Thursday, 4:30 PM
Post agrees to quit barring women
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff
When Peabody City Council candidate Marisa DeFranco told officials at the local Portuguese American War Veterans post that she would like to come to a dinner they were holding just before the 2001 primary, they gave her two options.
She could either send her husband to work the crowd on her behalf, or she could wait in another room with other women candidates, catching the attendees on their way out of the dinner.
The event was a men-only affair, Post Commander Raymond Silva told DeFranco. No women were allowed at the dinner, which was to be replete with male voters and male political hopefuls.
"My first reaction was shock," DeFranco recalled today. "I found it intolerable and unacceptable."
Six years later, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination agreed with her. Attorney General Martha Coakley announced today that her office and MCAD had reached a settlement with the veterans post over allegations that it violated state law by excluding women from their monthly men’s dinners.
"It is troubling that in the 21st century there are still social clubs and organizations that discriminate against women solely because of their gender," Coakley said in a statement. "We all know that business and professional relationships are created and furthered in these kinds of settings, and excluding women is both unjust and discriminatory under the law."
A man who answered the phone at the Peabody post said he had no comment on the settlement, and the lawyer who represented the veterans group did not return phone calls.
DeFranco, who was a first-time and ultimately unsuccessful candidate in 2001, also reached a private settlement with the veterans post. DeFranco, 36, a lawyer, refused to disclose the terms.
"I was really heartened by the attorney general’s participation," she said. "I’m hopeful that women will continue to expand their access to the political world and to clubs like this, so that it will expand access to the full panoply of people’s ideas, regardless of their gender."
The attorney general and MCAD determined that the veterans post was not sufficiently private to be excluded from the state’s antidiscrimination law.
"Organizations that are essentially the equivalent of the public square, where business relationships are formed and through which civic life is conducted, should be open to all members of society," Zucker said. "That is clearly the case here, and the attorney general is absolutely right to [compel] the veterans club to include women and, in this case, to allow women candidates for public office to make their cases to its members."
DeFranco said she thought for a long time before bringing her complaint. In the end, she said, she had no choice.
"In my work and my personal life, I advocate for people to stand up for themselves," she said. "The other impetus for me is to make sure it didn’t happen to the next woman running for office."
