Anti-discrimination campaigner wins public service award
Two federal employees, including a senior manager responsible for passage of an anti-discrimination law, won top awards for public service Wednesday at an event sponsored by a leading women's magazine.
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency who shepherded the 2001 Notification and Federal Employee Anti-Discrimination and Retaliation Act (No FEAR) into law, was one of two federal employees honored by Good Housekeeping magazine. Adebayo and Dr. Susan Mather, chief public health and environmental hazards officer at the Veterans Affairs Department, each received a $25,000 grand prize as part of the annual Good Housekeeping Award for Women in Government and the Good Housekeeping/Wyeth Award for Women's Health, respectively.
The women in government award recognizes 10 women each year at all levels of government for improving people's lives through innovation and dedication to public service. Partners in the awards ceremony include the Council for Excellence in Government, the Partnership for Trust in Government and the Center for American Women and Politics.
During her acceptance speech, Adebayo, who won a $600,000 verdict in a race and sex discrimination suit against EPA in 2000, said she was "extremely disappointed" by responses from agencies about how they planned to enforce No FEAR. The law aims to hold agencies more accountable for discrimination and retaliation against federal employees.
Adebayo, who still works at EPA, is also head of the No FEAR Institute, a group that works to ensure legal protection for all federal employees.
The No FEAR Act requires agencies that lose or settle discrimination and whistleblower cases to pay judgments out of their own budgets. Currently, such payments are made out of a general federal judgment fund. The law also requires agencies to make employees aware of discrimination and whistleblower protection laws and file an annual report detailing the number of discrimination or whistleblower cases filed against them, how the cases were resolved, the amount of settlements and the number of agency employees disciplined for discriminating against other workers or harassing them.
In May 2001, EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman ordered all 1,600 EPA managers and supervisors to attend a two-day national civil rights training program. She also said the agency, which had been plagued with allegations of discrimination, would begin distributing copies of its anti-discrimination policies and procedures to employees.
Actor Danny Glover, who sent his congratulations to Adebayo via video, plans to make a movie about Adebayo and her experiences pushing No FEAR into law.
Mather, who began her career in the 1970s when VA hospitals had no gynecologists on staff, has been a "voice for women's health at the VA," said Good Housekeeping Editor-in-Chief Ellen Levine. Mather developed training programs on women's health in VA hospitals and helped establish sexual trauma centers in every VA health center.
Mather said while her job, at times, has made her "want to tear my hair out and sometimes tear other people's hair out," she has "never been bored a single day."
"VA gave me a chance to pay back the government, which has done so much for me and my family," Mather said.
Katherine O'Rourke, a research microbiologist at the Agriculture Department, won $2,500 for her work in preventing the spread of mad cow disease in sheep.
All award winners are profiled in the July 2003 issue of Good Housekeeping.