The Foreign Service Journal, March 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2016 25 Implicit and explicit bias in the performance evaluation and promotion system was one of WAO’s primary targets. her 1971 victory in that case with a class-action suit on behalf of all women in the U.S. Foreign Service in 1976. Today’s impartial entrance criteria, evaluation and promotion policies, and assign- ments processes all stem in large part from “the Palmer Case,” which was fought in various phases over more than 30 years. During the same period, Palmer’s spiritual journey led to her collaboration with other women to enter the Episcopal Church priesthood, and she was “irregularly” ordained in 1975. When she retired in 1981, after a 26-year career in the Foreign Service, Palmer was an FS-3. In her autobiography, Diplomat and Priest: One Woman’s Challenge to State and Church (CreateSpace, 2015) and in a series of interviews with the author, Palmer describes her experience. After three written rejec- tions from ambassadors in Africa, Palmer, an African affairs specialist, had tried for a position in Addis Ababa in 1966. As she put it in the interview, her assign- ments officer wrote the ambassador that, though he might be “surprised that we would consider sending a girl to Addis,” he could be assured that “given her superb record and qualifications, we believe she will fill the job splendidly.” The ambassador permit- ted Palmer a position at post in Ethiopia—as social secretary to his wife. Two years later, Palmer showed up for her first day in an FS-4 position in Washington, D.C., only to be told she would instead assume a position two grades lower because a lower-ranking male colleague needed the position as a path to promotion. “I used to tell women to not join the Foreign Service because their talents wouldn’t be used,” Palmer says. Palmer’s 1968 EEO complaint charged the three ambassadors with discrimination, yet the four-page memo submitted by the State Department investigator did not name them. In 1969, the State Department found in her favor, but Palmer demanded a change in personnel policies, a retroactive promotion and a review of State’s EEO Office. With the help of the American Federation of Government Employees, Palmer appealed to the board of the Civil Service Commission, the federal employment entity that was later replaced by the Office of Personnel Management, the Merit Sys- tems Protection Board and the Federal Labor Relations Author- ity. After hearings in the summer of 1971, the board decided in her favor. She received the promotion and retroactive pay, which she used to fund the class-action lawsuit she filed in 1976. Parallel Strides Meanwhile, Palmer and other members of an “ad hoc com- mittee to improve the status of women” (which would later become the Women’s Action Organization) continued to work separately and together for Foreign Service equality on a number of fronts. In 1968 the ad hoc committee demanded that State appoint a women’s coordinator to monitor and implement the Federal Women’s Program the Johnson administration had established to promote female employment in the federal government. The department complied, nam- ing Elizabeth Harper as a part-time coordinator and establishing an official com- mittee that included Jean Joyce, a founder of the WAO; Alison Palmer; and Barbara Good, an American Foreign Service Association board member and a founder and presi- dent of the WAO. “The timing of this mandated program greatly facilitated WAO’s effort to press for change,” Good wrote in the January 1981 Foreign Service Journal (“Women in the Foreign Service: A Quiet Revolution”). At its official formation in 1970, WAO resolved to be an independent, voluntary organization that would work, in the words of Good, “not by confrontation or militancy, but by dealing directly with management to bring about reform” that would serve all categories of women in the three foreign affairs agencies—State, USAID and the U.S. Information Agency. The organization worked closely with AFSA to eliminate the policy banning married women from the Foreign Service and secure reappointment for those who had resigned—a goal that was achieved in 1971. According to Good, WAO members disagreed with Palmer’s “militant” approach. After her EEO victory in 1971, which ben- efited all Foreign Service women, the group split over support for the class-action suit. “After long discussion,” Good notes in her FSJ article, WAO became “a somewhat silent partner” in that suit and, at the same time, continued to work “within the system,