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Elyse Duckett
Firefighter, San Francisco Fire Department
Elyse Duckett’s grandmother was a maid for
a white family. Her mother was a seamstress. The women
in Elyse Duckett’s family held the traditional
jobs offered to African American women. At an early
age, Duckett saw a different path. She preferred playing
in the mud to playing with dolls, wood shop to home
economics. She decided to become a firefighter.
A single parent, unemployed, and on welfare, Duckett
jumped at the chance to volunteer for the GAIN program
which gave AFDC participants the chance to get job
skills. GAIN would pay for child care and school supplies
while Duckett attended class. So with the support
and encouragement of her GAIN counselor and her three
women firefighter friends, Duckett enrolled in Fresno
City College firefighter school. She was the only
woman and the only African American.
In May 1986, as part of the first class under a court-ordered
consent decree, Duckett joined the San Francisco Fire
Department. The battle to obtain the consent decree
began in 1979 when the Black Firefighters Association
convinced the director of the San Francisco Black
Firefighters to file a class action suit against the
department on their behalf.
Previously, black firefighters had been subject to
physical harassment by their white colleagues, as
well as unfair testing policies. White male firefighters
were fed the answers to the lieutenant exam questions
by white firefighters already in the department. The
decree addressed these problems, and began the process
of affirmative action.
Duckett’s journey highlights the positive aspects
of affirmative action. A young African American woman
was able to fulfill her dream of becoming a firefighter
because the GAIN program gave her the skills to advance
and the consent decree gave her the equal footing
necessary to compete in a white male-dominated trade.
Today, Elyse Duckett is one of the 115 women out
of the 1,500 workers in the San Francisco Fire Department.
Belinda Guadarrama
Owner and president,
GC Micro
Belinda Guadarrama waged and won a one-woman legal
battle against the goliath Defense Logistics Agency
(DLA) to ensure proper apportionment of government
defense subcontracts to small disadvantaged businesses
.
Guadarrama’s company, GC Micro, sells computer
software and hardware, principally to the defense
and aerospace industries. In 1989, Guadarrama found
out that the federally mandated goal of awarding 5
percent of subcontracts to small disadvantaged businesses
was repeatedly going unmet. So she began to share
this information, detailed on the Department of Defense
Standard Form 294, with other mino rity-owned businesses
and members of Congress. Soon the Defense Logistics
Agency stopped sending her the 294s, claiming that
she was circulating sensitive material to competitors.
In response, Guadarrama filed a legal suit against
the agency for violation of the Freedom of Information
Act.
After a four-year court battle—which cost Guadarrama
close to $20 million in lost business—the Federal
Appellate Court in San Francisco ruled in her favor.
Guadarrama’s efforts forced Lockheed, Boeing
and General Dynamics to draw up new contracts for
the Air Force’s F-22 advanced tactical fighter
jet. They now award 5 percent, instead of the original
.007 percent, to small disadvantaged businesses.
“We’re nine years old now, we’ve
established ourselves, our pricing is competitive,”
says Guadarrama. “But I don’t overlook
the fact that had there not been companies willing
to work with me early on because of these programs
[for disadvantaged businesses], I wouldn’t
be here today.”
Reprinted with permission from the March/April 1995
issue of MBE MAGAZINE. ©1997 by MINORITY BUSINESS
ENTREPENEUR. |
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Jenijoy La Belle
Professor of literature,
California Institute of Technology
In 1969, Jenijoy La Belle became the first woman
hired as an assistant professor at the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 1974, she was
unanimously recommended for tenure by the department
faculty, and began her five-year battle with the university.
The chairman of the humanities and social sciences
division informed her that her tenure was denied due
to lack of “scholarly productivity,” even
though two men with fewer publications than La Belle
had just recently gotten tenure. The literature faculty
protested the decision. An outside arbitrator was
brought in and La Belle agreed to follow his verdict;
she assumed the chairman made the same agreement.
But when the arbitrator ruled in favor of La Belle,
the chairman denied any such agreement and once again
refused La Belle’s tenure.
The chairman then proceeded to change the criteria
for tenure to include acceptance of a book for publication
by a major university press. In a matter of months,
La Belle’s book was accepted by Princeton University
Press. She asked for tenure reconsideration. Again,
it was denied.
La Belle filed a complaint with the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission. In 1977, it found in her favor,
charging Caltech with discrimination against women
faculty. The EEOC also discovered that La Belle had
been paid less than her male colleagues of equal rank.
Armed with these findings, La Belle met with university
trustees. They negotiated a settlement: assistant
professorship and promi se of an unbiased tenure review
in two years. In April 1979, Jenijoy La Belle became
the only tenured woman on the Caltech faculty.
“Did I get my position because I’m a
woman? Probably not,” she says. “Did I
lose it because I’m a woman? Probably. Did I
get it back because I’m a woman? You bet.”
Jenijoy La Belle continues to teach at Caltech.
Marilu Meyer
Co-founder and president,
Castle Construction Corp.
Women are rare in the construction industry. More
rare still are women construction contractors. Marilu
Meyer, who started as a school teacher, is a tenacious
advocate for women-owned businesses who fits in as
well on the job site as in the boardroom.
Meyer’s firm, which specializes in concrete,
masonry, carpentry and management, got its big break
in 1981 when Chicago’s Department of Transportation
(DOT) declared it would make good on its promise to
contract with women-owned businesses. Meyer won four
contracts, and seven years later her firm became a
general contractor.
In 1987, the DOT contracted a $210 million project
to renovate Chicago’s expressway (then the country’s
largest highway project). When Meyer learned that
not one contract had been awarded to a black-owned
firm, even though the new expressway cut through predominately
black neighborhoods, she was outraged. The slight
to black-owned businesses, coupled with accusations
that the contracts awarded t o white women-owned businesses
were just for show, prompted Meyer to take on the
fight for separate goals for women- and minority-owned
businesses. She testified before Congress on the issues.
And she was appointed by then President Bush to the
National Women’s Business Council.
Meyer’s reputation quickly grew as a successful
women business owner. The National Association of
Women Business Owners named her 1990 Woman of the
Year. The Chicago Women’s Business Development
Center named her 1990 Entrepreneur of the Year and
inducted her into their hall of fame. She is also
the past president of the Illinois Chapter of the
WCOE.
Marilu Meyer’s personal goal is to see more
federal contracts be awarded to women-owned businesses.
The tenacity which brought her success in the construction
world fuels her as an advocate for women business
owners: “I don’t have any problems about
stating my beliefs. Somebody’s got to stand
up and confront the issues.”
Reprinted with permission from the November/December
1992 issue of MBE MAGAZINE. ©1997 by MINORITY
BUSINESS ENTREPENEUR. |
