Equality on Trial: Gender and Rights in the Modern American Workplace by Katherine Turk (review)

Katherine Turk's book explores how Title vii of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has both inspired progressive visions of workplace gender equality in the United States and played a role in preventing many of these visions from being realized. Through richly detailed accounts of key struggles over Title vii's sex provision since the 1960s, Turk sheds light on the different interpretive possibilities that were expressed through these struggles, and explains why the more radical, egalitarian interpretations failed to leave a permanent mark on American law and public policy. The book is meticulously researched and cogently argued, and makes a significant contribution to scholarship on US women's and labour history.

The first chapter examines the government agency at the centre of Title vii, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (eeoc), in the first years of implementation. During this time, thousands of letters poured into the offices of the eeoc, most of them from working-class women enquiring about the new law. Turk draws from these letters to illustrate the range and diversity of interpretations and expectations of the law that different women held, and which were based on their personal experiences within and beyond the workplace. Initially, eeoc officials adopted the time-consuming approach of reading and attempting to address each individual letter. While the pressure for efficiency pulled the agency toward the more statistical approach it is known for today, Turk's fascinating dive into the early years of the eeoc reveals that, for a short period, (and due to the unique circumstances surrounding the inclusion of the sex provision in Title vii), it was a site of potential for progressive and inclusive government approaches to ensuring workplace equality.

In the next four chapters of the book, Turk examines how different groups – workplace caucuses (Chapter 2), feminist organizations (Chapter 3) and private and public sector unions (Chapters 4 and 5) – sought to use the law to "reset the terms of economic citizenship from laboring women's perspective." (9) In each case, initial efforts to engage with broad, inclusive notions of sex equality ultimately gave way to more narrow interpretations. Turk begins with the New York Times Women's Caucus, which brought together women from various departments representing both professional and pink-collar work. However, the concerns of journalists and other professional women often dominated the agenda, despite some caucus leaders' efforts to address the particular experiences faced by pink-collar women. In addition, a parallel (and in some ways, competing) campaign against racial discrimination at the Times drew in many women of colour who might otherwise have joined the Women's Caucus. Turk documents how the decision to pursue litigation in the early 1970s pushed the caucus even further away from a cross-class and interracial approach, as lawyers put together a "winnable" class action lawsuit that focused on barriers to upward mobility and downplayed the concerns of women who did not work in or aspire to the professional jobs.

Chapter 3 takes us out of the work-place and into the offices of the National Organization for Women (now). In the late 1960s and the 1970s, state and local chapters like Chicago now pursued grassroots activism as they sought to harness the power of Title vii, and convinced the eeoc to take on large employers such as AT&T and Sears. In the midst of the Sears campaign, however, national leadership contests at now brought competing visions of feminism and workplace equality to the fore; the Chicago chapter's emphasis on economic justice as imperative to gender equality was pitted against the argument that now needed to become more centralized, streamlined, and focused on pushing for formal legal equality. In 1975, the latter faction won the leadership race, ushering in a new era for the organization. The Sears campaign was one of the casualties of this transformation, and by the time the lawsuit went to trial in 1986, now was nowhere to be seen...