Calling All Women Under 32 ...-
Only apply if you are perpetually young, single, and attractive!
Oh no, Dusty. I should be thanking you for everything you've done. You're the one who started it all! -Gloria Steinem
Meet Dusty Roads, the hidden figure who really ignited the women's movement! She became the little voice way out in the wilderness where women worked in the world of the 1950s and 60s when it was mandatory for stewardesses to:
-Wear girdles and submit to flick checks to ensure they did.
-Maintain weight standards that would be shocking today.
-Be willing to be paid less than in the same job.
Phrases like sex discrimination and women's rights hadn't yet entered the nation's vocabulary. Yet.
The captivating story of Barbara "Dusty" Roads begins in the early 1950s and explores her fight against American Airlines' employment policies firing stewardesses at 32 and termination if they married. The airline's leadership belief was that female stewardesses had to be perpetually young, single, and attractive to entice traveling businessmen to buy tickets.
Incensed, Dusty vowed to fight the policy she worked under. She learned quickly that she was fighting for women and for national gender discrimination.
Author Elaine Rock used extensive interviews with Dusty Roads to bring her empowering tenacity alive for readers. As the most influential voice in her union and one of the first female lobbyists in Washington DC comes alive, she revealed to Elaine, "I was the cheapest lobbyist in the world ... Congressmen took me out to lunch ... I never took one out for their support!
Elaine Rock is a women's rights advocate, former history teacher, and technology executive. Her passion is writing about little-known but courageous and heroic women and men whose persistence and resilience helped shape history and became trailblazers.
ElaineRock.com
