Cheryl Tevis
Unfinished Business, March 14

As a farm girl growing up in northwestern Iowa, I couldn’t make sense of traditional gender roles. I wasn’t a tomboy, but I didn’t know why my sister and I had to wear dresses to school. (We could wear warm trousers beneath our dresses on below-zero days, and remove them in the cloak room.) I don’t recall any good explanation ever given: It was just the way of the world.

I didn’t understand why men and women would adjourn to different rooms following a big family meal at Grandma and Grandpa’s home, or why their conversations were so different. The women washed dishes while they gossiped or spoke in hushed tones about “female” health problems, and the men relaxed in the parlor, smoking their pipes, and discussing politics and farm policy. That’s just the way it was. (But I preferred to eavesdrop on the men.)

I spent a lot of time reading, and my fictional heroines didn’t have to conform to all the social norms: Jo March in Little Women, Nancy in Nancy Drew, Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, Elizabeth Winthrop in The Winthrop Woman, or Anne Boleyn in The Concubine.

During college English Lit, I discovered another unconventional heroine from the late 14th century: The Wife of Bath. I wrote a 10-page paper titled Medieval Male Chauvinism, defending this thesis: “The Wife of Bath is a vehicle for criticism of the traditional view of the Medieval church regarding marriage and the role of women.” I explored the dichotomous medieval images of women: Mary, the Virgin Mother, worshiped for her purity and innocence, and Eve, condemned for creating original sin following the unfortunate incident of the apple in the Garden of Eden.

The colorful life of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath posed a threat to the dominant view of women as articulated by the Church. She was bawdy and opinionated. She said the quiet part aloud: Wives should rule their husbands!

But the Wife of Bath also complained that most women didn’t have the opportunity to tell their own stories. She took it upon herself to highlight the prejudices and problems facing women in medieval culture. This also advanced Chaucer’s aim in The Canterbury Tales of shining a light on people whose voices typically were unheard.

Throughout history women who broke the mold in real life have been overlooked, marginalized, and often outright villainized. Women’s History Month was launched in 1987 to set the record straight.

A new book, We the Women, the Hidden Heroes who shaped America, by Norah O’Donnell with Kate Andersen Brower, celebrates many of these fascinating untold stories of women who were unwilling to accept the way of the world.

Trailblazing Women’s Work

Most of the women in We the Women aren’t household names. But they’re even more admirable because most of them ran households, and raised children, on top of the achievements cited in this book. Here are a select few:

Mary Katherine Goddard, 1739-1816. She’s the only woman with her name printed on the Declaration of Independence. She had learned the printing business from her brother, and the Continental Congress asked her to print their official resolutions as well as the document listing the signers. In doing this, she placed her life and livelihood at risk of retaliation from the British. In July 1775 she was named the postmaster of Baltimore – the first woman postmaster in the Colonies, and later, of the United States. With the ratification of the new Constitution in 1789, she was removed from office. The official reason? The job would require more travel than a woman could handle.

Mercy Otis Warren, 1728-1814. She was called the secret muse of The Bill of Rights. Four years prior to the Declaration of Independence, she was writing criticisms of the British Colonial governor, and taking other British leaders to task through her plays. In 1805, she wrote the History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, the first book published by a woman in America. None of this would have been possible without the support of her prominent father and later her husband.

Elizabeth Ellet, 1818-1877. She authored Women of the Revolution, a three-volume history published in 1848. Women’s lives weren’t considered important by historians of this time. It’s only because of Ellet that we have a record of their contributions today. She married in 1835, and by 1843, she had set up an apartment in New York City, the center of the publishing industry. She traveled back and forth to visit her husband in South Carolina, publishing at least 17 other books.

Belva Ann Lockwood, 1830 -1917. As a young widow, she sent her daughter to live with her parents while she earned a college degree. Later moving to D.C. with her daughter, she became active in women’s suffrage. After remarrying, she persevered to find a law school that would admit her. She had to appeal to President Ulysses S. Grant for the release of the law degree she had earned. “We shall never have equal rights until we take them, nor respect until we command it,” she said. Lockwood ran for president in 1884, long before women could vote. After appealing to Congress to change the rules, she became the first woman attorney to argue a case before the Supreme Court.

Charlotte Forten, 1837-1914. Forten grew up a free Black woman, educated in the antebellum north. The women role models in her family founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. She became a published abolitionist poet and essayist. After the Civil War, she traveled

South to teach freed slaves. She was the first black woman to write for The Atlantic Monthly in 1864. She helped establish the National Association of Colored Women in 1896.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, 1821-1910. She applied to 30 schools to achieve her ambition to become a physician. Studying the human anatomy alongside men was considered extremely improper, and sometimes she was denied observation of surgeries. Even after earning a degree, the public wasn’t ready for women physicians. But she and her sister Emily, who eventually earned her medical degree, opened The New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1857.

Susan LaFlesche, 1865 – 1915, a native American member of the Omaha tribe witnessed an Indian woman die when a white physician refused to treat her. She graduated valedictorian of her medical class in 1889, becoming the first indigenous woman to receive medical degree. She opened the first private hospital on a Native American reservation in 1913. Her sister Suzette LaFlesche, 1854-1903, became an interpreter in the landmark civil rights case of Standing Bear v. Crook. It was the first Native American civil rights victory in U.S. federal court. She also worked as an advocate, lecturer, and writer.

Emily Warren Roebling, 1843- 1903. It required 14 years to build the Brooklyn Bridge, and the human toll was steep. It took the life of developer John Augustus Roebling, and severely disabled his son Washington Augustus Roebling, husband of Emily. She took over as project manager and became a skillful negotiator and stand-in chief engineer. She fought to retain leadership under the Roebling name. The plaque on the Brooklyn Bridge is dedicated to three Roeblings: She is listed first.

Inez Milholland, 1886-1916. After being rejected by several law schools, she earned her degree in 1912. In 1913, dressed in flowing white and riding a white horse, she led 5,000 women down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. creating huge headlines just prior to President Wilson’s inauguration. It was a turning point in the passage of the 19th amendment. Despite her diagnosis of pernicious anemia, she made 50 appearances in 28 days in eight states promoting women’s suffrage. “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” she asked at a National Women’s Party event in 1916, where she collapsed on stage. She died a few weeks later, at the age of 30. The 19th Amendment passed in 1920.

Margaret Sanger, 1879-1966. Sanger’s motivation was derived from her mother, who endured 18 pregnancies, dying at age 50. Sanger became a nurse, witnessing other women die from the lack of reproductive rights. She opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916, and founded the American Birth Control League in 1921 (the precursor of Planned Parenthood). She was jailed 9 times for violating the Comstock Act, which banned dissemination of information about contraception. She worked with philanthropist Katharine McCormick to obtain funding to develop the first birth control pill.

Mary McLeod Bethune, 1875-1955. She was the first in her family not born into slavery. In 1904, she opened the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training Institute for Negro Girls. She also launched the Mary McLeod Hospital and Training School for Nurses and the National Council of Negro Women. She became the only woman on FDR’s “Black Cabinet”. She lobbied with the First Lady for a training program for the first black pilots, integrating the military during WW2. In 2021, she became the first woman to represent a state in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.

Frances Perkins,1880-1965. After college, she taught and volunteered at Hull House in Chicago. In 1911, she witnessed Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Leaving her New York office of the National Consumers League, she became even more involved in changing labor laws to improve safety and working conditions and end child labor. In 1933, she was asked by FDR to serve as Secretary of Labor, becoming the first woman to serve in the Cabinet. She was considered a major architect of Roosevelt’s New Deal. “Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees,” she declared. She is most known for developing the Social Security policy.

Rep. Patricia Schroeder, 1940 2023. She moved from Oregon to Des Moines as a child, and graduated from Roosevelt High School. She met her husband while attending Harvard Law School. They married in 1962, moving to Colorado at a time when married couples weren’t allowed to obtain contraceptives. She was elected to Congress at age 32 on a platform of opposition to the Vietnam war, support of the environment, and child care. “I have a brain and a uterus and they both work,” she announced. Schroeder fought for the Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993, as well as protections against child abuse, the Safe Motherhood Act, and the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. She served as a member of Congress, at a time when fewer than 10% were women. She ran for president in 1988. Her 1998 memoir was titled 24 Years of House Work. . . and the Place is Still a Mess.

Count on Backlash

Suffragists meeting in Seneca Falls in 1848 created the Declaration of Sentiments, demanding their rights as citizens, including:

• Right to vote
• Legal status in marriage/divorce
• Access to education
• Expanded employment options
• Control of property and earnings

Most of these rights have been won, but some not until 1970s. I came of age just as the second wave of women’s rights was gaining momentum, with a focus on structural inequalities. Landmark Supreme Court cases and legislation included:

1) The 1972 decision that unmarried women had the same constitutional rights to contraceptives as married women

2) Passage of Title IX, prohibiting sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funds

3) The 1973 ruling that the U.S. Constitution generally protected a woman’s right to abortion

4) The 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act made it illegal to deny women credit because of sex or marital status</nl>

I was able to buy my first house as a single woman in 1981. I naively assumed there would be a through line of progress for women’s rights throughout my lifetime, and if I had daughters, they wouldn’t have to fight the same battles.

But progress has been uneven:

• One-third of working physicians are women, but much less in some surgical specialties
• Women are 56.2% of law school students
• Women control half of the wealth in the U.S.
• 11% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women
• A total of 69% of veterinarians are women
• Women compose 34% of the STEM workforce
• Only 14% of engineers today are women
• Women earn 83¢ for every dollar earned by men
• Women hold about two-thirds of U.S. student loan debt

Then, as now, there were those who stood in their way, arguing this wasn’t the way of the world. Some of them were women. For instance, Phyllis Schlafly, who held a law degree and was decidedly not a typical housewife, turned the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) into a war among women over gender roles. Passed by Congress in 1972, it was only ratified by 35 states prior to the deadline. It’s still not part of the Constitution.

After fighting for four years to deprive Iowa women of their reproductive rights Gov. Kim Reynolds succeeded in passing a six-week abortion law in 2023. Today it’s more difficult to recruit OB-GYN providers for all women, and it’s creating maternity care deserts.

Although she proposed legislation allowing Iowans ages 18 and older to obtain various birth control products directly from a pharmacist, and the Iowa Senate passed this bill, the Iowa House never brought it to a vote. Reynolds also placed regulatory and funding restrictions on Planned Parenthood Centers, shrinking the number of clinics.

On the national level, the women appointed by President Trump to his Cabinet simply promote his administration’s culture war policies. Over the past decade, we’ve seen how easily women’s economic potential– and their autonomy – can be eroded.

Recently I ran across a brief entry in my old college notebook. I wrote: “My interest in women’s lib was not a sudden fad. I didn’t just wake up one morning and rush out and burn my undergarments, smash my perfume bottles, or give all my dresses to the Goodwill. That’s not what women’s liberation means to me. . .

“A really ambitious boy is urged to aspire to the office of President; an ambitious girl is supposed to aspire to be Miss America… This brings me to a point which I can’t emphasize enough: women cannot truly be liberated until men are.”

During this 250th anniversary of our country, we must not allow women’s struggles against inequalities to be erased from history. We owe them too much.

We must assume that women’s rights are on the ballot every time there’s an election. After all, hidden heroines still are in our midst, and someday they’ll add their own inspiring stories. The next chapter remains to be rewritten.

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