Brenda Feigen
| Brenda Feigen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Brenda Sue Feigen 1944 (age 73–74) Falls Church, Virginia |
| Education | Harvard Law School |
| Alma mater | Vassar College |
| Occupation | Activist, producer, attorney |
Brenda Feigen (born 1944) is an American feminist activist, film producer, and attorney.
Brenda Sue Feigen was born in 1944 in Falls Church, Virginia to Arthur Paul Feigen, a lawyer, and Shirley Kadison, a housewife. Feigen graduated high school in 1962 and graduated from Vassar College in the spring of 1966 cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Math. She turned down an offer from a fully funded joint J.D./M.B.A. program at Columbia, and chose instead to attend Harvard Law School. At Harvard, Feigen was one of only 32 women in her law school class of 565. Harvard proved to be a hostile place for the few women that attended. Feigen recounted that her property-law professor, A. James Casner—later the inspiration for the professor in the movie The Paper Chase—designated only one day a year to call on women in the class, which he dubbed “Ladies’ Day.”
In 1968, Feigen married Marc Fasteau, a Harvard Law classmate, in the Harvard Club of New York. She took the name Brenda Feigen Fasteau, and Marc later changed his to Marc Feigen Fasteau.
Just before walking down the aisle, Feigen spotted a “NO LADIES ALLOWED” sign on the Harvard Club of New York library wall. Feigen and her husband were appalled and appealed to the Harvard Club of New York to allow women among its members, but the board voted to reject the proposal. The newlyweds soon launched a class action lawsuit against the Harvard Club for discriminating on the basis of sex. After five years of legal work, in the last conference before the trial was set to begin, a federal judge ordered the club to take one final vote. The next day, on January 11, 1973, the Club voted 2,097 to 695 to admit female members. Publicly, the Club’s outgoing president, Albert H. Gordon maintained that the vote was unconnected with the discrimination suit filed earlier in the year. Nevertheless, the decision marked a win for Feigen, who would come back together with her fellow plaintiffs in 2008 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the success.
In 1970, Feigen was elected National Legislative Vice President for the National Organization for Women (NOW). Though the organization had a 6-month membership eligibility requirement for elected positions, the requirement was waived for Feigen. During Feigen’s tenure as National Vice President, Democratic Senator from Indiana Birch Bayh, chair of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, asked Feigen to coordinate the U.S Senate testimony for the Equal Rights Amendment. Feigen coordinated the testimony of fellow NOW leaders and fellow activist Gloria Steinem, and testified herself on May 5, 1970. In March 1972, the law passed the Senate, though it was never ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures. After the congressional hearings concluded, Feigen returned to New York, and was hired as a litigation associate at the law firm Rosenman, Colin, Jaye, Petschek, Freund, and Emil. Feigen continued to serve as the national spokesperson for NOW, regularly appearing on Good Morning America.
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