A B RI E F STO RY 0 F ST RI KE 1970
Jacqui Ceballos, Jan Cleary and Joan Michel

The Storyline
Yes, we moved mountains, changed the course of rivers-but we also lost a lot. We lost high heels, tight bras and girdles and fashion-certified hemlines. We lost the need to have a man cosign our leases and credit cards. We lost the obligation to follow society's dictates about the kinds of careers we could aspire to, at having to accept lower wages that compromised our dignity. We lost being defined by our marriage-or-not state, by our sexual orientation. We lost the fear of lawyers and courts who left us in poverty after divorce. And, as Robin Morgan put it so well, "Goodbye to All That."

Eleanor Bailey

Goodbye to limited career opportunities, to quotas in medical schools and other male-only domains. To men-only restaurants, bars, executive airline flights, clubs, college libraries. To skimpy support (if any at all) for women's sports. To disbelief, disregard and disdain of sexual harassment in the workplace, to sexual abuse of young girls and children, to wife battering. To back-alley abortion mills.

To ridicule at our demand for equality, dignity, independence and equal pay. To being accused of ruining our children. For being blamed for every one of society's ills. That's a lot of losing. So come. Come reunite with your sisters in joyful celebration of all the things we unloaded in the 70s.

SETTING THE SCENE
It is the decade of the 70's. Watergate. The Beatles.

Constance Comer

And our Strike.

After which our small movement sweeps boldly across the country. Women's Liberation groups and NOW chapters spring up in cities and towns, colleges and universities. Caucuses form in every field, in government, law, medicine, sociology, psychology. Throughout the days and throughout the nights, in lofts, apartments, in mansions and offices from east to west, from north to south, women find new strengths. They are seen and heard on the streets, in houses of worship, in Congress, in the courts and the clubs, hotel dining rooms, bars, doctors' offices, lawyers' dens. They are out to change the world.

CURTAIN CALLS