Women's Action Organization.

The Women's Action Organization (WAO) was formed in November 1970 to address some of the long-standing inequities in the treatment of women in the State Department and its "sister" Foreign Service agencies: United States Information Agency and Agency for International Development. Jean Joyce, who in 1970 was senior reports advisor in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and one of the founders of WAO, conceived the idea of interviewing those involved in the formation of WAO. She conducted interviews with ten women and two men and was in turn interviewed by Valerie Kreutzer.

The Women's Action Organization (WAO) was formed in November 1970 to address some of the long standing inequities in the treatment of women in the State Department and its "sister" Foreign Service agencies: United States Information Agency and the Agency for International Development. For further background on the WAO, see the introduction to the oral history interviews.

Jean Joyce, who in 1970 was senior reports advisor in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and one of the founders of WAO, conceived the idea of interviewing those involved in the formation of WAO. She conducted interviews with ten women and two men and was in turn interviewed by Valerie Kreutzer. The interviews were transcribed by the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, which is the repository for related records of the Women's Action Organization. They were copyrighted by the Schlesinger Library in 1982. For a related interview with Alison Palmer conducted by Marguerite Cooper King in 1978, see T-173.