Rose, Susan

Metadata

Abstract

An oral history with Susan Rose, former member of the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. This interview was conducted for the Women, Politics, and Activism Since Suffrage Oral History Project at California State University, Fullerton, and the Center for Oral and Public History. The purpose of this interview was to gather information about Rose’s activist history in Southern California. Specifically, this interview discusses Rose’s Jewish family background in New York and Connecticut; high school years in the 1950s; comments on current successes of her two daughters; college years at Connecticut College for Women; recalls first political experience while attending college and campaigning for local representative Horace Seeley-Brown; how politics were discussed in her family; meeting first husband on a blind date, and subsequently relocating to Ventura, California; teaching in the Los Angeles suburb of Lynwood; briefly relocating to Detroit, Michigan, where she recalled the race riots of the late sixties; reading The Feminist Mystique and how much it changed her perspective; returning to Ventura County and becoming aware of sexist children’s books, and how they reinforced traditional gender roles; starting a local NOW chapter; becoming active in local Santa Barbara politics, including the Planning Commission; earning her Master’s degree; divorce, remarriage, blending families and the affects; advocating personally for equal pay; sitting on California’s Fair Employment and Housing Commission; participating in the Coro Program and subsequently becoming director of the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women, wherein she advised the Los Angeles mayor and city council; researching and crafting policy for federal childcare in Los Angeles, particularly with Councilwoman Joy Picus; discusses current stages of the Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, and CEDAW [Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women]; and finally, reflects on the challenges of directing the Commission.

Metadata

Abstract

A second oral history with Susan Rose, former member of the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. This interview was conducted for the Women, Politics, and Activism Since Suffrage Oral History Project for California State University, Fullerton, and the Center for Oral and Public History. The purpose of this interview was to gather information about Rose’s activist history in Southern California. Specifically, this interview includes additional commentary on Rose’s years as director of the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, including her exit report; working in collaboration with CEWAER [California Elected Women’s Association for Education and Research]; creating a citywide directory of women’s resources; her role in creating the Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee and how Betty Friedan was their kickoff’s keynote speaker; creating a “Pipeline Committee” to create a pipeline of women candidates in Santa Barbara; the committee’s impact on the local committee; her decision to run for the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors in 1998; finding solutions on local homeless issues, and how unexpectedly housing and the homeless became major focal points of her campaign; raising early money for her campaign; campaign strategies; having her “Truman moment” in thinking she’d lost the campaign, but actually won; early days on the Supervisors and working on land preservation; gender demographic of the Supervisors; attending the Women in Power program at Harvard; working with Human Rights Watch; creating a women’s leadership program at Antioch University, working with Emerge California; writing articles for women’s blogs and digital news outlets; reflects on Election 2016 and the negative affect of Trump’s victory; describes her motivation and leadership style; differences in the way men and women lead; how women are judged differently in politics; why so few women are elected to office; advice she gives to women who want to run for office; reflects on the impact of Hillary Clinton’s nomination; and final, shares what she is most proud of in her life.