In my last post, I introduced you to Rep. Patsy Mink (D-HI), who teamed up with Rep. Edith Green (D-OR) to author the Title IX legislation ending discrimination in educational settings that receive federal funding. Both women had encountered barriers to the goals they had in life — Mink had wanted to be a doctor and Green a lawyer.
But to advance their legislation, the two women needed help. They needed research to back up their anecdotal evidence of bias. That’s where Bernice “Bunny” Sandler came in.
Sandler was another woman who knew what gender discrimination was. Born in Brooklyn, little “Bunny” learned early on that girls didn’t have the same status as boys. In grade school, girls couldn’t be crossing guards, couldn’t run slide projectors, couldn’t do the “important” things that boys did.
“She told her mother back then that she was going to change the world, that this was wrong,” said her lifelong friend and colleague Marty Langelan.*
Sandler earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a masters in clinical and school psychology. She went on to get a doctorate in the field of counseling and personnel services from the University of Maryland.
In 1969, Sandler was a part-time instructor at the University of Maryland. That year, the university had seven tenure-track teaching positions open in her department.
Despite her credentials, Sandler was denied all of the positions she applied for.
“I asked a faculty member, a friend of mine, why I was not even considered for any of the openings. It was not my credentials; they were excellent. ‘But let’s face it,’” he said. ‘You come on too strong for a woman.’”
“It was the words, ‘too strong for a woman,’ that turned me into a feminist, although I didn’t know it at the time,” she said.**
Surprisingly enough, Sandler needed some convincing on the idea of gender equality. “I was somewhat ambivalent about the women’s movement and halfway believed the press descriptions of its supporters as abrasive, man-hating, radical and unfeminine,” she says.***
Sandler credited her husband, Jerrold Sandler, for helping her see that her blunted ambitions were the result of systemic discrimination and not a personal failing.
Sandler studied up on the civil rights movement to see how African Americans were breaking down discriminatory organizations, like segregated school systems. She became an activist for women’s rights, joining the Women’s Equity Action League, which had been formed in 1968 by women wanting to use legal means to enforce antidiscrimination laws.
In 1969, Sandler had the “a-ha” moment she needed — while reading through a report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, she spotted a footnote that inserted a wedge into the gender issue. In the note, President Lyndon Johnson had amended an executive order barring discrimination by federal contractors based on gender. Because almost all colleges and universities had federal contracts, she thought the order could apply to them.
“Even though I was alone, I shrieked aloud with my discovery!” Sandler said.****
Because of her extensive research and her activism, Sandler was named to advise the House of Representatives on educational issues, and so we’ve come full circle back to Mink and Green. And for her part in the passing of Title IX, Sandler became known as “The Godmother of Title IX.”
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* Tom Goldman and Bill Chappell, “How Bernice Sandler, ‘Godmother of Title IX,’ Achieved Landmark Discrimination Ban,” NPR (January 10, 2019). https://www.npr.org/2019/01/10/683571958/how-bernice-sandler-godmother-of-title-ix-achieved-landmark-discrimination-ban
** Bernice Sandler, “‘Too Strong for a Woman’ — the Five Words that Created Title IX,” About Women on Campus (New York: National Association for Women in Education, Spring 1997), pp. 23, 24, 28.
*** Vanessa Grigoriadis, “Bernice Sandler, the ‘Godmother of Title IX’ (Postscript),” Politico (December 29, 2019). https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/12/29/bernice-sandler-the-godmother-of-title-ix-088277
**** NPR (January 10, 2019).