Geraldine Ferraro Head of the Special Victims Bureau and Member of the Supreme Court Bar
Part 5 of the Geraldine Ferraro Series
Inequality within the workforce
Ferraro worked long hard hours as head of the Special Victims Bureau and member of the Supreme Court Bar. She gained a reputation for being tough; but, fair in plea negotiations. She sometimes conducted trials and her oratory and summations always won the jury over.
After all her efforts and hard work to bring justice to the victims of these crimes, Ferraro discovered she was paid less than her male counterparts. The lame excuse she was given was that she was a married woman with a husband who could support her. Equality in the workforce was still not recognized even in these top legal careers!
Ferraro is tired out
The long hours, hard work, stress and strain of the job caused her to develop an ulcer and so she decided to change her career focus; to get into legislative branch of the legal system instead.
House of Representatives
Ferraro ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives in 1978, for New York's 9th Congressional District in|Queens. She had tough competition. Her democratic rivals were well-known. She was not that known, at that level of government policy making.
What she had going in her favor was her heritage, this area of Queens was known for its ethnic constituents and she was born of Italian stock. Ferraro's platform was law and order, support for the elder population, and preserving the community.
She labeled herself as a conservative with a small c, but her campaign slogan was, " Finally a tough Democrat." Ferraro won the three-way primary and went on to win the election by a 10 percent margin.
Campaign funding is questioned
The campaign was sticky as Geraldine Ferraro's campaign was funded by family and declared as illegal. Her husband John Zaccaro had to repay the loans taking out for her campaign. Zaccaro had civil fines to pay for civil violation of election law.
Despite the bad publicity Geraldine Ferraro continued to forge ahead.
In 1980 she founded the National Organization of Italian American Women
Rise in the ranks
Geraldine made a great impression upon the house and quickly became the The house speaker, Tip O'Neil's protégé .
To be continued
Montreal's McGill University is an ivy league University and Concordia University specializes in Women's Issues.
Sources:
Published by Carol Roach
Carol Roach holds a masters in counselling psychology. She worked as a therapist at the Douglas Hospital in Montreal before becoming a professional writer.Carol is the author of the book Picking Up The Piece... View profile
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10 Comments
Post a CommentGreat bio on her!
Do we all need to go to the forum and gripe about this glitch in the comments section, or is it something peculiar to this computer?
Your articles contain good detailed information about people we've only heard a few things about.
Interesting.
it just gets better
Superb reporting on this. Well done!
Geraldine Ferraro has always been a classy lady.
excellent work, thanks for sharing ♥
neat info on her!
It's really sad there is such inequality. It isn't supposed to be that way anymore, but I hear it is. I know a new graduate nurse made the same as me and I had about 12 years seniority.