Monday, September 4, 2017

American Women's Lives At Work since 1964

It seems that every day we are reliving and relitigating the past sixty years. Nuclear fears, war in Korea, Russia, espionage, the Klan, civil rights, and the rights of women in the workplace.

The past is like a giant wave that catches us and then washes over us. I guess it's the ultimate reminder that if we don’t learn the lessons of history, we truly are condemned to repeat them.

In my recent conversation with ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Gillian Thomas, we focused on the nexus of two areas of this history: The rights of women, particularly in the workplace, and civil rights.  It was the landmark 1964 civil right act that also laid the predicate for the expanded rights of women in the workplace.

Thomas writes about this in Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women's Lives at Work.

My conversation with Gillian Thomas: