelson, "Displaced Homemakers: Who's Displacing Whom?," Encore American and Worldw
16, 1979, pp. 18-19.
38 On Alexis Herman, see Lefkovitz, Problem of Marriage in the Era ofWomens Liberation,
tions, see "Criticism Is Displaced: Smith," Montclarion, Feb. 15, 1978, clipping, folder 26, box 3
makers Archives Collection (University of California at Davis Special Collections, Davis). Cynthi
Herman, Oct. 30, 1978, Women - Displaced Homemakers folder, box 24, Records of Domestic P
abeth Abramovitz, Carter Presidential Papers; Connie Davis to U.S. Department of Labor, Dec
Vinick, Displaced Homemaker, 1 1, 49. On the opinions of now leaders (some of whom supporte
on age), see correspondence in folder 33, box 5, Sommers Papers.

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Even in face of pressure from now, Sommers did not back down. She consistently
defended her opposition to means tests and her support for age restrictions as part of
her longstanding commitment to older women, who she believed would be completely
overlooked in job-training programs if the legislation did not afford them special con-
sideration. Sommers described Smeal as "fundamentally wrong on seeing an age focus as
discriminatory. . . . That is no different than saying that a program targeted for women
discriminates against men. Sex plus age equals a double bind and must receive special at-
tention."39
The age focus of displaced homemaker legislation was one of many issues that increas-
ingly drove a wedge between Sommers and some of the leadership of now. At the outset
of the displaced homemakers campaign, Sommerss energy and initiative meshed well
with now's organizational structure, which allowed for significant variation among chap-
ters and different forms of grassroots activism. Yet in the mid-1970s, a new group of now
leaders sought to centralize and streamline the organization. The national office began to
set a single agenda, increasingly focusing all efforts on the era. In 1 977 now established
policies requiring that all literature distributed by a committee be vetted by the national
office, a demand that proved extremely burdensome for an activist such as Sommers, who
frequently self-published time-sensitive newsletters and "action alerts." Amid these pro-
cedural changes, some now members expressed doubts about Sommer ss organizational
commitment, suggesting that she was using now to further her own narrow agenda. At
issue was the relationship between the leadership of Sommers and Shields of the Alliance
for Displaced Homemakers and their positions as co-chairs of nows Task Force on Older
Women. When speaking to the media, now members noted, Sommers and Shields did
not always give now credit for being part of the displaced homemakers campaign. After a
heated meeting with now leaders in 1977, Sommers and Shields tried to establish clearer
lines of responsibility. They disbanded the Task Force on Older Women, and Shields took
sole control of the Alliance for Displaced Homemakers. Sommers formally resigned from
the group and became chair of the newly constituted now Older Women's Rights Com-
mittee (owrc).40
Tensions between now and Sommers soon resurfaced over questions of strategy. Som-
mers had initially envisioned her work on behalf of older women as intimately connected
to now's goals. She saw her efforts to secure tangible benefits for displaced homemakers
39 Sommers to Arlie [Scott], May 1, 1978, folder 33, box 5, Sommers Papers. See also Alliance for Displaced
Homemakers, "Why Should Displaced Homemaker Programs Focus upon Middle-Aged and Older Women?,"
April 28, 1978, folder 31, box 7, ibid.' Vinick, Displaced Homemaker, 5; Laurie Shields, Feb. 28, 1978, memo, fold-
er 32, Sommers Papers; and André, Homemakers, 205. Not all now leaders agreed with Smeal. In May 1978, now's
vice president Arlie Scott expressed the organizations support for an age focus in the displaced homemakers section
of the ceta. See Scott to Senator, May 1, 1978, folder 26, box 94, Series XI: National Action Center: Subject Files,
National Organization for Women Records.
40 Turk, "Out of the Revolution, into the Mainstream"; Barbara Duke to Sommers, Feb. 9, 1978, folder 12, box
5, Sommers Papers; Sommers to Julie Goldsmith, Feb. 13, 1978, ibid.; National Organization for Women, "1977
National Board Motions Pertaining to Publications Committee," ibid; Smeal to Sommers, Dec. 29, 1977, ibid;
Sommers to Smeal, Feb. 9, 1978, ibid. On the 1977 meeting, see Duke to Sommers, Feb. 9, 1978, ibid.; Sommers
to Goldsmith, Feb. 13, 1978, ibid; National Organization for Women, "1977 National Board Motions Pertaining
to Publications Committee," ibid; and Smeal to Sommers, Dec. 29, 1977, ibid. Former now Task Force on Older
Women Co-Coordinators to now Board of Directors, Dec. 4, 1 977, ibid. The decision to eliminate the Task Force
on Older Women and replace it with the Older Women's Rights Committee reflected now's decision to eliminate
its task force structure and rely instead on committees vetted and more strictly supervised by the executive commit-
tee. See Smeal and Scott to Current National Task Force Coordinators and Committee Chairs, May 17, 1977, ibid;
and Barbara Duke, Jan. 28, 1978, memo, ibid.

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1 1 34 The Journal of American History March 201 4
helping the women's movement "overcome the generation gap among w

ťtoo late for me' mentality" that prevented many older women from suppo
causes such as the era. Yet in the late 1970s, now leaders increasingly p
campaign to ratify the era over all other projects. They believed the er
variety of women's problems in one fell swoop, enabling the women's move
addressing every pressing issue in a piecemeal fashion. However, for this st
fruit, the era needed to become law. With ratification increasingly in jeopa
ers declared an era "state of emergency" in 1978 and asked members to ram
volvement in the campaign. While Sommers lent support to this effort, she r
get her activism solely toward the eras passage. "I understand the primary
she explained, "but it cannot be [the owrc's] only interest, or else why have
mittee? We must continue to work to assure passage of displaced homemake
. . . battle on the social security question . . . work for jobs and against
tion." now's efforts to secure gains for women by making the era a priorit
compatible with Sommer ss vision of expanding the women's movement by
specific problems faced by older women.41
As feminists debated critical questions of strategy, Phyllis Schlafly sough
the displaced homemakers campaign. In the mid- to late 1970s, throug
ous speaking engagements, monthly antifeminist newsletter, and semiweek
ed newspaper column, Schlafly lambasted and purposefully misreprese
major feminist proposals to assist displaced homemakers. Claiming tha
lib" movement had made "housewife a term of derision," Schlafly insisted t
sought to punish homemakers for devoting their lives to their families. A
tive grassroots activist, Schlafly mobilized her supporters to send letters to
Congress arguing that displaced homemaker centers cost too much and dupl
ing services, enlarging an already bloated federal welfare state. "Just becau
husbands who die or leave them," Schlafly charged, "I don't think this calls
new federal bureaucracy."42
In her public statements and appearances, Schlafly consistently portra
tives as homemakers' defenders and feminists as their opponents. She d
arguments in a detailed critique of the negotiations over women and Social
zeroed in on the hew proposal for earnings sharing. Claiming that femi
all elements of this proposal, Schlafly ignored their insistence that any ear
policy should not decrease homemakers' benefits. Instead, Schlafly warned t
sought to implement a severe reduction in the pensions earned by the "
41 On Sommerss belief that the displaced homemakers campaign could help "overcome the
see Task Force on Older Women, "The Displaced Homemaker Action Project," 1976, folder 1
Papers; Tish Sommers and Laurie Shields, "now and the Displaced Homemaker," Do It NOW, 9
now leaders declaring a "state of emergency," see Turk, "Out of the Revolution, into the Mainst
421 . Sommers to Duke, March 30, 1978, folder 12, box 5, Sommers Papers. Examples of Sommer
of the equal rights amendment include Tish Sommers to Congressperson, April 25, 1978, folder
XXIX: era General, National Organization for Women Records; Ad Hoc Committee on the
Amendment," folder 26, ibid.; "Older Women's Rights Committee, Action Bulletin #1," Marc
42 Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Positive Woman (New Rochelle, 1977), 46; Happiness of W
"Women's Lib - Foe of Housewives," flyer in "how Inc. (Happiness of Womanhood)," America
cal File (Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, East Lansing); Rebecca E. Kla
New Right (Philadelphia, 1987), 131-39. For the Phyllis Schlafly quotation on new bureaucrac
placed Homemakers, 132; and Laurie Shields, "Displaced Homemakers Assistance Act - Action P
folder 2571, box 96, Boston Young Women's Christian Association Records, 1858-1988 (Schles

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income couple," which would "drive all wives and mothers out of the home and into the
work force." Feminists' ultimate goal, she charged, was the outright elimination of the
"career of motherhood."43
When she turned her attention to the problems confronting divorcees, Schlafly co-
opted feminist arguments. She maintained that "a wife divorced after twenty-five years of
marriage may be able to get a job, but in no way can she support herself at the level that
she could have supported herself if she had spent those past twenty-five years in the job
market instead of in the home." Instead of acknowledging that feminists had identified
and tried to address this problem, Schlafly held them responsible for the growing rates
of marital dissolution and the adoption of no-fault divorce. Feminists had not instigated
no-fault divorce, but Schlafly associated them with these laws, claiming they had created
"a new class of women who are financially impoverished and emotionally devastated."44
Schlafly used the feminist campaign for divorce reform as evidence for one of her ma-
jor criticisms of the women's movement - that it would free men while leaving women
unprotected. She argued that feminists' insistence on equality in divorce laws would allow
men to stop supporting their wives and impose on women an "equal (50 percent) finan-
cial obligation to support their spouses . . . [and] infant and minor children." Indeed, if
feminists had their way, Schlafly maintained, "Your ex-husband won't have any obligation
to support you at all! Each sex on its own. That's sex equality, sister."45
As now ramped up the campaign for the era, Schlafly made displaced homemakers in-
tegral to her fight against the amendment. Along with dire warnings about the era man-
dating unisex bathrooms and women serving in combat, she frequendy claimed that the
amendment represented a fundamental "attack on the rights of the homemaker." Schlafly
described the era as a "big takeaway of rights that women now have" that would strip
widows of their "superior inheritance and financial rights" and "invalidate the state laws
that make it the obligation of the husband to support his wife financially, to provide them
with a home, and to support their minor children." The New Republic observed: "Most of
Schlafly 's major arguments against era are outrageous fabrications, but they are so artful
and so brazenly repeated that Schlafly has put era proponents on the defensive in state
after state."46
Some grassroots women's organizations protested Schlafly's "deceptions, half truths

and falsehoods," but her vivid portrayals of feminists' antipathy toward homemakers and
43 "Changing Social Security to Hurt the Homemaker," Phyllis Schlafly Report, 12, sec. 2 (June 1979), 1-4. For
Schlafly on feminists' ultimate goal, see "Eagle Forum Defends Wives and Mothers, "ibid., 14, sec. 1 (April 1981),
1. See also "Don't Let the Libs and the Feds Tear Up the Homemakers Social Security'Card," Eagle Forum (or-
ganization) Brochures, Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements (Kenneth Spencer Research Li-
brary, University of Kansas, Lawrence). For the other Schlafly quotations, see "Changing Social Security to Hurt
the Homemaker," 1 .
^Schlafly, Power of the Positive Woman, esp. 84, 163. On feminism and no-fault divorce, see Kay, "Equality and
Difference," 2-5, 56; and Herma Hill Kay interview by Germaine LaBerge, 2003, transcript, p. 75, Regional Oral
History Office (Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).
45Lefkovitz, "Problem of Marriage in the Era of Women's Liberation," 166-67. For the Schlafly quotations, see
ibid. , 279, 273. For similar conservative critiques, see Onalee McGraw, Family, Feminism, and the Therapeutic State
(Washington, 1980), 12; Women Who Want to Be Women, "Ladies Have You Heard?," n.d., pamphlet, Pro-Family
Forum Ephemera, Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements; Women Who Want to Be Women,
"Warning! Equal Rights Amendment Is Dangerous to Women!," n.d., flyer, ibid.
46 Phyllis Schlafly, "Can Federal Bureaucrats Buy Passage of Equal Rights Amendment?," Human Events, May
15, 1976, p. 10; Phyllis Schlafly, "era Means Unisex Society," Conservative Digest, 4 (July 1978), 15-16. See also
"era Is a Fraud," ibid., 2 (April 1976), 46. Morton Kondracke, "End of an era?," New Republic, April 30, 1977, p.
14, clipping, folder 5, box 4, Office of the Assistant for Public Liason Margaret Costanza, Carter Presidential Papers.

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of the destructive potential of the era exercised tremendous public sw

many reporters followed Schlafly's lead in interpreting the gender poli
1970s as a clash between conservative representatives of "traditional" h
radical "women's libbers" who disdained motherhood and narrowly focu
advancement in the labor force.47
By the early 1980s, although feminists had lost the battle to publicly rep
wives, some activists continued to address the problems associated with wom
responsibility for unpaid household labor. Their efforts evolved in several d
tions. In 1980 Sommers and Shields left the displaced homemakers camp
the Older Women's League, a move that enabled Sommers to pursue he
interest in the struggles facing all aging women. Sommers no longer ch
owrc, but feminist efforts to reform divorce, Social Security, welfare, and
policies continued, as did the National Displaced Homemakers Network. Y
of many displaced homemakers centers changed because of sustained fem
on behalf of the poor and the fact that fewer middle-class women were spe
lives as full-time mothers. The already-limited federal support for services t
placed homemakers diminished, and state authorities enacted increasingly p
grams aimed at forcing welfare recipients into the labor force. In the face of
realities, many displaced homemaker centers began to brand themselves as
agencies for a broad swath of women facing a variety of life "transitions."
entation reflected the assistance many centers increasingly provided to wel
and other low-income women seeking employment. Signaling that trans
National Displaced Homemakers Network in 1993 renamed itself Wom
National Network for Women's Employment.48
47 "Homemakers Need the Equal Rights Amendment," n.d., folder 31, box 192, Series XX
National Organization for Women Records; "Housewives for era," n.d., folder 38, box 195, i
"Housewife Speaks Up for era," Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 18, 1978, p. 20; Betty Gordo
Belk Moorhead, "What the era Will Do for Family Law," Graduate Woman (July-Aug. 19
"deceptions, half truths and falsehoods" quotation, see "Homemakers Need the Equal Rights
Washington Post described displaced homemakers as a group "largely ignored by the women's m
ment that ignored the feminist roots of the campaign. See MacPherson, "Hill Unit Examines Plig
Divorcees." On struggles between feminists and conservatives, see Marjorie J. Spruill, "Gender an
Turn," in Rightward Boundi ed. Schulman and Zelizer, 71-89; Marjorie Julian Spruill, "The M
Feminists, Antifeminists, and the International Women's Year Conference of 19 77," in Mississippi
tories, Their Lives, ed. Elizabeth Anne Payne, Martha H. Swain, and Marjorie J. Spruill (2 vols., A
II, 287-312; and Lassiter, "Inventing Family Values."
48 In 1983 Congress replaced ceta with the Job Training Partnership Act (jtpa). On the lim
serving displaced homemakers, see U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Hearing before th
Employment Opportunities , 101 Cong., 1 sess., Sept. 28, 1989, pp. 50, 54, 72; U.S. Congress,
fore the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Examining the Hu
pact of Reentry of Women into Education and the Labor Force, April 30, 1986 (Washington,
O'Brien and Nightingale, Programs for Displaced Homemakers in the 1980s, iii; and "Profile
maker Programs Nationally," Network News, 7 (Winter-Spring 1985), 1, 6. On the limitations of
Displaced Homemaker, 48-49; Older Women's League Educational Fund, "How to Tame the ce
vocacy Manual for Older Women," folder 36, box 10, Sommers Papers; and Vinick, "Displaced
On feminist attention to poverty, working-class women, and welfare recipients in the 1970s, se
Welfare, 174-75. National Network for Women's Employment, "Women Work! Building on 20
nual Reports folder, box 2, Women's Work! Archives, 1979-2009 (Sally Bingham Center for W
Culture, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham,
Nightingale, Programs for Displaced Homemakers in the 1980s ; "Number of Displaced Homemak
diana News-Examiner, July 30, 1987, clipping, Press folder, box 3, Women's Work! Archives.

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The legacy of feminist activism surrounding housework took a different turn with the
development of the field of work-family research and advocacy, which attracted signifi-
cant attention in the 1980s and 1990s and continues today. While echoing 1970s femi-
nists emphasis on women's disproportionate responsibility for unpaid household labor,
the work-family field has created new frameworks and constituencies. Focusing on the
problems facing employed mothers rather than housewives, work-family research and
advocacy seeks to help women balance the often-competing demands of their jobs and
families through benefits such as guaranteed paid maternity leave, flextime, and high-
quality child care. Most work-family scholars and activists recognize the time and emo-
tional energy consumed by housework and child care, yet, unlike 1970s feminists, the
field has not focused on the economic value of women's labor in the home. In fact, by
juxtaposing "work" and "family" and emphasizing the conflict between these two spheres,
work-family advocates often make it appear as if "home" and "work" are fundamentally
different. This vision negates the history of feminist efforts to envision the household as
itself an important realm of productive labor that enables the functioning of family and
national economies.49
One of the hallmarks of the modern women's movement has been its highly generative
yet almost constant culture of self-critique, frequently centered on questions of inclusion
and exclusion. Sommers participated in this tradition when she identified age as a critical
axis of women's oppression and delineated how the women's movement had overlooked
widows, divorcees, and older women. Yet, as her critics observed, when Sommers re-
ferred to older women she meant middle-class, predominantly white women. As femi-
nists sought to build an economically inclusive and racially diverse women's movement,
Sommers's unabashed refusal to include welfare recipients in the displaced homemakers
campaign made many uncomfortable and some outright enraged. And so a campaign
built to remedy an age-based exclusion in feminist politics foundered in part on its own
exclusion of poor and minority women.50
Although the women's movement ultimately turned away from displaced homemak-
ers, during the 1970s feminists drew unprecedented public attention to the struggles of
millions of middle-aged widows and divorcees and instigated a national conversation
about the economic value of housework. Advocates convinced government authorities to
fund services to help homemakers enter the labor force and succeeded in reforming Social
Security and divorce law in ways that recognized women's unpaid household labor. In the
49 An exception is Ann Crittenden, who addresses the economic value of household labor. See Ann Critten-
den, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued (New York, 2001).
One of the first influential uses of the term work-family conflict was in Joseph H. Pieck, Graham L. Staines, and
Linda Lang, "Conflicts between Work and Family Life," Monthly Labor Review, 103 (March 1980), 29-34. On
late twentieth-century academic scholarship, see Teri Ann Lilly, Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, and Bradley K. Googins,
Work-Family Research: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, 1997). Most media representations of the work-family
conflict foreground middle-class women, but academic scholarship on poor women's work-family conflicts has re-
cently emerged. See Lisa Dodson, Tiffany Manuel, and Ellen Bravo, Keeping Jobs and Raising Families in Low-Income
America: It Just Doesn't Work (Cambridge, Mass., 2002); Lisa Dodson and Ellen Bravo, "When There Is No Time or
Money: Work, Family, and Community Lives of Low-Income Families," in Unfinished Work: Building Equality and
Democracy in an Era of Working Families, ed. Jody Heymann and Christopher Beem (New York, 2006), 122-55.
5 Numerous conversations with Jacquelyn Dowd Hall have drawn this culture of self-critique to my attention.
See also Joan W. Scott, "Feminisms Wisiory'' Journal of Women's History, 16 (no. 2, 2004), 23.

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1138 The Journal of American History March 20 1 4
1980s, with conservatives claiming to be the true spokespersons for housew

feminists divided over the goals and constituency of the women's mov
homemaker activists critiques of middle-class housewives economic subo
from public view. Questions about the social supports the U.S. governm
vide homemakers remain unresolved, and the feminist goal of defining un
labor as economically productive remains largely unfulfilled.

93.19.19.120 on Wed, 16 Nov 2022 19:05:32 UTC

Levenstein - Homemakers and Postwar Feminism

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Levenstein - Homemakers and Postwar Feminism

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"Don't Agonize, Organize!

": The Displaced Homemakers Campaign and the Contested

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Lisa Levenstein is an associate professor of history at University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

1114 The Journal of American History March 2014

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The displaced homemakers campaign represented a pivotal moment in the history of

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women's movement in the 1970s has emphasized its capaciousness,

"Don't Agonize, Organize!" proclaimed Tish Sommers, the magnetic f

York, 2012). On conservative attacks on feminists as antihomemaker, see Matthew D. Las

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The predicaments of displaced homemakers became a pressing issue because their

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8Lefkovitz, "Problem of Marriage in the Era of Women's Liberation," 94-117. On alimony, se

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Tish Sommers (center) worked in East Los Angeles on Henry Wallace's

I2Huckle, Tish Sommers, 165.

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^mÊÊÉí^® WOMEN'S ACTION

Ę$yĘ$y™ wńJpSkffl ™ w ereLUJ?As M 1941 Organizmy OAKLAND HIGH ST '/ LUJ?

16 Shields, Displaced Homemakers, 35; Katz, "Displaced Homemaker."

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17 Shields, Displaced Homemakers , 47-62.

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M-tC M-ŚJ M-tC

BUREAU BUREAU ^BUREAU

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Sommers made the establishment of these centers a priority from the b

32 Shields, Displaced Homemakers, 64.

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helping the women's movement "overcome the generation gap among w

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Some grassroots women's organizations protested Schlafly's "deceptions, half truths

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of the destructive potential of the era exercised tremendous public sw

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1980s, with conservatives claiming to be the true spokespersons for housew

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