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From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues

Ireland, Patricia (b. 1945)

Patricia Ireland was president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1991 to 2001. Ireland became involved in the feminist movement through a personal experience. A flight attendant for Pan American World Airlines from 1967 to 1975, Ireland learned that the company’s health insurance policy covered male employees’ families but not female employees’ families. She protested the company policy and contacted NOW for advice. Following NOW’s recommendations, she successfully challenged the policy, but only for women who were heads of households. The company later granted women the same insurance coverage as men. Years later, Ireland noted: “The vice president of the labor task force at Dade County NOW is now the dean of women lawmakers in the Florida legislature. I am the president of NOW. And Pan Am is bankrupt.”

Ireland discovered that she could create change; that although laws existed to protect women’s rights, they were not consistently enforced; and that NOW’s feminist agenda related to her. She also found satisfaction in having power. Increasingly dissatisfied with the control that Pan Am exercised over her life as well as that of other flight attendants, Ireland sought new avenues to gain status and power. She entered law school while still working for Pan Am to support herself and her husband. Following graduation in 1975, she joined a private law firm, where she worked for 12 years. During those years, she also did pro bono work for women and learned how legal barriers limited women’s options and prohibited women from fully exercising their human rights. Her exposure to the inequities of divorce and inheritance laws, the crimes of violence permitted under marriage laws, and the economic travesties perpetuated by businesses and governments contributed to her growing commitment to the feminist agenda.

Ireland’s continued involvement in NOW led to her election as vice president of the organization in 1987 and her appointment to the presidency in 1991, when incumbent president Molly Yard resigned because of illness. Controversy over her personal life immediately accompanied Ireland’s move to the president’s office. A gay rights magazine article revealed that Ireland, who had been married for 20 years, also had a same-sex companion. Questions of her sexual orientation surrounded her, but Ireland resisted engaging in a battle or even fully responding. She explained: “This is how I live my life and I’m not ashamed. Here I am. Here’s my whole set of skills. You get the parts of me you like and also the parts that make you uncomfortable. You have to understand that other people’s comfort is no longer my job. I am no longer a flight attendant.”

During her tenure as president of NOW, Ireland had its members in the Women-Friendly Workplace Campaign call on corporations to end sexual harassment and other workplace discrimination. Through her leadership, NOW initiated an innovative lawsuit using racketeering laws to stop attacks on abortion clinics. The case, NOW v. Scheidler, went to the U.S. Supreme Court and was decided in NOW’s favor.

Ireland developed NOW’s Elect Women for a Change campaign in 1992 and the organization’s Victory 2000 campaign to elect 2,000 new feminists to office by the turn of the century. She also enhanced NOW’s involvement in international issues by nurturing its Global Feminist Program, working with African women to end genital mutilation, and with other groups to end the gender apartheid imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

After completing her term as president of NOW, Ireland was briefly president of the YWCA in 2003.

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Patricia Ireland earned her bachelor’s degree in German from the University of Tennessee in 1966 and her J.D. degree from the University of Miami Law School in 1975. Ireland wrote her memoir, What Women Want, in 1996.

See also: Feminist Movement; National Organization for Women; NOW v. Scheidler

References: Ireland, What Women Want (1996); The New York Times, March 3, 1992, October 21, 2003; NOW, www.now.org (accessed July 23, 2012).

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Ireland, Patricia (b. 1945)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, edited by Suzanne O’Dea, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0485.
APA 7th
Ireland, Patricia (b. 1945). From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, In S. O’Dea (Ed.), Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0485.
CMOS 17th
"Ireland, Patricia (b. 1945)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, Edited by Suzanne O’Dea. Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0485.