Presenting

SONIA PRESSMAN FUENTES Community and Feminist Activist, Co-Founder NOW, Author, Public Speaker 86, Currently resides in Sarasota, Florida. Born in Berlin, Germany. Who better to ask how feminism has been redefined over the years, and how women are viewed today than one of the original trailblazing pioneers? More than 50 years after she first began passionately championing equal rights for women and creating the world that many of us know today, NOW co-founder Sonia Pressman Fuentes still conveys the same spirit that led to those monumental changes in the way women are treated and valued in society. While we've moved beyond the era of one figure or singular voice, the issues at the core of the feminism fight haven't waned."Nothing has changed. The definition has changed. It's still the belief that men and women have equality, regardless of the issue. Issues like equal pay, pregnancy rights and reproductive choice are still prevalent today," she says. She adds that while great strides have been made for women in the legal profession, politics, academia, and the enter tainment industry, more needs to be done to elevate women into positions of power, including the first female president in the United States. When I first met with Fuentes in her modest golf course view home in Sarasota for our interview, I was impressed with her rapid-fire, razor-sharp recollection of dates, times, places, and faces. She recalled story after story of her days as the first woman attorney at the Equal Employment Oppor tunity Commission, and her realization that it wasn't just minorities who faced discrimination, but women as well. The motivation to fight for equality was very personal to Fuentes, as she shared in an earlier interview with encore.org. "I grew up with wanting to do something bigger with my life. As a refugee from Nazi Germany, a Jew and a woman, I became involved in fighting discrimination of any kind, whether it was based on age, gender, race, color, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, marital status, or any other invidious form of discrimination. Fighting discrimination is the passion of my life." Since the age of 10, Fuentes says she felt there was a purpose to her life, more than girls of her generation whose goals were simply to get married, raise a family and live happily ever after. She tells me it was due largely because she had escaped the Holocaust. Fuentes and her family fled Antwerp, Belgium and were among the survivors who sailed the Red Star Line's S.S. Westernland to in New York City in 1934. Fuentes was a bright student growing up, finishing first in her law class at the University of Miami. After graduating, she landed a job at the Justice Depar tment and later with the National Labor Relations Board before she joined the Equal Employment Oppor tunity Commission (EEOC) in 1965. One of her first historic cases involved interpreting the provisions of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which among other things, prohibited employment discrimination based on sex. She soon became known as the lead voice among her co-workers who would champion rights for women, a role she didn't always relish. "I became known as a 'sex maniac' by my boss," Charles T. Duncan [the EEOC's general counsel]. Fuentes grew frustrated with the internal battles of the EEOC to focus on gender discrimination issues. In her memoir titled "Eat First – You Don't Know What They'll Give You, The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter," she describes her meeting with Betty Friedan that soon changed the course of women's rights. "I shared with her my frustrations with the EEOC's failure to focus on gender discrimination issues and told her that what this country needed was an organization to fight for women like the NAACP (National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People) fought for its constituency." In June 1966, the idea soon blossomed from an idea on a napkin and in October of that year, 49 men and women (including Fuentes) came together to form NOW. These trailblazing pioneers, who didn't take "no" for an answer were on their way to leading the second wave of feminism. The organization pressured the EEOC to take gender discrimination seriously, and Fuentes led the push. She drafted several key legal enforcements, including the early Digests of Legal Interpretations and the first Guidelines on Pregnancy and Childbir th, which were later adopted into the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. As she reflects back on her legacy, "the successes are so overwhelming that I frequently say I don't know how many people in their lifetime can see the changes that we saw. It's so gratifying. We wanted to create a world where equality for women is normal." GRAVITAS MAGAZINE GravitasMag.com | 69 Sonia Pressman Fuentes is scheduled to speak on "The Women's Movement: Where It's Been, Where It's At, Where's It's Going"on Tuesday, March 3 from 3-4:30 p.m. at the Longboat Key Education Center Lecture Series. $15 members, $20 non-members. Call 941.383.8811 to register. Hear more of Sonia Pressman Fuentes' emotional story about her return to Antwerp for the opening of the Red Star Line Museum, dedicated to the immigrants who came to North America. She was the only survivor in attendance for the opening in 2013. Go to gravitasmag.com to hear more of her audio interview. Fuentes being awarded a Superior Performance Award by EEOC

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