Delaware women reflect on breaking into ‘good ol’ boys club’

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — The first openly gay person to serve in the Delaware Legislature.

The first woman to set the precedent of legally using only her maiden name, even though she was married.

And the first woman in the United States to lead a large company.

As the country hears more women speaking up about the harassment and inequality they face, these three women lived through the decades it took to break into the ranks and rights of men.

When they were fighting for their jobs or name, most men and women considered feminist to be a dirty word. A married woman was expected to take her husband’s last name. No Delaware woman had ever had the title of CEO of a big communications company.

All three are among a group of First State women advocating for the passage of an equal rights amendment to the state constitution, which would specify that a person can’t be discriminated against on the basis of sex. Supporters say it will help reduce sex-based disparities in Delaware; opponents say it’s not needed. The bill has passed in the House and will soon be considered in the Senate.

The News Journal spoke to three of the women about their lives, how and why they did what they did — and the sexism they faced along the way.

As the Catholic priest testified that gay people were “sick” and “need to find God” when the state Legislature was arguing in 2013 about whether to legalize gay marriage, Sen. Karen Peterson knew she needed to come out.

She was by no means closeted: Her family and many of her constituents knew she was gay and loved her longtime partner Vikki Bandy.

Peterson considered herself a “real private person” and didn’t talk too much about her personal life. But when the then-senator, herself a Catholic, listened to the priest, she knew it was time to make a public statement.

“I think it’s so interesting that my bishop would send a priest here today to rail against same-sex marriage,” she recalls saying. “Just a couple of weeks ago, we debated the death penalty. My bishop didn’t see fit to send a priest here to speak against killing people, but rails against people loving each other. The irony is not lost on me.”

Peterson remembers then thinking: “To hell with it. I’m all in at this point.”

She made a reference to her 24-year relationship with Bandy.

“Neither of us chose to be gay, any more than heterosexual people chose to be straight,” Peterson said then, becoming the first openly gay legislator to serve in Delaware. “Nobody gets to make those decisions any more than we decide to be tall, short, black or white. We are what God made us. We don’t need to be fixed. We’re not broken.”

The bill passed, and Peterson and Bandy became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in Delaware. She also was the first woman elected New Castle County president — and one the youngest, elected at age 30.

Peterson, now retired, says she spent most of her career as the only woman in the “good ol’ boys club.”

A few hours before her first meeting as County Council president in 1981, Peterson was confronted by other council members, all men. They tried to tell her how to vote on proposed ordinances. Peterson refused.

The council members called her father, who was involved in politics. Peterson’s dad called to tell her the men asked him to tell her to “behave herself.”

“I told them I didn’t control you the first 30 years, and I don’t control you now,” he told her.

At that same meeting, Peterson asked a department director a question after he made a presentation. The man, despite referring to other council members as “sir” or “Mr.,” responded with: “What is it, sweetheart?”

“You can call me madam president or Ms. Peterson,” she recalls saying.

Peterson says she was the only council member at the time who was not allowed to hire an aide, meaning she had to take phone calls and type letters herself — in addition to working a full-time job at the Department of Labor. She believes it was a “punishment” for not giving into the pressure of how others wanted her to vote.

Peterson decided to address the pay disparity among women and minorities in New Castle County during her time as council president. She commissioned a study of county government jobs, which found that 911 operators, who were mostly women, were paid far less than male dispatchers despite having similar jobs.

Peterson gave the information to the unions, who were able to negotiate higher rates when the contacts came up for renewal.

To her knowledge, no form of Delaware government has commissioned a similar study since then.

When Peterson entered the state Senate in 2002, there were seven women out of the 21 senators. When Senate Majority Leader Margaret Rose Henry retires next year, there may be only three female senators.

Even so, it’s promising to see more U.S. women running for elected office than ever before. She credits this in part to the fear of women “losing ground” under the Trump administration.

“As one who marched in women’s marches in the 1970s, it is changing,” she said of the current climate. “But what’s pushing the change is Trump. We have to push back or we’re going to get dragged back to the 1950s.”

Growing up in a small town in Oregon, Beverley Baxter did what the other girls did when they got married: She took her husband’s last name. She didn’t know anyone who didn’t.

In the 1960s, Baxter and her husband lived in Europe and South Africa. Her husband’s work as an ordained minister involved traveling, resulting in Baxter meeting different women of different cultures and religions.

And it made her start to question everything.

When Baxter returned to the U.S. years later, she started reading work by feminist Betty Friedan. She wrote papers for her University of Delaware master’s program about novelist Norman Mailer misogynistic writing. She joined the Delaware chapter of the National Organization of Women, eventually becoming co-president.

For about 12 years, Baxter used her husband’s name despite the feeling in her gut that it didn’t fit. She loved her husband, but she loved being Beverley Baxter. Not Beverley Dobbins.

So, in 1974 she petitioned the Delaware Superior Court to legally change her name back to Baxter — and was denied.

Soon after the first judge denied her, Baxter tried again. The second judge postpones his decision to a later time. He didn’t rule in her favor until the last possible day legally.

“I just remember them being almost angry at the idea that I did not want to use my husband’s name,” Baxter said of the judges.

She remembers to listening to the second judge’s harsh tone of voice when her lawyer called him on the phone. Baxter believes the judge ruled in her favor because he didn’t want to be overturned, potentially embarrassing him.

This decision set the precedent in the Delaware courts for married women to have the ability to have a driver’s license, Social Security card, checking account and voter’s registration in their maiden name. Before then, married women were forced to use their husband’s name, Baxter said.

Now, decades later, Baxter’s three sons are married to three women — all of whom kept their maiden names.

When Carolyn Burger started her first job at age 22 in 1962, she was deemed an “experiment.”

Just three weeks out college, she was a part of the Bell Telephone Co. of Pennsylvania’s inaugural management trainee program for women. The expectation was that she and three other women might become managers one day.

Yet the 25 employees in the established men’s program were expected to achieve higher management levels after completing their training.

Burger became a manager and — decades later — CEO of Bell Atlantic – Delaware.

She is one of the first women to be CEO of a major company in Delaware and is still one of the few women to ever run an operating telephone company in the United States.

“I don’t think they underestimated me, they just didn’t count me at all,” she said. “I was a woman, and therefore I wasn’t considered.”

Bell Telephone Co., unlike other companies in the 1960s, was interested in improving opportunities for women, Burger said. As an employee, she was a part of a committee that made recommendations to leadership about making the management training program co-ed and improving benefits for all employees.

The company accepted all of the recommendations she drafted.

That doesn’t mean it was an easy place to work: Burger still remembers the isolation of being the only woman in the boardroom.

“If you left the room for any reason, when you came back in sometimes there was an awkward silence,” she said. Burger remembers walking into rooms where men would immediately stop joking around and an awkward silence would fall.

It wasn’t unusual for Burger to hear her male colleagues talk about her behind her back. Some men “couldn’t get over the fact” that she was a woman, Burger said.

One day, Burger heard employees commenting on how she didn’t have to abide by the company’s dress code of a suit and tie because she was a woman.

The next day, Burger came in wearing a blouse with a pussy bow, which she found to be equivalent to a tie. She wore a bow almost every day as CEO, a total of six years. She left the company, which eventually become Verizon, after more than three decades to manage her own consulting firm.

Burger often tells younger women to find jobs that have measurable goals or objectives. If a job doesn’t have them, you should create them yourself, she said. That way, no one can deny a woman advancement, Burger said.

While she is an advocate for the ERA bill, she believes women should set their goals higher than becoming equal to men.

“I think women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition,” she said. “Ambition is to be the best you can be in every job you have.”

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Information from: The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., http://www.delawareonline.com