Strosser Speaks on Women's Rights

Advocates of women's rights are currently battling a tide of potential infringements, said President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Nadine Strossen '72 yesterday at the fifth annual Rothschild Lecture in the Agassiz Theatre.

Commenting to an audience of approximately 100 on issues ranging from affirmative action to the Shannon Faulkner case, Strossen emphasized the major vanguards of the women's movement and its progress in recent years.

"The first front is that the United States Supreme Court never held that the Constitutional guarantee of protection against discrimination applies to women," Strossen said.

Instead, women received a sort of "watered-down version" that still allows for public institutions such as the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel to practice gender exclusionary policies, she said.

Demonstrating another obstacle to women's acquisition of total autonomy, Strossen discussed the Supreme Court's recent curtailment of reproductive freedom, which hinders the practice of abortions.

"In Blair, Nebraska, there was a case where the city officials captured a 15-year-old girl and imprisoned her in a foster home to force her to carry the baby to term," Strossen said.

"The third ongoing battle for women's rights legislation is in the broad attack on the feminist movement," Strossen continued. "We [the ACLU] believe that all rights are indivisible and if the government violates one right of one individual, no right is safe for anybody any more."

The assault on women's rights has taken the form of pending Congress bills to significantly reduce affirmative action, Strossen said. She added that affirmative action helped account for three out of 10 middle managerial positions held by women.

"Even with affirmative action, there still is no equality," Strossen said, referring to the statistic that women now make 72 cents to a dollar earned by men.

"I shudder to think how much worse it will be without [affirmative action]," she added.

"Pay inequality is still a fact of life," Strossen said. "And that hurts not only women, but their husbands and family who increasingly become dependent on the mother for income."

According to Strossen, 73 percent of working women must support both themselves and their families. Their job is made even harder because "not only is the woman expected to bring home the bacon, but she is expected to fix and serve it, too."

"There's a great general lack of awareness, a lack of concern and a lack of outrage at these congressional cutbacks," Strossen said about the cuts in welfare reform "or welfare deform," that would force economically disadvantaged women to stay in abusive relationships.

"The current [welfare reform] measures clearly aim to curtail child-bearing," Strossen said. "But the [abortion policies] clearly want to curtail abortions, so the only choice, it seems, is abstinence."

The lecture was sponsored by Maurine Pupkin Rothschild '40 and Robert F. Rothschild '39.

"I heard her speak on her book Defending Pornography and found her to be a very dynamic speaker," said Eva S. Moseley, a curator of manuscripts at the Schlesinger Library who assisted in planning the event. "You can see how irrepressible she is."

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Strossen is also an alumna of the Harvard Law School.

"It's important to take stock of how far we have come regarding women's rights," Strossen said. "But we also have to see how far we have to go.

The lecture was sponsored by Maurine Pupkin Rothschild '40 and Robert F. Rothschild '39.

"I heard her speak on her book Defending Pornography and found her to be a very dynamic speaker," said Eva S. Moseley, a curator of manuscripts at the Schlesinger Library who assisted in planning the event. "You can see how irrepressible she is."

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Strossen is also an alumna of the Harvard Law School.

"It's important to take stock of how far we have come regarding women's rights," Strossen said. "But we also have to see how far we have to go.