Janette Pratt oral history interview, April 16, 1997

Interviewed by Joyce Durand. Pratt talks about her working class childhood and youth in Lancashire, England. An only child, born late in her parents’ marriage, she remembers post-WWII rationing and bomb damage. She attended the London School of Economics which she says was considered “England’s Berkeley,” because of its radical reputation. She chose to study law because “nobody had -- in my little world -- had ever heard of a woman doing that…It was an act of rebellion, really.” After graduation, Pratt recounts that she came to the United States to attend graduate school, and then went on to teach, first in Chicago (where she married one of her students) and then in Boston. She came to Atlanta when her husband was offered a job. Encouraged by her feminist mother in law, Pratt joined the Atlanta chapter of NOW, and volunteered to edit the organization’s newsletter. She describes her trips to national NOW conferences, and the issues that were important to her, such as exclusion of women from all-male clubs. After the defeat of the ERA, Pratt considers that the main problem for the Women’s Movement was the faction of fiercely radical feminists, who would not allow for the possibility that women would choose to stay at home and raise families, and who encouraged the negative connotations of the word “feminist.” She believes that the movement should have taken a more mainstream role. Pratt ends by discussing issues that are important for women today: she believes that women’s approach to the issue of sexual harassment is one that needs careful consideration.