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NOW Press Release on City Hall Gender Discrimination
(1972)
(Editors Note: Gender discrimination in Chicago city employment was
rampant before the advent of the women's movement. The reigning Daley
political machine was very adroit at fending off challenges, but organizations
like the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Chicago Women's
Liberation Union were not easily brushed aside.)
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE September 1, 1972, 11:00 a.m.
The National
Organization for Women (NOW) has been working (for the past two years)
for passage of city legislation which would prohibit discrimination
because of sex. Partial success was achieved in 1971 when two of four
of NOW's proposed bills were passed by the Chicago City Council, thereby
adding sex to the classifications of persons discriminated against
to the Ordinances on Housing and The Commission on Human Relations.
However, to date the council has refused to pass what N.O.W. considers
its most important proposal, namely, its employment ordinance which
would prohibit discrimination because of sex in employment.
N.O.W. started
working for a city law on sex discrimination in employment in 1970
when Atty. Charlotte Adelman, Legislative Chairperson, addressed the
City Council to speak in favor of such an Ordinance which Alderman
Leon Despres (5th) had then introduced. Ms. Adelman was the first woman
to address the Chicago City Council on the subject of equality in employment
on the basis of sex. But, two years later, after numerous meetings
with assistants to the Mayor, phone calls, letters, reintroduction
of a similar ordinance by Alderman Despres and publication of his study
revealing massive sex discrimination in the City government itself,
the Ordinance is still unpassed. If the City feels it has something
to hide, N.O.W. points out that those seeking relief from city sex
discrimination in employment can file, as Ms. Eleanor Protos recently
did, a complaint with the State of Illinois Fair Employment Practices
Commission (FEPC).
The American
Civil Liberties Union, Illinois Division, joins the alderpeople
and the organizations present in denouncing employment discrimination
on the grounds of sex by the City of Chicago.
The essence
of the fundamental civil right to equality of treatment under the
laws is recognition of individual merit, without regard to the race
or sex into which a person happens to be born. When a person's own
city practices a clear pattern of job discrimination against him
or her, the basic right to equality of treatment by ones own government
is seriously abridged.
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