Primary Source
“1. [A large committee] was involved in crucial constitutional revisions at the Atlanta staff meeting in October. . . . The committee was all men.
2. . . . the male organizer immediately assigned the clerical work to the female organizer although both had had equal experience in organizing campaigns. . . .
10. Capable, responsible, and experienced women who are in leadership positions can expect to have to defer to a man on their project for final decision making. . . .
Undoubtedly this list will seem strange to some, petty to others, laughable to most. The list could continue as far as there are women in the movement. Except that most women don’t talk about these kinds of incidents. . . . The average white person finds it difficult to understand why the Negro resents being called ‘boy,’ or being thought of as ‘musical’ and ‘athletic,’ because the average white person doesn’t realize that he assumes he is superior. And naturally he doesn’t understand the problem of paternalism. So too the average SNCC worker finds it difficult to discuss the woman problem because of the assumptions of male superiority. Assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every much as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro. . . . The woman in SNCC is often in the same position as that token Negro hired in a corporation. The management thinks that it has done its bit. . . .
It needs to be made know[n] that many women in the movement are not ‘happy and contented’ with their status. It needs to be made known that much talent and experience are being wasted by this movement when women are not given jobs commensurate with their abilities. . . .
Maybe sometime in the future the whole of the women in this movement will become so alert as to force the rest of the movement to stop the discrimination and start the slow process of changing values and ideas so that all of us gradually come to understand that this is no more a man’s world than it is a white world.”
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Position Paper: Women in the Movement, November 1964