Tanya Collier

Let me tell you about a journey that I could never have made alone. It took thousands of people over at least two centuries to lay the groundwork that enabled me to add my little piece to it. It’s the story of a quest—that others who come after us might have a brighter future.

College was a word that was never mentioned to me as I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in a southeast Portland lower middle class family. My mother did not finish high school and it was her dream that I would do so and, thus, be well educated—for a girl. I did. Then I married at eighteen, had my first child at nineteen, and my second at twenty-two. Just as I was expected to do.

Even though there was a long historical continuum of women trying to improve their lot in life, by the mid-twentieth century the role of women was pretty well cemented. As the feminist movement slowly unfolded, it dawned on me that I could actually become something in addition to a wife and mother.

Although I had to get a divorce to do it, I went back to school at age twenty-six, starting at Clackamas Community College. I graduated and went on to Portland State University and earned my bachelor’s degree in Political Science.

I was remarried to Greg Hartman—a man who encouraged me to be all I could be. He even let me keep my own name, something that women didn’t have an automatic right to do in 1979. I ran for the state legislature and lost. It dawned on me that elective office might not be the only, or the best, or the surest way to either earn a living or make my mark. I went back to Portland State again and got my master’s degree in Public Administration. I was awarded the degree the same day my son graduated from eighth grade. Public Administration was exactly the right place for me and the degree increased my confidence, meant I was taken seriously, and made me brave enough to try, and succeed, at the things that my mother would never have dreamed possible.

As this was going on for me personally, women from Portland and the Willamette Valley formed the Oregon Women’s Political Caucus. It wasn’t long before it went statewide. The purpose of the Caucus was to achieve equal rights for women by increasing the number of women serving in elective office. Women were making fifty-nine cents for every dollar a man earned. Abortion, now known as “a woman’s right to choose” was neither universally available nor legal. We felt that, if we could only elect more women to office, we could change the laws that bifurcated men and women’s rights. The actual words of the Equal Rights Amendment were: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

In 1982, I marched from the North Park Blocks to Terry Schrunk Plaza in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. My grandmother was right beside me. She said, “Tanya, I won’t see it in my lifetime but you might in yours.” She was eighty-one years old. Well, I won’t see it in my lifetime either; nevertheless, progress was, and continues to be, made. 

We started seeing a large variety of occupations becoming open to women. More women became lawyers and the women lawyers became judges. More and more women started serving at every level of elective office, making laws more friendly to women. I was able to lobby for Multnomah County and be a Labor Representative for registered nurses and improve their wages, hours, and working conditions. I was elected to the Metro Regional Government and served seven years. I was twice elected Multnomah County Commissioner. All of these jobs allowed me to make real contributions, not only for women, but for the whole community.

The children are raised now and have five children of their own. That is why I’m telling this story. Someday maybe my grandchildren will take the Walk of the Heroines, read stories written here, and be motivated to be all that they can be. And it will have come to be, in part, because my generation marched, worked for change, and created possibilities for women that never before existed. I want to encourage them to join their own revolution, however it may present itself, and to become all that they can be. It happens one small step at a time.

Written by Tanya Collier