The Foreign Service Journal, March 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2016 47 Service at the GS-13 level, which in those days translated to FS-4. I was brought back as an FSR-5, and I complained about it. Not because I expected a 4, but because I’m not a doormat. I wrote a memo to the director of personnel and said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate; I should be a 4.” He was furious, and was reliably quoted as saying ‘If she didn’t want the 5, why the hell did she come back in?’ ... The first thing I did when I came back was sit on the files project. And one of the things I did on the files project was check the files of anyone who had come in laterally. And guess what? The men came in at 4 if they had been a GS-13, and I came in as a 5. … When the women sued the State Department back in the mid-70s—this is a hard story for me to tell, but let’s be truth- ful for history. I don’t believe in suing the State Department. I didn’t like the style of the people who were in charge of the suit. …There is a statistical pattern of discrimination which is, I think, clear and well established. And I think, by and large, it is not just unconscious, but maybe even subconscious. And we need to work on it. But I don’t like the suits. My husband urged me to join it. … As a whole the department was doing what was comfortable. It was because these women had taken risks. You shouldn’t just leave them out there to take all the flak. It was a class action suit which was filed by female Foreign Service officers led by Alison Palmer and others. The claim in the suit was that the department had discriminated against women in hiring, assign- ing, promoting, giving incentive awards, every step of the way. ... I was promoted as fast as anybody in the Foreign Service. I became an ambassador, I became an assistant secretary. I was the first woman to be a principal deputy assistant secretary in EB. I was the first woman to run the international finance and development portfolio in the EB. So for me to argue that the department was discriminating against me as an individual was ridiculous. … [Constable did join the suit, but was not eligible for the remedies the department was ultimately required to offer.] Elinor Constable joined the State Department Foreign Service in 1957 and resigned in 1959, after her marriage to FSO Peter Consta- ble. She rejoined the Foreign Service and served not only as ambas- sador to Kenya (1986-1989) but also as the first female principal deputy assistant secretary of the Economic Bureau and as assistant secretary in the Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. She retired in 1993. These excerpts are taken from interviews by Charles Stuart Kennedy beginning in 1996. It Was the Early 1970s, and America Was Changing PHYLLIS OAKLEY W e had decided to get married [in 1957], and it was a very complicated situation. I knew that I had to resign. I must say that at the time my conscious- ness was very low. Women in the Foreign Service knew that if they married they would have to resign, and we accepted that discrimination without batting an eyelash. At the time, there weren’t many vacancies for junior offi- cers; if the department had offered me something potentially interesting and challeng- ing, I might have felt differ- ently about resignation. My decision to get married was undoubtedly greeted by the Personnel Office with relief because it was just one less person it had to place. … I never asked to see the regulations about married women; I did not object or demand a job when I got to Khartoum. I just accepted life as it was generally lived. In fact, the department operated by custom, and not because of legal limitations; but no woman thought of challenging those customs—our consciousness was very low indeed. … I was deeply in love, ready for marriage. I did not see myself as a victim in marrying Bob; it was the beginning of a new phase in my life. Sometime during our tour in Beirut [1974], we began to hear that the State Department was changing in regard to women. The issue of married women in the Foreign Service had been revisited, and policies were changing—for example, women were no longer required to resign when they married. So I went to see the embassy’s personnel officer and told her that in light of the policy changes being implemented and in Officials were striving to advance women and to demonstrate that they were moving with the times. —Phyllis Oakley