The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

46 JULY-AUGUST 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL both employees. If that was not possible, one could take leave without pay for the duration of the other’s assignment.” The ad hoc group got to work to provide data-driven evidence of discrimination with 28 recommendations for policy changes. None of them appeared in the task forces’ final report, “Diplo- macy for the 70s.” Over the next year or two, WAOmaneuvered within the system on some of their desired changes in personnel policy: for instance, an end to the ban on marriage and dependents for women; an end to discrimination in FSO assignments; and adjustments for the staff corps in their allowances, housing, and opportunities for upward mobility. The Personal Dimension The personal dimension in this progress was critical. Mov- ing from statements of support fromMacomber and his Special Assistant for Women’s Affairs Gladys Rogers, the group followed up to draft implementing policy statements. Because staff was busy with the task force–required changes, WAO drafted changes to the implementing regulations for review, editing, and publica- tion. As Rogers said, the ad hoc committee provided “a coherent, timely, integrated approach.” Macomber himself said that the WAO approach on these early issues was practical, and he appreciated our willingness to express thanks for work accomplished. WAO’s broad member- ship of men and women, Foreign Service and Civil Service, grew to 1,000 in all three agencies, led in the beginning by an FS-1, Mary Olmsted. Much has been written about the discontent of employees’ wives. Briefly, it was taken up in 1971 as an issue in the Secre- tary’s Open Forum, then called the Open Forum Panel (OFP), following the backlash to a 1970 policy statement restricting the demands senior wives could make on others. That statement had been drafted at the Foreign Service Institute’s wives seminar chaired by Dorothy Stansbury. Richard Williamson led an OFP committee that focused on the legal status of wives in negotiations with Macomber and other senior officers for a policy statement that included apprecia- tion for spouses’ contributions through their representational and charitable activities. But dependent spouses were declared to be “independent persons,” not government employees, and thus unable to be ordered to take on duties or included in their employee spouses’ efficiency reports. Other issues of concern to spouses abroad were the ability to work and family support. Tandem couples predominantly included a secretarial spouse who would be able to continue her career under the new guidelines. But others sought work abroad, some at missions on a part-time, intermittent, or temporary basis. While I was president of WAO (1976-1978), a group of spouses sought WAO’s help with a host of family concerns they wanted to take to Director General Carol Laise. These early efforts led to creation of the Family Liaison Office (now the Global Community Liaison Office) and the spouses’ skills bank, led by Hope Mey- ers and Cynthia Chard, respectively. For more information, see Married to the Foreign Service: An Oral History of the American Diplomatic Spouse by Jewel Fenzi with Carl L. Nelson (1994). A Turning Point The fight for women in the Foreign Service took a serious turn in 1976 when Alison Palmer filed a class action lawsuit charging sex discrimination of FSOs and Foreign Service applicants. In her March 2016 FSJ article, “Foreign Service Women Today: The Palmer Case and Beyond, ” former FSO Andrea Strano credited the lawsuit with causing State to either cease the unfair practices or make progress on such problems as out-of-cone and initial cone assignments for women FSOs, the lack of stretch and deputy chief of mission assignments for women, the dispropor- tionate promotion of men, discriminatory hiring practices and processes, and the reclassification of awards. But this remarkable progress took 34 years to accomplish, on appeal, bit by bit, as described in Palmer’s 475-page autobiography, Diplomat and Priest: One Woman’s Challenge to State and Church (2015). At the time, WAO agonized over whether to join the suit. We believed that the agencies discriminated, and despite the advances made in 1971-1972, there was much left to be done to achieve an equitable system. A good deal of the problemwith discrimination in initial grade and cone assignments, efficiency reports, and future potential was the result of subconscious atti- tudes. The lawsuit could document such discriminatory actions, based simply on statistical analysis, much of which WAO had collected. State Department Deputy Under Secretary for Management William Macomber meeting with Women’s Action Organization members in 1972. Facing the camera are Macomber (next to podium); his assistant, Gladys Rogers (to his left); Barbara Good, from State; Elaine Fry, from USIA; Idris Russell, State WAO vice president; and Viessa Jackson, USAID WAO vice president. FSJ ,FEBRUARY 1991