When the Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee was established in 1988, the Reagan administration had succeeded in curtailing feminist gains in employment and reproductive rights while introducing no legislation to support the struggling families that Reagan purported to champion. In 2017, the current administration did as much damage as Reagan had during his eight years, rolling back enforcement of pay equity, environmental safeguards, worker safety, reproductive rights, and protection of women from violence in the home and the workplace.
In 1988, the women’s movement, according to the media, was in decline. Younger women, it was said, were already enjoying the significant gains that the movement achieved in the 1970s, and they saw little need for further action. Conservative politicians were ascendant with the support of groups like Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP ERA [Stop Taking Our Privileges Equal Rights Amendment] and the “right to life” movement, both with their dominant strength in Southern states.
Worried by these developments, longtime feminists Susan Rose, Lois Phillips, and Gayle Binion, energized by their discussions in a seminar at USC’s Institute for the Study of Women and Men, decided to push back against the Reagan administration’s retrograde measures.