Women Working

Viv Sutherland, via WBAI Folio 1970s

Women Working was most likely not a recurring program in and of itself, but was instead part of WBAI-FM’s Women Working Weekend series held in the late 1970s. "Sexual Harassment on the Job" was therefore most probably a one-off episode, produced by Viv Sutherland for the Women Working Weekend series. The program confronted workplace sexual harassment through firsthand accounts from Mary Garvin, a union carpenter, and Rachel, a legal secretary, both of whom describe experiences of gender-based discrimination and assault. Interwoven with listener call-ins, the broadcast explored the legal, cultural, and economic barriers that kept women from seeking justice, while exposing how deeply patriarchal structures shaped the modern workplace. This program notably offered one of the era’s earliest public discussions of sexual harassment as a structural labor issue, urging listeners toward collective resistance, legal reform, and everyday empowerment.

Mike Edl, Joan Hervey, and Viv Sutherland (April 10, 1978)

Women's Studies, via WBAI Folio 1970s

Lesbian Studies, via WBI Folio 1970s

Viv Sutherland:

A highly involved member of WBAI’s Women’s Department (circa 1974-1985), Viv Sutherland was a producer and host of numerous programs at WBAI, including Lesbian Studies, The Velvet Sledgehammer, and Women’s Studies. Women’s Studies, in particular, mixed feminist scholarship, literature and activism and incorporated readings and interviews with notable feminist thinkers and writers like Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks. According to Sutherland, as quoted in a 1977 WBAI Folio: “I have a really complex political philosopy–I believe that every woman (or man) has the right to her own politics, and the concurrent right to conduct her life according to the way she sees fit…regardless of what I, or anyone else, thinks about the “rightness” of her choice. I think that this is the only way we’re going to take the second wave of the women’s movement to its logical and inevitable conclusion…because this is the only way to ensure that women are able to take actual control over their own lives. Once that happens, the rest of the struggle is much easier to deal with. That’s what Women’s Studies has been about for the past three years. That’s what my life has been about for the past six.”