The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2023 45 1 percent of the senior ranks; most women FS employees were secretaries. Women FS employees of all ranks and positions were expected to resign upon marriage. They were not hired if they had dependents, and their allowances were lower than their married male colleagues. There was only one career woman ambassador. Many women Civil Service employees were in dead-end jobs. Discrimination on the basis of sex (as well as race, color, religion, and national origin) had been outlawed in federal employment in 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For women FSOs, gender bias seriously harmed their hiring, assignments, performance evaluations, and promotions. At the time, the quota for women and Black people was one hired every other year, according to the transcript of Alison Palmer’s 1971 equal employment opportunity hearing. Their assign- ments were limited by the State Department due to the widely held beliefs that they would be looked down on in the Middle East and Asia and face machismo in Latin America, danger in Africa, and compromise behind the Iron Curtain. For more details, see my article, “Twenty Years After the ‘Women’s Revo- lution’: A Personal View, ” in the February 1991 FSJ . Women FSOs’ advancement was also severely limited by their assignment largely to the consular cone and some administrative functions, with few senior positions available. In the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), women were clustered in the cultural function, not information. At the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), women officers abroad, largely in nutrition and home economics functions, were the first to go when cuts were made. None were in policy or supervisory positions in Washington, D.C. Few, if any, women were chiefs of mission or in program direction in the three agencies, and their promotions were substantially slower than for men. The Foreign Service Staff Corps (FSS) was largely made up of women secretaries and male communicators. Secretaries served everywhere, but the ban on marriage left few chances for professional advancement. They had to share their housing, work unpaid overtime, were often without diplomatic status, and were frequently excluded from official functions. They felt disrespected both as professionals and as people. Adding to the discontent were the wives of FSOs, especially of younger and lower-ranking officers, who chafed at the bar- riers to their working overseas, the tradition of being subject to the demands and whims of the senior wives at post, and the fact they were evaluated as part of their husband’s efficiency reports. Stirrings of Reform The first shot across the bow in the fight for FS women’s equality was the grievance filed by FSO Alison Palmer in 1968 with the Civil Service Commission. Palmer charged discrimina- tion when her assignments to three African posts were refused or abridged by the ambassadors. It took three years, but she won her case in 1971 on appeal. In early 1970, State’s Deputy Under Secretary for Manage- ment WilliamMacomber oversaw a program to craft a more flexible and responsive State Department, with parallel systems for sister agencies—USAID and USIA. Thirteen interagency task forces looked at a broad range of personnel and management issues, held large open hearings from April through June, and drafted recommendations for change. The previously cited FSJ articles by Barbara Good and myself addressed the development of a group at this time intent on seeking redress of issues of concern to women employees and families. An Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women (later the Women’s Action Organization, or WAO) sought relief at first through the reform task forces. At a critical Aug. 26, 1970, meeting of the ad hoc group with Macomber and his staff, we found him to be sympathetic to the career aspirations of women. Although the deputy under secre- tary denied our request for separate women-focused task force subcommittees, he invited the group to make recommendations for “serious consideration.” As Macomber said at the time: “It was stupid to require women employees to resign at marriage: if the woman employee intended to continue her service, the department would attempt to find appropriate assignments for COURTESYOFMARGUERITECOOPER Mary Olmsted, the first president of the Women’s Action Organization, receiving the Woman of Courage award in 2010. The National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) presented the award in honor of Ms. Olmsted’s leadership of WAO. At right, NWPC President Lulu Flores; at left, the author, Marguerite Cooper, then NWPC vice president.