Executive Order 10980 by which President Kennedy created the President's Commission on the Status of Women spoke for women's basic rights, opportunity for women, the national interest in security and defense of a more "efficient and effective utilization of the skills of all persons," and the value of home life and family.
It charged the commission with "the responsibility for developing recommendations for overcoming discriminations in government and private employment on the basis of sex and for developing recommendations for services which will enable women to continue their role as wives and mothers while making a maximum contribution to the world around them."
Kennedy appointed Eleanor Roosevelt, former US delegate to the United Nations and widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to chair the commission. She had played a key role in establishing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and she'd defended both women's economic opportunity and women's traditional role in the family, so she could be expected to have the respect of those on both sides of the protective legislation issue. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission from its beginning through her death in 1962.
The twenty members of the President's Commission on the Status of Women included both male and female Congressional representatives and Senators (Senator Maurine B. Neuberger of Oregon and Representative Jessica M. Weis of New York), several cabinet-level officers (including the Attorney General, the President's brother Robert F. Kennedy), and other women and men who were respected civic, labor, educational, and religious leaders. There was some ethnic diversity; among the members were Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women and the Young Women's Christian Association, Viola H. Hymes of the National Council of Jewish Women.
