Ch. 11: Modern Feminism and
American Society, 1965-1980
History 37
Summer, 2014
Questions to Consider:
• How did the civil rights movement contribute to
the women’s movement in the early to mid
1960s?
• What was “women’s liberation” and what
factors/events contributed to its emergence?
• What is “liberal feminism”?
• Has the definition of “feminism” changed since
the 1960s?
• How did women of varying races, classes, and
religions participate in the women’s movement?
Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement
• Equal Pay Act of 1963
• Civil Rights Act, 1964 (includes Voting Rights
Act of 1965)
• The “Great Society” – LBJ’s social programs
to end discrimination and poverty
• Civil Rights Act, 1968
• Political attention to racial discrimination
overshadowed many gender-specific
employment and/housing issues.
Social, Cultural, Political
Trends and Movements in
the 1960s
• Students for a
Democratic Society,
founded 1962
• The Sexual Revolution
• Counterculture
(Timothy Leary
pictured at right)
• Hippies
• Mods
• Communes
• Anti-War Movement
(mid to late 1960s)
National Organization for
Women (NOW)
• Founded in 1966 by
activists unsatisfied with
the EEOC (Equal
Employment Opportunity
Commission) and
enforcement of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964.
• Modeled after the NAACP,
NOW promoted ideology
of “liberal feminism”
• Focus on economic and
political rights soon
expanded to reproductive
freedom and other social
justice issues, including the
ERA
Second Wave Feminism, 1960s - 1980
• First “wave” refers to women’s activism for
suffrage rights in the early twentieth century
• Also called “Women’s Liberation” or the
“feminist movement”
• Global movement, focused on issues including
but not limited to: reproductive rights, rape
and sexual violence, female genital mutilation
(FGM).
Divisive Issues within the
Women’s Movement,
1960-1980
•
Work, Education, and
Motherhood
•
•
•
•
•
Title IX funding, 1972
Reproductive Rights (BC and
Abortion)
• Griswold vs. Connecticut
(1965)
• Roe vs. Wade legalizes
abortion in 1973
Issues between white and nonwhite feminists
• Black Power
• Chicana Movement
Lesbianism and feminism
• Lesbian separatism
• Disagreements over what
true “feminism” means
The Equal Rights Amendment
• Phyllis Schlafly and the
“Stop the ERA” campaign
(pictured at right)
When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKd9zWjxr6k
(28 minutes)