“In Civil Procedure I sat every day in the third row and always put my hand up to answer a question. “The law professors were all men,” she recalled. She decided a law degree would help her level the playing field and enrolled in the U-M Law School in 1965 - one of 10 women in a class of 320 students - where she encountered more discrimination. Working as a secretary at U-M while she was a student in the 1940s and '50s, King saw the low pay and unequal treatment of female employees.Īs an activist in the Ann Arbor Democratic Party, she was frustrated by the lack of female delegates at party conventions. King confronted sex discrimination early in life. They have been so punished for standing up for themselves.”
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I have many times assembled women who are afraid and taught them how to represent themselves. “You can’t negotiate when you have nothing - no power and no respect.
She used her family’s grocery budget and often drafted her three young children to stuff envelopes and wear sandwich boards to support her various causes. She waged battles for equality from her kitchen table, her living room and in beauty parlors. Her petite stature and curly hair belied her fierce confrontational style and enormous intellect. In 1972, the creation of Title IX, the federal civil rights law banning sex discrimination by educational institutions that received federal funding, made the policies the law of the land. It was also the beginning of improvements in salaries, promotions, maternity leaves, athletics and scholarships for women at U-M. That effort sparked nationwide reforms for hiring and recruiting female faculty and staff. When U-M refused to comply with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare’s demands to increase women’s admissions and provide gender equity in athletics, it became the first university in the country to have federal grants withheld. The complaint sparked a federal investigation and led to reforms at many colleges and universities across the nation. In 1970, King filed her most significant educational action against the University of Michigan, co-authoring a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Labor for sex discrimination in admissions, financial aid, employment and athletics. Jean Ledwith King, an Ann Arbor attorney who championed gender equity for millions of women in education, employment, politics and sports, and helped to lay the foundation for Title IX, the federal antidiscrimination law, died Saturday. View Gallery: Jean Ledwith King, champion for gender equity
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