Peggy Olson, Civil Rights and Women's Rights

Today marks the beginning of three weeks of our syllabus set aside for the question of Mad Men and early feminism. Several months ago, I was writing a long paper for another class on pop culture depictions of lawyers, civil rights and women's rights and researched women's rights legal history.

For a time, I considered including the following Mad Men scene as an illustration of the relationship between civil rights and women's rights in the early '60s, but ultimately found the scene too complex for the rhetorical purpose of my paper. Luckily, this class gives me a reason to discuss the scene. It is from the fourth season episode "The Beautiful Girls", and is set in the summer of 1965. Peggy Olson sits at bar with Abe, a bohemian guy that she is interested in romantically, and who has more radical politics than she does. As we enter the scene, Abe mentions one of Peggy's clients:

ABE:	Fillmore Auto Parts is worse than a corporation, what with the boycott and all.
PEGGY:	What boycott?
ABE:	The southern stores won't hire Negroes.
PEGGY:	Says who?
ABE:	It was in the Voice. It was a couple of places.
PEGGY:	I don't think that's true. I would have heard that.
ABE:	It is true.
PEGGY:	It doesn't seem like them.
ABE:	I'm sure they are perfectly nice, for racists, you know.

This first part of the scene sets up the civil rights issue and builds tension between the characters. Abe is interested in Peggy romantically but wants her job and her politics to conform to his moral position. Peggy is attracted to Abe but is put on the defensive by his statements. She defends her client's integrity although she has less information than Abe does about their actions. Even in this short scene there are layers to their relationship -- they want more than one thing from one another and those goals are brought into conflict.

The following continuation of the scene flips the dynamic between the characters to some extent as Peggy raises the question of women's rights in the context of civil rights. Abe pushes back.

ABE:	Civil rights isn't something that can be fixed by a PR campaign. It's inequality. It's something that the world has its eyes on.
PEGGY:	I know, but I have to say, most of the things Negroes can't do, I can't do either, and nobody seems to care.
ABE:	What are you talking about?
PEGGY:	Half of the meetings take place over golf, tennis, in clubs where I'm not allowed to be a member or even enter. The University Club said that the only way I could eat there was if I arrived in a cake.
ABE:	There are no Negro copywriters, you know?
PEGGY:	I'm sure they could fight their way in like I did. Believe me, no one wanted me there.
ABE: (sarcastically)	All right, Peggy, we'll have a civil rights march for women.
PEGGY: (disgusted)	I have a really early day. It's nice to see you again.
ABE:	All I'm saying is that they're not shooting women to keep them from voting.
PEGGY: (leaving)	You're opinionated and you're criticizing me.

Part of the complexity of the scene comes from the fact that neither character is perfectly right. Abe is inconsiderate, but makes a valid point about the violent reaction to the civil rights movement. Peggy is naive in some sense and also puts work ahead of politics (in the same scene she says agency would have taken Goldwater as a client), but raises the issue of justice for women at a time when it wasn't even on the radar screen of radicals like Abe.

Until a few months ago, when I was doing research for the paper I mentioned above, I was unaware of the politics and history regarding the inclusion of an amendment prohibiting gender discrimination in the 1964 civil rights act. Here's how I summarized the debate in my paper (and here's a link that includes citations):

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 passed Congress and was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy, but it was “amended until it was so riddled with holes” that its sponsor, Edith Green of Oregon, felt it would do little to remedy wage discrimination. The next year, Representative Howard Smith of Virginia proposed an amendment to the Civil Rights Act that added women to the list of classes that would be protected from discrimination in employment. Smith, no friend of civil rights, hoped his amendment would stop passage of the bill. Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan, the only female lawyer in the House of Representatives, realized that Smith’s ploy created an opportunity, allowing her to add the votes of Southern conservatives opposed the Act to the votes of liberals who would support the amendment on its merits. Eventually, both the House and Senate passed the Civil Rights Act with the gender provision intact, and it was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Years later, the now retired Howard Smith ran into Martha Griffiths in Washington and their conversation turned to the gender provision of the Civil Rights Act. “Martha,” Smith said, “I’ll tell you the truth. I offered it as a joke.”

The interpersonal complexity of the relationship between Peggy and Abe in the Mad Men scene  -- complexity created through the dialogue techniques, character deepening techniques and movement of the scene through the competing moral considerations of the characters -- mirrors the complexity of the real politics of the time.

Peggy and Abe are not like the historical actors in the way that a direct comparison might first suggest, but their wrangling with the moral considerations of the issue -- how is the fight for women's justice like the fight for racial justice and should one fight take precedence -- what is the relationship between the personal (one's relationship, one's job) and the political -- is an accurate reflection of the debate from a certain vantage point. The storytelling techniques give us access to both characters thoughts and feelings, but also place us slightly outside, where we can empathize to some degree with both character's point of view.