Each attendee at the AAUW Convention in Phoenix was given a copy of the “AAUW Historic Principles,” a 34 page booklet listing statements on “what we believe” from AAUW documents over the years. As an exercise to kick off our discussion of the strategic change, we handed out pages from that booklet to each of the attendees at our summer meeting and asked people to pick one item from the page to share with the rest of the group. Principles that were highlighted included:
Education
1898: “College training is a necessity and not a luxury for the average woman as well as for the average man” (p. 4)
Individual Rights
1919: “… [supports] equal pay for equal work” (p. 12)
Labor, Health, and Human Services
1923: “… [urges] a child labor amendment to the Constitution of the United States” (p. 22)
1974: “… supports the Equal Credit Opportunity Act … making illegal discrimination in granting credit on the basis of sex, race, creed, marital status, or national origin” (p. 24)
Global Interdependence
1931: “[supports] a treaty providing for consultation and conference in case of threatened war, a measure for the limitation and reduction of land, air, and naval armaments by international agreement at the General Disarmament Conference in 1932.” (p. 31)
1941: Throughout the war years, AAUW supports the establishment of women’s units of the armed services and calls for equal pay and rank for women. (p. 31)
1971: “…[urges] control of environmental pollution, conservation and wise utilization of our resources … [supports] the principle of zero population growth” (p. 30)
1975: “recognizes that food is a basic human need rather than a political issue and recommends support of measures to cope with world hunger which will minimize use of food as political tool, insure more efficient distribution beginning with establishment of worldwide food reserve programs and the sharing of technological agricultural assistance.” (p. 34)
1999: “… advocates support for United Nations programs that address human rights and women’s and girls’ concerns. AAUW has endorsed the ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) since 1981.” (p. 33)
If your quotation is missing from this list, feel free to add it to the comments or send it to Marty so it can be part of the article in the next Tar Heel News.I expect that the booklet will be available from www.aauw.org soon. In the meantime, if you’d like a copy to use this exercise at a branch meeting, contact Nancy who can e-mail you a PDF of the booklet.