I Stand on the Bra Straps of Giants

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton

To paraphrase Isaac Newton, if I have seen further it is because I stand on the bra straps of giants. Those bra straps have been on the shoulders of some powerful and forceful women, women who weren’t afraid to make a change, talk about how the world could be different, be bold enough to request a place at the table. In some instances, I stand on the bare shoulders of women, like the ones who destroyed their bras on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1969.

Let me tell you a story. Like all good stories, it starts a long time ago, in 1975 to be exact. This was six years after the famous Miss America protest in 1969, when Carol Hanisch and some other women who were part of a small group called the New York Radical Women threw their bras, and girdles, mops, and pots and pans into a garbage can on the Atlantic City boardwalk. They didn’t actually burn bras, but the media, looking for a sensational angle, latched onto the idea that these women were “bra burners” and that myth was created. A “bra burner” quickly became the moniker for a radical feminist. Or maybe just a feminist. Or maybe a gay woman. Or maybe someone who just believed that women should have equal opportunity with men. Each ideology was just as ground-breaking, shocking and sensational as the next.

In 1975, a group of women who were natives to Atlantic County decided that, as the civil rights movement had changed the country, so too could the women’s rights movement. One of the greatest needs was to provide battered women and children with shelter and safety. These women, with their own families to care for, with their own careers to consider, founded the Atlantic County Women’s Center. Were they inspired by the protest of the “meat market,” as the New York Radical Women considered the Miss America pageant? Possibly. For six years, a sea change was happening in the way society viewed women. Status quo didn’t work anymore, and women in Atlantic County were no less impacted than women in counties across the nation.

Change was sweeping the nation, and this included southern New Jersey. Atlantic City was morphing from an economic dead-zone, as portrayed during the 1964 Democratic convention to a city soon to be the Monte Carlo of the East Coast. These women followed the mantra of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead, who spent her childhood summers in Hammonton – “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

2010 marks the 35th anniversary of that founding. The Atlantic County Women’s Center has been a place created by women for women for three and a half decades. Through seven American presidents, eleven New Jersey governors, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the electronic age, the Women’s Center has stood as the only organization in Atlantic County focused on improving the quality of life for women and their families.

Does that mean that we don’t provide services to men? Are we, in fact, those preverbal bra burners? We provide services to men. We provide services to children. We provide services to families. We provide services to people and families that fall in the margins and fall through the cracks.

All of the services we provide are built around improving the lives of women – so, we work with batterers in the Alternatives to Violence Program, because we know that, for every person with battering behavior, there is survivor of that abuse. Working to change the behavior of the batterer benefits the survivor, even in small ways. The services we provide to families help women as well, even if the family is made up of men, women and children. We recognize that women have the lion’s share of the childcare responsibility while typically bringing home the smaller portion of the “bacon.” Childcare resources and referrals are a large part of what we do.

Our job readiness programs, Home to Work and Self Sufficiency, recognize that, in order for a woman to have a place at the table, she has to first have the job, the professional clothes and the transportation for her to get to the table. These programs help people who need assistance with resumes, job searches, and educational advocacy.

For 35 years, the Women’s Center has been creating a place for us in Atlantic County. Although who that “us” is has changed…when the founding mothers came together, it was women and children who were escaping abusive homes. Today, the Violence Intervention Program still offers confidential shelter, a 24 hour hotline, advocacy and community education – for women, men, children, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered individuals. These services are for survivors and their loved ones – all survivors and their loved ones.

Soon it was recognized that, if a woman’s childcare didn’t work, neither did she. This idea today has is expanded to families – in an economy where both partners work, if a family’s childcare doesn’t work, neither does that family. Before too long the Women’s Center realized that, to keep up with a society that was evolving, it too would have to evolve. Today this is done by exploring the transferable skills people have, how to turn these into a new job, or a better job, or a chance at an education.

During 2010, we are celebrating our 35th anniversary and paying homage to the bra straps that have come before us. We are also celebrating the place we have created – not the physical space, not the building. Instead we are celebrating the place we have worked to carve out in Atlantic County and southern New Jersey – for women, for children, for people who are marginalized or invisible, regardless of gender, because of need, not in spite of it. We are celebrating the place that we have at the table – be it the kitchen table, the playroom table or the boardroom table.

And we are looking forward to providing the shoulders (and the bra straps) for the next 35 years.

-- Erin O'Hanlon

(Erin O'Hanlon is the Coordinator of Community Initiatives at the Atlantic County Women's Center. This is the blog of the Atlantic County Women's Center, a non-profit organization in Atlantic County, New Jersey, that has been creating a place for us since 1975. For more information, check out our website at acwc.org)