Sonia "Sunny" Pressman Fuentes

Born: 1928

Country of Birth: Germany

Nationality: German/American

Ethnicity: White

Cornell University BA Liberal Arts or Psychology 1950; University of Miami School of Law LLB 1957

" “As a Jew who had escaped from Germany, I naturally had an interest in the rights of minorities.” (msa.maryland.gov/megafile/); “I became the staff person who stood for aggressive enforcement of the sex discrimination prohibitions of the Civil Rights Act.” (jwa.org); "Then Betty Friedan, who had become famous through writing The Feminine Mystique, came to the EEOC to interview officials and staff for a second book. I invited her into my office and told her, with tears in my eyes, that the country needed an organization to fight for women the way the NAACP fought for African Americans. Thereafter, in June 1966, at a luncheon at the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C., 28 people planned the formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Another 26 founders, of whom I was one, were added at an organizing conference in Washington, D.C. that October." (jwa.org); "At that time, few Americans were aware that there was such a thing as sex discrimination," recalls Fuentes. "In my early speeches for the EEOC, any references to 'women's rights' was greeted with laughter. Words like 'sex discrimination' and 'women's rights' hadn't yet become part of our national vocabulary." "At that time, men and women lived in two different worlds. A woman's place was in the home. Her role was to marry and raise a family. She was not to have career ambitions, although she could work for a few years before marriage as a typist, clerk, secretary, telephone operator, schoolteacher, a saleswoman, librarian, social worker or performer. When she had children, she was to raise her sons and daughters differently so that they too would conform to the socially acceptable gender roles." (womensvoicesmedia.org); "Over the years, I’ve learned that human relationships are the most important thing in life. Women’s rights is the most meaningful idea to me since I became involved in it in 1963." (forward.com); "

— Sonia "Sunny" Pressman Fuentes

Field of Study: Lawyer; Author

Institution/Corporation: DOJ; EEOC; NOW; HUD; GTE

Degrees & Memberships: Member: Phi Beta Kappa (1956); Veteran Feminists of America (1992); Board of Trustees National Women's Party (1990-2006); American Cancer Society; Florida Association for Women Lawyers (2007); NAACP; Americans United for Separation of Church & State; NOW; WEAL; FEW

Awards: 2000 Maryland Women's Hall of Fame; Foremother Award, National Center for Health Research; 1999 Women at Work Award, Wider Opportunities for Women; 1996 Medal of Honor, Veteran Feminists of America; 2000 inducted into Gallery of Prominent Refugees, UN High Commissiopn; 1966-67 Superior Performance Award, EEOC; 1979 Annual Award of the Status of Women Committee, Connecticut Bar Association; 1984 named 1 of Cleveland's 6 Top Business Women, New Cleveland Woman Journal; 2001 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society's (HIAS) Hall of Fame; 2005 Immigrant Achievement Award, American Immigrant Law Foundation; 2011 Certificate of Recognition, NOW; 2013 Glass Ceiling Award, Jewish Museum of florida; 2013 inducted into Hall of Distinction, Monticello (NY) Central School District; 2016 16 Over 61 Award, Wechsler Center for Modern Aging; 2013 ABA's Women Trailblazers in the Law Project; 2018 Backbone Award, Secular Student Alliance at Ohio State University

Achievements: 1 of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW); 1 of the 1st lawyers in the Equal Employment Opportunity commission (EEOC); 1968 co-founder of Federally Employed Women (FEW); drafted many of the EEOC's initial landmark guidelines and decisions; 1968 co-founder of the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL); 1981 is 1 of the founders of Women in Management (WIM); drafted important guidelines and decisions including one finding that airlines violated the law when they terminated or grounded stewardesses when they married, or reached their early 30's;