“Be Damned Pushy at Times”: The Committee on the Status of Women and Feminism in the Archival Profession, 1972–1998
Over more than a quarter-century of activity (1972–1998), the Committee on the Status of Women (COSW) tenaciously pursued feminist goals. This article uses COSW (an official SAA committee) as well as the Women's Caucus (an informal interest group) as a lens through which to examine the larger phenomenon of feminism in the archival profession. First, it sets forth the political, social, and cultural context of 1960s and 1970s feminism and discusses the factors that led to the founding of the two groups. Next, it traces their activities in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. COSW and the Women's Caucus worked within while pushing to reshape established SAA organizational structures. The two groups promoted the documentation of women's experiences and the writing of women's history, attacked job discrimination and salary inequities in the profession, lobbied strenuously for women's equitable participation in the SAA, encouraged scholarship by and about women, and supported passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. This article then sets forth the circumstances that led to the dissolution of COSW in 1998 (the caucus continued its longstanding work). Finally, it discusses the vital legacy of the two groups and suggests areas for further research.ABSTRACT
I felt like I was at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. You were strong and vocal and did not hesitate to speak your minds and disagree with one another.
–Andrea Sheehan1
Our field is conservative in style but liberal in thinking.
–Elsie Freivogel2
Columbus, Ohio, scarcely seemed the likeliest place for history to be made. Program chair for the 1972 annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Herman J. Viola said drolly, “As slogans go, ‘Come to Columbus’ was not very imaginative, but it got the job done.”3
The largest number of annual meeting attendees in the organization's history (more than 600) braved abundant rain to attend SAA's first-ever four-day meeting. It boasted 32 sessions and 127 speakers, approximately twice as many as at any previous meeting. Columbus was also the first time an annual meeting featured a session with only women presenting papers. Session chair Mabel E. Deutrich quipped, “It should be interesting!”4
The November 2 all-women session featured papers by Deutrich (National Archives), Elsie Freivogel (Smithsonian Institution), Joanna Zangrando (American History and Civilization Program for Community Museums), Eva Moseley (Radcliffe College), and Miriam Crawford (Temple University). The SAA's Committee on the Status of Women and the Women's Caucus effectively gestated at this Columbus session.
Over more than a quarter-century of activity (1972–1998), the Committee on the Status of Women (COSW)5 tenaciously pursued feminist goals. This article uses COSW (an official SAA committee) as well as the Women's Caucus (an informal interest group) as a lens through which to examine the larger issue of feminism—the women's movement—in the archival profession. First, it sets forth the political, social, and cultural context of 1960s and 1970s feminism and discusses the factors that led to the founding of the two groups. Second, it traces the activities of the two groups in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Working within while pushing to reshape established SAA structures, COSW and the Women's Caucus promoted the documentation of women's experiences and the writing of women's history, attacked job discrimination and salary inequities in the profession, lobbied strenuously for equitable participation in SAA (namely at annual meetings, in office-holding, and in the receipt of honors and awards), encouraged women's scholarship, and supported passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (1972–1982). This article then sets forth the circumstances that led to the dissolution of COSW in 1998. Finally, it discusses the legacy of the two groups.
The story of COSW and the caucus is not one of steady Whiggish progression. The two groups fought valiantly for women's rights and encountered numerous setbacks as well as important successes; as Mary Janzen lamented, “Even mild criticism doesn't go over very well in some quarters of our profession.”6 Comprehending the history of the women's movement can promote feminists' current and future efforts.7 By seeking to recover the history of the women's movement in SAA, this article pursues that aim.
The Feminist Context
The 1960s resulted in greatly expanded personal freedoms, radically flattened racial and gender hierarchies, and encouraged the formation of new political interest groups.8 Even as it confronted institutionalized sexism, feminists found an auspicious social climate given evolving attitudes toward sexuality, changing fertility rates, and improved long-term employment prospects.9
Feminism constitutes a democratic movement that insists women should be free to define their own identities.10 It propagates a twofold philosophy: first, that men and women are of inherently equal worth socially, politically, and economically; and second, that culture rather than biology accounts for the differences in men's and women's roles.11 Beginning in the 1960s, women claimed full equality within and outside the home with unprecedented forcefulness—and success.12 Feminists addressed political and civil rights, labor discrimination, sexual relations, and the so-called psychology of deference.13
Liberal, Radical, and Socialist Feminisms
The reinvigorated women's movement comprised three strands: liberal, radical, and socialist.14 Although these groups agreed on the presence of discrimination, they disagreed over the means of redress and ultimately the need for and the extent of social change.15 Many women, however, moved among or borrowed tenets from all three groups.16
Liberal feminism framed freedom as embodying both personal and political autonomy. Inadequately represented in and even marginalized by the democratic process, women suffered conditions that neglected their basic needs and interests.17 Enlisting the state as an ally, liberal feminists sought the integration of women into society through pragmatic reforms such as affirmative action, federally funded childcare, equal opportunity legislation, the Equal Rights Amendment, and entry into and advancement in male-dominated professions. They fought for assimilation and equality of opportunity, working within extant structures and electing not to question those structures' legitimacy.18
Sharing a collectivist attitude toward women's oppression, both radical and socialist feminists rejected the individualism of liberal feminism.19 Radicals anathematized not only the patriarchy, but men qua men, and favored separatism.20 Given their focus on institutional and structural change, moreover, radical feminism lambasted the ostensible timidity and even conservatism of liberal feminism as embodied in organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW).21 Socialist feminists, by contrast, were Marxists; they stressed the relationship between race and class as well as gender oppression.22 But socialists struggled mightily to forge cross-class or cross-race communities. What was more, they prioritized personal confrontation, which sometimes sapped their focus on larger political issues.23
All three strands of the women's movement capitalized on a redefinition of politics that included power relations between men and women.24 In other words, as historian Ruth Rosen maintains, “The ‘personal’ no longer seemed a purely individual problem, but the result of deep cultural, social, and economic forces and assumptions.”25 For better—and sometimes for worse—the personal as political could be applied in nearly any situation.26
A rite of passage for membership in the women's movement, consciousness-raising (CR) vivified the notion of the personal as political.27 Through CR, women politicized the dilemmas of their private lives and shared knowledge about the ways in which internalized societal norms contributed to their oppression.28 Requiring minimal resources, consciousness-raising not only attracted new members to the feminist cause, but also helped educate them and goad them to action.29
The women's movement seemed most effective when it fought for incremental changes, namely by stressing the imperative of equal individual opportunity.30 After 1968, liberal feminism seemed dominant, not least because of the National Organization for Women's influence.31
The National Organization of Women (NOW)
The civil rights movement provided an intellectual and practical model for postwar feminism that included legislation, executive orders, and court decisions.32 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 included a section (Title VII) that proscribed discrimination based on sex. The government's newly established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) failed to enforce Title VII, however, and many women grew disenchanted by its limitations.33 By contrast, an extragovernmental organization could act untrammeled by governmental direction or interference.34 Thus, NOW coalesced to pressure the EEOC politically to address women's issues just as the EEOC did racial issues.35
NOW's leaders branded the system—not men—the enemy.36 Soon after its founding, NOW petitioned the EEOC to end sex segregation in job advertisements. Also focusing on women's economic opportunities, it pushed in 1967 for federally funded childcare centers and income-tax deductions for childcare costs.
Young, educated, white, heterosexual, professional middle-class women formed the backbone of NOW and powerfully influenced the direction of COSW and the Women's Caucus.37 NOW's first president, Betty Friedan, author of the best-selling Feminine Mystique (1963), and her colleagues argued that existing social structures and institutions relegated women to the status only of house-wives and mothers as opposed to unique human beings.38
During its first five years, NOW foregrounded activism over education, maintained political independence, addressed diverse issues and adopted diverse tactics, and encouraged grassroots participation.39 Leery of schism, at first NOW downplayed issues such as lesbianism and sexual preference, abortion, and reproductive freedom.
Work and Economic Citizenship
“Independent status that provides the possibility of full participation in the polity,” economic citizenship hinges on access to the market.40 But, historically, women have been deprived of their own income; furthermore, lower status and low pay have often accrued to occupations into which women have entered in large numbers.41
Until the late 1960s, the majority of American men and women believed that family normalcy inhered in women subsuming their needs, rights, and obligations to those of their spouses and children.42 Overlooking prejudice, many Americans clung to the notion that women's occupational marginalization somehow complemented condign family obligations.43 But an increasing number of women both challenged the separation of spheres (female as domestic and male as public) and their being deprived of economic citizenship: over 40% of all women worked by the close of the 1960s.44
Yet, even as they gained purchase in the sphere of work, women faced considerable resistance: while educated women capitalized on new professional and managerial opportunities, many women remained consigned to low-wage, pink-collar work.45 Furthermore, the most prestigious or high-paying occupations seemed most intransigent.46 In general, moreover, employers and coworkers proved at best indifferent.47 A pattern emerged in professional associations seeking equal representation on women's behalf, one that COSW by and large followed. Older women organized women's caucuses in professional associations and generated fact-finding committees on the status of women. Subsequently, a tiny female presence would grow to a modest one; almost invariably, however, the increase would cluster at the entry-level.48
Women in the Society of American Archivists, 1936–1972
In its first three and a half decades (1936–1972), the Society of American Archivists seldom considered women's interests, though women comprised more than a quarter (28%) of its founding members.49 Concordantly, women played a minor role in Society matters: compared to men, they served in fewer offices and on fewer committees, authored fewer papers and articles, and received fewer awards (see Table 1).50 Elsie Freivogel, COSW's second chairperson, bemoaned this “pathology”: as late as 1972, she reported, women comprised a third of SAA's members but only 17% of its committee memberships and 10% of its committee chairpersons.51
Perhaps surprisingly, some “founding mothers” neglected to press for greater involvement: an absence of sorority contributed to the lack of proportional representation.52 Mary Janzen wrote, “A woman who is now a member of Council and who became active in the SAA in the 1960s said to me, ‘You know, there were so few of us in those days, we felt kind of cherished.’”53 COSW and the caucus indicated an end to such complacency.
The advances of the civil rights movement and feminism as well as the unrest produced by the Vietnam War, the New Left and the student movement, the consumer rights movement, and a broader questioning of political authority spurred these archivists toward reflexivity and ultimately, to action.55 East Coast–based educated white males stationed at the National Archives dominated SAA until well into the 1960s.56 “Old-boy networks” as well as a dearth of childcare, female role models, and self-promotion undercut women's contributions to and opportunities in SAA.57 But demographics changed seismically: between 1960 and 1970, membership surged from 1,272 to approximately 2,500; women soon constituted nearly half of SAA members and their imprint upon the organization increased markedly. “Contemporary feminism,” Andrea Hinding recalled, “required that each of us consider what it meant to be a man or woman as well as struggle with mundane but surprisingly troublesome questions of who would open doors, who would make coffee, and who would take minutes.”58
Wrapped up in this demographic transformation, a younger, more restive generation charged SAA with elitism.59 These new members lobbied for greater professional involvement for all members, for changes in SAA's decision-making processes, and for engagement with pressing contemporary social concerns.60 This momentum crystallized in a 1970 annual meeting session, “The Archivist and the New Left,” specifically in Howard Zinn's talk, “The Archivist and Radical Reform.”
The session sparked the founding of the Archivists for Change (ACT) caucus, led by Lynn Donovan, Miriam Crawford, and Patrick Quinn. ACT's founders set the stage for Columbus when they huddled in Donovan's living room at the 1971 SAA annual meeting in San Francisco. ACT effectively introduced the “activist archivist”—those who “address major social concerns of the archival profession and the public it serves and . . . improve their own workplaces, their professional organizations, and the archival profession.”61 Jettisoning the traditional separation of professional and extraprofessional political issues, these archivists endeavored to topple SAA's “elitist, sexist ‘old boy’ system.”62 Presaging COSW's aims, ACT committed to increasing members' participation in SAA affairs, encouraging the recruitment and retention of minorities, and improving the professional status of women.63
Though ACT proved an important precursor to COSW, SAA's Committee for the 1970s, established in 1970, played a similarly crucial part. Its recommendations—both procedural and constitutional—sought to render SAA more open to membership input.64 In its final report, released six months before Columbus, the committee exhorted SAA to pursue racial justice and equal employment while further opening access to research materials. It also stressed SAA's moral responsibility to propagate official positions on contemporary public issues affecting the profession.65 The committee focused heavily on racial and ethnic discrimination, however, allocating minimal attention to sex discrimination.66 Its limitations set the context for the founding of COSW and the Women's Caucus.
Columbus and the Founding of the Women's Caucus and the Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women
By the 1972 Columbus meeting, feminism had made impressive inroads in American society and would see more milestones achieved in the next two years. Nineteen seventy-two saw the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, which sought to give women the full and equal constitutional protection vouchsafed to men; the passage of Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act; the founding of Ms. magazine; Shirley Chisholm's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which extended the protections of Title VII to public employees and increased federal enforcement power. The next year yielded the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, the publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women, and AT&T's settlement with the EEOC conceding discrimination and making financial restitution to 13,000 women and 2,000 men of color. Nineteen seventy-four ushered in the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which ensured women had access to credit cards, bank loans, and mortgages long denied them; the Women's Educational Equity Act, which provided federal government monies for training teachers, improving girls' science and math success, and encouraging the development of women's studies programs; and a class action suit against the New York Times (settled out of court) that secured the company's pledge to hire more women.67
In addition to national political developments, by 1972 numerous professional organizations had established groups focusing on recognizing women's past contributions and expanding their current leadership roles. They included the Modern Language Association's Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession (1969), the American Historical Association's Coordinating Committee of Women in the Historical Profession (CCWHP) (1969), the Organization of American Historians' Standing Committee on the Status of Women in the Historical Profession (1970), and the American Library Association's Task Force on the Status of Women (TFSW) (1970).68 These precedents, especially that of ALA, provided added momentum for SAA to establish a similar body.69
Wilfred Smith of the Public Archives of Canada, SAA president in 1972–1973, recalled the informal meeting that launched the Women's Caucus and, by extension, the Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women. On the evening of Wednesday, November 1, ACT members camped out on the floor in the hotel lobby, supping on cold sandwiches and discussing the needs of women in the profession.70 This meeting, combined with the November 2 session devoted solely to women in archives that featured papers by Deutrich, Freivogel, Zangrando, Moseley, and Crawford, proved a springboard for action. Planning work for the session during the previous year had channeled into a nascent network of radical women.71 At the session, fifty-two attendees signed up for a mailing list to explore further action. This list constituted the kernel of the caucus.
The Women's Caucus subsequently tapped female candidates for SAA positions, helped women enter the job market and seek promotions, encouraged annual meeting session participation and publication, educated management about feminist concerns, served as a watchdog on women's issues, provided legal resources, disseminated information on the status of women, and supported COSW.72 Unlike the committee, however, the caucus operated outside SAA's control; it remained an interest group open to all.73
In November of 1972, SAA Council approved the creation of an ad hoc committee to conduct a salary survey measuring the extent of discrimination against women in the profession. Aside from Deutrich, who agreed to serve as chair, members included Marie B. Allen, Ann Morgan Campbell, Lynn Bonfield Donovan, Shonnie Finnegan, Andrea Hinding, David E. Horn, Clarencetta Jelks, Andrea Lentz, Richard Lytle, Nancy V. Menan, Patrick M. Quinn, and Jarritus Wolfinger.74 Conversely, dissenters emerged. Declining her appointment, Maine State Archives' Sylvia J. Sherman characterized women's issues as of secondary importance.75 As they had throughout the organization's history, SAA feminists would invariably face detractors; sorority could never be assumed.
The caucus and the Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women (COSW) complemented each other in their activities and their membership. Like the caucus, the committee's agenda revolved around three issues: sources for women's history, salary inequalities, and SAA participation, particularly in governance.76 On the last point, SAA president Smith assured Deutrich of SAA's commitment to increasing women's committee representation.77
Early COSW members' positions generally meshed with the tenets of liberal feminism as espoused by NOW. Deutrich blamed prejudice and tradition for hamstringing the social, economic, and legal status of women, as did others such as Deutrich's successor as COSW chair, Elsie Freivogel, and Joanna Zangrando.78 Noting that feminism boasted a broad base of support, Miriam Crawford likened feminist efforts to struggles for civil rights and economic justice. On the latter point, she deemed equal opportunity of employment not only central to attaining social and intellectual equality, but also the common denominator among feminists of all persuasions. She advocated, further, for consciousness-raising to help women improve their self-image.79 Finally, she blamed the system based on economic relationships favoring white men over other groups—not men per se.80 They, too, seemed victims of a perverse social structure. Testifying to this point, the committee welcomed male members from its inception.
More insidious, some women discriminated against other women.81 Andrea Hinding picked up on a peculiar contradiction: “Many women believe they have not been discriminated against, though they believe women generally have. The solution suggested most frequently is that women pull themselves up by the bootstraps.”82
Given the manifest adversity they faced from within and outside the profession from many men and a few women, as early as 1973, COSW requested that Council commit SAA to supporting the ERA.83 On two other feminist issues, however, COSW initially remained cautious. First, apropos of affirmative action, Deutrich expressed skepticism about the committee serving as a watchdog; she doubted its ability to supply necessary information and literature to women or minorities.84 Even so, the committee subsequently promoted affirmative action. Second, the committee remained mum on abortion, perhaps because the issue became a lightning rod of controversy, especially after Roe v. Wade (1973).85 On one hand, the right to choose earned support from advocates who cited population control, economic prudence, families' and women's suffering from unwanted births, and the freedom of physicians to care for patients.86 Indeed, feminists of all stripes overwhelmingly supported Roe.87 On the other, this robust support met an increasingly determined opposition from the right-to-life movement. Opponents framed abortion as the cynosure of feminist selfishness.88
Even as it struggled to determine how best to pursue affirmative action for women and persons of color and to unite women despite disagreement over issues such as abortion, COSW pushed SAA for an antidiscrimination resolution. Despite some opposition, SAA adopted such a resolution in 1973. It pledged to elide discrimination based on race or ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, age, lifestyle, and political affiliation. Additionally, it enjoined members “to secure equal opportunity . . . by establishing and monitoring programs which will correct past discriminatory practices, increasing . . . the number of qualified minority group members and women, and . . . seeking full compliance with the law.”89
In 1973, the ad hoc committee faced dissolution. Constituted specifically to undertake the salary survey (published in 1974), its mandate seemed fulfilled. But Deutrich and other members hoped the committee would be made permanent and its agenda broadened.90 Universities and related businesses discriminated against women with impunity; the dearth of female administrators demanded particular attention.91 Freivogel even advocated for equal employment opportunities as an SAA professional standard.92
In the spring of 1973, Council extended the ad hoc committee for a year, albeit without formal action on its fate. David E. Horn approved, calling information provision and antidiscrimination efforts ever-necessary. Also pleased, Andrea Hinding suggested the committee parlay its influence into substantive recommendations for change. Miriam Crawford, by contrast, cautioned that any separatist strategy should be temporary.93
Despite its new lease on life, the committee struggled to obtain even nominal funds from its parent organization. Like NOW in its early years, COSW ran on a shoestring budget. Nonetheless, in addition to its salary survey, it planned to publish a newsletter, to recruit female participants for SAA activities by compiling a roster of female archivists, to forge collaborations with women in related professions such as the American Library Association, and to promote women's history, for example by developing a national guide to repositories that held relevant records.94
In 1974, SAA Council made the ad hoc COSW a standing committee. In less than two years, then, COSW had advanced toward two of the committee's foundational goals: annual meeting participation and women's history. Elsie Freivogel commented on the annual meeting:
Most gratifying to me . . . was the role that women played in the sessions, both on and off the program. Comments from the floor, papers read or panels led, one had the impression of women who were taking responsibility for their own professional development. The superwomen syndrome had begun to be the every-women syndrome. . . . It was a mood I have not seen before, and was immensely satisfying.95
Freivogel's enthusiasm aside, that year the Report on the Status of Women in the Archives Profession made clear the daunting challenges faced by women in the profession.
The Report on the Status of Women in the Archives Profession (1974)
The report bolstered the COSW's arguments.96 Salary data proved most alarming: women earned less than men whether broken down by educational qualifications, years of professional experience, or years of professional experience at their institutions.97 The profession shut women out of the “big jobs and big money.”98 It appeared to Elsie Freivogel that “women run the house and men run the world.”99
In line with its findings regarding salary inequity, COSW protested discriminatory job advertisements and career information. Much career information was implicitly if not frontally sexist.100 To this point, one respondent insisted, “Job and career equality would definitely be a major factor in bringing about general equity.”101
In addition to salary discrimination, the report publicized the presence of broader discrimination against women (see Table 2). Overall, 58.3% of women (182) said discrimination did exist, in contrast to slightly more than one-third of male respondents (34.4%, or 115). Conversely, 219 men (65.6%) and 130 women (41.7%) claimed discrimination did not exist.
Further, age mattered in participants' perception of discrimination. For instance, men and women under 40 years of age were most likely to perceive discrimination in the profession (Table 2). Discrimination seemed most pronounced in promotional opportunities (Table 3); economic citizenship remained a distant dream.
Respondents also commented on sex discrimination. One wrote, “When I asked a woman who had been employed at this institution longer than I if there was sex discrimination, she replied, ‘hah, are you kidding? That's a dumb question!’”104 “I've worked under three men,” claimed another, “who have practiced being fatherly, head pats et al. Yuk.”105
Complicating any reductive interpretations, however, one respondent not only encountered male chauvinists, but also women who welcomed the status quo.106 Another echoed this sentiment: “Most archivists who are women, particularly those who have worked long and hard to ‘make it,’ are just as self-righteous as other professional women who insist that ‘if I could do it, they can do it too.’”107 A tiny fraction of respondents—eighteen men and two women—even contended that reverse discrimination existed.
The survey posed two “women-only” questions. One asked whether the respondent earned more than half her family's income and the other whether she preferred to be called “Ms.” First, well over half of respondents (56.2%) earned at least half of their household's income. In contrast to embedded stereo-types, then, “The earnings of married women are significant in the upkeep of the family and . . . belie the view that women work only for ‘pin’ money.”108 Economic citizenship loomed large in their estimation. Second, more than a quarter of women (27.5%) preferred the use of “Ms.” suggesting generational differences. Those under 30 years of age were far more likely to prefer the term (46%), followed by those 30 to 39 (27%), 40 to 49 (9%), and over 50 (7%).109
Two other key issues the report tackled included affirmative action and diversity and inclusivity. First, the survey found that fully four-fifths (118 of 147) of responding institutions supported affirmative action programs. One respondent suggested, “The greatest boon to ending sex discrimination here has been the necessity of filing an affirmative action plan with the Federal Government.”110
Additionally, the report pointed to the challenge of diversity and inclusivity. Though heavily indebted to the post–World War II civil rights movement, feminists, including those of COSW, struggled to forge alliances with other underrepresented groups. Miriam Crawford said, “We should not be drawn into the divisive Black vs. woman approaches. Our stake is the same as that of the Black man and woman. . . . We are allies in the movement towards a society that guarantees equal opportunity.”111 One respondent in the 1974 salary survey pointed out the formidable barriers facing those seeking to bring together diverse women. “My opinion is that 95% of the white women who are making a fuss over sex discrimination are skewed around inside,” this individual wrote. “They don't know much about what discrimination is.”112
Both Mabel Deutrich and David E. Horn hoped to include persons of color in COSW and they were not alone.113 Crawford, for instance, regretted the lack of data on African Americans' and other minorities' status. She favored soliciting statements from black archivists to help create a composite picture of discrimination in the profession and raise professional awareness about needed change. Unfortunately, this project never materialized.114
While the 1974 report underlined salary and overall professional discrimination, another issue related to discrimination also cropped up: that of women historians and women's history.
Writing Women into History in the 1970s
Women's historians argued that politics cannot be extricated from knowledge and its production; therefore, women's history is an inherently political field.115 The efflorescence of women's history thus dovetailed with the broader feminist movement.116
Historian Gerda Lerner bemoaned historians' neglect of women's history, which resulted in a profoundly distorted historical record.117 As she put it, “Men have defined their experience as history and left women out.”118 Few historians addressed women's history and few repositories collected, deliberately acquired, or proactively provided access to women's papers or other documentary resources.119 As avatars of the domestic sphere, women also faced exclusion from the (male-authored) history books.120 The Schlesinger Library on the History of Women's Eva Moseley favored the establishment of separate women's repositories, a comprehensive listing of locations of women's records (despite their possibly separatist connotations), and a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of keeping women's papers.121 Moseley also urged archivists to collect nontraditional sources and to update collecting policies, appraisal strategies, and finding aids.122 Of like mind, Zangrando pointed out that although sources such as court and health records, material objects, and diaries existed, “they have to be used . . . with some innovation and imagination.”123 Sanguinely, she asserted, “Women are being accorded a new place in the historical literature, and this change forces a total reassessment of the American experience.”124
By “raising Clio's consciousness,” feminist archivists and scholars reclaimed their past and rendered themselves visible historical actors.125 New feminist scholarship challenged established disciplinary methods and filled in gaps in the scholarly record, in the process revising virtually the entirety of the humanities and social sciences.126 Courses on women's history, journals and conferences, and the numbers of women in history generally and in women's history specifically all proliferated.127
The 1960s and 1970s saw more active solicitation of women's papers, the production of guides on and the reexamination of holdings, and revisions of catalogs and finding aids.128 A pivotal initiative in this area was the Women's History Sources Survey (WHSS). COSW's Andrea Hinding steered the project, which came together in 1975 through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Minnesota.129 Nearly 7,000 repositories responded to the survey and 2,000 held relevant materials. Contrary to popular belief, sources to write women's history existed in abundance and many smaller repositories held useful but overlooked materials.
WHSS encouraged archivists to reassess their holdings and their collection development policies. A comprehensive WHSS guide published in 1979 stressed not only the growing legitimacy of women's history, but also the need for the use of previously neglected or recently located sources. The survey unearthed two troubling findings as well: a widespread lack of education and training of repository personnel, and the poor physical condition of many of the repositories holding materials.130
Complementing the WHSS, the National Archives hosted both an exhibit (opened in July of 1975), Her Infinite Variety: A 200-Year Record of America's Women, to commemorate the national bicentennial and the International Women's Year and a Women's History Conference (held in April of 1976). Under the guidance of Elsie Freivogel, the conference highlighted unpublished sources for documenting women in American history. The amount and quality of documentation struck observers, as did the formidable challenges of arranging it and publicizing it for research use.131 Momentum for women's history and documentation only grew in the following years.
COSW and SAA in the 1970s
Increased female representation in SAA affairs seemed evident at the 1976 annual business meeting, as women constituted five of the six presenters. “We'll soon have a Committee on the Status of Men in the SAA,” joked SAA executive director and COSW founding member Ann Morgan Campbell.132 SAA had embraced a younger and more progressive membership, and women increasingly assumed more professional responsibilities and published and spoke out more.133 At the same time, women but for a few “superstars,” lacked equal professional opportunity.134 McKay wrote, “Superstars of either sex will always rise to the top; it is the ordinary person that I worry about.”135 COSW thus integrated affirmative action for women into its goals. To this end, it developed a roster in 1976 and began monitoring statistics on women in the profession.
By the mid-1970s, although feminist language and perspectives pervaded the American lingua franca, the women's movement seemed in trouble, its morale and its pragmatic efforts in jeopardy.136 Most foreboding, both anti-abortion and anti-ERA groups had increased their activity and amped up their rhetoric.137 Inertia seemed to plague COSW too. Chair Freivogel informed committee members, “No new people signed on. The issues, exacerbated by the job crisis, appear not to be high on anyone's list, nor do general questions of advocacy activity seem to be gaining strength in the Society.” She fretted about COSW's goals and even its viability. The Women's Caucus, too, struggled with a crisis of confidence, deliberating whether to extend their activities beyond an annual meeting and a semiregular newsletter.138
Freivogel apprehended the ambivalence felt by some committee members. One who resigned claimed, “I don't have time (or really the desire) to work on this committee.” She felt the COSW's work alienated men; the COSW's efforts seemed nothing more than “‘coffee-klatching.’”139 New chair Eleanor McKay conceded the committee's lack of militancy.140 In 1977, for example, only five of the committee's twenty members were effectively active.
Program participants at the 1977 annual meeting included 125 men and 53 women (a dispiriting 28%), though the Program Committee was more inclusive (9 men and 7 women, or 43%). A maddening gap persisted between women's de jure and de facto equality.141 An undaunted McKay urged her colleagues to forge collective stands on better working conditions and improved professional status.142
Numerous COSW leaders had long agitated for recognition as an SAA permanent committee, but the committee encountered opposition from those who believed women's issues of transitory importance.143 SAA Council, though, conferred this status on COSW in 1978, acknowledging the group's necessity for the conduct of the organization's regular affairs.144 Despite its mid-1970s doldrums, the committee's legitimacy appeared secured.
McKay posited that SAA leadership failed to represent the organization's rapidly evolving membership and trivialized the latter's concerns.145 Indeed, demographics favored COSW's efforts: SAA membership spurted 80% between 1970 and 1978 (50% alone between 1975 and 1978) and women continued to increase their proportion of SAA membership. McKay ruminated, “That question of the status of women in our profession and our society is both controversial and still very much unresolved in the best interest of humanity.”146
As part of its efforts to monitor the disparities between men's and women's wages, especially given the flood of new SAA members, the committee embarked on a second salary survey in the fall of 1978. Periodic surveys of the status of professional women were among the central components of the women's movement.147 COSW's project proved so alluring, in fact, that Council appropriated it.148
The new survey found decreased but still pronounced salary inequity. The average woman earned approximately $15,000 and the average man nearly $19,000. (ALA's survey found a similar discrepancy.149) The survey broke down these disparities by education, age, and years of work experience. First, women gained at both the BA and PhD levels, decreasing the wage gap from 30% to 12% in the former and from 14% to 9% in the latter. Second, salaries increased 28% for men and 20% for women under 30 years of age, 24% for both men and women ages 30 to 39, and 41% for women and 34% for men ages 40 to 49. Finally, the survey reported an increase of 27% for women and 16% for men with 0 to 3 years of professional experience; 38% for women and 23% for men with 8 to 15 years; and 32% for women and 29% for men with 15 or more years. Though women had made substantial gains, they trailed men at every level. Men made anywhere between 9% and 51% more than their female colleagues.150
Results of the survey suggested to Mabel Deutrich that the women's movement benefited younger professional women, particularly in encouraging their expectations and aspirations. At the same time, she lamented, “Many of the older working women . . . have never recovered from the barriers they faced—either outright sex discrimination or the same thing in a more subtle form, their own lowered aspirations.”151 Linda Henry likewise equivocated, “I won't discount sexism for the dearth of ‘women's faces in high places,’ but . . . too many women have not thought about their work in career terms.” She also pointed out the continuing problem of women resisting program participation or office-holding.152
Leadership soon took its toll on McKay. “After three years and many crises,” she admitted in 1979, “I have burned out.” Rejected by four potential successors, McKay decried COSW's lack of leadership. All the same, she remained cautiously optimistic. Though inequalities regarding salaries, titles, publications, and speaking opportunities continued, attitudes seemed to be evolving.153
Closing out the 1970s, COSW continued to urge the involvement of women in SAA and to monitor opportunities for their participation.154 Their efforts paid modest dividends. In 1979, for example, women submitted 12 articles to the American Archivist, 6 of which were accepted. By contrast, men submitted 48, 11 of which were accepted. “Let's urge women to write more!,” admonished editor Virginia C. Purdy.155 Less than one-third of the 1979 annual meeting program was composed of women (74 women, 162 men, and 5 whose gender could not be identified by their names), however, not least because many refused to participate even when asked. The next year, too, numerous women demurred, becoming “shrinking violets,” to Nancy Menan's consternation.156
COSW encountered more frustration in the 1979 SAA election. Archie Motley, a longtime supporter of COSW, split the so-called liberal vote (he was a petition candidate). As a result, Ruth Helmuth defeated Elsie Freivogel. McKay exploded, “I will have a hard time forgiving [Motley] for his reckless lack of concern for the need to have a strong liberal executive.” “Damn Archie!”157 For her part, McKay feared Helmuth's reputed conservatism.158 It was painfully evident once more that not all SAA members endorsed the COSW agenda.
The committee pressed forward in 1980 on job monitoring, the roster, SAA Fellows, publishing, and cooperating with both archival regional organizations and allied professional organizations regarding affirmative action. It continued its work at the professional grassroots level as well: at the annual meeting, the committee raised money by selling ERA buttons and raised the consciousness of SAA members in the process.159
In line with the burgeoning numbers and changing demographics of membership, the committee agitated still more for SAA's democratization. Its efforts ultimately helped effect revisions to the SAA constitution. COSW's Nancy Sahli argued, first, for SAA's instantiation of initiative and referendum measures. Controversial questions would be put to the entire membership via mail ballot; its vote would be binding on Council. Second, Sahli favored making binding on Council any votes on resolutions at annual business meetings.160
Agreeing with Sahli, Eleanor McKay insisted that membership should retain final decision-making authority. “There is always the danger that the members can be swayed by emotional or illogical feelings,” she explained, “yet I would rather place my trust in the collected wisdom of thousands of members than in that of a handful of elected leaders.”161 David E. Horn, conversely, rejected direct membership control on both theoretical and practical grounds.162 Virginia Purdy suggested a third route: deferring to SAA Council on matters within its constitutionally approved purview, but on controversial issues opting for a mail ballot binding on Council.163
The new constitution adopted two changes that increased membership participation in SAA decision making. First, it expanded Council from eight members to nine, each of whom would serve a three-year as opposed to a four-year term. This measure increased turnover and widened the possibility for participation by more officeholders. Second, the new constitution permitted membership to overrule Council in certain situations:
Resolutions passed at the annual business meeting which request the council to take a specific action must be formally considered and voted upon by council in a timely fashion. The membership shall be notified of the results of that deliberation in the first mailing sent to the membership following the final council decision. If ten percent (10%) of the membership disagrees with council's decision, and files a petition to that effect with the executive office, a mail ballot shall be conducted through the next mailing to the membership and the results of this ballot shall be binding.164
Both of these changes seemingly benefited women of SAA, given their demographic advantage.
In the 1970s, women accounted for 60% of the total increase in the United States labor force. They made important gains in equalizing pay, fighting job discrimination, and provision of childcare, but by the early 1980s, feminists in the United States appeared to be on the defensive, if not in full retreat.165 Overall, the 1970s and 1980s showed Americans' ambivalence in terms of women's roles.166 The ERA was a glaring case in point.
The Equal Rights Amendment, 1978–1982
Passed by both houses of Congress in March of 1972, the ERA went down to final defeat fully a decade later (June 30, 1982). Its defeat effectively truncated feminist hopes in national politics.167 The ERA cast a long shadow over feminism. The fight enabled its participants to hone a feminist consciousness that helped them understand the machinations of power.168 Yet the ERA also revealed class fissures: while like COSW the National Organization for Women welcomed the ERA, trade unions rejected it.169
The ERA also rallied opposition to feminism, however. Opponents charged the ERA with subverting traditional gender roles indispensable for moral and social order and cohesion. They framed the amendment as an effort to make men and women the same and thus to abolish all institutions—the family, the home, religion, and motherhood—traditionally based on these differences.170 Often rural and religious, opponents also tied their arguments to anticommunism, patriotism, and all-male combat forces. Supporters cited nebulous values such as “equality” and “justice,” but these paled before anti-ERA groups' discourse of apocalyptic moral combat.171
Between 1978 and 1982, COSW like NOW foregrounded the ERA ratification campaign.172 Following its long-standing support of the ERA, COSW proposed to boycott states that refused to pass the amendment. It requested SAA relocate the 1979 annual meeting from Chicago to a city in a state that had ratified the ERA.173
Edward Weldon, later SAA president, demurred for financial but not ideological reasons. He concurred with the Women's Caucus's perhaps surprising stance, that is, not moving the annual meeting from Chicago, and cited the financial penalties should SAA breach its existing contract.174
Even as those such as Eleanor McKay favored a boycott, other SAA leaders in addition to Weldon remained wary. The Women's Caucus Newsletter reported:
Mr. Berkeley moved that the Society cancel its plans to meet in Richmond, Virginia in 1982, and that future meetings be scheduled only in states which have ratified the amendment. The motion was seconded by Mr. Weldon. Speaking against the motion, Ms. Hinding stated that participation in such a boycott is not appropriate for a professional organization such as the Society, and that much of the burden of the boycott would be felt by numerous female employees of boycotted hotels, restaurants, and other businesses. Ms. Hinding pointed out that these employees are not responsible for the position of their state legislatures on ERA. . . . The motion was defeated by a vote of 2–9.175
Pursuant to the vote, McKay castigated Hinding, writing, “My knowledge of the history of various movements has prepared me emotionally for finks and scabs in unlikely places.”176 Again, a united feminist front proved untenable. As a fall- back position, COSW leveraged pocketbook politics, encouraging its members to spend as little money as possible at the meeting.177
Though McKay demanded it abandon neutrality on the ERA, SAA Council remained chary of supporting the ratification extension; at the time, it also rejected economic boycotts as inappropriate for a professional organization.178 That summer, however, national politics intruded: the United States Congress voted (223 to 189) to extend the ratification deadline for ERA for thirty-nine months.
Still more propitious news came from the fall business meeting: McKay exulted to COSW members, “WE DID IT!”179 Attendees passed four resolutions. One supported ERA ratification overall; one supported the extension resolution on the ERA; one stipulated that after 1980, the SAA would hold meetings only in states that had ratified the ERA; and one pledged to inform Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, drafter of the 1972 version of the amendment, of SAA's position.180
Not all SAA members approved of the proposed boycotts. Sister M. Helena Sanfilippo chided Campbell for SAA's “secondary boycott.” “As a woman I am offended by these tactics for granting me my ‘right,’” she insisted.181 But a majority of membership disagreed; a persuaded Council relocated the 1982 annual meeting.182
Although SAA had endorsed ratification as a germane professional concern, controversy simmered.183 In a letter to the editor of American Archivist, Joseph Andrew Settani excoriated SAA for refusing to separate professionalism and politics. He characterized himself as “profoundly disturbed that a heavily loaded political issue . . . has grievously hurt the professional status of the SAA.” The ERA he dismissed as a “pet peeve.”184
In a vigorous rejoinder, COSW's Timothy Stroup argued that discrimination had “disastrous consequences for hiring, promotion, salaries, and even for what archivists think it worthwhile to preserve.” He upbraided Settani as “extremely myopic” and deemed ameliorating discrimination “one of the great moral challenges of our time.”185
A 1980 survey offered a broader perspective on membership's disagreement over social issues such as the ERA (see Table 4).186 Those who disagreed or strongly disagreed (407) with the statement that SAA should involve itself with social concerns outstripped those who agreed or strongly agreed (373). Similarly, those who disagreed or strongly disagreed (420) that the ratification of the ERA should be a social issue of concern to SAA outnumbered those who agreed or strongly agreed (332), and the same was true regarding the proposition that the ratification of the ERA should be a professional issue of concern (385 versus 359). Perhaps most pressing, those who disagreed or strongly disagreed (419) with the notion that SAA should participate in secondary economic boycotts in support of issues endorsed by the Society far outnumbered those who agreed or strongly agreed (305).
Though Susan Davis found these results terribly disconcerting, Miriam Crawford thundered, “The momentum that has now been generated for equal rights will not be stopped, and we cannot make the issue go away simply because it may be inconvenient and upsets our usual routines.”187 Alas, the ERA suffered final, narrow, defeat in 1982.
COSW and SAA in the 1980s
Even though salary inequality persisted, women streamed into the labor force: by the middle of the 1980s, nearly two-thirds of women ages 20 to 64 worked. Middle- and upper-class women had unprecedented opportunities in higher education and career advancement.188
A 1982 SAA membership survey found demographics continuing to shift in women's favor. Young women comprised an unprecedented majority: 68.7% of those under 30 (as opposed to 60% in 1973 and 56% in 1979). Conversely, salary inequality festered, though the survey showed some progress. Men earned 125% of women's salaries (versus 129% in 1979), namely, $23,746 versus $19,009.189
In addition to its campaign for salary equality, in the first half of the 1980s the committee maintained its established efforts in areas such as employment monitoring, SAA Fellows, annual meeting participation, the roster, childcare, sexist language, and coalition building. The results, though, were checkered. Mary Janzen blamed social structures that deterred women from taking advantage of opportunities and women's own “internal doubts and insecurities.”190
For example, COSW sponsored workshops on public speaking, publication, and career development along with a roundtable on management at the 1982 annual meeting, but lack of enrollment forced the cancellation of a 1983 follow-up, “Career Development and Job-Seeking Skills.” Similarly, though COSW agitated for a job-monitoring project in 1981 and 1982, it met with no success.
COSW's efforts to promote women for SAA Fellow also continued. Whereas between 1937 and 1972, 112 men and 27 women were named Fellows, between 1973 and 1980, 24 men and 11 women were so named.191 Zofia Sywak sighed, “It will take changes in attitudes and values over a substantial period of time before females will not feel that they have to prove that they are superwomen in order to qualify for various recognitions and honors.”192
Even with the defeat of the ERA and the challenge of convincing deserving women to accept recognition, COSW members could celebrate in 1982 because an equal number of men and women submitted annual meeting proposals. As important, women outnumbered men in SAA for the first time. This demographic advantage, Mary Janzen asserted, seemed important leverage for the committee. Conversely, she worried about archives becoming a “feminized” profession vulnerable to shrinking salaries and status.193
Just as COSW celebrated progress in SAA participation, so too did it try to exploit the roster as a wellspring for program proposals. Though the Women's Caucus found the roster ineffective in terms of job placement, it hoped the roster would increase participation at both national and regional meetings. But few women completed rosters, thus limiting the latter's effectiveness. In 1983, for example, COSW mailed 1,000 forms but only 127 women returned completed forms and only 58 of those suggested annual meeting paper topics. Though women constituted 54% of SAA membership, they comprised only 43% of participants in the 1983 annual meeting program.194
Another contentious issue—that of SAA-subsidized childcare—came to a head in 1984. A resolution on subsidized childcare for annual meetings passed unanimously at the annual business meeting; each annual meeting attendee subsequently contributed a childcare surcharge of $2. This seemed a conspicuous victory for parents in the SAA, especially mothers.195 Henceforth, the Local Arrangements Committee assumed this responsibility.
Sexist language in publications such as American Archivist also came under COSW's scrutiny. In an article about scholarly editing, the Smithsonian's Nathan Reingold provided a glaring example. Reingold recounted, “[Clarence] Carter was a fascinating old codger with whom I lunched on a number of occasions. . . . Carter was a striking man given, even in his early 70s, to pinching waitresses, which impressed me greatly. Young PhDs did not do that in the early 1950s, at least not in public. Even more impressive was his singular concentration on turning our volumes.”196
Justly appalled, Anne Kenney chided editor Charles Schultz for publishing an article that contained such sexist language.197 Schultz offered a rather tepid apology, writing, “I shall certainly try to keep an eye out for any such offensive phrases in manuscripts which come to me and delete any which I note.”198 For many men, after all, sexist language seemed innocuous.199
The challenge of coalition building with other underrepresented groups persisted as well. The lack of direct collaboration between COSW and archivists of color likely impelled the creation of the Task Force on Minorities (TFM) in 1981. Just as the civil rights movement influenced feminism, so too did the COSW influence the Task Force on Minorities. The first African American archivist at the National Archives, Harold T. Pinkett, recommended the task force consult COSW for possible strategies.200
Mary Janzen saw potential for collaboration among the groups, but the extent of their collaboration apparently remained nominal. COSW's 1983 annual report, for example, claimed only that the group had established contacts with TFM.201 COSW wanted to include persons of color but also to avoid interfering with TFM's prerogatives.202 The underrepresentation of minorities in the profession resulted not from exclusionary efforts, argued Archie Motley, but “from minority perceptions, often correct, that these fields have been the preserve of the white middle class.”203
Despite their perennial struggles with challenges such as coalition building, COSW had much to appreciate as the middle and late 1980s unfolded. Numerically in SAA, women constituted a “‘new majority.’”204 Women had served as three of the most recent four SAA presidents (Hinding, Finnegan, and Sue Holbert), and women constituted a major presence in committee, section, and Council work.205 Though on one hand, women proposed themselves and other women as speakers for program sessions with increasing frequency, on the other, more women than men turned down invitations for financial or temporal reasons.206 Advocacy remained crucial, in short, as the newfound gender balance on ballots and programs always faced retrogression.207
Committee leaders appeared divided on the group's success and its future direction, however. Mary Janzen worried, “There is some reality to the fear that the generation that brought change into the Society during the 1970s is too securely seated in the boat to make waves.” “We have met the establishment, and they is [sic] us.”208
Countering her own doubts, Janzen suggested, first, that COSW forge coalitions with ACT and the Minorities Roundtable, specifically by linking projects and by encouraging others to participate at annual meetings and Council forums. Second, she favored broad representation on committees and working groups. Third, as women earned less than men, she stressed the need to keep the costs of participating in SAA low. Finally, Janzen wanted COSW to lobby SAA to conduct periodic surveys of salaries and related concerns.209
By the end of the 1980s, the vast majority of American women (at least 80%) reported suffering from job discrimination and unequal pay.210 Conversely, between 75% and 95% of American women applauded the feminist movement achievements and urged it to continue agitating for change.211 Feminism permeated American culture still further in the 1990s.212
Consolidation and Dissolution in the 1990s
Despite concerns about its future direction, the committee adhered to its long-standing agenda as the 1990s dawned. SAA president John Fleckner wrote, “Although many positive changes have occurred . . . the committee's work is no less important today than it was ‘way back then.’”213 Hence, COSW focused on preparing SAA Fellow nominations (as of 1991, women comprised 52% of SAA membership but only 29.5% of Fellows); monitoring the participation of women in SAA affairs (the 1991 annual meeting program was 52% male and 48% female); assuming SAA leadership positions (1991–1992 SAA leaders comprised 52% men and 48% women); supporting the annual Women's Caucus meeting; initiating conversations on SAA mentoring initiatives; ensuring quality childcare at annual meetings; and parleying with the African American and Third World Archivists Roundtable (AATWAR) and the Lesbian and Gay Archivists Roundtable (LAGAR).214 Based on their “mutual concerns,” the three groups sought to establish “a social action agenda” for SAA.215 The possibility for collaboration seemed evident in the 1990 furor concerning the proposed annual meeting site (Salt Lake City) for 1996.
Long hostile to African Americans and lesbians and gays, Utah even tried in 1991 to roll back Roe v. Wade.216 The COSW joined with AATWAR and LAGAR in opposing Salt Lake; it seemed an ideal opportunity for coalition politics. As had the ERA, the Salt Lake City debate broke SAA into factions. Much discussion on the role of social issues in selecting a meeting site ensued, but no consensus emerged. SAA membership remained divided on abortion rights, and it preferred weighing only archives-related issues in site selection.217 Nonetheless, SAA moved the meeting to Atlanta, a key victory for COSW, the Women's Caucus, AATWAR, and LAGAR.
At its twentieth anniversary, COSW celebrated many gains. Women comprised approximately 53% of SAA membership, two women (Trudy Peterson and Anne Kenney) had been elected SAA president since 1987, and the Program Committees had achieved gender balance in the previous five years.218
Even so, many benchmarks remained: no women had yet served as Archivist of the United States; no women at the time directed any of the presidential libraries; and only five state archivists were women. The glass ceiling persisted in archives as in other professions nationally.219 Ever-pressing issues included pay inequity; equal opportunity in job appointments, promotions, and training; affordable childcare at annual meetings; gender balance in SAA appointments; sexual harassment; and mentoring, education, and training.220
COSW's vicissitudes continued. Although in 1996, women represented the majority on the annual meeting program, Laurie Baty worried about COSW's very survival. The body wavered over its status as a committee for a second consecutive year, but determined to keep its current configuration.221
Just as COSW members deliberated over its future, the body faced dissolution from another direction. Formed in 1995, the Task Force on Organizational Effectiveness (TFOE) issued its final report in January 1997.222 The first effort to revisit the constitutional amendments of 1981, it likened its task to that of the Committee on the 1970s: responding to perceived member needs and expectations regarding member services, publications, education and outreach, and policy.
TFOE recommended excising five extant committees, including COSW. The task force offered a lengthy if somewhat specious rationale:
Women participate actively in all phases of SAA's business and activities and are well represented in elected and appointed position. This portion of the Committee's charge has been accomplished. The other elements of the Committee's charge—monitoring the status of women in the archival profession and promoting an awareness of women's history and the sources that support it—are not specific programmatic or administrative elements of SAA's mission that warrant a committee.223
Aside from COSW's elimination, TFOE advocated for the Women's Caucus to assume roundtable status.
A firestorm of debate ensued among COSW members. Carol Rudisell objected, “SAA is not yet at the point where diversity issues will take care of themselves.”224 To this end, she strongly advocated for the establishment of a Diversity Committee with a broader scope than COSW's.225 An irate Tanya Zanish found SAA's decision risible; she expressed skepticism that Council would establish a Diversity Committee or attend to women's issues unless compelled by COSW. She even requested being noted as a dissenter should COSW agree to dissolve.226
Gretchen Lake took a similar if less fiery position. She informed Baty, “If in fact, much of what our official charge has been, has been accomplished, then we should fold our tents and NOT quietly go away, but go away with cautionary overviews of Council to be sure that our hard fought for needs are still being taken care of.”227
SAA president William J. Maher retrenched. He admitted that the task force had assumed erroneously that demographic changes and overall progress in women's status in SAA rendered COSW superfluous. Maher nonetheless enjoined Baty and COSW to marshal their energies toward addressing external challenges, not fomenting internal discord. He encouraged Baty to rally COSW members around the possibility of a new roundtable centering on women's issues.228
By early 1998, a majority of COSW members cautiously supported TFOE's recommendations. Baty informed Maher that COSW consented to roundtable status if scheduling conflicts (e.g., with the Women's Caucus at the SAA annual meeting) would be avoided. A second condition was that if the proposed round-table's membership fell below critical mass, SAA would pursue other avenues in addressing women's issues.229
That summer, SAA Council gave its imprimatur to the creation of a roundtable and voted to disband COSW. The Women's Professional Archival Issues Roundtable (WPAIR) took over from COSW (it was renamed the Women Archivists Roundtable [WAR] in 2000). The Women's Caucus meanwhile continued its unofficial role. A Task Force on Diversity did coalesce; its final report praised SAA's “outstanding results in opening its membership, program participation, awards recognition, and appointed and elected leadership to women.” But the report also stressed, “Within the profession…more remains to be done to overcome barriers to full participation by women at all levels, and SAA should do all that it can to encourage this process.”230
Even though COSW succumbed, the 1990s saw further progress for women in archives. The Women's Collections Roundtable, established in 1989, continued to gain momentum. Establishing at least fifteen repositories after 1990, feminists preserved their legacy even as scholars continued to look for more diverse primary sources.231 By the end of the decade, in the archival profession as in American society, feminism's influence was ineluctable, though always contested.232
Conclusion
Testifying to feminism's success, its conspicuous achievements—suffrage, education, and contraception, for instance—appear prosaic.233 But women face tremendous obstacles associated with the psychology of gender, infighting, sexuality, household labor and childrearing, and labor discrimination.234 The latter problem remains obdurate. Although a Pew Research poll in 2011 found that nearly three-quarters (73%) of Americans believed the trend toward more women working was a positive social development, women still lacked full economic citizenship.235
Between 1979 and 2015, at every level of educational achievement, men's earnings declined or their wages grew less than women's.236 Women with bachelor's degrees saw their earnings increase 32.5% (versus 17.8% for men).237 In 2015, however, women who worked full time year-round earned far less than men (79.6%), though the gap had narrowed since the 1980's 60.2%. The U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau concludes, “By every measure, the wage gap endures, despite women's increased educational attainment, heightened labor force participation rates, and expanded access to jobs.”238 In libraries, the gender gap is smaller: as of 2014, females made approximately 89% of the salaries of males.239
The history of COSW and the Women's Caucus carries both symbolic and substantive significance. Working on shoestring budgets and from within a patriarchal structure, these groups made notable strides toward a more egalitarian and democratic SAA. They ferreted out documentary sources for women's history; redressed salary inequalities and monitored occupational discrimination; stimulated SAA participation, particularly in SAA leadership, annual meetings, publications, and awards; monitored sexist language; supported the Equal Rights Amendment; explored coalitions with other underrepresented groups; and provided childcare at SAA annual meetings. For example, SAA's immediate past president and its current president are COSW alumnae. The ratio of female to male Fellows,240 presidents,241 and Council members242 has improved over time as well. Childcare is a fixture of annual meetings, and women's history is a global phenomenon.243
Two surveys conducted by SAA in the 2000s explored women's affiliation with WAR, their interest in women's history, and their salaries compared to men's. A 2002 survey, though completed by only 227 women, revealed at least two striking findings vis-à-vis COSW's legacy. First, although 73% of respondents were SAA members, only 10% were members either of WAR or of the Women's Collections Roundtable. Second, although 98.7% of respondents believed that promoting and facilitating the writing of women's history was important, 77.1% made a dedicated effort to do so, and still fewer (61.9%) worked with materials related explicitly to women. (The survey did not address race or ethnicity or salary.)244
A second survey, the Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States (A*Census) of 2005 found a gender split of 65% women and 35% men, 93% of whom were white. It also examined salary data. On average, men's salaries outstripped women's by about 15%, an improvement from 1982's 25%. More propitious, the survey determined that the salary discrepancy was only 2% among those who entered the profession in 2000 or after.245
COSW became the Women Archivists Section (WArS) in 2017. Demographics in SAA continue to favor women. A WArS survey of 2017 did not juxtapose men's and women's salaries, but found that self-identified women constitute 84.3% of SAA and men 14%. Diversity has increased somewhat: the top three demographic groups include white (87.7%), African American (3.1%), and Latinx American (3.1%).246 Like COSW, WArS “continues to actively monitor the status of women and advocate for their involvement in the archival profession, looking toward the future while highlighting the accomplishments of women who have shaped the profession and the historical record.” Also extending COSW, its priorities center on family leave, salary negotiation and parity, flexible working hours, and highlighting past and current leaders.247
COSW's story suggests four questions for future research. First, has feminism's trajectory in the Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA) and regional archival organizations such as the Delaware Valley Archivists Group (DVAG), the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC), the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC), and the Society of California Archivists mirrored that of SAA?
Second, the history of COSW, particularly its efforts to mobilize SAA behind the ERA and to boycott venues in nonratifying states for annual meeting sites, points to a larger question: what are the social roles and responsibilities of professional organizations? This issue has emerged recently with the discussion over whether to move the 2019 annual meeting because of the so-called bathroom bill.248 Other issues on which membership likely lacks a united front include gay marriage and the Me Too movement.
Third, can and should a group such as COSW speak on behalf of all members who identify as part of that identity group? Controversial issues such as abortion and the ERA clearly divided female membership. Nancy Menan wondered about this issue as early as 1980, writing, “Many women within the profession may not be in agreement with the past or present slant of the Caucus or Committee: are either large enough in scope and philosophy to accommodate these women?249 In any event, COSW engaged in constructive, reasoned conversation with friends and foes alike, a key legacy.
Fourth, how might underrepresented professional groups forge coalitions with other underrepresented groups and agree on a common agenda for change? The history of COSW suggests the myriad challenges in doing so; the issue seems ever more complicated. Further organizational structures emerged to address the concerns of underrepresented populations: 1987 saw the establishment of the African American and Third World Archivists Roundtable (now the Archives and Archivists of Color Roundtable)250 and 1989 the establishment of the Lesbian and Gay Archivists Roundtable (now the Diverse Sexualities and Gender Section).251
Looking forward, archivists invested in women's collections and women's history would profit, first, by engaging in collaborative collection development nationally and locally. Second, they might collect more materials in nontraditional formats such as reminiscences, oral histories, scrapbooks, ephemera, and artifactual materials.252 Third, outreach activities might include publicizing repository activities and goals, hosting events, giving presentations, visiting community celebrations, developing displays, and disseminating printed materials.253 Fourth, archivists might promote the use of new technology to facilitate unprecedentedly wide access, even as they remember that the digital divide still festers and smaller repositories might lack the resources to promote their collections.254
Archivists have a continuing mandate—and a responsibility—for work. The same concerns that animated COSW still resonate. Feminism permits archivists “to honor the past, actively engage with the intellectual tradition today, and guide women's archives into the future.”255 More colloquially, archivists can appreciate the merits—indeed, the virtues—of a small group of women (and men) who proved willing to act “damned pushy at times.”256
Citation: The American Archivist 81, 2; 10.17723/0360-9081-81.2.394