Bem-vindos a Bordo 02-02

Name: Bem-vindos a Bordo 02-02
Uploaded: 2025-10-10T11:29:24+00:00
Duration: 53 min 57 s
Channel: Vida e Tecnologia

Vida e Tecnologia

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Bem-vindos a Bordo

Queriam ver o mundo e acabaram por mudá-lo. Minissérie documental de 2 episódios que conta a história de mulheres pioneiras que se tornaram hospedeiras de bordo e lutaram pela igualdade de género.

A história de jovens pioneiras que se tornaram hospedeiras de bordo numa época em que as mulheres solteiras não podiam pedir uma bebida, comer sozinhas num restaurante, pedir um crédito ou obter uma receita de um contracetivo.

Tornar-se "assistentes de bordo", como eram chamadas, oferecia oportunidades inéditas de viagem, glamour, aventura e independência.

Embora frequentemente criticadas pelo seu feminismo, estas mulheres estiveram na linha da frente da luta pela igualdade de género no local de trabalho e pela transformação do ambiente laboral.

Com relatos em primeira mão, histórias pessoais e imagens de arquivo, o documentário em duas partes conta a história vibrante, mas pouco conhecida, de mulheres que mudaram o mundo enquanto o sobrevoavam.

Ficha Técnica:

Título Original Fly with Me

Realização Sarah Colt, Helen Dobrowski

Produção Sarah Colt Productions

Autoria Argumento Sarah Colt

Música Troy Herion

Ano 2024

Categoria

📚

Aprendizado

Transcrição

Exibir transcrição completa do vídeo

00:00The following program contains the use of racial epithets in historical context and to recount personal experiences. Viewer discretion is advised.

00:09The following program contains the use of racial epithets.

00:39Five hours after the House passes the measure, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed at the White House by President Johnson.

00:56The Civil Rights Act was designed to address the race-based inequalities that have been a part of the United States since before the United States was founded.

01:09Less known about the Civil Rights Act is that the worker protections to prevent discrimination also covered sex.

01:18Just before it was passed, Howard Smith, a congressman from Virginia, introduced an amendment to include prohibition on gender discrimination.

01:39It was then called sex discrimination.

01:47This stunned everybody there because this was a law that was supposed to help black people.

01:53What is your opinion, Mr. Chairman, of the current Civil Rights Bill?

01:59Now we've had trouble with the so-called civil rights thing for a good many years.

02:09His motivations were not clear.

02:11One interpretation is that he did that to add this laughable idea of sex discrimination that would help tank the bill.

02:24The other interpretation is that he wanted to ensure if this bill was going to provide all these protections for black Americans,

02:31that white women should get protection as well.

02:33For the first time in the United States, we now have employment protections that are designed, really, to promote women entering professions that were otherwise reserved for men.

02:48Our eyes were like, oh, that is gender. That includes gender. Women have rights now.

02:56The passage of the Civil Rights Act was a major step forward.

03:08But the passing of a law is not enough. It's nowhere near enough.

03:13You comply with the law because you think it's good for the, you know, it's a good way to live.

03:19You stop at a red light so people don't crash into each other.

03:22Good. But if you pass a law that people don't want to obey, they won't.

03:35The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was set up to be the enforcement mechanism to make sure that discrimination in employment was not happening.

03:48Good morning. This is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. May I help you?

03:54The expectation at the EEOC when they opened their doors was that they were going to hear from a bunch of African Americans who had documented cases where their rights as a worker had been ignored.

04:11I was going to be fired at age 32.

04:20Dusty and I went to the EEOC so I could file a complaint.

04:27Dusty had heard they were opening that day.

04:30So we planned our flight to be there.

04:33There were people putting typewriters here and, you know, chairs there and getting it all straightened out.

04:42They had just opened the doors.

04:44They weren't really ready at all.

04:49We were there the first day.

04:52This black woman looked at me.

04:53She said, you're free white and 21.

04:55What are you here for?

04:56You have everything going for you.

04:58So when we said, sit down, honey, I've got a story to tell you.

05:02And we told them.

05:03And they went, ooh, ooh, they couldn't believe it.

05:13I joined the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission October 4th, 1965, three months after the agency opened.

05:22I was the first woman attorney in the office of the general counsel, which dealt with answering the big legal questions that came up in administering the law.

05:37We had tons of complaints filed by the stewardesses.

05:40They had no idea what was coming, this volcanic kind of expression of a yearning for justice of women keeping it bottled up for so long.

05:55They challenged restrictions on age, the ability to get married, that you couldn't be pregnant and be a flight attendant.

06:07They filed complaint after complaint after complaint.

06:13Within a year, flight attendants had more than 100 cases on file.

06:17These were not women who were setting out to break barriers for women.

06:21And they just wanted to keep their jobs.

06:24But the EEOC was not taking these complaints based on gender very seriously.

06:31There were commissioners who were favorable to women's rights.

06:36But the executive director was opposed to women's rights.

06:40Vice chair was opposed.

06:42And on the staff level, I was the only woman speaking out.

06:47From an early age, I was sensitized to the second-class treatment of blacks in this country.

06:58But I was blind to the second-class treatment of women in this country.

07:04I had never done anything or given any thought to women's rights, but I read the statute.

07:09The law said you have to handle cases of sex discrimination.

07:16You don't have a choice when a law says something has to be investigated to say,

07:22I don't feel like doing that part of the law.

07:24This book has sold more than 50,000 copies in the hardcover edition,

07:38and 700,000 have been published in paperback.

07:47Betty Friedan, a trained psychologist-turned-housewife, mother, and author.

07:53The Feminine Mystique is the name that I have given to the image of woman

07:58that we have been living by in America and, in fact, in most of the Western world

08:03for the last 15 or 20 years.

08:08The Feminine Mystique put words around the disquiet

08:13that a lot of women of a certain class were experiencing.

08:18It called to people's attention the reality that women who were smart and educated

08:26and could do so much were confined to one role once they were married and had children,

08:34and that was mom and wife.

08:36Ms. Friedan, do you think maybe society is right now in an age of evolution and of change?

08:41Oh, yes, and I think no one's going to hand women anything.

08:44I think women must begin to say yes to themselves and become who they could be

08:49and ask for society the real solutions that women still need.

08:56Betty Friedan came to the EOC

08:59because she thought she was going to write a follow-up book to The Feminine Mystique

09:06about all the progress she thought women had made,

09:11and she saw me there, a woman, so she came over to me,

09:15and she said, what's really going on here? What's happening?

09:18I was feeling pretty down.

09:21I had had a discussion with the executive director who was opposed to women's rights.

09:26I asked her to come into my office, and I leveled with her.

09:31I said, what this country needs is an organization to fight for women

09:36like the NAACP fights for its members.

09:45Halloween weekend, 1966.

09:49Nineteen women and two men met in the basement of the Washington Post

09:54to form NOW, the National Organization for Women,

10:00which had been conceived in the summer.

10:05All of us wanted women to be accepted in educational institutions

10:11on an equal basis,

10:12and we wanted women to be treated equally on the job.

10:16Sonia started feeding information

10:24to two of the other NOW founders

10:26about what the EEOC was not doing

10:30about women's equality.

10:36Then we would draft a letter

10:38from NOW

10:39to the EEOC

10:41complaining

10:43about the EEOC's action

10:46in various sectors.

10:55I knew that wasn't proper procedure,

10:59but

11:00I was so emotionally involved

11:03that I did it.

11:06To my amazement,

11:09nobody ever raised the question

11:11of how come these people

11:12know what the commission is doing

11:15at its innermost meetings.

11:20NOW took many directions

11:23to try to pressure the EEOC

11:25to enforce the law.

11:27They used demonstrations.

11:29They filed lawsuits.

11:31They went into the Legislature

11:36to say,

11:37hey, they aren't enforcing your law.

11:50Ida Phillips is a waitress in Florida.

11:51She was refused a job at a defense plant

11:54because she had a preschool-aged child.

11:56The company thought a child,

11:58not yet in school,

11:59would keep Mrs. Phillips home

12:01from work too often.

12:02She took her case to court,

12:04and the Supreme Court

12:05has agreed to review it.

12:07The Supreme Court is involved

12:09because of the 1964 Civil Rights Law.

12:12One of the things the EEOC did

12:17was to signal how the courts

12:20were going to think about things.

12:22A particular concern for the airlines

12:29was whether they were going to have

12:33to change rules about marriage and age.

12:38In Title VII of the Civil Rights Act,

12:47there is mention of a bona fide

12:51occupational qualification.

12:53That was a provision in the statute.

13:00And what it meant was,

13:03for some jobs,

13:05you don't have to hire men and women equally.

13:11For example,

13:12if you were hiring somebody as a wet nurse,

13:16you don't have to interview men for that job.

13:18The airlines thought it was absolutely necessary

13:25for their business

13:28that they have only women.

13:30And because they only had women,

13:33they really weren't discriminating.

13:35Airlines were very confident

13:39that the public liked having stewardesses on planes.

13:44They actually did surveys that showed

13:49that 80 percent of the flying public

13:51preferred stewardesses over stewards.

13:58They pushed the EEOC to have hearings

14:01so they could clarify the situation.

14:04They put on this whole elaborate defense.

14:13Men can carry trays, but they can't be charming.

14:18They can't create the liveliness

14:20and the atmosphere that young women can create.

14:24And we argue that a man cannot do this

14:27in the same capacity whatsoever that a woman can.

14:32And therefore, being a woman is essential for the job.

14:36The Employment Opportunities Commission issues its opinion.

14:43And it says,

14:44being female is absolutely not a qualification for this job.

14:49Then they had to issue the second decision,

14:52which was,

14:53is it a violation of Title VII

14:56for airlines to terminate or ground stewardesses

15:00at the age of 32 or 35 or when they got married.

15:05I drafted the decision of the commission,

15:09finding that it was unlawful.

15:13One option for the airlines is to just give up

15:18and to change their hiring and firing policies.

15:20But if something is so dear to you,

15:23then you're going to fight.

15:29I was a doctor's assistant in Washington, D.C.

15:33I did all the bookkeeping.

15:35I did all the secretarial work.

15:36I met Richard Lansdale.

15:39He was an attorney.

15:41And I fell in love.

15:43That was just, I just fell in love with him.

15:46He said,

15:47why don't you get out of what you're doing now

15:49and become a stewardess?

15:52I was working 60 hours a week

15:55and getting paid for 40 and no vacation,

15:57no sick leave.

15:58I had no benefits at all.

16:01So it seemed like a good thing to do.

16:08I went to United and they hired me.

16:14When I was hired, stewardesses could not be married.

16:18I thought it was wrong.

16:22I just, why can't you be married?

16:25Pilots can be married.

16:27Why is it okay for a pilot to be married

16:30and not a stewardess?

16:32I was secretly married for four years.

16:39We had observation reports called check rides.

16:43and you were evaluated on everything.

16:49I remember there was a supervisor

16:52who gave me a performance evaluation.

16:57She said one of my problems was that I just was tenacious.

17:04They wanted someone who complied.

17:07You did what you were told to do

17:10and you didn't challenge them.

17:11I found it hard not to challenge them.

17:17When they started giving me extra check rides,

17:21I thought, they have to know I'm married

17:25and they're trying to get rid of me.

17:30I was off of work for nine months.

17:34I really never wanted to be a housewife.

17:38I wanted to get back in the air

17:40and then one day I said, the hell with this.

17:43And I went to the Miami Herald.

17:53This stewardess married secretly.

17:55Then when she admitted she was married,

17:58the airline fired her.

17:59She, the stewardess said today, they certainly have a funny set of morals.

18:05When it hit the news, there was a group of stewardesses in Miami

18:11and they all wore wedding bands to work.

18:14They kind of ganged up on the company.

18:16It hit the fan in the executive offices in Chicago.

18:26Fortunately, I had free legal services from my husband.

18:31And I filed a lawsuit.

18:33Flight attendants are contesting age and marriage rules on a variety of airlines.

18:42For the first couple of years, the judges who were hearing these sex discrimination cases

18:47really sided with the airlines almost unilaterally.

18:52Then there's a crucial court decision where the judges determine the essential work that an airline does

19:02is safely transport people from point A to point B.

19:05If that's the essential work of an airline, then the essential work of a flight attendant is about safety.

19:15It doesn't matter if you're a woman.

19:18It doesn't matter if you're under age 32.

19:22It doesn't matter if you're married.

19:25We start to see a kind of consensus among courts and they start to rule for flight attendants.

19:29As it turned out, they had to give me all of my back pay and they had to pay my lawyer's fees.

19:48Flight attendants had achieved a lot in terms of gaining certain workplace rights.

19:55But there was a lot more to be done.

20:00In the earlier days, aircraft were smaller.

20:03So therefore, it was very important to have a weight limit.

20:06You have to filter in fuel, baggage, the weight of the passengers,

20:11and you also had to add in the stewardess' weight.

20:15The girls who fly come in various sizes.

20:19The assortment is greater than most people think.

20:21They can be as tall as five foot nine.

20:24One airline takes girls as short as four foot five.

20:28They had a card, your appearance card.

20:31They weighed you in every month and put your weight down.

20:34You would just get off a plane.

20:37A supervisor is waiting for you with a clipboard.

20:40There's a scale at the bottom of the stairs.

20:43And if you were even one pound over your hiring weight, you were put on probation.

20:47And you had three chances to lose that weight.

20:53I took water pills.

20:55I took diet pills.

20:57I starved.

20:59Those were some of the tricks that all of us did.

21:02All of us did.

21:04We just passed the tricks around and said,

21:06here, take this laxative, you'll lose three pounds.

21:09No, here, take this dexedrine spansel, you won't be hungry all day.

21:13Just for one pound, you could be taken off a payroll.

21:19No one else at the airline except women were being held to the standard.

21:24Airlines had this stodgy, old fashioned image that was dependable, reliable, but not hip or cool.

21:35Braniff hired Emilio Pucci to design stewardess uniforms.

21:44This ad was really the beginning of an entirely new version of the stewardess.

21:52Airlines start to go, how high can we go with these skirt lines?

22:02Remember what it was like before staff left the airline.

22:05You didn't have heads, it was in hot pants.

22:07Remember?

22:09There was one uniform that was a problem because if you bent over, cleavage would show.

22:15We're going around keeping our hand on our chest.

22:26TWA introduced foreign accent flights.

22:31They had four different designs for the uniforms and they were all paper.

22:36The paper dresses were either an old English wench, a French cocktail, an Italian toga, or the Manhattan penthouse.

22:50You had to kind of be careful, first of all, trying to get it on, that you didn't rip.

22:56And then parade around in them.

22:59It was ridiculous.

23:00I'm Diane. I've got 747s to Miami. Fly me.

23:10I'm Terry. I've got great connections in Miami, all over the sunshine states of America. Fly me.

23:15I'm Marisa. I've got non-stop flights to Miami every day. Fly me.

23:20Fly me.

23:22Fly me how? What are you going to do, get on top of me?

23:25You can fly me morning, afternoon, or night. Just say when.

23:31I'm Judy, and I was born to fly. Fly me.

23:35Fly Judy.

23:37It was pretty close to fuck me.

23:40And I hated that. It was really an insult.

23:47It wasn't just that the ads were demeaning in some abstract way.

23:52It concretely affected the women's day-to-day lives. It made their job much harder.

24:03We knew when people passed by us and felt our butts.

24:07Or they accidentally pretended they were reaching for something to fill our breasts.

24:11Or trapped us. You know, tried to squeeze past something so they could fill your body.

24:16Some women were busy enjoying their new freedoms to exist as sexual beings in a world that was now willing to acknowledge them as such.

24:27But those campaigns in particular really did cause a much wider swath of the women who were working as stewardesses to stand up and say, hang on, that's one step too far.

24:37Just as stewardesses are becoming more sexualized, the world is becoming more complicated.

24:51This is the darkest hour in America's Cold War fight.

24:56We'd like to welcome you aboard. Flying Tiger Line flight number F2B3 to Benoit, Vietnam.

25:10By 1968, there are 500,000 troops on the ground in Vietnam at any given moment.

25:16To maintain those numbers, the U.S. military can't do it alone. So they contract with private airlines.

25:26The arrangement is that they're leasing the jet fully staffed.

25:34Flying in, it was very somber.

25:38But the soldiers knew where they were going.

25:40We usually landed in the middle of the night and got in and out of Vietnam as quickly as possible.

25:52Men off, men on. They were shooting rockets.

25:56And that would have been a good score if they could pull down a 747.

26:01When we landed, if you heard gunshots, you had to evacuate the aircraft quickly.

26:11You ran to the bunkers.

26:16Every time we left, going home, there's an absolute huge roar.

26:24Some of the soldiers got hooked on drugs.

26:33I remember one flight.

26:36Someone had not been weaned off of whatever they were on,

26:40and he was just shaking all the way back.

26:43I just put my arms around him and held him

26:46until we got to where we were going and they got medical transport for him.

26:54The flight attendant profession has always struggled with the differences between the intensity and seriousness of the work that must be done,

27:04especially as safety professionals.

27:07And then you've got this public role of being desirable, of being serene, of being charming.

27:16The late 60s, early 70s is this very precarious and completely confused moment.

27:25Students! I think my window's open!

27:29It's not my aisle.

27:32They are so dumb!

27:37Beautiful, but dumb.

27:41You're being marketed basically as a Barbie doll,

27:45and yet doing more and more complex work.

27:50There's a fundamental incompatibility between these two things.

27:54The scene was an all-too-familiar one at LaGuardia Airport today, as an early afternoon bomb threat forced the evacuation of the airport.

28:04In the late 60s, there were a lot of bomb threats.

28:11And once you get a bomb threat from an airplane, you evacuate it.

28:16And you don't get back on until they've cleared it.

28:19So we had a bomb threat, and we had evacuated the airplane.

28:24The pilot comes out of the cockpit and says to me,

28:27while we're here, would you mind cooking me a steak and make it medium rare?

28:31Without even thinking, I went to the galley, I turned on the oven, and then all of a sudden it struck me.

28:41There I was in the galley of an aircraft that might explode at any minute, cooking this guy a steak.

28:47I had one of those clicks where, wait a minute, why would I be doing this?

28:58I walked off the airplane and I said, you can cook your steak yourself. I'm not staying there.

29:05That moment was a turning point for me.

29:09The men don't have to wear hats with their uniform, why do we?

29:12The men got single rooms, the women did not.

29:23When I was 30 years old, I was the master executive chairman with the union,

29:31which entitled me to sign a non-discriminatory contract with Northwest Airlines.

29:37It included a provision for stewardesses to become pursers.

29:47The purser handled all of the paperwork on international flights.

29:54They did not have way check.

29:58They were able to wear eyeglasses, and they always had single rooms.

30:03There was no reason why a female could not be a purser.

30:13If you were a woman that wanted to make a career out of flying,

30:18your natural inclination would be to move to the purser position because of the better pay.

30:24But certain airlines, like Northwest, refused to hire women for the purser position.

30:35In 1967, Northwest hired five men off the street to be pursers.

30:49I called the director of labor relations, and I said,

30:52the contract requires you to post these purser job positions to everyone,

30:59to everyone, which he did.

31:06The men made the stewardess feel that they were not entitled to the job,

31:12and they could not handle the job of purser.

31:15I realized as Master Executive Chairman that someone had to do it.

31:21So I applied for the job.

31:25I became the first and only female purser with Northwest Airlines.

31:35When I became a purser, the male pursers were getting $250 more per month.

31:42It was not fair at all.

31:45Why should I be treated differently than the men?

31:49My whole thought was, I am right and they are wrong.

31:55I will pursue this.

31:57Michael Gottesman was an expert in labor law.

32:01I made an appointment to see him.

32:04Our expertise was labor law and employment law.

32:07We were the logical people to call.

32:09I laid out the whole picture of the discrimination and how we had no recourse.

32:22In the course of describing her efforts to get the purser job,

32:29she just said offhandedly, you know, it's particularly ridiculous because it's really the same job.

32:35If a man holds it, they call it a person.

32:39If a woman holds it, they call it a stewardess.

32:43It would have been a good case, even if it was just the way they had treated Mary Pat.

32:48But it was a much bigger case.

32:51We filed a class action lawsuit on July 15th, 1970.

33:04We originally had 40 people to file the suit.

33:11That guaranteed us a class action.

33:14You have to convince the judge that this would be an appropriate class action.

33:20That all of the people have the same grievance.

33:23And Mary Pat led the effort.

33:26She was fantastic at organizing.

33:29We had to educate people that we were on the right side of the law.

33:34And we're only trying to force the company to obey the law.

33:47Eastern presents The Losers.

33:51She's awkward.

33:52Not very friendly.

33:58Aw, but she's too young.

34:03Oh, she's, oh, she bites nails.

34:09She wears glasses.

34:11Honey, no, the other, oh, now.

34:13Meet the Losers relishes the fact that they're turning away perfectly attractive, perfectly articulate people.

34:26Well, uh.

34:28And they're all white.

34:30And that is not an accident.

34:33They're probably good enough to get a job anywhere they want.

34:36But at Eastern, we're very choosy about whom we let serve you on a plane.

34:39Eastern Airlines, this stressing, we're still an exclusive form of transportation.

34:45And the promise of exclusivity is also a promise of racial exclusivity.

34:54The first black flight attendant for Delta was hired in 66.

34:58And then I was hired in 1971.

35:02So we're saying nearly a decade after Pat won her case.

35:06Pat opened the doors, but the doors weren't kicked open.

35:12They were cracked.

35:15By the start of the 1970s, there's about a thousand black women working across all of the airlines.

35:23But that's only 3% of the total number of flight attendants in the country at that point.

35:31Affirmative action was designed to make sure that candidates of color, if they're qualified, they get hired.

35:41That replaces nepotism where employers hire people that they're most comfortable with, which is usually people like themselves.

35:49Airlines are forced to hire black people.

35:54It doesn't mean they want to.

35:55I was hired in 1970.

35:59Once I completed the training and I started the job, I realized that the company, National Airlines, did not want me.

36:13When I would see certain captains, I knew scheduling was going to pull me off the flight because they refused to fly with me.

36:24When we traveled, you had to share a room.

36:29We would pull up to the hotel.

36:34The other three flight attendants, they've already discussed it among themselves.

36:41One would run out into the hotel and sign up for the rooms.

36:47By the time I'm getting into the hotel, they already have the key and they're gone.

36:58They would open the door but then tell me that I have to go downstairs and get my own room.

37:06I remember the front desk not being able to convince them to open the door, not having any rooms available.

37:19And on many occasions, I would kind of settle in a corner, you know, I'm still in uniform.

37:29And I would sleep in the lobby.

37:39There was absolutely no one that I could discuss a problem with.

37:47The union did not want me as well.

37:52If I had a problem with my own supervisor, who was I going to go to?

37:58I ended up calling the Southern Poverty Law Center.

38:03And they, of course, they asked me for proof or paperwork or whatever.

38:08And I said, they won't give it to me.

38:11And they said, well, we'll make a few phone calls.

38:13I have no idea what was said, but all of a sudden things started to change.

38:23My supervisor called me in and said, the director is asking, you know, to submit names for the Fly Me ad.

38:32And I thought about it.

38:40Okay.

38:42You don't want me here?

38:44Watch this.

38:53You don't like me in the workforce?

38:56Then how are you going to like me with my picture pasted all over?

39:01The sexual nature of the campaign ad, Fly Me, really didn't bother me.

39:07I did the ad because I wanted to show them.

39:14When you looked at all the different advertisements, you never saw a black face.

39:18You never were chosen to do any advertisement.

39:22So the sexism was secondary.

39:24I'm not sitting here in a sexy position to advertise sex.

39:31You were representing the black stewardess and all that we could accomplish and that we were capable of doing.

39:37We understand the burden of the doors that we possibly could be opening up for anyone else to follow us.

39:50Take your hands so that you've got them up out of the water.

39:54Push the water away.

39:55A couple of times a year we used to go to recurrent training.

40:00And this person stopped and said,

40:03there is a huge billboard with your ad, the Fly Me ad.

40:11And when I saw you, I thought, I didn't know they had black stewardesses.

40:18And she went and applied.

40:20Women's Rights Day, come join us in the march tomorrow.

40:27For more than four years, members of the National Organization for Women have been campaigning throughout the nation for more equality and better civil rights.

40:36And today their movement is wider and stronger than ever.

40:39This inhuman system of exploitation will change, but only if we force it to change and force it together.

40:53I've never been captive.

40:55No, I don't feel, you know, enslaved or anything like that.

40:58We love you men and you can be the boss.

41:00What is liberation now?

41:02Quality, you don't know what the hell you want.

41:04You're not going to be able to do anything unless we begin to do it for ourselves.

41:21Good.

41:23Women's liberation has reared its pretty head in the friendly skies.

41:27Leaflets for our first national convention.

41:29These women are protesting what strikes them as sexual discrimination on the airlines.

41:35The question is whether or not a stewardess is a flying waitress, a sex object or a safety expert.

41:43They seem to be a little bit of all three, but some of them are so annoyed by that sex object business that they formed an organization to try and change their image.

41:51I would like you to know that I am trained to open this door in case of emergency, to take care of an epileptic attack, take care of a heart attack.

42:04If you should have one, I am there to help you with these things.

42:07And also, if none of these things should happen on your flight, I will serve you a meal and offer you a cocktail.

42:13In 1972, a group of women founded Stewardesses for Women's Rights, and they were really trying to find a place in the broader women's movement for stewardesses who were invested in political change as well as workplace change.

42:29They wanted to professionalize the occupation, raise the status and respect of the job.

42:39They also wanted to make the airplane safer, not just for the women who worked there and for the employees, but also for the passengers.

42:50They took up economic issues, like promoting women into positions that they had been excluded from, but they also focused on issues that had not been seen as labor issues.

43:08Issues having to do with appearance and grooming and control over women's bodies.

43:14I joined because I've had a lot of frustrations, and I felt that the union was not the answer to a lot of this stuff.

43:31The union reps were just a bunch of 50, 60-year-old guys that were oblivious to the advertising and to the sex discrimination.

43:44I just don't think they were capable of understanding it or something.

43:48You know, it was like we're dealing with people who were in a different generation.

43:53I don't think that a lot of feminists thought that these stewardesses, who on the surface looked so complacent, could be so effective.

44:14Gloria Steinem championed stewardesses' rights from the beginning.

44:18Gloria was so supportive.

44:20She used to come to the offices.

44:24She felt that flight attendants would make a good case for changes that women were going through.

44:33We could represent a new era.

44:37She just had a lot of positive energy.

44:41Like, we can do this.

44:43We can just, you know, fight them.

44:45Stewardesses for women's rights were savvy in terms of fighting fire with fire.

44:58They distributed bumper stickers and buttons.

45:03And the buttons said, go fly yourself.

45:09The bumper sticker said, National, your fly is open.

45:14And one of the things they did was what they called a counter-commercial.

45:19I don't think of myself as a sex object or a servant, but as someone who is capable of opening the door of a 747 in the dark, upside down, and in the water.

45:33Fantasies are fine in their place, but let's be honest.

45:38The sexpot stewardess image is unsafe at any altitude.

45:41Think about it.

45:43We went to trial on December 4th, 1972.

45:53Seventy percent of Northwest Airlines' stewardesses were part of the lawsuit.

46:00It was a six-week trial.

46:03Executives of Northwest Airlines had to testify.

46:06We were the plaintiffs, so we had to put our case on first.

46:16Northwest tried to make a point that, for safety reasons, they thought that women would want to share rooms.

46:26Whereas men, they felt quite safe staying in their own room.

46:31Why do you put women in double rooms and allow men to have single rooms?

46:38The company's witness said, in restaurants, you see women going to the bathroom together.

46:49They don't go to the ladies' room alone.

46:52That was their explanation.

46:55That this is what women want.

46:57The whole staff in the court were like, oh, what kind of logic is that?

47:08And I remember the judge's reaction.

47:11He just leaned back in his seat and roared.

47:14And he was looking up and he was laughing.

47:17A federal judge today ordered Northwest Airlines to do the following things.

47:21Pay back salary and interest to all stewardesses who were fired since 1965 for being overweight.

47:28Give stewardesses paid less than stewards since 1968 the difference in salary.

47:33And reimburse stewardesses for the difference in room rent since 1968 when they doubled up while stewards had single rooms.

47:39The judge made the decision in our favor on all issues.

47:49But then Northwest Airlines was able to appeal the case.

47:54Their strategy was to take every opportunity that was legally available to them to defer the final moment when they were going to have to pay this money out.

48:07It took 11 years.

48:16My sister was folding her laundry and she called me and said, Patty, you won.

48:22I said, what?

48:24The Supreme Court today upheld the big payoff awarded to stewardesses who sued Northwest Airlines for sex discrimination.

48:31The women charged that they were there is justice.

48:34That was my thinking.

48:36There is justice.

48:38It was a big win.

48:43$60 million is a big chunk of money.

48:47And for a flight attendant to be receiving in one fell swoop $50,000 in back pay.

48:54Women could wear eyeglasses.

48:58They would no longer be suspended for weight.

49:03And we could have single rooms.

49:07One flight attendant sent a note and said that every time she walks around in her single room, naked, she thinks of me.

49:20She thinks of me.

49:31Mary Pat Laffey's victory is definitive in saying that under no circumstances shall a woman doing this job be presented with different and unequal standards as a man doing this job.

49:49This is what women's workplace civil rights are designed to do.

49:56The Mary Pat Laffey case encouraged flight attendants to push the boundaries and to move into those jobs that had been off limits.

50:10The women were finally allowed to have the same benefits of the men.

50:20If you were capable, you could have a man's job.

50:25Now, a flight attendant can be male, can be older, can be married, can be any race, ethnic origin.

50:39We're different now. We kind of match the passengers.

50:55We match the passengers.

50:56We match the passengers.

50:57And maybe at the next door, he will have a man's job.

51:00His abilities will continue the seat-to-air rents at the hotel.

51:07I try and use this בא-G différence.

51:10flights of cada couple are gaining and has moved into the hotels.