Brenda Feigen

Brenda Feigen (born 1944) is an American feminist activist, film producer, and attorney.

Brenda Sue Feigen was born in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, to Arthur Paul Feigen, a lawyer, and Shirley Kadison, a housewife.

Feigen graduated high school from the Latin School of Chicago in 1962 and graduated from Vassar College in the spring of 1966 cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in math.

Feigen credited her Vassar attendance with giving her "a welcome respite from the unrelenting anti-Semitism she faced in the private day school she attended in Chicago."

She turned down an offer from a fully funded joint J.D./M.B.A. program at Columbia University, and chose instead to attend Harvard Law School.

At Harvard, Feigen was one of only 32 women in her law school class of 565 students.

Harvard proved to be a hostile place for the few women who attended.

Feigen recounted that her property-law professor, A. James Casner—later the inspiration for the professor in the movie The Paper Chase—designated only one day a year to call on women in the class, which he dubbed "Ladies' Day."

In 1968, Feigen married Marc Fasteau, a Harvard Law classmate, in the Harvard Club of New York.

She took the name Brenda Feigen Fasteau, and Marc later changed his to Marc Feigen Fasteau.

Just before walking down the aisle, Feigen spotted a "NO LADIES ALLOWED" sign on the Harvard Club of New York library wall.

Feigen and her husband were appalled.

They appealed to the Harvard Club of New York to allow women among its members, but the board voted to reject the proposal.

The newlyweds soon launched a class action lawsuit against the Harvard Club for discriminating on the basis of sex.

After five years of legal work, in the last conference before the trial was set to begin, a federal judge ordered the club to take one final vote.

In 1970, Feigen was elected National Legislative Vice President for the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Though the organization had a 6-month membership eligibility requirement for elected positions, the requirement was waived for Feigen.

During Feigen's tenure as national vice president, Democratic senator from Indiana Birch Bayh, chair of the US Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, asked Feigen to coordinate the Senate testimony for the Equal Rights Amendment.

Feigen coordinated the testimony of fellow NOW leaders and fellow activist Gloria Steinem, and testified herself on May 5, 1970.

Later in 1970, Steinem called Feigen to accompany her at Vassar's commencement, where Steinem had been asked to speak in her first major public address.

The speech was titled "Living the Revolution", and in it Steinem advocated for a rejection of women's second-class status in society.

In March 1972, the law passed in the Senate, though it was ultimately not ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures.

After the congressional hearings concluded, Feigen returned to New York and was hired as a litigation associate at the law firm Rosenman, Colin, Jaye, Petschek, Freund, and Emil.

Feigen continued to serve as the national spokesperson for NOW, regularly appearing on Good Morning America.

In 1972, Feigen left private practice, and she, Steinem, and Catherine Samuels founded The Women's Action Alliance.

The mission of the Alliance was to provide resources to women, women's centers, and women's groups to combat and overcome sexism and sex discrimination.

Letters poured in to the WAA to find "feminist psychologists, women lawyers, or doctors, or simply to learn how to bring the women's movement to their hometowns."

Steinem's idea for a newsletter for the Alliance eventually turned into Ms. Magazine.

The initial meeting to discuss the idea with female journalists was held in Feigen's New York home.

However, Feigen focused on the nonprofit, while Steinem took over the outreach through Ms. Magazine.

In 1972, Feigen joined Ruth Bader Ginsburg in co-directing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)'s newly formed Women's Rights Project (WRP).

Feigen's legal expertise and experience as the legislative vice president of NOW made her a prime candidate for the job, but she remained unsure as to whether or not she wanted to leave her position at Ms. Magazine.

Eventually, with approval from Ms. Magazine co-founder Gloria Steinem, Feigen assumed her position at the ACLU.

During her time at WRP, Brenda contributed to the establishment of heightened scrutiny for sex classifications under the Equal Protection Act.

The next day, on January 11, 1973, the Club voted 2,097 to 695 to admit female members.

Publicly, the Club's outgoing president, Albert H. Gordon, maintained that the vote was unconnected with the discrimination suit filed earlier in the year.

In 1974, Feigen left the ACLU to take part in a law partnership with her husband, Marc Feigen Fasteau.

The Partnership was a law firm called Fasteau and Feigen, located on Madison Avenue in New York City.

Nevertheless, the decision marked a win for Feigen, who would come back together with her fellow plaintiffs in 2008 to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the success.

An interview with Feigen about this work is featured in the 2018 documentary RBG.