Letitia "Tish" Innes Sommers (September 8, 1914 – October 18, 1985) was an American author, women's rights activist, and the co-founder and first president of the Older Women's League (OWL).^[1][2][3]

Letitia Gale Innes was born in Cambria, California and raised in San Francisco, the daughter of Murray Innes and Katherine Dorsch Innes.^[3] Her father was a mining engineer, and her mother was a teacher.^[4] She studied dance as a young woman, including three years in Germany in the 1930s. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles.^[5]

During World War II, Innes worked in the parks department in Los Angeles.^[5] In 1945 she directed a youth theatrical production in Los Angeles with over 150 youth participants,^[6] and chaired the program for a "thanksgiving harvest festival" in the city.^[7] In the 1950s, Sommers and her second husband worked for social and civil rights causes in the South.^[3][8]

In the 1970s, Sommers became focused on feminist issues, especially involving older women.^[5] With the help of her friend Laurie Shields, she successfully lobbied 39 states and Congress to pass displaced homemaker laws,^[9] which offered a network of job training and counseling centers for career housewives who went through divorce or the death of a husband.^[3][8] Sommers coined the phrase "displaced homemaker."^[2][10][11]

Sommers chaired the National Organization for Women's task force on older women in the 1970s.^[12] She was also a NOW board member and led the Jobs for Older Women Action Project.^[2][3][13] She co-founded the Older Women's League with Laurie Shields in 1980, and was its first president.^[1][8]

Sommers was named one of the "Bay Area's Ten Most Distinguished Persons" by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1974. She testified before a Senate committee on aging and Social Security in 1975.^[14] She won the Western Gerontological Society Award in 1979, and the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation's Ministry to Women Award in 1981. In 1982, already facing a cancer diagnosis, she was keynote speaker at a conference on employment at Sonoma State University.^[15] In 1983, she testified before a Congressional hearing on Medicare and aging.^[16] In 1984, she once again spoke before a Congressional committee on aging and healthcare.^[17]

• The not-so-helpless female: How to change the world even if you never thought you could; A step-by-step guide to social action (1973)
• "Freelance Agitator Argues for Hiring Changes: Look Out Job Market!" (1978)^[18]
• "If We Could Write the Script..." (1980)^[19]
• "If I Had a Billion..." (1981)^[20]
• "Caregiving: A Woman's Issue" (1985)^[21]
• "Three Caregivers Tell Their Stories: Seriously Near the Breaking Point" (1985)^[22]
• Women Take Care: The Consequences of Caregiving in Today's Society (1987, with Laurie Shields)^[23]

Innes married Sidney Arnold Burke in 1938; they later divorced. She married fellow activist Joseph Sommers in 1949; they adopted a son, and divorced in 1972.^[5] "Undoubtedly the divorce was, in part, my own awakening," she later recalled.^[24] Sommers died from cancer in 1985 at the age of 71, in Oakland.^[3][25] Some of her papers are held in the San Diego State University Libraries.^[13] The Institute for Health and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco established the Tish Sommers Senior Scholars program to honor her; it supports the work of older graduate and postdoctoral students working to improve the lives of older women.^[26] In 1991, a biography of her was published, titled Tish Sommers, Activist: and the Founding of the Older Women's League.^[27]