Kenny Anderson
Eleanor Smeal: Biography
Eleanor Smeal was born on July 30th, 1939 in Ashtabula Ohio to parents who
had recently immigrated to the US from Italy. She grew up in Eerie Pennsylvania and
lived in the Pennsylvania area for most of her life. She was raised Catholic but went
to public schools and did very well in them. She went to college at Duke University,
graduating in 1961 with a B.A. in political science.
She went on to get a masters degree in both political science and public
administration in 1963 from the University of Florida where she met her husband
Charles Smeal. The couple had two children after they graduated and Eleanor began
to work on her doctoral thesis as they raised their kids but was unable to finish due
to a lack of daycare services as well as a chronic back injury. Her back injury was
one of the reasons that she got involved in the feminist movements when she
realized that wives and mothers were unable to get disability benefits, which she
badly needed. Looking back she says that the moment she decided to get involved
was during a TV program on the 50th anniversary of suffrage, "The eleven o'clock
news made the whole conference look like we were stark raving mad. That was the
day I said, 'I'm joining NOW. With these kinds of misstatements and lies they need
all the help they can get.'"
She gave them that help first by joining her local league of women voters in
1968 and then by joining the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1970.
When she said she was going to help she meant it and by 1971 she was the
president of her local chapter of NOW, rising to become the president of the state of
Pennsylvania’s NOW chapter by 1972. As the Pennsylvania president of NOW she
worked to get equal physical education classes for girls and supported the Equal
Rights Amendment (ERA). She wouldn’t be stopped at the state level and became a
member of the NOW board of directors in 1975, and finally became the president of
the organization in 1977.
When she became president NOW was the largest women’s rights
organization in the world, and during her first two years as president she doubled
the membership of the organization. As president she maintained the grassroots
origin of the movement, wanting the movement to be accessible to everyone who
wanted to support women’s rights. The biggest part of her presidency was her
campaign for the ERA. She was instrumental in organizing the march on Washington
that allowed for an extension on the deadline for getting the amendment ratified.
After she increased the deadline she continued to campaign in states, which she
believed could be convinced to ratify the amendment. Sadly the amendment was
never ratified and in 1982 she left her office as president because NOW laws forbid
her from running for a third term.
Stepping down as president did not however stop her activism in women’s
rights. After she stepped down she wrote a book called Why and How Women Will
Elect the Next President, which was published in 1984. In the book she wrote about
how women would vote in upcoming elections as a collective and would be able to
Kenny Anderson
focus on issues of social change, social welfare, and peace. Here we see the legacy of
Frances Willard’s use of the Cult of True Womanhood professing that women are the
moral voice of society and need to use their votes for the good of society.
By 1985 the members of NOW decided to suspend their laws and allow
Smeal to run for one more term. In her last term as president she stressed that the
organization needed to become more militant and needed to “get back on the
streets”. She focused her new campaign on reinstating the ERA and during this time
she began her interest in reproductive rights, which would shape the rest of her
career. After her term ended she founded the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF)
in 1987.
In her work with the FMF Smeal has been active in supporting reproductive
rights, along with many other feminist issues. She has been very active in supporting
mifepristone, commonly known as the “morning after pill” and continues to fight for
more research into mifepristone use. Along with her reproductive rights work she
has been instrumental in beginning to integrate Little League baseball. In another
instance she worked at comparing Christian and Muslim religious extremists after a
member of the “army of God” a militant Christian organization sent hoax letters
claiming to contain anthrax to various abortion clinics. Smeal is still active today and
campaigned for Barak Obama in the 2012 presidential election. She still runs the
FMF and continues to be dedicated to women’s rights, but specifically focuses on
reproductive rights.
Bibliography:
"Eleanor Smeal." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Biography In Context. Web. 25
Apr. 2013.
"Eleanor Smeal (1939 - present) 2008 Humanist Heroine." The Humanist Sept.-Oct. 2008. Biography In
Context. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.
"Q&A: Eleanor Smeal. (On the Line)." The Progressive Jan. 2003: 16. Biography In Context. Web. 25 Apr.
2013.
Jacoby, Mary. "DOMESTIC TERRORIST: SECOND OF A TWO-PART SPECIAL REPORT;
WAAGNER ON THE RUN." St. Petersburg Times [St. Petersburg, FL] 5 Aug. 2002: 1A. Biography In
Context. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.