Papers of Sandi E. Cooper, 1969-1988

A professor of history at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, Sandi E. Cooper collected these papers because of her interest in the case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Sears, Roebuck and Company.

The plaintiff charged Sears with discrimination in two main categories of employment, claiming that women were underrepresented in high-paying commission sales jobs, and that there were disparate salary rates for men and women in certain managerial and administrative positions (so-called "checklist" employees). Sears maintained that the government's statistics did not prove discrimination, and disputed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission assumption that male and female applicants were equally qualified for and interested in commission sales positions. To bolster their respective arguments, the litigants brought in two prominent feminist historians: Rosalind Rosenberg testified for Sears and Alice Kessler-Harris for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They presented conflicting interpretations of women's attitudes toward work and the relative importance of workers' and employers' roles in shaping patterns of employment by sex. The case was tried in 1984 and 1985 in U.S. District Court in Chicago, and in early 1986 Judge John A. Nordberg ruled in favor of Sears.

For further information on the case, see "Women's History Goes to Trial: EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck and Company," with an introduction by Sandi E. Cooper, in Signs 11 (summer 1986); and Ruth Milkman, "Women's History and the Sears Case," in Feminist Studies 12 (summer 1986).