GRAMSCIAN HEGEMONY AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY

Although Gramsci's ideas have been used extensively (see e.g., Letherby Reference Letherby2003), we must describe his theoretical framework. His approach to societal change did not fit within the usual Marxist framework of economic determinism as the means of overcoming advanced capitalism (Marx Reference Marx1977, Marx and Engels Reference Marx, Engels and Feuer1989). Instead, the Italian scholar and activist used a multifaceted approach to describe how ideas and their subsequent societal and cultural influences help create new predispositions, or lack of predispositions, among common populations (Harootunian Reference Harootunian2015, 115). Part of Gramsci's Marxist reformulation centered on how cultural discourse operated as an amorphous process constructed from a three-layered interaction: the “spontaneous philosophy” of individuals, the “world views” of societal groups united by cultural and economic solidarities, and most importantly, the “dominant hegemonic view” of the ruling class (Gramsci Reference Gramsci, Hoare and Smith1971, 323). To maintain long-term societal stability, Gramsci argued, a capitalist ruling class must use peaceful means, instead of violent coercion, to convince the other, “subaltern” classes of the validity of values and norms (Gramsci Reference Gramsci, Hoare and Smith1971, 333; Gramsci Reference Gramsci and Buttigieg1996, 91; Gramsci Reference Gramsci1991).

Gramsci's major theoretical breakthrough lay in his recognition of the inherent instability of hegemonies due to the fluidity of societal interaction and the constant threat of new influences. The constant need of the ruling class to justify its cultural hegemony allows for the development of counter-hegemonies from either the society's intellectuals or the subaltern classes. The most fruitful counter-hegemonies, moreover, result from a combination of theoretical formulations and practical means (Adamson Reference Adamson1983, 170–79; Bates Reference Bates1975, 353–57; Gramsci Reference Gramsci, Hoare and Smith1971, 323). Gramsci defined the continual battles between opposing hegemonies as a continual “war of position,” through which counter-hegemonies would most effectively use class unity to oppose capitalist accumulation and “popular democratic currents” (Femia Reference Femia1975, 34Footnote ¹; Gramsci Reference Gramsci, Hoare and Smith1971, 328; Gramsci Reference Gramsci and Buttigieg1992, 169; Urry Reference Urry1981). While social justice feminism started as a counter-hegemonic movement in the early twentieth century against the major hegemonic forces then present in the United States, laissez-faire capitalism and patriarchy, it faced challenges in both developing and influencing events.

FRIEDA MILLER AND THE ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, 1944–1953

The years 1941 through 1945 showed the difficulty of continuing social justice feminism's counter-hegemonic aims. Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in a presidential press conference that “Dr. New Deal” would be replaced by “Dr. Win the War,” and his sole effort to sustain the prewar economic situation, the 1944 “Economic Bill of Rights,” only led to congressional legislation extending benefits to returning veterans (see, e.g., Fraser and Gerstle Reference Fraser and Gerstle1989). Events after World War II showed no change in direction, with Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, reluctantly supporting the Fair Employment Act of 1946 and firing Perkins from her long-held cabinet position, while the Republicans captured Congress (Blewett Reference Blewett and Hamby1974; Weisbode Reference Weisbode2016). In addition, the cultural hegemonies altered by the organic crisis of the Great Depression began to reassert themselves. Fears of a revival of the Great Depression proved ephemeral as a substantial number of the population began enjoying an unprecedented prosperity (Chafe Reference Chafe2003). Interestingly, this did not mean a return to the general acceptance of laissez-faire capitalism. The general mood of conformity prompted by the creation of what historian Elizabeth Cohen aptly calls a “consumer's republic” became stronger in the 1950s as an increasing middle class turned to home ownership and consumer goods as social and cultural hegemonies (Cohen Reference Cohen2003).

Even with all these difficulties, one determined woman would revive and continue the counter-hegemonic aims of social justice feminism: Frieda Miller, who succeeded Mary Anderson as the director of the Women's Bureau in 1944 Laughlin Reference Laughlin2000. Born in 1889, the University of Wisconsin graduate moved to Philadelphia in 1918, where she became secretary of the local branch of the Women's Trade Union League. Over the following 10 years, Miller expanded her connections in the social justice feminist network, particularly with Frances Perkins, then New York State Industrial Commissioner. In 1929, upon Perkins's recommendation, Miller became the head of the Commission's Division of Women in Industry and Minimum Wage. Four years later, she helped shepherd through the New York State legislature a new minimum wage law for working women (Martin Reference Martin1976; Montgomery Reference Montgomery, Sicherman and Hurd1980, 478–79). Becoming New York's Industrial Commissioner in 1938, Miller restructured the state's employment service (Montgomery Reference Montgomery, Sicherman and Hurd1980, 479). When political power shifted to the Republicans in 1943, Miller became a special labor advisor to the US Ambassador to Great Britain, John Winant, where she took note of the growing agitation for postwar social change and the issuance of the Beveridge Report in 1942, which recommended that the national government provide extensive social services for the British people from the “cradle to the grave” (Chandler Reference Chandler2002, 25; Cobble, Reference Cobble, Cobble, Gordon and Henry2014a; Trattner Reference Trattner1999).

After returning to the United States to become Women's Bureau director, however, Miller realized that such agitation only existed as a muted echo, at best, in the United States. She thus quietly established counter-hegemonic means through a revival of the alternative view of public administration. Miller accomplished this goal through a priority forced upon her by the war's looming end: the reconversion of 11 million veterans, nearly all males, into their previous peacetime jobs, and the corresponding loss of employment opportunities for women replacement workers. Miller ordered the Women's Bureau to conduct an extensive survey of women throughout the United States, and, most significant, scheduled a special conference in early 1946 that brought together national labor leaders and the officials of women's organizations. Not only did the conference lead to some answers, including model language for any future union contracts concerning women workers, but Miller quickly established her prominence in national women's labor issues (Montgomery Reference Montgomery, Sicherman and Hurd1980, 479; Kessler-Harris Reference Kessler-Harris2001, 304). Miller subsequently created a special advisory committee on working women issues, including as members veteran labor activists, such as Pauline Newman, and rising figures such as Esther Peterson (Cobble Reference Cobble, Cobble, Gordon and Henry2014a, 20; Montgomery Reference Montgomery, Sicherman and Hurd1980, 479).

In pursuing a new agenda, Miller and the proponents of an alternative view of public administration established the following goals: economic and social security for everyone in the United States, an end to sexual discrimination against women, and the extension of civil rights for African Americans. Therefore, the feminist movement in the United States, instead of remaining relatively dormant in the years between 1945 and 1965, revived and continued counter-hegemonic means (Cobble Reference Cobble, Cobble, Gordon and Henry2014; Rupp and Taylor Reference Rupp and Taylor1987). This counter-hegemonic regeneration, however, echoed contemporaneous developments in academia. Women scholars delved deeply into the social conventions that identified both the activities of women and the definitions of gender in the United States. Ten years before Betty Friedan examined middle-class women and their discontent in The Feminine Mystique, for example, sociologist Mirra Komarovsky argued in her groundbreaking work Women in the Modern World: Their Education and Dilemmas (1953) that problems confronting such women did not come from psychological, but social factors. This academic re-examination of seemingly sacrosanct boundaries particularly proved apropos in a society that, in celebrating the nuclear family, conveniently elided memories of the Great Depression and the continuing disadvantages facing minority women (Coontz Reference Coontz1992, 24–26, 31; Jamison and Eyerman Reference Jamison and Eyerman1994, 44, 134–36; Lynn Reference Lynn1994, 104; Tannant Reference Tannant2006, 107–94). Former social justice feminists, such as Peterson, noted these complex circumstances by the early 1960s.

Despite the continuing relevancy of domestic reform, however, the ambitious agenda proposed by Frieda Miller and her supporters encountered mixed success. From 1951 through 1961, efforts to extend comprehensive social security coverage to all citizens, to expand FLSA minimum wage requirements to uncovered workers, and to institute “equal pay for comparable work” for working women all failed to receive approval from either Congressional committees or final enactment. Miller's testimony in favor of the bills thus became a vain effort (Cobble Reference Cobble, Cobble, Gordon and Henry2014a, 32–33, 39–43). On the state level, however, some progress occurred in economic security and the elimination of sexual discrimination. In California the statewide labor union Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Women's Auxiliary helped successfully lobby for the continuation of wartime childcare programs. Overall, 18 states passed “equal pay for comparable work” laws by the late 1950s. But major successes still did not exist at the federal level (Cobble Reference Cobble, Cobble, Gordon and Henry2014a, 39–43).

By the end of the 1950s, however, Frieda Miller's influence vanished in the wake of what became known as the “second Red Scare,” a successor to the first such period after World War I, when anti-Communist hysteria rose to a peak between 1919 and 1921, and a corresponding development to the rise of the Cold War consensus. By 1956, an estimated five million federal workers underwent loyalty screening, with approximately 14,700 employees being either dismissed or resigning, based on charges ranging from previous participation in the Communist Party to suspicions of homosexuality (Johnson Reference Johnson2003; Storrs Reference Storrs2013, introduction, 3). A federal security investigation of Miller's alleged Communist connections continued for more than five years, forcing her to leave the Women's Bureau in the spring of 1953. Miller never worked in the federal government again (Montgomery Reference Montgomery, Sicherman and Hurd1980, 480; Storrs Reference Storrs2013, 228–29). By the early 1960s, however, a new proponent would show how political strategizing and organizing could make some significant, if partially limited, advances.

1961–1964: ESTHER PETERSON AND THE REVIVAL OF COUNTER-HEGEMONY

In late January 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced his new federal sub-Cabinet appointments. Few received any significant popular or press attention, particularly that of Esther Peterson to the directorship of the Women's Bureau. On the surface, Peterson received the appointment solely due to her major campaign efforts on behalf of Kennedy in the previous year. But a closer look reveals how the actual circumstances can belie such usual assumptions for two reasons. First, Peterson's husband, Oliver, endured continual investigations as a State Department employee from 1949 through 1962 because of his former leftist associations (Storrs Reference Storrs2013, 230). With such complicated, and potentially damning, familial circumstances, Peterson's appointment remains an extraordinary occurrence. Second, despite her own mainstream political credentials, Peterson retained a formidable array of progressive activism, from her being an organizer for the American Federation of Teachers in the mid-1930s to being the first national legislative representative for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the first woman lobbyist for the newly formed AFL-CIO (Cobble Reference Cobble and Bowes2014b; see also O'Farrell Reference O'Farrell and Arnesen2006, 1078; Peterson and Conkling Reference Peterson and Conkling.1995). She also knew of Miller's previous efforts due to her serving on the Women's Bureau's special advisory committee. Thus, as one scholar notes, Peterson's extensive experiences in “the labor movement and social justice feminist politics” made her a ready proponent of the alternative view of public administration (Cobble Reference Cobble, Cobble, Gordon and Henry2014a, 49).

Peterson's determination to revive the counter-hegemonic aims of the alternative view of public administration is seen in her formulation of two aims: (1) the creation of a special presidential commission to consider the social and economic status of women in the United States and (2) the promotion and passage of a congressional equal pay act. But the Women's Bureau director also took care to establish alliances, given the Kennedy Administration's initial indifference toward domestic issues and the Southern Democratic and Republican conservative coalition's continued power in Congress (Reeves Reference Reeves1993). Thus, shortly after assuming office, Peterson's lobbying effort for the proposed presidential commissions combined efforts with women reformers and with old colleague counsel Arthur Goldberg, now US Labor Secretary. By the spring of 1961, Peterson's careful efforts bore fruit, as Kennedy issued Executive Order 10980 creating the President's Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) (Cobble Reference Cobble, Cobble, Gordon and Henry2014a, 49; Stebenne Reference Stebenne1996, 124, 251–52).

As the PCSW's vice chair, Peterson became determined to remedy one of the failures of social justice feminism: its inability, or at times outright refusal, to encompass questions of race in its counter-hegemonic aims. From 1933 through 1940, the Women's Division failed to include all women voters, particularly African American women. However, the political situation was complicated: the skepticism of African American women towards the national Democratic party after 1936 continued, given its long-held opposition to the civil and political rights of their race; the control of the US Congressional hierarchy by Southern white male Democrats endured; and the presence in the Women's Division leadership of Southern white women was firmly enmeshed in their regional racial outlook (Higgenbotham Reference Higginbotham, Tilly and Griffin1990; Materson Reference Materson2009; White Reference White1999). Ironically, a counter-hegemonic movement helped continue the continuing racist hegemony. After World War II, however, this unfortunate oversight slowly yet surely became remedied through the efforts of such organizations as the Young Women's Christian Association and the American Friends Service Committee, which began to educate their members and the general public about racism and integration (Izzo Reference Izzo2018; Lynn Reference Lynn1994, 103–12). The input of African American women increased in the now-powerful national trade unions such as the United Packing Workers of America local president Addie Wyatt (Cobble Reference Cobble2004, 32, 79, 201; Lichenstein Reference Lichenstein1995). Not only did these organizational efforts help bridge pre-World War II feminism and the civil rights and women's movements of the 1960s, they also convinced Peterson of the value of reaching across racial lines (Cobble Reference Cobble2004, 155).

By the end of 1961, Peterson took effective action for her new goal of inclusiveness through two PCSW appointments: Dorothy Height, the powerful president of the National Council of Negro Women, became a commissioner, while Pauli Murray became a member of the subcommittee on civil and political rights. The results were mixed. Height, a graduate of New York University and a former social worker (Height Reference Height2003, 1–131), eventually agreed in early 1963 to head an informal consultation with African American women. Height's efforts, however, encountered mixed results, particularly when her committee member, Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, insisted that black women's problems stemmed from the traditional matriarchal structure of African American families. Although Height's adoption of Moynihan's argument as the central theme of her final report, issued in April 1963, disappointed some committee members, the previously neglected issue of African American women did receive badly needed attention (PCSW “Transcript of Consultation By Minority Groups,” 1963; Mead and Kaplan Reference Mead and Kaplan1965, 220–21, 227). A happier and longer-lasting result came from Murray's participation. An independent, outspoken lawyer, scholar, activist, and teacher, the 50-year-old Murray garnered her appointment in part through the sponsorship of PCSW chair Eleanor Roosevelt and Peterson (Rosenberg Reference Rosenberg2017, 245–46). She soon proposed that the best way to counter traditional barriers to women's participation lay in arguing that such discrimination violated the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. While legal experts such as Harvard Law School dean Erwin Griswold initially opposed Murray's proposal, the PCSW eventually adopted the argument as one of its final recommendations. Moreover, Murray soon found herself consulted on such matters as the inclusion of the word “sex” in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and later, on the legal cases that established the unconstitutionality of gender discrimination, such as Reed v. Reed, 404 US 71 1971 (Rosenberg Reference Rosenberg2017, 258, 264–65, 272, 279–80; Strebergh Reference Strebeigh2009, 13, 25–27). Thus, Peterson's inclusion of women of color not only finally encompassed the issue of race in the alternative view of public administration's counter-hegemonic efforts, it also helped establish a quiet but definite shift away from economic issues to equal rights, a shift which the women's rights movement would take full advantage of several years later.

The adoption of the Pauli Murray “equal protection” proposal did not constitute the only far-reaching effect of the new presidential commission. After two years of taking extensive testimony on a myriad of issues confronting working women in the United States, ranging from pay inequality to women's labor legislation, the PCSW issued its final report in October 1963. In addition to adopting the Murray argument, the report also recommended that the federal government should reaffirm that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution guaranteed equality for women and that equal opportunity should be the “governing principle” in private employment (Mead and Kaplan Reference Mead and Kaplan1965, 151, 211–13). While such recommendations remained only advisory due to the lack of specific commitments from either the President or Congressional leaders, the report's call for “equality for all women” did spark a national discussion, not unlike the discourse initiated by a predecessor, President Truman's Civil Rights Commission. Within three years, frustrated by continuing governmental inaction, Friedan and other women's rights advocates would found the National Organization for Women (Barakso Reference Barakso2004, 11–19).

While working with the PCSW, Peterson also concentrated on the promotion and passage of an equal pay bill in Congress. While she naturally sought the support of labor leaders and women's labor advocates, surprising support came from a White House nervous about the continuing effects of a recession on the national economy (Harrison Reference Harrison1988, 89). Peterson further established the need for such legislation through evidence of gender discrimination garnered from labor unions, state departments of labor, and even previous complainants from the Bureau's files (Harrison Reference Harrison1988, 92). Even so, Peterson remained all too aware of the fact that the passage of such legislation lay in the hands of Congress. Thus, despite concessions from labor on the definition of equal pay and the important sponsorship of the measure by Congressional allies, such as Representative Edith Green of Oregon and Senator Patrick McNamara from Michigan, aroused opposition from Republican Congressmen prevented consideration of the initial bill before legislative adjournment in the summer of 1962 (Harrison Reference Harrison1988, 98). In early 1963, Congressional opponents focused on the bill's requirement of “equal pay for comparable work,” claiming that “comparability” was a difficult term to define, even as supporters pointed out the use of such language in previous federal legislation (Harrison Reference Harrison1988, 98). To win eventual passage, Peterson and other bill supporters reluctantly supported an amendment, not coincidentally introduced by a Republican Congresswoman, that replaced the term “equal pay for comparable work” with “equal pay for equal work.” President Kennedy signed the ensuing bill into law during June 1963 (Cobble Reference Cobble, Cobble, Gordon and Henry2014a, 52–53; 2005, 165).

Peterson fully recognized that the Equal Pay Act of 1963, as with the PCSW, represented only a symbolic advance for women, particularly with no effective enforcement measures. But she could not realize how the bill would become a significant harbinger of a new, powerful legal and social development known as the “rights revolution” (Gerstle 2015, 85; Foner Reference Foner1999, 299–305). Within a year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with an almost unnoticed provision prohibiting discrimination on “account of sex.” By the end of the 1960s, women's rights advocates seized upon that statutory language to undertake extensive court litigation that finally began to remove gender discrimination, particularly in employment (Collins Reference Collins2009, 75–83). Correspondingly, the passage of further legislation protecting individual rights, such as the Voting Act of 1965, and the US Supreme Court's increasing willingness to rule in such an area, marked by such cases as Griswold v. Connecticut 1965, provided positive precedents for the activism of such groups as Native Americans and gay groups (Foner Reference Foner1999, 299–305).

In 1964, at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Peterson left the Women's Bureau to become the executive branch's first consumer advocate (Glickman Reference Glickman2009). She never returned to public administrative service, instead serving two additional Democratic Presidents in the fields of consumer affairs and international diplomacy (Molotsky Reference Molotsky1997). But her continuing counter-hegemonic efforts by social justice feminists after World War II remained a definitive presence.