 My name is Olive Streit. I live here in Ashland, Oregon. I arrived with my husband and six-month-old baby about 50 years ago, and I don't remember exact dates. I'm kind of an impressionist. But my husband and I drove across country from Detroit, Michigan, where he had just finished his graduate degree, and he had a job in Medford, Oregon, at the Family and Child Guidance Clinic. I was a stay-at-home mom at that time, and that's a good lead-in to what I want to talk about today, which is, during that time that I was a stay-at-home mom, it also lapsed into being active in the women's movement, which was happening nationwide. But in the Rogue Valley, in particular, it was coming alive in the mid-late 70s. And so what I want to talk about today is some of the work that I was involved with during that time. There are two terms in the women's movement that are kind of buzzwords. One is the word consciousness-raising, and it was often abbreviated CR. We had CR groups where women told their stories, and then they learned about the second term, which is called click moments, moments where the veil went up, a consciousness came forward in realizing, like, oh, that's not fair, or, oh, how come men get paid more than women for the same job, or even smaller things, like sharing housework with your partner equally? So a lot of my work has to do with consciousness-raising and helping people to experience click moments. There are five areas that I want to talk about, and the first one is sexism in the schools. There was a federal piece of legislation called Title IX in 1977, I believe, that made it unlawful to discriminate in education, and that was from elementary school through college. And so some of my work was in helping teachers and administrators and students understand how sometimes discrimination exists in unconscious ways. A real simple example is in textbooks, studies were done where they counted the number of illustrations of boys or men versus the number of illustrations of girls and women, and the imbalance was a giant click moment. And oftentimes in those depictions, stereotyped activity was shown. Usually boys were shown playing with doctor kits, whereas the girls were shown playing with kitchen stoves and kitchen equipment. And it's not that those things don't exist, it's just that they became stereotyped, and it became stereotyped in our thinking. Also Title IX was very instrumental in their arena of sports, probably it's the most obvious one, because today we see girls playing high level, highly skilled sports, and giant pictures exist on the sports page of women, girls playing softball, winning tournaments. And just on a personal level, sometimes when I watch girls' sports, what I realize with some sadness is how so many generations of women, girls, did not have an opportunity to experience that great physical openness of being able to run up and down a court, make baskets, become passionate about sport, activity, swimming, soccer, softball, golf. And so great strides have been made with Title IX in sports, mainly. I also remember giving a workshop in an elementary school, and the principal, there was an activity day called Snoopy Day, and it's where boys and girls played and games and they competed, and the principal insisted that the teams be segregated into boys' teams and girls' teams, and his language, his thinking was, is that because you wouldn't want a boy to be beaten by a girl. And it's not that this principal was an ogre or vindictive or mean, it's just that that was the unconscious thinking. And so we began to integrate Snoopy Day, and actually it all turned out fine. A second area of work that I enjoyed doing was around giving sexist language workshops. There's working to raise consciousness about how sexism exists in our language in ways that we didn't really realize, a simple sentence in a history book might be, pioneers came west with their wives and children, and that seems kind of benign, but really it's kind of like he came and he brought his luggage along as opposed to saying men, women and children came west, that there's an equality in that. Also terms like doctor, mankind, chairmen, policemen, those were all very common terms, and it's been 40 years since that consciousness was raised, and so now we're much more likely to hear the postal worker or the police officer or the doctor he or she, the language has become more equitable. That's very satisfying. I remember one of the exercises I would do in workshops is to ask the participants to close your eyes and let me say some words and see what images you have. Doctor, principal, fireman, president, and 40 years ago it was obviously predominantly male images, and people were surprised. They didn't know that baseball player could have an image of a girl, a woman. It's fun to see the progress. A third area that was very big is the area of domestic violence. Actually at the university there was a task force of women that put together a conference on domestic violence, and it was probably one of the first workshops on domestic violence in the area, but we became much more conscious of how domestic violence exists, and we would begin trying to do trainings with police departments, like I remember doing a training in Medford with police, and it was very awkward because they probably had never had a workshop with a diminutive Asian American feminist woman talking about what to do, or how domestic violence exists, largely for women. It also exists for men, but largely the perpetrators are men, partners, but the police chief was wonderful. He called them to attention and corrected them and asked them to please listen with an open mind, and where they did begin to perk up is when I said that the statistics show that one in five police officers that were killed were killed in intervening in a domestic violence situation, and that had impact. People did not talk about it, and they also thought that it was private, that it was between partners, and it wasn't, it wasn't, I think also in terms of being the person being abused, that she also didn't have consciousness around like this is not okay, you know, that this is actually dangerous, I could die. It was largely, domestic violence came to the forefront, largely through a book written by Del Martin, D-E-L-M-A-R-T-I-N, and the book is called Battered Women, and from that book Rosemary Dalton, I think, was partly, she was head of the women's center at the university, and she gathered a task force together and we put on a conference, and to be honest, I don't remember all the topics at the conference, but it was broad, countywide, and you know, probably people from education, medicine, social work, social services were all involved, but that was the beginning, and then just grassroots women would begin calling the crisis hotline, Jackson County Helpline, where I actually worked, and they would need a safe place, and so we would, by we, I mean members of the task force, maybe two by two, we'd go and pick up the woman at Safeway, be at Safeway at 9 p.m., I'll pick you and your kids up, I'm driving a VW bus, and we will take you to, at that time we didn't have a shelter yet, but we would house in maybe a motel, an expensive motel, till she could find more help, whether it's family or relatives or friends, but those, the question you're asking is about origins, and those are, those are quick moments, you know, like when did we realize that, it's not okay if he beats her up, I mean that it's not a private issue, if he beat her up on the street, he would be arrested, but because he's beating her up in the kitchen, it's private, so the quick moment is realizing that no, that is a violation, like I said, I worked at the county hotline, and so the people could call 779-HELP, and they would get someone that would know where, that would listen to what their situation was, and know where to direct them, or who to direct them to, and gradually it grew, like I said, it grew until we were able to get grant money for a shelter and for staff, and, but it was very, I smile because it was very, make it up as we go along, like, you know, to staff a shelter 24 hours requires a lot of effort, and we didn't always have people that had the time to volunteer 24 hours a day, or to deal with the kinds of things that would come up, whether it's a perpetrator that found out where the shelter is, and is banging on the front door, and, but the police, you know, building relationships with the police to, you know, patrol our area, helping find employment for the women so that they could feel like they could take care of their kids. It was all made up as we went along learning, and today, of course, I haven't been connected with the shelter directly for a long time, but I think it runs well, and it is funded, so that's nice. And I'm glad you brought up that there is so much awareness, so much more awareness nowadays, like I think specifically in the sports area, that football teams are actually punishing football players, or releasing them, firing them if they're being arrested on domestic violence issues. That is incredible. I mean, it's just the beginning, but it's become like it's not okay. So it's nice to see the arc that that early work, the work of the pioneers, have made a difference, and there's always more to go, always more to go, like I think the sexual harassment is picking up. And it's not ever neat and tidy, you know. Like I said, it's a continuum, and things are complex. It's not always just clear, black and white, good or bad, right or wrong. It's complicated, and that's the stuff of human work, that's our work, to figure out what is what is just, what is fair. Then if we fast forward to recent, recently, maybe in the last year or so, I was happy to know that the Medford Police Department has instituted a risk protocol for their officers, which means that they can assess whether a situation requires the perpetrator to be arrested or not. Whereas in the past, the responsibility relied on, was based on the woman where she had to decide, yes, arrest him, although he is the father of my children. I love him, and he is the breadwinner. It was an agonizing decision, so that's been taken out of our hands. We also worked on legislation to make it easier to get restraining orders, and then a large project that we did was to establish a shelter for battered women and their children. It was creating a safe place that they could be. There was a lot of confidentiality and secrecy involved, because oftentimes perpetrators are very dangerous. So a shelter was started, the Dunhouse, and that was valuable work. I will confess that one of the things I am aware of is that in doing a lot of consciousness raising about domestic violence, I think that we did not do enough in raising consciousness around sexual harassment, which is huge right now. What's happening is a groundswell of women coming forth saying, me too. Another movement has been born, and it involves sexual harassment, which is a continuum from, I wouldn't say minor, but lesser transgressions to huge things, sexual trafficking, etc. So the work continues, but it was exciting to be part of that pioneer movement. We're awake now. A fourth area that I enjoyed working in was helping women to enter non-traditional work, and my background is as a therapist, a counselor, but this project was specific in that it was working to help women get involved in non-traditional work, that things like heavy equipment operating, heavy machinery becoming part of an electrician apprenticeship, carpentry, this kind of thing, in order to earn wages that could be earning a living. And that was pioneer work. And today, I just saw an ad on TV yesterday for a lumber company, and the actor was a woman in her hard hat and tool belt and ever so proud about the house that was being built with the lumber from the lumber company. And I thought, wow, new skills for women was the name of the project. So that was very worthwhile. And the last area which I think a lot is being done on this history project to outline it is Women's History Month. The month of March is known as Women's History Month, and a wonderful organization, Women's Organization out of Santa Rosa was responsible for making, for raising consciousness about all the historical contributions women have made in every field, every imaginable field. And it came alive in the Rogue Valley, started with a small group of women which probably will show up in this project that Maureen's doing. What do I want to say about it? Well, it was exciting. One recollection is that it started out as Women's History Month, but we did a week of events. And then that over time elapsed into 23 different projects in the course of a month. And that didn't even begin to touch areas that hadn't been brought to the forefront. But it's notable that this is the year 2020, and women first got the vote in 1920 only. That's only 100 years ago that we've had the vote. Can you imagine that? That still jars with me, because it was so recent. But I think bringing awareness to the contributions that women have made over time, since time in Maureen Memorial, to bring women the right to vote. And I think oftentimes we don't realize it wasn't just about legislation. It was about physical participation. Women were force-fed. They often were arrested, sent to jail. They often lost their children, their relationships. They were punished. A lot of that is a very dramatic part of getting the vote, is to realize how much women went through. And that there's still a question today. Can a woman be elected? And so on that note, I think maybe I will. It's a good note to close on with the answer. Yes.