Karen DeCrow is an attorney, writer, activist and feminist whose life's work included civil liberties advocacy and serving as president of the National Organization for Women.
Background
Karen Lipschultz DeCrow was born in 1937. She was raised in Chicago, where she studied journalism at Northwestern University, graduating in 1959. After working in editing and publishing during the 1960s, she attended law school at Syracuse University, earning her J.D. in 1972. She also ran for mayor of Syracuse while she was a law student, the first woman to run for that office. She married and divorced twice, but continued to use the last name DeCrow from her second marriage.
She became a prominent civil rights lawyer and well-known Syracuse citizen, as well as a leader of the NOW chapter in Syracuse. She was frequently a voice in the media speaking out for women's rights and gender equality. Throughout the 1970s Equal Rights Amendment struggle, she debated the ERA with anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly in various locations across the U.S.
Feminist Leadership
In May 1974, Karen DeCrow was elected the national president of NOW in what has been called the organization's first hotly contested election. As president of NOW, Karen DeCrow:
- Met with President Gerald Ford at the White House
- Worked to make sure collegiate sports would be covered by Title IX
- Pressured NASA to recruit women as astronauts
- Focused on issues such as employment discrimination, battered women, reproductive rights, access to public accommodations, women in the media and equal pay
In 1974, Time magazine named Karen DeCrow one of 200 future leaders of America. She responded that being one of 18 women out of 200 future leaders gave her leadership a focus. "Five years ago," she wrote in a letter to Time, "no leader of a women's liberation group would have been on your list. Five years from now we plan to be 100 out of 200."
Written Work
In addition to her law practice and gender equality activism, Karen DeCrow is a journalist and book author. For several decades, she has written articles and opinion pieces for major U.S. newspapers. Her books include:
- The Young Women's Guide to Liberation: Alternatives to a Half-Life While the Choice Is Still Yours (1971)
- Sexist Justice (1974)
- Women Who Marry Houses: Panic and Protest in Agoraphobia, co-authored with Robert Seidenberg (1983)
Feminist Ideals
Karen DeCrow cited Nancy Drew as an inspiration. She speculated that many other women in the 1970s women's liberation movement had also read the Nancy Drew books decades earlier and were motivated - perhaps subconsciously - by Nancy Drew's independence and ability to do anything.
Karen DeCrow criticized the prevailing mid-20th century notions that passivity, stupidity or inadequacy compared to husbands should be a way of life for women. She also spoke out about erasing the gender roles that begin in childhood. In later decades, she praised the new generations of men who actually helped take care of their children, unlike their grandfathers who may have never changed a diaper, but she remained concerned that both men and women still considered taking care of the children to be primarily a woman's responsibility.
In Later Years
Karen DeCrow wrote "The Significance of Becoming 50" for The New York Times in 1988. In the piece, she called the feminist movement "the glorious perception that women can be valued for our brains and not just for our faces."
Also in 1988, Karen DeCrow founded World Woman Watch with Robert Seidenberg. The World Woman Watch initiative worked with global leaders to address sexism. The goal was to refuse to remain silent about misogyny when women are treated badly for religious or "cultural" reasons.
Karen DeCrow received multiple awards in recognition of her lifetime achievements, including being inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2009.