•Women’s place
before the
movement
•Women in College
•Women in the
Workplace
•The Women’s
Movement
•The Equal Rights
Amendment
•Reproductive Rights
•Abortion
•The Decline of the
Movement
“For the American girl, books
and babies don’t mix. Long
ago scientists concluded that
the American Family’s
reproduction rate is inverse to
the educational attainment of
the parents” Newsweek (1946)
•‘Betty co-ed’
• The M.R.S degree
• Reinforced sex roles
• Attendance and
competition
• Early admissions (1957)
•Positive experience
• Activism
• WoManpower
• Success for the women’s movement on campuses
• Ivy League/ Law and Medical School attendance
increases
•Post WWII exodus
•Return to work
•Discrimination
• Pay disputes
• Normalising
• Sexual harassment
• Non-white women
• Lack of promotion
•Stigma
• Juvenile delinquency
• Neglected husbands
• Double day
• 1957: the watershed
• The ‘single woman’
demographic
• Betty Friedan and The
Feminine Mystique (1963)
• PCSW Report (1963)
•
•
Equal Pay Act (1963)
Civil Rights Act (1964)
•
Title VII - Equal Employment
Opportunities Commission (EEOC)
•
The ‘Bunny Law’
• 1966: National Organization
for Women (NOW)
• Betty Friedan Largest US
feminist organisation
• Plagued by problems
• 55 chapters today
• 1967: Women’s Liberation
• Causes
• Equality
• De facto and de jure
• The ‘Personal is Political’
• Sisterhood
• The Body
• Methodology
• Legislative rights
• Consciousness raising
• Radical groups
• Shulamith Firestone (New
York Radical Women)
• Redstockings (NYC, 1969)
• White middle-class
women’s movement
• Historiography
•
Education
• Title IX
• Women’s Educational Equality Act
(1974)
•
Representation
• 1970: Bella Abzug
• 1975: Military Academies
• 1981: Sandra Day O’Connor
•
Support
• Comprehensive Child
Development Bill (1972)
• Pregnancy
Discrimination Act (1978)
•Alice Paul (1923)
• End legal
discrimination based
upon sex
•Involvement of NOW
• Picketed Congress in
1970
• Spurred Congressional
hearings on the ERA
•Passed the Senate in
1972
• Endorsed by Nixon
• Comstock Law (1873)
• “Act for the Suppression
of Trade in, and
Circulation of, Obscene
Literature and Articles for
Immoral Use”
• Margaret Sanger
• American Birth Control
League (1921)
• Legalisation of
contraception (1938)
• 55 birth control clinics in
1930 but over 800 in 1942
• The Pill
• FDA approval in 1960
• Not widely distributed until July 1961
• ‘new’ contraception: easier, more discrete and
more effective
• Prejudice, ignorance
and the Cold War
• Griswold v.
Connecticut (1965)
•
Privacy issue
• Eisenstadt v. Baird
(1972)
•
Marital Rape
•
•
•
•
Susan Brownmiller Against Our
Will (1975)
Joan Little
•
•
Growing sense of illegality (illegal nationally 1993)
“By getting married a woman has consented to sex and I
don’t think you can call it rape” – Phyllis Schlafly
Sexually assaulted in prison by a
guard
• Cleared of murder as self
defense in 1975
‘Take Back the Night’ March
• 1975, Philadelphia: response to
murder of a microbiologist when
walking home
•
Doctor’s discretion
•
•
•
•
To save the life of the mother; cases of rape or incest;
deformed foetus.
Illegal/backstreet abortions
NARAL (1969)
Roe v. Wade (1973)
•
•
•
•
Right to privacy/ 14th amendment
Norma McCorvey
Landmark decision which gave women the right to
control their own bodies
Major win for the women’s movement
•
Conservative Right
• Resurgence
• Church
• Catholicism
•
Violent protest
• Operation Rescue,
• founded by Randall
Terry
• Christmas Day protest
(1984)
• “a birthday present for
Jesus”
•
Ongoing debate
•
•
•
•
Reduction of term
Counselling
Ultrasounds
Election issue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=5R7JmZ1q310&feature=relmfu
Feminism is “anti family, anti children and pro
abortion. It is a series of sharp-tongued, high
pitched whining complaints by unmarried
women. They view the home as a prison, the
wife and mother as a slave... Women’s lib is a
total assault on the role of the American woman
as a wife and mother, and on the family as the
basic unit of society. They are promoting federal
day care centres for babies instead of homes.
They are promoting abortions instead of
families”
– Phyllis Schlafly
• Lack of organisation
• Splinter groups
• Sharp decline in prominence
after 1975
• Anti-Feminism
• Rise in right wing movements in the 1980s in all
areas of American life
• Phyllis Schlafly
• “A bunch of women seeking a constitutional cure for
their personal problems”
• Constitutional Lawyer
• Still alive and campaigning
• Liberation from Oppression
• By 1970, 360 educational institutions had been
forced into court for discriminatory practices
• Battered women’s shelters
• Rape crisis centres; rape speak outs
• Organised self defence classes
• Picketed congress for abortion
rights
• Post abortion support
• Women’s Studies
• Women’s history; women’s issues
Next Week…
The Rise of the Right
1960-1975