Are we regressing? Women’s rights in education are under growing threat in Idaho | Opinion
The first day of school when I was in ninth grade, the algebra teacher asked us to introduce ourselves and tell what we wanted to be when we grew up. I announced that I wanted to be a lawyer. The class erupted in laughter at the thought of a woman lawyer. It was the 1950s.
Fast forward to 2025 — four women lawyers sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
This did not happen by accident.
In 1869 when Myra Bradwell, having passed the Illinois bar exam, applied for a law license she was denied because of her sex. She sued, but when her case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, it denied her appeal, reasoning that “The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother… .” In the 1950s most law schools did not even admit women, and the few women, like Sandra Day O’Connor, who gained admittance had a hard time finding jobs after graduation.
In fact, until the 1970s or later many universities did not admit women at all. Getting them to do so took a lot of hard work, much of which was done by organizations like the American Association of University Women.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination against minority men and all women. Conservative groups opposed it, talking a lot about “states’ rights” rather than racism, and “sexism” wasn’t even a word yet. Women had to organize and work hard for enforcement. In 1972 Congress passed Title IX guaranteeing women an equal education. Since the 1970s, women have outnumbered men in colleges and universities, and now women make up more than half of entering classes in law schools and medical schools. Yet the wage gap still exists, with women’s pay averaging 82 cents for every dollar a man makes.
The Idaho Board of Education recently passed a resolution banning diversity, equity, and inclusion activities in our institutions of higher learning. College and university Women’s Centers, established to encourage women as they pursued their education, have closed. We get the message — women are no longer welcome in higher education in Idaho.
None of this is happening by accident either. Conservatives are well organized and eagerly anticipate overturning the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, on which so many of our rights depend.
After 60 years of the Civil Rights Act and other legislation that banned discrimination, are we now going to abandon the dream of equal opportunity for all? As a student, I said the pledge of allegiance in school every morning — “with liberty and justice for all.” I thought then that equality was an American value. Are we now going to change that pledge to “liberty and justice for a few”?
Does anyone expect that we women will quietly go back to 1869 when our “paramount destiny and mission” was to be a wife and mother?
And will my granddaughters have to go to school and be mocked by their classmates, as I was, for being ambitious?