Gerald Gardner

From Philosopedia

Gerald H. F. Gardner (2 March 1926 - 25 July 2009)

Gerald Henry Frazier Gardner was born in Toolmaker, Ireland. He studied mathematics and theoretical physics at Dublin's Trinity College. At the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he received an M.S. in applied mathematics and a doctorate in mathematical physics from Princeton.

In 1950, he married Jo Ann Evans, holder of a Ph. D. in experimental psychology, and both were social activists. His wife of 59 years, she has combined their last names without a hyphen.

Gardner died of leukemia at the age of 83.

In a New York Times obituary (28 July 2009), Gardner was described as one "who provided the statistical underpinnings for the landmark Supreme Court case that resulted in the prohibition of sex discrimination in newspaper want ads."

Dr. Gardner, a geophysicist by profession and a mathematician by training but a social activist by temperament, taught at several universities, including the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now known as Carnegie-Mellon University), Rice University and the University of Houston. He worked for more than two decades for the Gulf Research and Development Company, a subsidiary of Gulf Oil, contributing to significant advances in applied seismology, or methods for finding oil and natural gas deposits.

But Dr. Gardner, a shy man who was uncomfortable in a lecture hall, was most formidable behind the scenes as a social activist, especially on behalf of women’s rights. He and his wife were among the earliest members of First Pittsburgh NOW, itself an early chapter of the National Organization for Women, which was founded in 1966.

In 1969, First Pittsburgh, led by Wilma Scott Heide, who would become president of the national organization a few years later, filed a complaint with the Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations against The Pittsburgh Press, then the leading local daily. The complaint contended that the division by sex of the paper’s employment ads — “Male Help Wanted” and “Female Help Wanted” — amounted to discrimination against women.

“What Gerry did was calculate the statistical chance that a woman could get a job in one of the male categories,” said Eleanor Smeal, the president of the Feminist Majority and a former president of NOW. “He calculated pay differentials. The disparities just flabbergasted him. He contributed the hard intellectual theory based on the math, and he made it understandable, powerfully so.”

When the commission upheld the complaint, The Pittsburgh Press took the commission to court, saying that the ruling violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press. The case went to the Supreme Court, whose ruling, in 1973, effectively forbade newspapers to carry sex-designated advertising columns for most job opportunities.

“Gerry was a total feminist,” Ms. Smeal said. . . .

Dr. Gardner was an officer of First Pittsburgh NOW. In addition to pursuing the want-ads case, he contributed to other legal efforts, including a lawsuit brought in the mid-1970s by NOW and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that resulted in the hiring of more women and blacks by the Pittsburgh Police Department.

Ms. Evansgardner, his wife, who holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology created her name as a hyphenless hybrid of her husband’s and her own. They married in 1950; she is his only immediate survivor.

Ms. Evansgardner said her husband, most of all, was fired up by principle.

“He was an activist atheist,” she said. “A proselytizing atheist. I hope you can print that because it was important to him. He thought that not saying you were an atheist hurt the cause of reality.”

Dr. Evansgardner was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that she and her husband worked as a perfect team on feminist issues:

He played the studious academic ready to back the facts while she, the obstreperous advocate, would shout through the megaphone.

"He produced a lot of change for the equality of women," said Evansgardner. "He was shy, gentle and quiet but very active in women's rights."

Dr. Gardner organized a picket line at the 1973 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., because the league had a boys-only policy. His efforts there, and a series of lawsuits filed by NOW and women's rights advocates, pushed the organization to integrate girls for the first time the next season.

In 1975, Dr. Gardner provided more of his methodical research toward a federal lawsuit filed by NOW and the Pittsburgh NAACP, alleging that the Pittsburgh police department's hiring practices discriminated against women and minorities.

The lawsuit led to a citywide consent decree that impelled police to hire in groups of four: one white man, one white woman, one black man and one black woman. The decree remained in effect for 15 years but was later dropped after a lawsuit alleged reverse discrimination. The decree had helped Pittsburgh lead the nation in the number of female and black police officers, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

(See obituary by Don Hopey in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and an obituary by T. Reese Shapiro in The Washington Post.)