By: Alicia Davis, Hal Turner, Jennifer Gonzalez, & Kai Dunbar Women's Rights 60’s Research Project By: Alicia Davis, Hal Turner, Jennifer Gonzalez, & Kai Dunbar

Terms to know: Women’s Liberation: A movement directed towards the removal of attitudes and practices that preserve inequalities based upon assumption that men are superior to women. Feminism: The belief that women are and should be treated as potential intellectual equals and social equals to men. Affirmative Action: An action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination. Dissatisfaction: A lack of satisfaction. The Sexual Revolution: A drastic relaxation in general standards. A time of sexual liberation, a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality in the 1960’s. Dynamic Leadership: Someone who serves organizational mission, vision, and values instead of personal power needs.

Reasons 4 the Emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement: Disatisfaction Dynamic Leadership Impact of Social Science The Sexual Revolution Influence of Civil Rights Movement Highly educated & talented women provided dynamic leadership. Feminist leaders include Betty Friedan & Gloria Steinem who founded “Ms. Magazine”, Women were dissatisfied with their roles and sought the freedom to express themselves in career and work. Social Scientist, Margaret Mead, began to see women's law status in Western Society as the creation of a male-dominated power structure rather than as a biological necessity. Sex education and birth control was encouraged throughout schools. Women attacked the myth of female passivity. They objected being treated as “sex objects” instead of human beings. The success of the civil rights movement inspired women to adopt the same techniques to promote women’s rights.

Summary of “The Feminine Mystique” The Feminine Mystique was one of the most influential books in convincing middle-class American women during the 1960’s that their personal identity as housewives and mothers had not provided them with full and meaningful lives. Herself one of the women whose plight she described, Betty Friedan examined “the problem that has no name” in a series of insightful chapters that set forth the many ways in which women felt frustrated and repressed. The book grew out of Friedan’s search for a more significant existence. A writer whose professional career had taken second place to a husband and family, she surveyed the condition of women at the end of the 1950’s and then found that women’s magazines for which she wrote were reluctant to publish her findings. The magazines did not want details about the anxieties and tensions of middle-class, suburban women. She decided to write a book that could explore the issue of women’s identity in greater depth. The Feminine Mystique Grew from her determination to locate the deeper causes of the frustration that she and women like her felt. As she researched how society directed women into child rearing and family to the exclusion of their own talents and abilities, she became convinced that the ideology of accepting such roles accounted for much of the problem. The book proved to be a significant catalyst for many women in the 1960’s. Friedan’s powerful description of how her...

About Betty Friedan American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men." In 1970, after stepping down as NOW's first president, Friedan organized the nationwide Women's Strike for Equality on August 26, the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granting women the right to vote. The national strike was successful beyond expectations in broadening the feminist movement; the march led by Friedan in New York City alone attracted over 50,000 women and men. In 1971, Friedan joined other leading feminists to establish the National Women's Political Caucus. Friedan was also a strong supporter of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution that passed the United States House of Representatives (by a vote of 354–24) and Senate (84–8) following intense pressure by women's groups led by NOW in the early 1970s. Following Congressional passage of the amendment, Friedan advocated for ratification of the amendment in the states and supported other women's rights reforms: she founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws but was later critical of the abortion-centered positions of many liberal feminists. Regarded as an influential author and intellectual in the United States, Friedan remained active in politics and advocacy for the rest of her life, authoring six books. As early as the 1960s Friedan was critical of polarized and extreme factions of feminism that attacked groups such as men and homemakers. One of her later books, The Second Stage (1981), critiqued what Friedan saw as the extremist excesses of some feminists.

Title IX- A comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. No person in the United States shall, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. To end sexYoung women were not admitted into many colleges, athletic scholarships were rare, and math & science was a realm reserved for boys. Girls could become teachers or nurses but not doctors or principals. There was no such thing as sexual harassment because “boys will be boys” & after all if a student got pregnant, her formal education ended. Women were warned that physical activity was not only unfeminine, but a proof of lesbianism. While most famous for its requirement that schools provide girls with equal athletic opportunities, Title IX benefits both boys and girls and promotes gender equity in schools.

Our Rights Roses are red Violets are blue Your men love your rights, and we do too We go through so much pain You guys think it’s a game This system of law is purely a shame You men take our liberation movement as a joke Our rights are just as crucial All we ever wanted to do was vote Us women do not want to be treated as fools We actually want to attend school Two words to describe us are love and modesty But one word we wish everyone would live by is equality