The Record, Stockton, Calif., Lori Gilbert column

April 28--As a committed feminist for more than 40 years, Beverly Fitch McCarthy has had victories big and small.

On the small end there was getting The Record to identify women by their own names, not by their husband's, and at the other extreme, getting San Joaquin Delta College to offer child care so mothers could go to school.

But when the Stockton City Council unanimously adopted the Convention To Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women at its March 20 meeting, it ranked very near the top.

"The night the City Council passed it, unanimously, I thought it was the most important thing that passed that night," said McCarthy, 84, who served on the Stockton City Council in the early 1990s. "This affects every woman and girl in the entire city of Stockton. I can't tell you how elated I was that night."

What passage of the convention means is the city of Stockton will promote equal access to and equity in health care, economic development, educational opportunities and employment for women, and address violence against women. There is no financial obligation to the city, but passage means that Stockton believes in equality for women stated in the United Nations' 1979 resolution, in a way that the United States and fellow UN members Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga do not.

Efforts to get 67 members of the Senate to pass it in the U.S. -- by Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama -- have failed.

But Stockton has joined other cities -- including San Francisco, the first city in the world to ratify the tenets in 1998 -- in saying women's rights across all areas of life matter. It says it will not discriminate against women in its hiring practices and will urge public and private entities to provide services, financial and otherwise, equally to women. The city says crimes perpetrated against women, including prostitutes, will be diligently investigated.

Assuring those rights -- as well as reproductive rights, the deal breaker for conservative politicians -- is what McCarthy has worked for her entire adult life.

It's easy for her now to laugh off the ignorance she faced in the battles she has waged over the years.

Like when she returned from a conference to Delta College, where she was a physical education teacher, to tell the board about the upcoming trend of re-entry students and a board member asked, "Where are they coming from, outer space?"

She bit her tongue and ended up running Delta's program for re-entry students until retiring in 1985.

"I was the campus feminist. The board would see me and say, 'what do you want now?' My personnel file wasn't all positive," she says with a laugh.

But if making waves meant making a difference, Fitch McCarthy was willing to dive off the high board.

She fought for child care on campus for 20 years and Delta opened a child care center in 1994. She explained Title IX and sexual harassment to those who didn't, or didn't want to, understand.

She started the San Joaquin County Commission on the Status of Women in 1974 and a year later, had that group put on its first Susan B. Anthony Awards banquet because when she looked around, she saw that all the civic awards in Stockton were presented to men.

It was held in the Redwood Room at University of the Pacific. Tillie Lewis was the guest speaker. About 50 people attended. Since then, more than 400 women have been honored for their service to this community.

"Recently, a friend of mine, Pat Vannucci, died. She was 99, a retired nurse," McCarthy said. "In her obituary it said there were two honors near and dear to her heart and one of them was the Susan B. Anthony Award. That touched my heart."

McCarthy doesn't need validation for all she's done for the cause of women, but it's nice to be recognized. The city of Stockton did that by embracing CEDAW.

That doesn't mean she's ready to rest on her laurels.

Next up is getting the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors to officially recognize the Commission on the Status of Women.

"We applied 20 years ago and were treated very poorly," McCarthy said, "so I let it go."

But timing is everything, she notes.

The City Council has a progressive mayor and three councilwomen and were open to her CEDAW proposal.

The election of Donald Trump has spurred women's activism, and McCarthy, a sharp cookie if ever there was one, seized on it.

She went to the county to state her case and was invited back for further discussion.

The hang-up seems to be the county's fiscal commitment, but it's not dead in the water.

McCarthy has since met with Kathy Harris, deputy director of human resources for the county, and they've gone over the 25 issues the commission raised.

"She said to pick three of the things that we're most interested in, because some of them, they're doing already," McCarthy said.

McCarthy and members of the Commission on the Status of Women will determine their most pressing concerns and she and Harris will talk after the June primary "because everyone's focused on that," McCarthy said.

Besides, she can wait. She's waited 44 years.

Being recognized by the county, McCarthy said, would mean being able to serve as an advisory board on legislative issues, have hearings on hot button issues in the community and put on annual conferences to address pressing concerns.

Her life as a feminist has taught her to bide her time, which does not mean sit back and wait.

She has more energy than women half her age and continues as she always has, to work in ways big and small to make lives of women better.

Contact reporter Lori Gilbert at (209) 546-8284 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @lorigrecord.

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