'70s saw beginning of change for women in Pittsburgh police ranks

The 1970s saw women consolidate gains in the workplace that began with the second-wave feminism of a decade earlier.

Therese Rocco began the Seventies wondering whether women in the Pittsburgh Police Department would ever get the pay, training and opportunities for advancement that men did. In the mid-1960s, women in the department still did not attend the police academy, carry their own weapons or attend morning briefings, according to her memoir “Therese Rocco: Pittsburgh’s First Female Assistant Police Chief.”

Then, on Aug. 27, 1970, Inspector William “Mugsy” Moore, speaking to a gathering of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in Pittsburgh, said he felt Rocco, then a captain, should be promoted to superintendent of the detective bureau to replace the retiring William Gilmore.

Rocco was out of the country at the time and didn’t learn about the remarks until her return. Needless to say, she was pleased.

“Mugsy was a great guy. … He was one of my supporters,” she told the Tribune-Review.

Rocco worked for decades in the Missing Persons Bureau, having joined the department in 1948. She retired in 1994 as the department’s first female assistant chief — an appointment she received in 1989 from Mayor Sophie Masloff. But the struggle for equality in the workplace was long and frustrating, she said.

“It wasn’t until the late ’70s that the Fraternal Order of Police viewed the salary disparity as an important issue and arbitrated against the city on our behalf,” she wrote in her 2017 memoir. “The women would now be paid a salary equivalent to that of a four-year patrolman and my salary rose to that of a lieutenant. Although I was grateful for the raise, I still questioned the inequality.”

In the late ’70s, Rocco went to bat for three female colleagues who filed a sex discrimination lawsuit against the city. Although she declined to join the class action, she testified on the women’s behalf in court.