Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927-2002)
Mink and colleagues pose in front of “Members Only” sign at the congressional health club, which was interpreted to mean “Men Only” following the election of female members (credit: New-York Historical Society)
Congresswoman Patsy Takemoto Mink is often cited as the architect behind Title IX protections for women’s rights. While that version of Mink’s history is less fact than fiction, Mink’s understanding of women’s rights is worth reexamining in the context of current debates about the Constitution’s relationship to women’s rights.
It is no mystery why the public associates Mink with Title IX. After all, prominent media outlets like TIME Magazine refer to Title IX as Mink’s “brainchild,” and a 2002 act of Congress dubbed Title IX the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. In reality, however, the legislative history of Title IX demonstrates that its passage was the culmination of interest group efforts led by feminist activist Bernice Sandler.
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order that “gave women a firm legal basis for filing complaints” of discrimination in educational settings. As a member of the Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL), Sandler helped overwhelm the Department of Labor and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare with formal complaints that the departments were not enforcing Johnson’s executive order.
Working alongside Sandler and seeking to codify the ban on discrimination against women in educational contexts, Representative Edith Green (D-OR) introduced the Omnibus Postsecondary Education Act of 1970, a precursor to Title IX. As chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor’s Special Subcommittee on Education, Green held several hearings regarding the bill.
During these historic hearings, Mink, a close political ally of Green’s, testified that the carveout for education in the Civil Rights Act was harmful for women, many of whom worked in educational institutions at the time. “The most unfortunate thing of all is that education is the very process we rely upon to make the changes and advances we need and yet,” she lamented, “we find that even education is not imparted on a fair and equitable basis.” Ultimately, the bill did not advance past the committee.
The Title IX we know today emerged due to Green’s continued efforts. In April of 1971, Green introduced a bill to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 and other laws related to higher education. Title IX of the bill prohibited sex discrimination in higher education.
Mink was instrumental to Title IX’s survival after its passage. The Senate proposed an amendment to Title IX that would exempt any revenue-generating college athletic groups from the law’s provisions. Mink led a coalition of women’s rights organizations to fight the proposal. Her work to spearhead this effort enabled women’s participation in collegiate sports, one of the most significant impacts of Title IX’s enactment.
The public may also mistake Mink for Title IX’s author because Mink authored other bills that promoted equality for women seeking education and for educated women in the workforce. She authored the Women’s Educational Equity Act to fund the development of nonsexist curricula, professional and vocational programs for women, women’s studies departments, and community-based educational programs for women seeking to return to work after having children. The bill also called for a federal study of sex discrimination in education. Mink also introduced the first child care bill ever considered by Congress to help working mothers stay in the labor force, and fought for measures to grant working women more financial independence through equal access to credit.
Alongside her lauded legislative legacy, Mink’s legal acumen, developed at the University of Chicago School of Law, produced many notable moments throughout her career.
Despite lacking membership on the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Mink participated in the committee’s hearing regarding G. Harrold Carswell’s 1970 nomination for the United States Supreme Court. In her statement, she asserted the “self-evident” fact that “the Constitution does in fact afford [women] full and equal employment opportunities.” She expressed a clear belief that the Constitution had guaranteed these equal rights for women since the success of the women’s suffrage movement 50 years earlier. She railed against Carswell’s appointment to the nation’s highest court, citing his role in Ida Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corporation as a disqualifying factor for his nomination. Mink described the case as having “enormous importance to the equal rights for women” as it involved a private employer’s ability to refuse to hire a female candidate (but not a male one) on the sole grounds of having young children. Carswell’s vote to deny appeal in the case demonstrated, in Mink’s view, “a total lack of understanding of the concept of equality” and “a vote against the right of women to be treated equally and fairly under the law.”
Mink also leveraged her legal background to publish law review articles during her time in office, including one entitled “Federal Legislation to End Discrimination Against Women.” In the piece, she reiterated her understanding of the Constitution as it existed in the 1970s as already protecting gender equality rights. She criticized the repeated “failure of the [federal] courts to apply the existing equal protection clause of the Constitution to women,” highlighting “numerous instances… in which lower courts answered the question of applicability [of the fourteenth amendment to women] in the affirmative.”
These documents demonstrate Mink’s understanding of the Constitution throughout the early 1970s as a gender equality document. She believed that the Constitution afforded women the right to gender equality on the basis of its existing commitment to equal protection under the law, and she believed that the 19th amendment solidified women’s status as full and equal recipients of constitutional rights.
Despite her understanding of the Constitution as a gender equality document, she refused to depend on constitutional protections alone for the protection of women’s rights, especially in critical spheres like education and employment. She foresaw that, even if the Supreme Court were to affirm her belief in a gender equality Constitution, that decision could not effectively protect women’s rights.
She worried that case-by-case adjudication through the judiciary would lead to inconsistent or piecemeal protections for women, and she highlighted that “the judicial approach has the inherent problems of delay” as cases pile up on court dockets. While she supported the Equal Rights Amendment, she recognized the practical need for federal legislation to be implemented to protect women’s rights immediately, as she “realiz[ed] the length of time it would take for a constitutional amendment to become reality.”
Mink was a thought leader who devoted her life to understanding and mitigating the barriers that women faced as they sought to use educational and employment opportunities to improve their stations in life in the United States. She combined her legal background with her own experiences as a member of Congress to reach insights about women’s rights that speak to today’s legal and political battles. While she believed that the Constitution demanded that women receive equal protection under the law without exception, her inside view of Washington showed her the practical impossibilities of relying on that view of the Constitution to protect women in the short term.
Today’s feminist activists face the daunting task of advocating for women’s reproductive rights in a world where one Supreme Court decision can topple decades of what was considered by many to be settled law. Perhaps, by taking a cue from Mink’s tireless legislative efforts, champions of women’s rights may need to be pragmatic and pursue legislative steps despite their own belief that the Constitution is a gender equality document.
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