Women’s Liberation Movement

What were they fighting for? Women wanted equal rights to men legally, socially, and economically. Though women were allowed to work, they were getting paid meager amounts compared to men and were restricted in their available career paths. Prior to the 1960s, young single women were expected to get married, have children, and take care of their families.

The movement focused on changing the idea that women could only be mothers – women could and should be anything they wanted to be, just like men had the right to. The civil rights movement coincided with the women’s movement. African – American women were an especially ignored faction of society.

Timeline

1960: The Food and Drug Administration approves birth control pills. 1963: Betty Friedan releases The Feminine Mystique laying the ground work for the feminist movement, the same year as the March to Washington.

Betty Friedan Author of The Feminine Mystique and co – founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) She was a staunch supporter of abortion laws and a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution After her death, many sources claimed she was infamously abrasive in her popular obituary in the NY Times

The Feminine Mystique Excerpt from the text on “The Problem That Has No Name”: "The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning [that is, a longing] that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries … she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — 'Is this all?’’

Gloria Steinem One of the most famous second - wave feminists of her time, credited for gaining awareness of the rights issue Journalist and activist for The New York magazine in the 1960s Fought for Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution alongside Friedan as well as avidly supporting same – sex marriage

Quotes by Steinem “I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.” “No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.” “We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

1966: Twenty – eight women found the National Organization for Women, including author Betty Friedan.

1968: First public speak-out against abortion laws are held in New York. The same year women protest the Miss America Beauty Pageant in Atlantic City. 1969: Redstockings, a radial feminist group, is organized.

1970: President Richard Nixon vetoes the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have established federally funded childcare centers. 1973: The Supreme Court strikes down many state abortion laws in the case Roe v. Wade.

Now?

Think… Can men be feminists also or is the movement limited to women only? Does the term “feminist” still apply today? In some ways, the women’s liberation movement has not ended. Why can this be considered so?

“The Women’s Liberation Movement and Public Schools” (Discover Magazine online) http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/04/07/the-womens-liberation-movement-and-public-schools/