Arlene Horowitz

Arlene Horowitz (born 1946) was born to Jewish immigrant, working-class parents in The Bronx, New York. Horowitz was orphaned in 1962, at the age of 15. Believing that the only hope she might have for a decent life was education, thanks to the lucky combination of a free higher education offered to academically-qualified New York City residents and her father's Social Security payments, she was able to earn a bachelor's degree in political science from Hunter College in 1967. [She went on to earn a master's degree from Rutgers University in 1993.]

After a move to Washington, D.C. in 1968 in search of employment on Capitol Hill, she worked in a series of low-level jobs, including staff assistant to an education subcommittee in the House of Representatives.

Frustrated by lack of job advancement and the overt acceptance of discrimination against women, she helped organize other women on Capitol Hill and helped to launch the first survey comparing employment practices and salary differentials between male and female employees. Asked to become an original member of the Legislative Core of the then-fledgling National Women's Political Caucus, she gave a workshop on legislative process at the NWPC's initial organizing conference in Wichita, Kansas in 1973.

In "Backlash" Susan Faludi explains, " [t] he woman who first proposed WEEA wasn't even one of those 'radical feminists' from NOW; Arlene Horowitz was a clerical worker in a congressional office, a working woman who understood from personal experience--trying to live off her skimpy paycheck--that unequal schooling could have painful and long-term consequences." Though often threatened by dismissal for her activism in the women's movement, she remained undeterred. Using legislative knowledge gained in Congress, late into the night and during every weekend, on a $70 portable typewriter she began drafting what was to become the Women's Educational Equity Act.

She authored the Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA) enacted as part of P.L. 93-380. Cited in July 30, 1974 "Congressional Record" by Congresswoman Patsy T. Mink for "diligent and able work." Listed on the National Women's History Project Path of the Women's Rights Movement for 1974. First documented in "National Politics and Sex Discrimination in Education" by Andrew Fishel and Janice Pottker in 1977, the WEEA has been funded by Congress to the present-day.

It is not clear if Arlene Horowitz is still alive.