Features

Celebrating Marquette women of the 1970s and 1980s

1970s

With the immplementation of Title IX, Marquette reviewed its athletic programs. Catherine “Tat” Shiely was hired in 1975 to coordinate women’s athletics. In the first year, 34 women played varsity tennis, volleyball and basketball. Although men and women received the same number of scholarships, women lagged in terms of dollar value. In 1976, Shiely wrote William Murphy, chair of the athletic board, to indicate her concern that wrestlers received $2,400 per scholarship while women received just $125. Scholarship inequity remained a focus for a number of years as the athletic board and university leadership worked to strengthen women’s athletics at Marquette.

Women of the Times

Joan Biskupic, Jour ’78, grew up in a Chicago household that received four daily newspapers, which may have ordained her choice of professions. She compounded her Marquette journalism degree with a master of English and a law degree, the latter earned while working full time as a journalist. She has covered the workings and rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court for 20 years, including for the Washington Post and now USA Today. Biskupic wrote four books about the high court, including one about Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and is a frequent panelist on the PBS series Washington Week with Gwen Ifill. Her latest book, American Original: The life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, will be released in November.

Dr. Felicia Mabuza-Suttle, Jour ’77, responded when Nelson Mandela called South Africans living abroad home to build the new democracy. She quickly became an award-winning entertainment powerhouse with her television program, The Felicia Show, which provided a forum for black and white South Africans to debate issues. Today she is a best-selling author and host of Conversations with Felicia on the Africa Channel. The channel is committed to changing perceptions about Africa abroad. Suttle also is president and co-owner of Leadership Success International, an executive leadership training, employee motivation, team building and business communications consulting firm. 

The Women’s Council

President John Raynor, S.J., sought a body of community women who could help advance and develop Marquette. At the charter meeting of the Women’s Council on May 22, 1975, Father Raynor asked the members to: “Acquaint yourselves with our strengths as well as our weaknesses so that we may seek your advice and counsel as Marquette develops.” The women took the invitation seriously and began work to rectify one immediate weakness — the lack of an art museum to exhibit priceless works of art scattered around campus. After a $3 million fundraising campaign, the Haggerty Museum of Art opened in 1984.

News of Note

• Women advanced to top leadership posts when Terri Nally, Arts ’74, was elected the first female student government president in 1972 and, in 1976, Joanne O’Malley Pier, Nurs ’59, was the first woman elected to serve on the Board of Trustees.

• These Marquette faculty members hold the elite status of Fulbright Scholars: Mary Catherine Bodden (1988), Susan Riedel (1989), Claire Badaracco (1994), Marjorie Piechowski (2002) and Kate Kaiser (2007).

• In the early 1970s, Marquette offered the course Women in Perspective, a precursor to the current Women’s and Gender Studies Program.

1980s

Mother Teresa of Calcutta visited Marquette in 1981 and accepted the Père Marquette Discovery Award, conferred only four times in university history and never before on a woman. In accepting the award, Mother Teresa said, “I am most unworthy to receive this honor, this award. But I receive it for the glory of God and in the name of our poor people—the unwanted, unloved, uncared for.” She arrived on campus with her belongings in a cardboard box wrapped with twine. It is said that she left behind the university’s gift of new luggage, saying it was too good for her and should be given to someone else.

A Woman of the Times

Judge Maxine Aldridge White, Law ’85, grew up in the Mississippi Delta, the heart of civil rights unrest in the South. She was the daughter of grade school-educated sharecropper parents and the eighth of 11 children. What she saw motivated her to dedicate the rest of her life to helping people. She was a star student and upon graduation from Marquette became the first African-American woman prosecutor to work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern Wisconsin. She is the second female African-American judge in Wisconsin history and the longest-serving African- American in Wisconsin state courts. She was the first woman to be named Judge of the Year by the Wisconsin State Bar.

News of Note

• Marquette elevated women’s and men’s athletics programming to NCAA Division I status in 1985.

• The College of Arts and Sciences unveiled an interdisciplinary minor in women’s studies in 1986.

• The 1982 Marquette women’s cross country team was the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics champ. The team was enshrined in the M-Club Hall of Fame in 1996.

• Beatrice Haggerty’s generous support for the art museum construction project spearheaded by the Women’s Council allowed for the recruitment of renowned architect O’Neil Ford. Haggerty donated more than 100 pieces to the museum.