OPINION: What women have gained — and what we stand to lose

Sixty years ago this month, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, religion, sex, color, or national origin in public places, schools and places of employment. The watershed legislation was a giant step forward for America’s Black citizens, who had long suffered the humiliation and brutality of Jim Crow-era segregation laws that barred them from full participation in public life based solely on the color of their skin. Just as profound, but perhaps less well-known, was the door the act opened for women, who until that time could be legally denied educational, career, and other opportunities based solely on their sex. For many, the latter change meant abandoning sexist practices that were unjust and unfair and living up to America’s promise of equality. For others, it meant uprooting well-established traditions that treated women as subordinate to men and threatening the stability of the country. Sadly, this tension persists today, and influential advocates who oppose women’s rights are hoping the upcoming election will allow them to peel back the freedoms we have gained.

In the early 1960s, civil rights for Black Americans were a deeply controversial proposition. “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would tend to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races,” a senator from Georgia declared during a debate on the bill. Civil rights for women were also controversial. Even though women had enjoyed the right to vote for over 40 years, the idea that they might be equal to men in their opportunities and choices challenged deeply entrenched cultural and religious views that a woman’s only proper place was in the home.

Ironically, “sex” was added to the civil rights bill in what many viewed as an effort to kill it. Sen. Howard Smith of Virginia, a strong opponent of Black civil rights, introduced the amendment to include women during debate on the Senate floor. The idea was so far-fetched that fellow senators laughed when he proposed it. Since Smith was known as a supporter of women’s rights, historians debate whether his main intention was cynical (to kill civil rights for Blacks) or genuine (to elevate civil rights for women). Either way, Congress passed the act with his amendment included, and overnight women gained freedoms they had long been denied.

In my own chosen profession — law — the change was dramatic. For over a century before the Civil Rights Act, it was perfectly acceptable to exclude women from legal positions for which they were qualified. In 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state could deny a woman the right to practice law, with one justice opining that “the natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life...The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.” For most of the next century, few women were allowed to enroll in our nation’s law schools, and even the most accomplished female graduates were denied employment. The late U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg both graduated in the top tiers of their law school classes, but no firm would hire them because they were women.

After the Civil Rights Act, the number of women in the legal profession grew steadily. In the 1950s, only five percent of law school students were women. By the time I left Fairbanks for law school in 1980, nearly one-third of my classmates were women. Today, women comprise over half of law school student bodies. Alaska’s legal community has seen the impact. The Alaska Bar Association recently recognized 64 attorneys for their 50-plus years of membership. Of the group, only two were women. In contrast, more than 950 of the attorneys currently active in Alaska — nearly 43% — are women, and women have held the highest judicial offices in Alaska with dedication and distinction.

Changes in law matter. Women didn’t become more capable or intelligent between the 1950s and today. Doors simply opened more widely, myths about women’s abilities got tested and proven false, and barriers to women’s achievement fell. Women thrive today in countless settings that were once off-limits to them. But the fact that the law that helped us shape our lives might have turned on a last-minute political move to avoid civil rights for Black people should alert us to just how arbitrary and tenuous our civil rights really are.

“The Conservative Promise” set forth in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” the blueprint for America’s future under a second Trump administration, identifies as its first goal the need to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” In far-right circles, “restore the family” is often code for removing women’s agency over our lives. Project 2025 celebrates the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade as “the greatest pro-family win in a generation.” Its authors promise that Dobbs is “just the beginning… The next conservative President’s agenda must go much further than the traditional, narrow definition of ‘family issues.’ Every threat to family stability must be confronted.” For these folks, independent women who pursue dreams outside the home pose a threat to “family stability.” NFL player Harrison Butker illustrated this view in his recent commencement speech, when he urged women to stay in their proper “lanes” as child-bearers and homemakers, claiming this was “God’s will.”

And how do Project 2025 proponents propose to achieve their vision of family? By erasing any notion of gender equality from our nation’s laws. Their document urges the next conservative President to “make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms … gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

To far-right hardliners poised to gain power in a second Trump administration, women’s rights are a feature of “woke” culture that must be sidelined, not fundamental freedoms that millions of Americans have cherished for 60 years. Backed by religious extremists who believe that God calls for women’s submission, they claim that nullifying the gains of women is their First Amendment right.

On the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, I look back with deep gratitude on the historic moment when courageous leaders recognized that our nation cannot prosper if more than half of our citizens are deprived of the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness on their own terms. But it’s vital to remember that the act’s protections against discrimination can be withdrawn as quickly and casually as they were granted. The best way to celebrate our civil rights today? Vote against those who would make them disappear.

Barbara Hood is a retired attorney and businesswoman who lives in Anchorage.

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