Looking for a little inspiration when it comes to holiday gift-giving? How about giving a little inspiration on the gender equality front?
I usually don’t go in for shameless self-promotion, but I want to point you to Busting the Brass Ceiling: How a Heroic Female Cop Changed the Face of Policing. I’ll justify this breach by quickly adding that I’m actually plugging Fanchon Blake, the inspiring co-author and star of this memoir whose selfless actions would increase gender equality and change the stature of American women in the workplace.
Fanchon dreamed of becoming a top cop. She knew she was going places. She had already made a mark in the Army. Why not try a career in law enforcement? In 1948, she joined the LAPD, sure her efforts and talent would be rewarded. Instead, despite long hours and high achievement ratings, she—like all the other women in that department and in many others—was not allowed to promote. It got worse from there.
Over the years, the tenacious police officer tried to challenge the increasingly discriminatory agenda and fight for gender equality from within. Then she went to the press. When those efforts failed to effect change, she realized there was one last way to try and prevent the LAPD from tacitly becoming an all-white boy’s club. Someone would need to take them to court, and that someone might as well be her.
In Busting the Brass Ceiling: How One Heroic Cop Changed the Face of Policing, Fanchon chronicles the sex discrimination that led her to finally sue the Los Angeles Police Department, thereby initiating one of the country’s landmark Title VII cases with little to no help from anyone. The decision to break the expected codes of silence and loyalty, however, would cost her.
The book is more than just an inspirational story of a woman determined to fight for gender equality. It’s a reminder that we still have a ways to go on that front.
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