(upbeat music) - Coming up in the next hour of local news on Arizona, PBS.

It's a special women's history month edition of Arizona Horizon that's followed by Cronkite News and Break it Down.

It's all ahead in the next hour on Arizona PBS.

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Thank you.

- Good evening and welcome to this special edition of Arizona Horizon, I'm Ted Simons.

Tonight, we celebrate women's history month by revisiting our conversations with prominent Arizona women about the influence of women on the state's past, present and future.

First, Mary Rose Wilcox who was the first Latina to serve on the Phoenix City Council and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

We spoke to her about her career and more.

Mary Rose Wilcox, good to see you again.

Thank you so much for joining us here.

Women's History Month, what does that, what does Women's History Month mean to you?

- Well, to me, it's a recognition of women.

For years women were in the background particularly in the political arena.

We were always the workers but we never rose to the forefront.

So to me, particularly involved in politics it means that you're highlighting and showing women who've been on the front line and doing things.

- And that's what we're doing with this series here and let's talk about you.

Fourth generation Arizona and correct?

- Yes, I am, yes, I am.

My mother and dad were from the mining towns.

My dad from Jerome, my mother from Superior and before that, her mother and dad came from the Florence area and they migrated from Tucson and the last generation that was in Mexico was in Magdalena Mexico.

- Wow, you got into politics but I wanna know, was this something when you were a little girl, when you were going to school, when you were a teenager, were you it sounds like, I think if I remember correctly your family was very much involved in the community.

- They really were, my mother in the church and my dad in civic affairs.

He was like the little league coach.

He was the head of a few committees and when I got to high school, there were very few Hispanics on the student councils and I decided I was gonna run.

So I ran against a very popular woman and I won and that kind of started me being very interested 'cause once I got in that student council, I could do a lot for the students.

- And when, obviously you saw public service there as something interesting.

When did politics become something that could be a career for you?

- My husband, Earl Wilcox and I, have been married 50 years and I was going to issue, met him, we got married and both of us wanted to become involved in the political arena.

We weren't sure we were gonna be politicians but we wanted to make change.

We were children of late sixties.

The world was going crazy and we wanted to make change and bring our community into the real world and get resources for them.

So we made a path where we got married and he ran first.

He ran for state representative and served for 14 years and then I was very fortunate to get a job with Senator Dennis DeConcini in the mid seventies to late seventies and then city council opened up and I ran for that position.

- You went for that position and you won, you were the first Latina on the Phoenix city council, the first Latina on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors - Yeah.

- And obviously the Latina influence there is obvious but I wanna focus on the women aspect of it.

Did you feel, I don't know.

Did you feel like you weren't taken seriously?

Did you feel that there were extra hurdles you had to jump over because you are a woman?

- Oh, definitely.

When I got on the city council, I was the only woman for two terms and that's a lot, so I really had to kind of move forward.

When I ran for city council for the first time, I went door to door and many women in the community, particularly, older women were saying we're so glad you're running.

There's so many issues and they wanted me to stay in it and they said we will vote for the first time.

So that was a real eye changer because a lot of them had never really voted and because I was a woman and Hispanic they were gonna get out and vote and when I got to city council, so it was a pretty liberal council.

Terry Goddard was the mayor.

We had people like Dwayne Powell and Calvin Good was on there but I still had a little bit of pushback from being a woman.

Well, I remember one time they were all caucusing in the men's bathroom and I opened the door and I said, nope, not fair.

You guys come out if you're gonna talk politics.

(laughs) - Yeah, yeah, indeed, same thing with the County Board of Supervisors?

- No, the county was a little bit different because when I got there, Betsey Bayless was on it and there had been women on it.

So the county was a little bit different but you always feel it.

You always feel as a woman, people don't give you your due and it's changing.

You see people getting elected to Congress now, getting elected to vice-presidents and it's changing.

But when I came in, I was on the forefront of women in politics and I literally had to work for everything I got 10 times harder than man and I'm not lying about it.

It's just the, you just looked at it and said it's a matter of fact and if you wanna get things done, you have to work 24 hours a day.

- When you got things done as far as approving the downtown ballpark as a board supervisors' member there, this was very controversial.

- It was.

- You wound up being shot because of this and many people find that hard to believe but you were shot because of your vote to approve a tax for that ballpark.

- I was.

- How did that change how you saw politics, how you saw Public Service?

- Well, first of all, I was shot because I had been re-elected and I was the only person who voted for the stadium who had been reelected but it was because I paid attention to my community.

I made sure that laborers got jobs at the stadium construction site.

I made sure that the local unions were involved.

I really reached out to minorities for some of the stands at the ballpark and so when I got shot, I knew that I got shot because I was a Mexican woman who was moving too fast and it didn't, the first time I was in the surgery, my husband came up and he said, Mary Rose and I said, Earl, I don't want this job, take it and then after I woke up and after everything happened I said, you know what?

I'm not gonna let that man take me out.

I serve my community and they have elected me and so it re-dedicated my will to serve people even more.

- Interesting, 'cause it was a very scary time and obviously that was a very scary situation for you.

Give me your inspiration there, there was a congressional run as well, I remember that.

- Yes.

- I had a debate with you and some other Congressman guy, Diego.

Seemed like that got nasty - Real.

- And that aspect of politics, did that change the way you saw Public Service?

- For a little bit it did.

What happened in that race is I was coming off that big fight with Arpaio and Arpaio had accused me of all kinds of things.

He had taken me to court, I had been proven a hundred percent innocent but Ruben took a lot of what Arpaio had said and put it out there and people were unsure because they didn't know what had happened in that court case and so ultimately, what happened is I lost the race and for a couple of years, I kind of I didn't go underground because people still demanded a lot of attention.

A lot of people knock on doors and ask for help with issues.

So I wasn't as vocal or as, maybe in the political face.

But what I did is kind of like look into myself, I needed a knee surgery, I got a knee surgery done and I just said, you know what?

I'm gonna come back and so what I did is just start working in the community again because a lot of people were calling me and the county had spun off the health system to Valleywise health system.

So I ran for that office and started helping people again but throughout the time in 14, till I start serving on the health board, I was pretty active.

So I knew why I had lost.

The fight with Arpaio and the misunderstanding of people and you can't take those things personal.

What you have to do, you just say, okay, I lost now, what do I do?

And all of this wealth of knowledge I had gained through my elected office, I didn't wanna give it up.

I wanted to keep helping people.

- Well, and last question.

With that wealth of knowledge, with all of your experience being a woman who was the first in so many different ways and having to fight those battles, do you consider yourself a mentor?

- Yes, I do and I reach out to the community and I've mentored a lot of men and women.

I see who's doing things, many people call me and say, can you give me advice?

I try to be a sounding board for them.

I try to encourage them.

I give them ideas from what I see in the political arena.

So I do, and I'm proud of it because when you're first, there's duties that you have to do and you have to reach back and pull up people.

So I'm a mentor, proud of it and I'm really proud that people still keep calling me and asking advice.

Don't know if I give good advice, but they keep asking.

(laughing) - Well, it's been quite a career, congratulations and again, we wanted to make sure we got you on for Women's History Month.

Mary Rose Wilcox, always a pleasure, thank you.

- Thank you very much, good to see you.

- Up next, a report on the state of women in Arizona.

- I hate the myth of Hemingway, it obscures the man.

- His talent, dystonic.

- She went against the grain.

- It's hard to imagine a writer who hasn't been influenced by him.

- In order to have something new to write, he had to have something new to live and he fell in love quite a few times.

- He's complex and deeply flawed but there he is.

- Hemingway, the man is much more interesting than the myth.

- Coming in April to Arizona PBS.

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Submit your questions, comments and concerns via email@arizonahorizonatasu.edu.

(upbeat music) - Earlier this month, we looked at a new report from the Arizona Foundation for Women that focuses on the state of women in Arizona.

Mesha Davis is the foundation CEO.

Mesha, good to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

This is the 2020 status of women in Arizona research report.

What did you look for?

What did you find?

- Well, it's interesting.

We were trying to find some data to see if we've moved the needle at all since our last report in 2016 and I'm kind of not surprised that we weren't able to find too much updated data but we did find a few things that we compare to see if we've done some improvements and not really, unfortunately.

So that was kind of disheartening, that we still have a lot to do and COVID 19 of course, really impacted a lot and pushed the numbers back kind of two years back, so.

- Could you tell, were the numbers heading in the right direction before COVID-19 hit?

- Not really, they were still sagging here in Arizona.

We just haven't really put a lot of effort behind keeping women equal, safe, healthy, giving them equal pay.

So a lot of work to do.

- Yeah, let's talk about some of the things the report found in terms of health and safety.

Arizona's seventh highest rate of women killed by men.

That's disturbing, that's troubling, what's going on here?

- So I think a lot of it is that we don't wanna believe that it's happening.

Arizona's supposed to be a great place to live, we don't really talk about domestic violence.

Those things that are just not the topics you wanna talk about at the dinner table and we really need to put this forward and just for example, we've seen a lot of backlog on sexual assault, rape kits, and I will say that Arizona has worked at this.

This is probably one thing that I will say we've had some movement.

Our law officials have really, they've got some federal grants to really help get these rape kits tested because all around the US rape kits were just sitting in warehouses or in the basements of buildings.

Some of them were destroyed and unable to be tested.

So we've done a really great job here of putting that as a priority and helping families and women get some closure.

- In terms of economic empowerment, the wage gap for women 40,000 meeting earnings a year, 44,000 for men and I also noticed that a lot of women that should be receiving child support are not receiving it.

Those are pretty big factors in women's lives here.

- Correct, and one of you asked me earlier what was the surprising thing that we found from the research?

There was something new that came up, it's called the motherhood wage gap.

So when you look at mothers with children compared to fathers with children that wage gap is even worse than just regular pay.

So again, it's showing that women who predominately are the caregivers in the home with or without children are not having equal pay and so that, like you said, that affects everything.

Cost of health care, food, moving the family forward and a lot of times women not having enough income to support themselves are stuck in domestic violence situations because they feel they can't get out.

They don't have the resources and the financial backing to do so.

- I did notice that in terms of education, women outpace men as far as undergraduates are concerned.

That seems like that's been a trend for a while.

Relatively encouraging there, huh?

- Yes, but do you wanna hear the flip side to that that?

- Okay, please.

- Is that women are getting educated and getting degrees and are outpacing men but they're still not getting a pay.

So you're doing all this work, going to school, doing the right things that we're told to do and then you come out and you're still far behind your male counterparts.

- So with all of this in mind, we're talking health and safety and economic empowerment and education.

All of these things where again, you mentioned after five years, four or five years or so, there's not much improvement.

What do we take from this study?

- So I don't know if you're seeing it but I'm seeing a lot of data now coming out and so I think we're starting to see people listening and talking about where women stand because of COVID and it's unfortunate that we had to wait for a pandemic to really help people realize that women were always in this place and now it's just worse than before.

So what we really need to take, like one of the things we're doing is we're starting a Women's Leadership Development Program that we launched this year and that is to help women get into those higher positions and have a higher earning potential.

So and then we need to hold companies accountable.

Are you giving equal pay?

It would be great if we can do some type of report card where, you may not get federal funding or you may not get a tax break if you can't prove that you're giving the same person coming in with the same experience, education and getting the same pay.

So there's a lot that can be done.

It's just, who's gonna do it?

And are we willing to fight those battles?

- Yeah, well, the study certainly shows that the battles need to be fought and congratulations on that study.

Mesha Davis, Arizona Foundation for Women.

Thanks so much for breaking it down for us and we appreciate your time.

- Thanks so much.

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(upbeat music) - Most Native American women did not earn the right to vote with the 19th amendment.

Earlier, Horizonte host, Jose Cardenas spoke with Diane Humetewa, judge of the US District Court for the district of Arizona about how the women's suffrage movement helped energize the fight for Native American voting rights.

- You've had a spectacular career including being the first Native American US Attorney for the district of Arizona.

The first Native American woman to be confirmed as a federal judge, one of only three, even today, Native Americans and you were prominently mentioned as a possible successor to US Supreme Court Justice Scalia after he passed.

To what do you attribute your own success?

- Well, good parents, first of all, who really saw that I had a good at the time, public education but I also in growing up, I have been thinking about my professional life, if you will.

I had really great role models and at the time when I was becoming a young professional there were very few and far between female role models and so I was very fortunate to be able to come under the tutelage of some very successful men who I think probably, had daughters themselves or maybe strong mother figures but at the same time, I also look back when I left the US Attorney's office to go to law school.

Linda Acres was serving as the US Attorney and when I came back and I came back from Washington DC as a lawyer to join the US Attorney's Office as a prosecutor, Janet Napolitano was the US Attorney and I actually had female supervisors supervising me as a young attorney in that office and so the balance was starting to shift when I left the US Attorney's Office.

For example, there were probably one or two women who were in leadership roles at the time in the entire office.

When I came back, there was a really strong, there was at least, a layer of leadership forming of women who were strong and who were also advocating for sort of equal balance of leadership roles.

- I understand that Senator McCain was also a very significant influence for you in your career.

- Absolutely, he was.

He gave me my first job as a lawyer, right out of the shoot and I noted when I worked with him in his office looking at his staff at the time, he actually had a number of very strong women working beside him and I think one of the things that I learned from him was when you say yes to a job you're gonna have to do the job and so he was very demanding and he made sure that when he had an issue that he wanted to discuss, you had to come there fully prepared and so he taught me how to look at all sides of an issue, to come ready to give him a snapshot of a briefing.

Give him the most pertinent parts, give him your opinion and I think he really set me up for great success later on just because of the way he had expectations of everyone in his office.

Not just the men but the women as well.

- Until 2018, there had never been a Native American woman in Congress, Sarah Todd elected in 2018.

We noted that you were appointed to the federal bench in 2014, one of three Native Americans at the time, still only three.

Are these accomplishments a sign of a big progress or do we still have quite a ways to go yet?

- Well, that question reminds me when I was in law school I was an extern in the US Senate and this was roughly about 1992 and a friend of my host family said there's going to be a photo shoot on the steps of the Capitol and we need all the women that we can get and so she said, you should go, you're gonna be there, you should go and so what I found out this photo shoot was about it was to display the opposite mere image of the United States Congress at the time, The Makeup of the Congress and so they had all of these women on the Capitol steps and I believe at the time only three men were in the photo and I think this was a times magazine spread and so for me thinking back about the landscape then in 1992, roughly and today I see that the incremental progress is being made and I think in my particular area for Native Americans certainly, I was the first in my family to attend a university and two, to go to law school and to be a lawyer.

But I see today a number of Native women and men, the doors have started to open.

There are people who are now graduating from law school who are taking on professional careers and so I think, it's an incremental progression that I've seen and it's very positive.

I think we still can do better, especially in areas that have been predominantly occupied by males but at the same time, I try to always think about every individual has their story.

Every individual has had to at least overcome some obstacles but still I think, we have an obligation to remove the obstacles that may continue to exist to ensure that every person achieves their best life.

- And on that note, judge Diane Humetewa, Judge in the US District Court for the district of Arizona.

Thank you so much for joining us to tell your story.

- Thank you, it was great to see you.

- Great to see you, thank you so much.

- Bye bye.

- Bye bye.

- And that is it for now, I am Ted Simons.

Thank you so much for joining us on this special edition of Arizona Horizon.

You have a great evening.

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