Daughter Finds Forgotten Paperwork, Realizes Mom Was History-Making Rebel
In 1968, a stay-at-home mom named Iris Feeley joined a class action lawsuit against American Airlines. It challenged the company’s policy that “stewardesses” – as they were then called – had to quit their jobs when they got married. The suit was one of many that year aimed at the airline industry’s gender-specific rules about marriage, pregnancy and body weight. Iris’s daughter Robyn was 8 at the time and didn’t realize the magnitude of the situation. But decades later, when she came across her mom’s job training pamphlets and paystubs, she realized what Iris and so many oth...