Addie Wyatt too embraced the new women’s movement, joining NOW early on and, in 1974, founding the
Coalition of Labor Union Women, which put abortion rights, women’s leadership in unions, and equal
rights for women in hiring, promotion, and pay among its top priorities.
By the early 1970s, only Myra Wolfgang and a few other holdouts actively opposed the new feminism.
Wolfgang testified against the ERA before the Senate in May 1970, claiming that for “Tillie the Toiler” the
ERA would bring “an equality of mistreatment.” Betty Friedan, representing the pro-ERA forces, roared
back, “I accuse the male labor establishment of gross neglect and blindness to the problems of working
women.” The “Aunt Toms” who agree with them, she added, with a nod to Wolfgang, didn’t help matters
either. Wolfgang and Friedan traded insults again a few months later at a Women’s Teach-in at Wayne
State University. This time when Friedan trotted out the “Aunt Tom” label, Wolfgang exploded. “Look
who’s calling who ‘Aunt Tom,’ ” she retorted. She turned to the audience and pointed to Friedan. “She’s
the real Aunt Tom, the Chamber of Commerce’s Aunt Tom. Anyone who tries to repeal women’s
protective legislation is doing the bosses’ work.” Wolfgang’s objections to the new women’s movement
went beyond the ERA or her personal squabbles with Betty Friedan. In a 1971 address before the
American Association of University Women, Wolfgang challenged the new feminism’s claim to
universalism and to represent all women. “I disagree with the approach that calls for the unity of women
under the nebulous slogan that ‘Sisterhood is Powerful,’ ” she began. Then, with a sly rewriting of a
phrase from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Ladies,” in which the male protagonist judges all the many
women with whom he has consorted as alike, as “sisters under the skin,” she begged to differ: “The
Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’Grady may be sisters under the skin but their lives, concerns, and needs are
radically different.”^38
A third group, best exemplified by Esther Peterson and Kitty Ellickson, took a middle path: they were
neither enthusiastic nor hostile to the new feminism. In 1971, Peterson dropped her opposition to the
ERA. Few woman-only state laws remained, she reasoned, and “now I believe we should direct our
efforts toward replacing discriminatory state laws with good labor standards that will protect both men
and women. . . . History is moving in this direction,” she added, and “women must move with it.”
Relieved because she thought a century of acrimony over the ERA had finally come to an end, Peterson
urged her political allies to move on and put the old battles behind them. At the same time, she worried
that in a new unified feminist movement, the needs of low-income women and women of color might be
lost. Don’t forget, she cautioned, the many women not well positioned to take advantage of opportunity.^39
Ellickson too had mixed feelings about the changes taking place. She had spent her life arguing for
women’s rights and trying to make sure that the labor movement, employers, and government took women
seriously. Now thousands of women were taking up the cause, continuing the struggle for women’s
equality and freedom. She welcomed what she called a “different wave in the long struggle for women’s
equality” and marveled at the new movement’s bold attack on the psychological underpinnings of
women’s oppression.^40 Young women, she wrote, were digging deep into their own psyches and asking
whether they should be sacrificing for others and putting the needs of others first; these questions were
important and must be asked and answered. Yet she too worried that other issues would be pushed aside
and forgotten. The younger generation of activists, born in prosperity and educated for success, might find
it hard to understand those without such advantages. Economic disparities must not be ignored, she
warned, nor should the caregiving, perhaps even self-sacrifice, necessary for societal survival be
underestimated.
In 1971, Anne Draper, a 1938 Hunter College graduate turned garment worker organizer, had a similar
set of concerns as she stood before the California Industrial Welfare Commission, testifying on behalf of