COSWL Cause

Sisters, our own Michele Leber is Chair of the National Committee on Pay Equity.

Please consider supporting the Paycheck Fairness Act by signing onto the Women's Law Center petition AND supporting Equal Pay Day by wearing RED on Tuesday, April 28.
Paycheck Fairness Act.

The emphasis for Equal Pay Day next Tuesday is the Paycheck Fairness Act, passed by the House of Representatives on January 9 and awating action in the Senate.

Read more at ALA Connect.

[Michele M. Leber served for ALA on: Mitch Freedman Better Salaries/Pay Equity Task Force; ALA Committee on Pay Equity; ALA Committee on Pay Equity; Task Force on the Status of Librarians].

Quiet Push to Recognize Suffrage Sites
by Peggy Simpson of the Women'sMedia Center

A Votes for Women History Trail would create a drivable route that visits up to 20 significant sites in the suffragists’ prolonged battle for the vote, from the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in Auburn, near Syracuse, to the Waterloo and Seneca Falls sites of the first women’s rights conventions, to the trail’s western anchor in Rochester, the Susan B. Anthony House. Point person for the trail has been Representative Louise Slaughter, D-NY—a former chair of the congressional women’s caucus—who has sponsored the bill since 2002....

So many people forget that it was just 89 years ago that women were finally allowed to vote in this country," Slaughter said.
She praised Obama for signingthe bill "to celebrate the historic events and recognize the important sites that served as the backdrop in the struggle for women's equality." The Votes for Women
trail will let Americans "learn more about the heroines
who changed history and opened the doors of opportunity
for future generations of women."

Good political strategy helped move the trail into reality. Slaughter's counterpart in the Senate had been Hillary Clinton, now secretary of State. As a stand- alone bill, the Votes for Women trail had faced one obstacle after another. Slaughter, now the House Rules
Committee chair with much clout in the New York delegation, worked with Senator Charles Schumer, D-NY, to get the Votes for Women bill included (with 160 other House-passed bills) into the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act.

In addition to the trail, the new law will expand the current National Register travel website, "Places Where Women Made History." As of now, only 44 percent of the 298 sites relevant to women's rights are included in this. And only 57 of those listed are national historic landmarks, including the Susan B. Anthony House.

The law also will direct the Department of Interior to establish a public-private National Women's Rights History Project Partnership, to help develop interpretive and educational programs dramatizing the
national women's rights history. The partnership would be run by a non-governmental entity and would provide grants to state historic preservation offices for up to five years to survey, evaluate and nominate women's rights history properties to be added to the National
Register of Historic Places. Read the rest of Peggy Simpson's article here.

See also: National Collaborative for Women's History sites. NCWHS supports and promotes the preservation and interpretation of sites and locales that bear witness to women's participation in American life. The Collaborative makes women's contributions to history visible so that all women's experiences and potential are fully valued.

Launch celebration in Washington, D.C. for the new Frances Perkins Center, based at her family homestead in Newcastle, Maine:Celebrating Frances Perkins and Her Commitment to Social Justice

Frances Perkins Center: Honoring and Learning from the First Woman Appointed to a U.S. Cabinet.

Today, as in 1933, the nation faces serious economic uncertainty. As we struggle to find new answers, we look to the example of Frances Perkins, labor secretary during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, for inspiration.

Perkins is best known for creating much of the social safety net that protects the elderly, young and those experiencing hard times. She is credited with creating Social Security, unemployment insurance and the system that became Aid to Dependent Children.

Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor March 4, 1933 to June 30, 1945, was appointed by Roosevelt; was the first woman Cabinet member. Led the battle against the Great Depression: the Wagner-Peyser Act revitalized the U.S. Employment Service, the Fair Labor Standards Act set a floor under wages and a ceiling over hours, the Wagner Act protected workers' right to organize. She established the Labor Standards Bureau. Through effective relationships with the state governments, she strengthened labor law enforcement by the states. She was also the principal architect of the Social Security Act.

New book by Kirstin Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience,

Department of Labor Headquarters named after her in 1980. Inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame in 1988.