take risks, has attracted many admirers, mentees and, at
times, adversaries.
Aiken, who serves as the first woman chief judge of
the District Court of Oregon and divides her time between
Eugene and Portland, was one of Roberts’ early admirers.
Shortly after Oregon’s ratification of the Equal Rights
Amendment securing equal rights for women — pushed
through in 1973 by a team of congresswomen led by Roberts,
a state senator at the time — Roberts celebrated her 50th
birthday. Aiken and three other young women working for
the Oregon legislature approached Roberts with a gift.
“With some diffidence, she handed me a small, flat red-
and-white box tied with a paper ribbon,” Roberts writes of
Aiken in her book. “Inside was a white bra that had been
partially burned … I joined in their giggles and grins and,
looking around to be sure no one was standing nearby, I
took it out and held it up to my chest to get a better look.”
She continues “Then they handed me my real birthday
present: a Helen Reddy album with ‘I Am Woman’ on it
and all the other great songs she sang. What a wonderful
gesture between generations! ‘I Am Woman, Hear Me
Roar,’ I sang to them as they departed.”
Odell continues, “She would be pleased that her service
is being documented. There is no other physical presence
of her in the state.”
In a sense, that isn’t entirely true, as all of Roberts’
papers are housed at PSU’s Center for Women’s Leadership
in the School of Government. Roberts also personally left
a mark on the center, which advises and trains high school
and college-age women in leadership.
“When we started this organization, Betty was
central to giving her counsel and her advice,” says Sunny
Petit, the executive director of the center and a mentee
of Roberts. “She would always come, no matter what,”
adding, “her story is so central to many of the women
and girls coming through our program, and in trying to
demystify leadership.”
As for the portrait, Petit says it is “so important because
one of the things we know is that any time you visit the
Supreme Court, or the state Capitol, what’s important is
who is represented in those halls. When you don’t see
people looking like you, it can send a message. To have
her portrait hanging in the Supreme Court — what a
wonderful testament to her leadership, but also to inspire
so many others who are walking through those halls.”
1) Know who she is — no matter how she is depicted
in the media or how much pressure there is from her
peers; 2) Show her the money — tell her it’s OK to ask for
money, whether she’s babysitting or running for office; 3)
Ask her to lead — she shouldn’t have to wait to be asked,
but if she does wait, tell her the world is waiting for her
to lead; 4) Encourage her to serve — whether it’s a local
board or executive office, there just aren’t enough women
represented in our government; 5) Recognize her work
— encourage people in your community to recognize
women’s achievements and learn about how women have
shaped our society and teach it to our children.
The panels hit on everything from the need for more
women on corporate boards and in tech fields to unequal
pay.
Oregon’s chief education officer, Nancy Golden of
Springfield, discussed the importance of prevention
versus intervention in education. “We need to provide
as much education as soon as we can,” Golden told the
crowd, pointing out that Roberts, once a high school
teacher, had long advocated for early education and wrote
the legislation to bring kindergarten back to Oregon after
it was defunded by the Legislature in 1957.
Cait Clarke, a lawyer who trained and taught
at Harvard Law, as well as authored Dare to
LYNDA LANKER’S JUDICIAL
Ask: The Woman’s Guidebook to Successful
LITHOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT
Negotiating, shared that she didn’t overcome her
OF BETTY ROBERTS
fear of asking for equal compensation until well
into adulthood.
“Wherever you get a job, there’s a range,” she
explained about asking for a higher salary or
benefits. “You can even negotiate an internship.”
Rachel Goldenberg, a film director in addition
to acting as White House liaison for the Emmy-
winning comedy website Funny or Die, screened
her short film “Mary Poppins Quits.” In it, actress
Kristen Bell plays Mary Poppins and sings to the
children she nannies as birds twitter and flutter
about, “Just a three dollar increase can make a
living wage — I don’t get these birds for free.”
(Watch at wkly.ws/1y9.)
After the audience laughter died down, emcee
Carmen Voilleque, CEO of Best Practices Media,
said of Roberts: “She would have loved that
video.”
Indeed. As Roberts wrote of her time in the
1973 legislative session: “Earning power, that’s
what it’s all about, I told myself. When women
make what men make, there will be equality. I’d
known that for a long time.”
As the National Committee on Pay Equity
states as of 2013, women’s earnings were still
78.3 percent of men’s earnings.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
In late January, sitting at the back table
in the Perugino coffee shop in downtown
Eugene, Aiken remembers Roberts. “I knew
her from the time I was 21 until the day she
died. We were close friends.”
She explains that the portrait project has
been in the works since Roberts’ passing. “No
one ever had a portrait done of her,” she says.
“A group of us said, ‘We’re going to do this.’”
Aiken is adamant that it took a village
of women to raise this painted tribute:
Roberts’ daughters Jo Rice and Odell and
sons John Rice Jr. and Randy Rice; Sunny
Petit of Portland State University’s Center
for Women’s Leadership; Oregon Historical
Society’s Eliza Canty-Jones; Aiken’s former
law clerk and now Deputy District Attorney
for Multnomah County Amber Kinney and her
senior staff attorney Jolie Russo, who is also
the immediate past president of the Oregon
Chapter of the Federal Bar Association;
members of Oregon Women Lawyers or
OWLS; and many more, including, of course,
artist Lanker.
After visiting Lanker’s Eugene studio on
Aiken’s suggestion, the portrait committee knew
early on that Lanker, renowned for her paintings
and prints of gritty and graceful women, must
be the artist to complete the portrait.
“I cared very much that it would look
like her and feel like her,” Odell says. “Ann
[Aiken] agreed that a stiff formalized portrait
standing there in her black robes was not who
she was.”
“Mine will be a departure, which seem
appropriate because Betty was a departure,” Lanker
says of the portrait. She stands in front of the 200-pound
limestone slab used for the lithograph in her home studio.
It takes “two burly men” to move the slab, Lanker says,
which seems about right considering Roberts’ tenacity in
the face of sexism. “She was a woman who had a sense of
purpose that was not to be deterred.”
Odell adds how important it was that Lanker captured
her mother smiling with her judicial robes slung over her
arm, in contrast to the traditionally somber portraits of
judges that line Salem’s federal courthouse. She describes
how this symbolizes Roberts persona. “This role I have
— it is important to me but it is not who I am,” Odell
says. “I’m comfortable with it, but I put on and take off the
uniform because I am more person than that.”
When asked what her mother would think of the
memorial, Odell pauses. “I think she would think that,
‘Well, it’s important that it be documented’ but she wasn’t
really into lasting memorials to her,” but “she was very
much willing to be the person to stand there to have
something documented if it meant a breakthrough.”
CHECKING IN WITH LEANING IN
The Oregon Historical Society also joined the “Betty
brigade” early. “The Oregon Historical Society recognized
the importance of this work, so we have been a partner
from the beginning, helping to facilitate some of the
logistics with fundraising,” says Canty-Jones, the public
outreach coordinator for OHS. Canty-Jones emphasizes
that one of Roberts’ greatest gifts to society was making
her life and work accessible to the public.
“She also recognized the importance of telling her
story and making sure her work was archived. That
means they are available to historians. From the OHS
perspective, the importance of being documented —
that’s really important.”
THE STORIES WE TELL
“Women need to tell their stories,” Aiken says. “The
essence of this event is women from different walks of
life” sharing their experiences.
Petit, who helped plan the day of panels, says as a guide
they used the Center for Women’s Leadership’s five steps
to “Helping Women Live a Life of Leadership”:
One panelist, Melissa Aubin, a UO law alum
and now the assistant to the counselor for Chief
Justice John Roberts (no relation) of the U.S.
Supreme Court, spoke about the invisibility
of women in government, a point of frustration Betty
Roberts discusses at length in her memoir.
In 1977, Gov. Bob Straub appointed Betty Roberts to the
Oregon Court of Appeals, where she was the only woman
among 10 judges. She writes about the discrimination she
faced in the judges’ weekly conferences: “It was at these
conferences that I encountered ‘you-are-not-present’
discrimination, one of the cruelest forms, for it makes one
nonexistent. It is also insidious, for the person practicing
it can say, ‘What did I do? I didn’t do a thing.’ Which is
both true and not true, and that is the point: there’s been a
refusal to interact at all.”
Aubin explained that in her career, whether it was
constantly being interrupted by male coworkers or
just being afraid to speak, this subtle discrimination
remains widespread and can keep women from reaching
executive positions. “One third of senior executives in
federal government are women,” she said. “Women are
disproportionately stuck at the management level.”
So, nearly 30 years after Roberts stepped down from the
bench, what is the state of her legacy? The current female-
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