For more than 35 years, the National Women’s Law Center has fought for policy and legislation to expand and protect what it believes to be the rights due to women and children. President and co-founder Nancy Duff Campbell, 66, has been at the center of those battles, arguing her way to the Supreme Court on behalf of unemployed mothers, and to the halls of Congress to pass laws like the monumental Tax Reform Act of 1986. Campbell shared with The Examiner by e-mail why she’s kept at it, and why the work is far from complete.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I am a Unitarian. I value its emphasis on freedom of thought, belief and faith within a spiritual tradition and I value the importance it places on justice, equality and compassion in human relations.
A good number of people believe that while there may have been a time for laws designed to ensure that women were afforded equal footing in careers and as heads of households, society has moved past that time and women and mothers no longer needs those crutches. How do you respond to that?
I strongly disagree. In the last 40 years we have secured some important laws designed to promote women’s equality and I’m proud to have been associated with securing many of them. But we still don’t have basic legal protections for women in a host of areas. And we don’t have strong enforcement of many of the laws that do exist. Finally, in the area of social and economic justice for women, we have a long way to go. One in four girls drops out of high school. Women working full time earn only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. More than 14 million women — one in eight — live in poverty, and single women, women of color and elderly women are especially vulnerable. Federal child care assistance reaches only one in seven eligible children. More than 17 million women have no health insurance and nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended. So we have quite an unfinished agenda.
What is your advice to young working women feeling pressure to choose between a career and raising a family?
My advice is to resist the pressure that you must choose one or the other in any absolute way. You may emphasize one or the other at different times, and you may actually choose one or the other for a time, but the important thing is that any number of arrangements can work. The challenge is picking the one that works for you — and remembering that even when your children are grown, issues of work/family balance do not disappear!
Has today’s generation of young women been responsible recipients of the rights earned by their mothers and grandmothers?
I think an important goal of each generation is to make life easier for the next generation. So, in a certain sense, we want each succeeding generation to benefit from our labors without having to think about it. Having said that, I am constantly amazed by the energy and commitment of today’s generation of young women — and men — to the cause of women’s equality. I think we are in good hands and, although it will take continued hard work, I am optimistic that we will continue to expand the possibilities for women and their families.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe that we must seek not just equality but social and economic justice for all individuals.
– Leah Fabel
