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M.W. Gray 133of law and it was easy (relatively). While I was getting a degree and qualifyingas an attorney, litigation in the TIAA case and a parallel case involvinga state employee pension plan in Arizona (Arizona Governing Committee,1983) continued. The latter reached the US Supreme Court first, by whichtime I was also admitted to the Supreme Court Bar and could not only helpthe appellee woman employee’s lawyer but could write an amicus curiæ briefon my own.Working with a distinguished feminist economist, Barbara Bergmann, wecounteracted the legal argument of the insurer, namely that the law requiredthat similarly situated men and women be treated the same, but men andwomen were not so situated because of differences in longevity. To show thatthey are similarly situated, consider a cohort of 1000 men and 1000 womenat age 65. The death ages of 86% of them can be matched up. That is, a mandies at 66 and a woman dies at 66, a man dies at 90 and a woman dies at 90,etc. The remaining 14% consists of 7% who are men who die early unmatchedby the deaths of women and 7% who are women who live longer, unmatchedby long-lived men. But 86% of the cohort match up, i.e., men and women aresimilarly situated and must be treated the same (Bergmann and Gray, 1975).Although the decision in favor of equity mandated only prospective equalpayments, most plans, including TIAA, equalized retirement benefits resultingfrom past contributions as well. Women who had been doubly disadvantagedby discriminatorily low salaries and gender-based unjustly low retirement incometold of now being able to have meat and fresh fruit and vegetables a fewtimes a week as well as the security of a phone (this being before the so-called“Obama phone”).Whereas retirement benefits and employer-provided life insurance are coveredby Title VII, the private insurance market is not. Insurance is stateregulatedand only a few states required sex equity; more, but not all, requiredrace equity. A campaign was undertaken to lobby state legislatures,state insurance commissions, and governors to establish legal requirementsfor sex equity in all insurance. Of course, sex equity cuts both ways. Automobileinsurance and life insurance in general are more expensive for males thanfor females. In fact an argument often used to argue against discriminatoryrates is that in some states a young male driver with a clean record was beingcharged more than an older driver (of either sex) with two DUI convictions.Today women are still underrepresented in the study of mathematics, butthirty years ago, the disparity was even more pronounced. As a result, fewactivists in the women’s movement were willing and able to dig into the ratingpolicies of insurance companies to make the case for equity in insurance onthe basis of statistics. One time I testified in Helena, Montana, and then wasdriven in a snow storm to Great Falls to get the last flight out to Spokaneand then on to Portland to testify at a legislative session in Salem, leaving theopposition lobbyists behind. The insurance industry, having many resourcesin hand, had sent in a new team from Washington that was very surprised tosee in Salem the next day that they were confronted once again by arguments