phasized as a career for girls, the revocation of fed-
eral funding from any school using textbooks that
portrayed women in nontraditional roles, the repeal
of all federal laws regarding domestic violence, and
the banning of any federally funded legal aid for
women seeking abortion counseling or a divorce.
The bill provided tax incentives designed to discour-
age women from working, such as allowing a hus-
band to establish a tax-deductible retirement fund
only if his wife had earned no money the previous
year.
Perhaps as a result of such efforts, new female ju-
dicial appointments fell from 15 percent of appoint-
ments to 8 percent during Reagan’s first term, and
the proportion fell even lower during the second
term. Despite federal regulations requiring the Jus-
tice Department to set hiring goals aimed at increas-
ing the number of women within its ranks, by 1986
Attorney General Edwin Meese III had yet to hire
a woman as a senior policy maker. The Federal
Women’s Program, which had been established in
1967 to increase the number of women in govern-
ment agencies, was dismantled by removing its re-
cruitment coordinators and its budget. As a result
of the Paperwork Reduction Act, the federal gov-
ernment ceased collecting recruitment statistics on
women. The highest female post on the Reagan staff
was held by Faith Whittlesey, assistant to the presi-
dent for public liaison, covering women’s and chil-
dren’s issues.
A central target for the Heritage Foundation was
the Women’s Educational Equity Act (WEEA) pro-
gram and its director, Leslie Wolfe. The only federal
program to promote equal education for girls, the
WEEA program had been called one of the most
cost-effective programs in the government. After
taking office in 1981, Reagan removed 25 percent
of the program’s already-approved budget and de-
clared his intention to completely remove its fund-
ing the following year. The program’s supporters
succeeded in winning a reprieve for the program, al-
though not without some casualties: 40 percent of
the program’s budget was cut. Its field reader staff,
which evaluated grant proposals, was replaced with
women from Schlafly’s Eagle Forum who were unfa-
miliar with the program’s policies and methods and
who did such things as repeatedly reject proposals to
study sexual discrimination on the basis that such
discrimination did not exist. A year later, Wolfe was
fired along with every other woman on staff, and the
office was demoted to the lowest level of bureau-
cracy.Women and the Workplace Unlike their American
counterparts, Canadian women were achieving some
significant legal victories. As a result of the Royal
Commission, led by Judge Rosalie Abella in 1984,
the Employment Equity Act was passed in 1986, re-
quiring employers to identify and remove unneces-
sary barriers to the employment of women and
minorities. The same year, the Federal Contractors
Employment Equity Program was implemented, re-
quiring contractors with at least one hundred em-
ployees who were providing goods or services for
the Canadian government to implement employee
equity.
In 1988, the Family and Medical Leave Act was in-
troduced in the U.S. Congress and failed to pass,
having been tied to the ABC Childcare bill and an
antipornography bill that proved too contentious. It
entitled employees to family leave in certain cases in-
volving birth, adoption, or serious medical condi-
tions and protected the employment and benefit
rights of employees taking such leave. Such a bill
would not pass until 1993.
In 1983, a thirty-nine-year-old newscaster, Chris-
tine Craft, filed suit against her former employer,
Metromedia, a Kansas City affiliate of the American
Broadcasting Company (ABC), on charges of sex
discrimination related to dismissal from her position.
Among the reasons Metromedia allegedly cited for
dismissing her were that she was “too old, too unat-
tractive, and not deferential to men.” Other women
working for the company confirmed that she was not
alone in her treatment; they quoted Metromedia’s
“fanatical obsession” with their appearance and had
also felt pressured to quit as a result of failing to meet
the company’s appearance standards for women. No
men reported similar treatment.
In August, 1983, the case was tried at the federal
district court in Kansas City, Missouri. The jury re-
turned a unanimous verdict in Craft’s favor, award-
ing her $500,000 in damages. U.S. district court
judge Joseph E. Stevens threw out the verdict and
called for a second trial in Joplin, Missouri. Stevens
justified Craft’s dismissal on the grounds that it was
not based on sex discrimination but on an applica-
tion of market logic. In the second trial, which took
place in 1984, the jury again decided in Craft’s favor.
Metromedia appealed the decision, and this timeThe Eighties in America Women’s rights 1061