Ruth Shinn, advocate for women and LGBT people, dies at 97
Ruth Shinn, who made a national name as an advocate for gender, racial and LGBT justice but was known in her family for a childlike joy about things like sharks’ teeth, blooming mountain laurels and swimming in her 90s, died May 1. A presumptive cause, her family said, was covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Shinn’s 97 years included phases living in different parts of the world, but her last 50 years were spent in Washington.
She served as chief of the legislative analysis division of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau, where in the 1970s she played a key role in strengthening affirmative action requirements for federal contractors, particularly around gender, said her grandnephew Marc Shinn-Krantz. She was a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus, which recruits women to run for political office, and was on the working group for then-first-lady Hillary Clinton’s health-care task force in 1993, Shinn-Krantz said.
Shinn for about a quarter-century — 1944 to 1969 — worked in leadership at the YWCA, her grandnephew said, including as vice president of the national board. Her passion, he said, was improving gender and racial equality, and she helped racially integrate student dorms at the University of Nebraska’s YWCA. She worked for the group at Carnegie Mellon and in Utica, New York.
Shinn was also the first woman to serve as moderator - or leading officer - of First Congregational United Church of Christ in the District of Columbia, her grandnephew said. In the 1970s the congregation was deeply divided over the leadership’s decision to host Metropolitan Community Church, one of the early LGBT religious denominations. It voted for MCC to leave.