EXHIBITS
Women of Caliber, Women of Cache Valley: Alison Comish Thorne
Alison Comish Thorne
“Can we do less than measure up to the expectations of our great grandmothers?”
—Alison Comish Thorne, 1972
A Woman of Quality
Alison Comish Thorne challenged established perceptions of “womanhood” in order to instigate social change, and she admonished other women of her generation to do the same. In a speech she gave in 1949, Alison encouraged women to “let the dishes wait.” She did not want women to lose their sense of personal identity as they fulfilled their roles as wives and mothers. She argued that women should not judge themselves or other women based on the tidiness of their homes. Alison demonstrated for women of Cache Valley that achieving an education and pursuing a career while being a wife and mother could be a reality. She balanced her professional responsibilities with her family duties and received personal fulfilment from both.
Alison was a trailblazer in the world of female higher education. Her pursuit for higher education began at a young age. In 1930, at sixteen years old, Alison attended Brigham Young University. In 1934, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics and education. Then, in 1935, she earned a master’s degree in consumption economics from Iowa State University. In 1938, Alison became the first woman to receive a PhD in consumption economics from Iowa State University.
“Dr. Alison Thorne is a wonderful example of service to our community, university, and nation.”
—Ross Peterson
September 20, 1999
Second-Wave Feminism and the
Equal Rights Amendment
Ahead of her time, Alison brought second-wave feminism to Cache Valley. Along with many other women during the mid-twentieth century, Alison took upon herself the legacy of Alice Paul, an early twentieth century suffragette and author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). When first introduced in 1923, the original ERA championed for both men’s and women’s rights, but took into consideration “women’s distinct needs.” The amendment’s objective was to establish men and women as equal under the law and focused on the right of women to compete equally with men in “all aspects of social and economic life.” Alice Paul opposed “protective legislation”—gender based laws written with the intention of “protecting” women from exploitation that, in reality, prevented women from pursuing work in particular professions, limited the number of hours they were allowed to work, and restricted pay rates. Despite Alice Paul’s valiant effort, the amendment did not pass.[1]
“Equality does not mean sameness.”
The ERA Alison promoted offered an updated version of Paul’s original amendment. Alison’s version of the ERA raised the issues of access to higher education, participation in the draft, and sexual discrimination within the Social Security program. In a draft for a pamphlet designed to promote the ERA in Utah to ratify, Alison explained, “the Amendment supports the constitutional equality for women and the extension of legal rights, privileges, and responsibilities regardless of sex.”
Similar to the movement in the Progressive Era, the ERA movement of the 1970s faced fierce competition from conservative groups such as “Humanitarians Opposed to Degrading Our Girls” (HOTDOG), “International Women’s Year” (IWY), and “Women for Maintaining the Difference between the Sexes and Against the Equal Rights Amendment.” In a pamphlet for the 1977 IWY Convention, the association announced that it opposed the ERA because the amendment “would provide undefined limits of governmental power over the lives of its citizens.” The IWY supported the idea that a government should have limited power over its citizens. The LDS Church also aggressively campaigned against the ERA, a stance that divided LDS women. By opposing the ERA, many LDS women “outwardly revealed to each other their internal acceptance of the church’s teaching about proper gender roles.” Those who supported the ERA seemingly questioned Church doctrine and ignored the counsel of Church leadership.[2] Alison tried diligently to reassure members of the Church that their religious rights would not be impinged. Equality did not mean that men and women became “the same.” From Alison’s point of view, the ERA provided women equality under the law, protected “traditional” roles of women, and simultaneously offered women more ways to navigate life as established definitions of “womanhood” were being challenged.
[1] Amy E. Butler, Two Paths to Equality: Alice Paul and Ethel M. Smith in the ERA Debate, 1921–1929 (New York: University of New York Press, 2002), 1–2.
[2] Neil J. Young, “ ‘The ERA Is a Moral Issue’: The Mormon Church, LDS Women, and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Movement,” American Quarterly 59, no. 3 (September 2007): 625; O. Kendall White, Jr., “Mormonism and the Equal Rights Amendment,” Journal of Church and State 31, no. 2 (1989): 249–268.
