by Kerrie Russell, Staff Writer
March 22, 2007
Women representing Sonoma County hold some of the highest ranking political positions and some of the most prestigious and influential jobs.
United States Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, State Senator Pat Wiggins, State Assemblymembers Patty Berg and Noreen Evans and County Supervisor Valerie Brown are all women who represent Sonoma County voters.
But it hasn't always been that way.
Like the rest of the country, many women in Sonoma County in the 1960s and 1970s felt compelled to join what is now commonly referred to as the second women's movement.
And as those women grow older, move away and die, a group of Sonoma State University history students are ensuring that their stories will not be forgotten.
Spearheaded by SSU history professor Michelle Jolly, the group is collecting interviews from dozens of women throughout the county who were involved in the movement. The interviews will be compiled and become part of the Sonoma County Women's Oral History Project.
Jolly said she felt compelled to start the project after receiving an e-mail from an influential woman in the movement.
“An important activist in Sonoma County said that as the women were getting older or moving away, someone ought to collect their stories,” Jolly said.
That activist was Mary Ruthsdotter, a Sebastopol resident and co-founder of the National Women's History Project, based in Santa Rosa.
Ruthsdotter said that she sent the e-mail to get the project started because she realized she couldn't do it herself.
“About 10 years ago, I boldy annonced in public that I was going to do the project. I got involved in the co-housing project in Sebastopol, but this project just kept nagging at me becuase my health was deteriorating. Various people had died who were really active in the time period and a number of people moved away. I thought, if this is ever going to happen, it has to happen now and I wasn't in a position to carry it out entirely,” Ruthsdotter said.
Ruthsdotter said that from her work over the last 20 years, one thing she has noticed is that Sonoma County “was and is unusual in the level of feminist activity outside a major urban center.” When asked why she she thinks the county became a hub for feminist activity, Ruthsdotter explained that she wasn't sure, but hoped the students involved in the oral history project would find out.
“It was just amazing - the level of activity here,” she said. “These were real women doing real things, it was not a wheel spinning activity.”
One of the Ruthsdotter's achievements as a co-founder of the National Women's History Project was successfully lobbying Congress in 1980 to designate the week of March 8 as National Women's History Week. In 1987, the coalition lobbied Congress again, this time for the entire month of March to be designated as Women's History Month.
The National Women's History Project was founded in Santa Rosa by Molly Murphy MacGregor, Ruthsdotter, Maria Cuevas, Paula Hammett and Bette Morgan “to broadcast women's historical achievements.”
With all of the activity in the county, Jolly said one of the first obstacles she and her students faced was deciding who to include in the project. “Do you include members of NOW (National Organization for Women), women from the county Commission on the Status of Women, the Girl Scouts, Soroptimists? The answer is that we're looking at all those things.”
The group has already conducted many of the interviews and are in the process of editing and finalizing those recordings. “We started with a list of about 60 names from 1965 to 1985,” Jolly said.
Some of those women include Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, artist Annie Murphy Springer, founding member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Mujeras Unidas Patricia Robles-Mitten, J. J. Wilson, founder of the women's studies program at Sonoma State University, musician Sherri Hoefling and Jewish community leader Carolyn Metz among others.
So, why was it that all of these activists centered in Sonoma County? And since they did, does that mean that Sonoma County was already a place sensitive to women's issues?
“Just because people felt like it was a receptive place to come, doesn't mean that there was no work to be done,” Jolly said.
The project received a grant from the California Council for the Humanities' California Story Fund, which was used to help purchase digital recording devices.
It will become part of a display gallery at SSU beginning in mid-August. At that time, women not interviewed in the project will have an opportunity to share their stories from the movement.
For more information about the project, contact Michelle Jolly at jolly@sonoma.edu. For more information about the National Women's History Project, call 636-2888 or go to www.nwhp.org.
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