Spring Break
Deis' feminist powerhouse
How three Brandeis scholars changed America
by Shana D. Lebowitz
Features Editor
Features | 5/22/07
Posted online at 11:24 PM EST on 5/21/07
/ Last updated at 12:40 AM EST on 5/21/07
Ruth Nemzoff is soft spoken and endearing as she invites me to join her on a couch outside her office. It is hard to imagine that this warm, peaceful woman has led a battle against chauvinistic patriarchal tradition and fought for the rights of women across the nation for the past three decades.
Roberta Salper, with bright red hair and a big, genuine smile, is equally animated and good-natured sitting inside her office, preparing to write the history of her life as a feminist researcher.
Nemzoff and Salper are two of three Women's Studies Research Center scholars, including Paula Doress-Worters, who are featured in Barbara Love's Feminists Who Changed America: 1963-1975, published last fall.
Nemzoff majored in American studies at Barnard College. but it was not until years after graduation that she commenced her involvement in the feminist movement.
In slow, reminiscing words, Nemzoff recounts the road that led to her role as a feminist activist. "I hired a young girl-a high school student-to come in on the afternoons" to help with the children. "She walks in on the third day with the book The Feminine Mystique and says, 'You need to read this.' I read that book and it really made me think."
After reading Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Nemzoff was inspired to join a women's consciousness-raising group and then to start a new series of groups when she moved to New Hampshire. In 1975, Nemzoff was elected to the New Hampshire State legislature, where she served as Democratic minority leader until 1981. Even within the political sphere, Nemzoff remembers encountering gender-based resistance.
"When I ran," Nemzoff reflects, her eyes growing wide as she envisions once more the struggles involved in her campaign, "all people were interested in was that I was the doctor's wife."
Recently Nemzoff published several articles about her experiences as a woman in politics, one specifically about being pregnant while serving in the legislature.
Roberta Salper, with bright red hair and a big, genuine smile, is equally animated and good-natured sitting inside her office, preparing to write the history of her life as a feminist researcher.
Nemzoff and Salper are two of three Women's Studies Research Center scholars, including Paula Doress-Worters, who are featured in Barbara Love's Feminists Who Changed America: 1963-1975, published last fall.
Nemzoff majored in American studies at Barnard College. but it was not until years after graduation that she commenced her involvement in the feminist movement.
In slow, reminiscing words, Nemzoff recounts the road that led to her role as a feminist activist. "I hired a young girl-a high school student-to come in on the afternoons" to help with the children. "She walks in on the third day with the book The Feminine Mystique and says, 'You need to read this.' I read that book and it really made me think."
After reading Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Nemzoff was inspired to join a women's consciousness-raising group and then to start a new series of groups when she moved to New Hampshire. In 1975, Nemzoff was elected to the New Hampshire State legislature, where she served as Democratic minority leader until 1981. Even within the political sphere, Nemzoff remembers encountering gender-based resistance.
"When I ran," Nemzoff reflects, her eyes growing wide as she envisions once more the struggles involved in her campaign, "all people were interested in was that I was the doctor's wife."
Recently Nemzoff published several articles about her experiences as a woman in politics, one specifically about being pregnant while serving in the legislature.
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