Challenges. Changes. Courage.

CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM Gov. Linda Lingle hosted the second annual International Women's Leaders Conference at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel last week. The conference, featuring women leaders from China, Japan, Iraq, Israel and the United States, encouraged women to network, share ideas and inspiration. Lingle is shown speaking to Rina Bar-Tal, chairman of Israel Women's Network.

Persistence rather than
revolution brought rights
for Hawaii’s women

The legal-abortion campaign
and efforts by labor unions
helped promote equity issues

Island women's rights pioneers said Hawaii got a head start on women's initiatives and the accomplishments are a credit to local individuals rather than the national movement that arose in the 1960s and 1970s.

"There was no organized movement of radical women holding signs," said Annelle Amaral, a founder and chairwoman of the Hawaii Women's Coalition. "People took up ideas as just a matter of conscience, what seemed reasonable. It was determined little ladies who knew what was not fair."

"It wasn't a revolution in any sense of the word," said Amy Agbayani, director of the University of Hawaii SEED -- Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity -- program. "We've been at this for decades; some things we've had to build on," she said. "The issues haven't gone away."

A former Hawaii Civil Rights Commission chairwoman, Agbayani has been an advocate for immigrant and women's rights for decades and instrumental in getting funding for university women's programs.

As one of the first women to be hired on an equal basis with men by the Honolulu Police Department, Amaral was the beneficiary of a "determined little lady."

In 1974, the late Lucile Abreu, hired as a police officer and limited to working with juveniles, won federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission backing, forcing Honolulu to hire and promote women on an equal basis with men.

Amaral, later elected to the state Legislature and appointed head of the state affirmative action office, said the Women's Coalition today includes 200 private and professional groups, government organizations and individuals working to improve the lives of women.

The decriminalization of abortion in Hawaii in 1970, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, was a pivotal moment for island women.

In Hawaii, the late Joan Hayes led the campaign, which got wide backing in the community and early resolution of an issue that became a rancorous women's rights fight elsewhere.

"It was backed by respectable ladies in high heels," said Marilyn Bornhorst, then a member of the American Association of University Women, which backed the measure. "We were very proud of that. Nobody thought it would get further than allowing abortion in the case of rape, but we found people were willing to go for the whole thing."

It was the beginning of political involvement for Bornhorst, who went on to become the third woman ever elected to the City Council and the first Council chairwoman.

Legalized abortion was also backed by the state's working class, said Ah Quon McElrath, retired social worker with the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, which organized women as well as men plantation workers in the 1940s.

Unions played a big role in equity issues, McElrath said. As the tourist industry burgeoned and provided more and more jobs in the 1970s, hotel and restaurant workers were organized.

"It was the only way in which women, especially women of color, were able to begin to earn the kind of money men were earning," said McElrath, who has served in numerous community positions, including as member of the UH Board of Regents.

But the battle for equality is far from over. Women still earn less than men with the same jobs and educational background. The Hawaii Women's Coalition and the American Association of University Women backed a bill passed by the last Legislature establishing a pay equity task force as a first step.

"Every generation has to build up on what happened before," said Agbayani, currently working on the "recently rejuvenated Women's Fund ... trying to increase the endowment, trying to get women to become philanthropists."

"What's good now is many men have a growing awareness that (equality) benefits everybody," she said. "That is when a minority movement takes hold, when the dominant sector becomes allies."

Bornhorst said the mark of success for the women's movement will be when "we can do away with women's auxiliaries and special interests and concentrate on the common good. It's an interim thing; we don't want to be separate."