Women within SNCC began
to identify obvious examples of bias, as enumerated in the late 1964 position
paper below, several months after the Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi. My understanding is that Casey Hayden was the primary
author, though it was circulated anonymously for reasons which are explained
within.
1. Staff was involved in crucial constitutional revisions at the
Atlanta staff meeting in October [1964]. A large committee was appointed
to present revisions to the staff. The committee was all men.
2. Two organizers were working together to form a farmers league.
Without asking any questions, the male organizer immediately assigned the
clerical work to the female organizer although both had had equal experience
in organizing campaigns.
3. Although there are women in Mississippi project who have been working as long as some of the men, the leadership group in COFO is all men.
4. A woman in a field office wondered why she was held responsible for day-to-day decisions, only to find out later that she had been appointed project director but not told.
5. A fall 1964 personnel and resources report on Mississippi projects
lists the number of people in each project. The section on Laurel, however,
lists not the number of persons, but "three girls."
6. One of SNCC's main administrative officers apologizes for appointment
of a woman as interim project director in a key Mississippi project area.
7. A veteran of two years' work for SNCC in two states spends her
day typing and doing clerical work for other people in her project.
8. Any woman in SNCC, no matter what her position or experience,
has been asked to take minutes in a meeting when she and other women are outnumbered
by men.
9. The names of several new attorneys entering a state project
this past summer were posted in a central movement office. The first initial
and last name of each lawyer was listed. Next to one name was written: (girl).
10. Capable, responsible,
and experienced women who are in leadership positions can expect to have
to defer to a man on their project for final decisionmaking
11.
A session at the recent October staff meeting in Atlanta was the first large
meeting in the past couple of
years
where a woman was asked to chair.
Undoubtedly this list will seem strange
to some, petty to others, laughable to most. The list could continue as far
as there are women in the movement. Except that most women don't talk about
these kinds of incidents, because the whole subject is [not] discussable--strange
to some, petty to others, laughable to most. The average white person finds
it difficult to understand why the Negro resents' being called "boy," or
being thought of as "musical" and "athletic," because the average white person
doesn't realize that he assumes
he is superior. And naturally
he doesn't understand the problem of paternalism. So too the average SNCC
worker finds it difficult to discuss the woman problem because of the assumption
of male superiority. Assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and
deep rooted and every much as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of
white supremacy are to the Negro. Consider why it is in SNCC that women who
are competent, qualified, and experienced, are automatically assigned to
the "female" kinds of jobs such as typing, desk work, telephone work, filing,
library work, cooking, and the "assistant kind" of administrative work but
rarely the "executive" kind.
“The woman in SNCC is often in the same
position as that token Negro hired in a corporation. The management thinks
that it has done its bit. Yet, every day the Negro bears an atmosphere, attitudes
and actions which are tinged with condescension and paternalism, the most
telling of which are when he is not promoted as the equally or less skilled
whites are. This paper is anonymous. Think about the kinds of things the
author, if made known, would have to suffer because of raising this kind
of discussion. Nothing so final as being fired or outright exclusion, but
the kinds of things which are killing to the insides--insinuations, ridicule,
over-exaggerated compensations.
“This paper is
presented anyway because it needs to be made [k]now[n] that many women in
the movement are not "happy and contented" with their status. It needs to
be made known that much ent and experience are being wasted by this movement
when women are not given jobs commensurate with their abilities. It needs
to be known that just as Negroes were the crucial factor in the economy of
the cotton South, so too in SNCC, women are the crucial factor that keeps
the movement running on a day-to-day basis. Yet they are not
given equal say-so when it comes to day-to-day decisionmaking. What
can be done? Probably nothing right away. Most men in this movement are probably
too threatened by the possibility of serious discussion on this subject. Perhaps
this is because they have recently broken away from a matriarchal framework
under which they may have grown up. Then too, many women are as unaware and
insensitive to this subject as men, just as there are many Negroes who don't
understand they are not free or who want to be part of white America. They
don't understand that they have to give up their souls and stay in their
place to be accepted. So too, many women, in order to be accepted by men,
on men's terms, give themselves up to that caricature of what a woman is-unthinking,
pliable, an ornament to please the man.
“Maybe the only thing that can come out
of this paper is discussion-amidst the laughter-but still discussion. (Those
who laugh the hardest are often those who need the crutch of male supremacy
the most.) And maybe some women will begin to recognize day-to-day discriminations.
And maybe sometime in the future the whole of the women in this movement
will become so alert as to force the rest of the movement to stop the discrimination
and start the slow process of changing values and ideas so that all of us
gradually come to understand that this is no more a man's world than it is
a white world.”