rganization for WomenNational Organization for Women
(NOW), group founded (1966) to support "full equality for women in America in a truly equal partnership with men." Its founder and first president was feminist leader Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963).
..... Click the link for more information. (NOW), formed in 1966, had over 400 local chapters by the early 1970s. NOW, the National Women's Political Caucus, and other groups pressed for such changes as abortion rights, federally supported child care centers, equal pay for women, the occupational upgrading of women, the removal of all legal and social barriers to education, political influence, and economic power for women.
With the leadership of women such as Bella AbzugAbzug, Bella Savitsky
, 1920–98, U.S. politician, b. New York City. She helped found Women Strike for Peace (1961) and the reformist New Democratic Coalition (1968). Elected to the U.S.
..... Click the link for more information. , Betty FriedanFriedan, Betty Naomi
, 1921–2006, American social reformer and feminist, b. Peoria, Ill. as Bettye Goldstein, educated at Smith College (B.A., 1942) and the Univ. of California at Berkeley.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Gloria SteinemSteinem, Gloria
, 1934–, American journalist and feminist, b. Toledo, Ohio, grad. Smith College (B.A., 1956). Steinem gained prominence as a spokeswoman for women's rights in articles, lectures, and television appearances.
..... Click the link for more information. , the Equal Rights Amendment was pushed through Congress in 1972, but by 1982 it fell short of ratification. While Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibited discrimination based on sex, the Roe v. WadeRoe v. Wade,
case decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with Doe v. Bolton, this decision legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
..... Click the link for more information. court decision, legalizing abortion, energized an antiabortion, antifeminist backlash. Nevertheless, the movement begun in the 1960s resulted in a large number of women moving into the workplace (59.8% of civilian women over age 16 were working in 1997, compared to 37.7% in 1960) and in broad changes in society.
See J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (1867); S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (tr. 1952, repr. 1968); B. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963); G. Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970); K. Millett, Sexual Politics (1970); J. Hole and E. Levine, Rebirth of Feminism (1971); E. Janeway, Man's World, Woman's Place (1971); J. B. Elshtain, The Family in Political Thought (1982); D. Spender, ed., Feminist Theorists (1984); J. S. Chafetz and A. B. Dworkin, Female Revolt (1986); A. C. Rich, Of Woman Born (1986); H. L. Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (1988); B. Aptheker, Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness (1989); N. F. Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism (1989); A. Ferguson, Blood at the Root (1989); W. L. O'Neill, Feminism in America (1989); D. E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic (1989); S. L. Bartky, Femininity and Domination (1990); M. Jacobs et al. Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (1990); S. Ganew, A Reader in Feminist Knowledge (1991); E. Cunningham, The Return of The Goddess: A Divine Comedy (1992); B. S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830–1860 (2000); R. Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (2000); G. Collins, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (2009).
- a holistic theory concerned with the nature of women's global oppression and subordination to men.
- a sociopolitical theory and practice which aims to free all women from male supremacy and exploitation.
- a social movement encompassing strategic confrontations with the sex-class system.
- an ideology which stands in dialectical opposition to all misogynous ideologies and practices. See also POST-FEMINISM.
Whereas feminism in the late 1960s was concerned with understanding and documenting an oppression