WIT volunteer Vicki Russo spent countless hours in 2018 and 2019 turning dozens of boxes of WIT documents into an organized and library-quality archive. Read her reflections on WIT’s 50th anniversary.
Vicki with her handywork in March 2020 (right before lockdown!)
By: Vicki Russo
As Women In Transition (WIT) celebrates its 50th Anniversary, I’m reflecting on WIT’s office move in 2017. Back then, the decision was made to move, rather than discard, numerous boxes of “old stuff” whose future was uncertain. I’ve spent the years since, a few hours here and a few hours there, creating an archive for WIT out of those boxes of “old stuff.” With records that reach back to the planning of the organization, the archive details many aspects of WIT: programs, administration, fundraising, and others. Organizing the records and making the history of this important Philadelphia institution available to the public has been a rewarding experience. These records provide insight into a very specific time and place, where women were beginning to have new options - but had few resources.
WIT’s 1972 publication, Women’s Survival Manual: a feminist handbook on Separation and Divorce, speaks bluntly of the misogyny and paternalistic attitudes to be expected by women seeking separation or divorce. Lawyers, landlords, doctors, banks, childcare providers – none could be counted on to treat a woman fairly as she sought to leave her marriage. WIT’s archive begins at a time when divorce was becoming much more prevalent, but also when the stigma associated with it had not yet lessened. One of the most striking pieces of advice I found in the WIT guides came from Survival Information for Women, published in 1977. It concerned birth certificates and “illegitimacy.”
It is that last part that really struck me – a hospital worker might try to label a child “illegitimate” on their birth certificate and to prevent them from doing so, a mother would need to contact legal services. This was not that long ago. It is one of the ways in which WIT’s archive captures these slices of our history that were fleeting. For years, children were labeled as “illegitimate” on their birth certificates, could be denied certain benefits, and had a social stigma attached to them through these permanent documents. WIT’s advice came at a time of change. So new was this change, that many hospital workers may not have been aware of it. Women needed to know the rules and assert their rights. But within just a few years, much of this tension disappeared and no one was concerned with “illegitimacy.” However, for the women having children during those few years, this was one more struggle to overcome, one more aspect of society that seemed aimed at punishing them and their children. WIT was there to help them overcome these obstacles.
Through counseling programs, legal referrals, and support groups, WIT has helped survivors through many changes in their lives. In the archive, one can see the expansion of services: drug dependence, support services for widows, domestic abuse within the deaf community, the 24-hour phone line, WAVE Self Defense classes, and expansion of services into the LGBTQ community. Anywhere WIT saw a need for their expertise, they tried to provide it. Not all of their programs were permanent. Some came and went as community needs changed, but others morphed into the larger goals of WIT.
I like to think I have a special insight to the work WIT has done over the years, but I don’t. The work of putting together the archive was nothing in comparison to the work that the archive documents. All of the women who worked to form the collective, those who donated time and money throughout the years, the women who supported others in group therapy, people whose own experience led them to refer friends and neighbors to WIT – those are the people who truly have the insight into the power of what WIT was working toward. While the archive does not contain the names of all of these advocates, WIT has been looking to their past for inspiration for the future. The timing of creating their own archive and their 50th anniversary has led to many initiatives. The archive’s Finding Aid has been made available online, an open call went out for oral histories from WIT’s staff and clientele, and a recent online panel discussion was had with some of WIT’s earliest “instigators and insiders.” This examination of the past to document history and change is part of the purpose of archiving.
When I began this project, I had many conversations at WIT about who might be interested in their archive. As an archivist, I always hope that an archive gets used by both its creator and people outside the organization. I talked to social science and psychology students, other service organizations, and academic researchers in feminist history about the importance of preserving the history of underrepresented groups. If future generations only see are the records of white, heterosexual men, then that will be their perception of who created their society. Archiving an organization like WIT opens the door and allows a glimpse of a fuller reality. Women who were kept “in their place” by society for so long took action to make a better life for themselves and their children. They helped others do the same. It is this reality that WIT confronted every day. A lot of those struggles have changed, and WIT has changed, too. Those changes have been preserved, and continue to be preserved, in the WIT archive. It is a living document and continues to grow as WIT moves past its 50th year. I look forward to seeing WIT at 60, 70, and beyond.