After the Vote was Won
After the vote was finally won
in 1920, the organized Women's Rights Movement continued
on in several directions. While the majority of women
who had marched, petitioned and lobbied for woman suffrage
looked no further, a minority - like Alice Paul - understood
that the quest for women's rights would be an ongoing
struggle that was only advanced, not satisfied, by the
vote.
In 1919, as the suffrage victory
drew near, the National American Woman Suffrage Association
reconfigured itself into the League of Women Voters to
ensure that women would take their hard-won vote seriously
and use it wisely.
In 1920, the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor
was established to gather information about the situation
of women at work, and to advocate for changes it found
were needed. Many suffragists became actively involved
with lobbying for legislation to protect women workers
from abuse and unsafe conditions.
In 1923, Alice Paul, the leader
of the National Woman's Party, took the next obvious step.
She drafted an Equal Rights Amendment for the United States
Constitution. Such a federal law, it was argued, would
ensure that "Men and women have equal rights throughout
the United States." A constitutional amendment would
apply uniformly, regardless of where a person lived.
The second wing of the post-suffrage
movement was one that had not been explicitly anticipated
in the Seneca Falls "Declaration of Sentiments."
It was the birth control movement, initiated by a public
health nurse, Margaret Sanger, just as the suffrage drive
was nearing its victory. The idea of woman's right to
control her own body, and especially to control her own
reproduction and sexuality, added a visionary new dimension
to the ideas of women's emancipation. This movement not
only endorsed educating women about existing birth control
methods. It also spread the conviction that meaningful
freedom for modern women meant they must be able to decide
for themselves whether they would become mothers, and
when. For decades, Margaret Sanger and her supporters
faced down at every turn the zealously enforced laws denying
women this right. In 1936, a Supreme Court decision declassified
birth control information as obscene. Still, it was not
until 1965 that married couples in all states could obtain
contraceptives legally.
The Second Wave
So it's clear that, contrary to
common misconception, the Women's Rights Movement did
not begin in the 1960s. What occurred in the 1960s was
actually a second wave of activism that washed into the
public consciousness, fueled by several seemingly independent
events of that turbulent decade. Each of these events
brought a different segment of the population into the
movement.
First: Esther Peterson was the
director of the Women's Bureau of the Dept. of Labor in
1961. She considered it to be the government's responsibility
to take an active role in addressing discrimination against
women. With her encouragement, President Kennedy convened
a Commission on the Status of Women, naming Eleanor Roosevelt
as its chair. The report issued by that commission in
1963 documented discrimination against women in virtually
every area of American life. State and local governments
quickly followed suit and established their own commissions
for women, to research conditions and recommend changes
that could be initiated.
Then: In 1963, Betty Friedan
published a landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. The
Feminine Mystique evolved out of a survey she had conducted
for her 20-year college reunion. In it she documented
the emotional and intellectual oppression that middle-class
educated women were experiencing because of limited life
options. The book became an immediate bestseller, and
inspired thousands of women to look for fulfillment beyond
the role of homemaker.
Next: Title VII of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act was passed, prohibiting employment discrimination
on the basis of sex as well as race, religion, and national
origin. The category "sex" was included as a
last-ditch effort to kill the bill. But it passed, nevertheless.
With its passage, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
was established to investigate discrimination complaints.
Within the commission's first five years, it received
50,000 sex discrimination complaints. But it was quickly
obvious that the commission was not very interested in
pursuing these complaints. Betty Friedan, the chairs of
the various state Commissions on the Status of Women,
and other feminists agreed to form a civil rights organization
for women similar to the NAACP. In 1966, the National
Organization for Women was organized, soon to be followed
by an array of other mass-membership organizations addressing
the needs of specific groups of women, including Blacks,
Latinas, Asians-Americans, lesbians, welfare recipients,
business owners, aspiring politicians, and tradeswomen
and professional women of every sort.
During this same time, thousands
of young women on college campuses were playing active
roles within the anti-war and civil rights movement. At
least, that was their intention. Many were finding their
efforts blocked by men who felt leadership of these movements
was their own province, and that women's roles should
be limited to fixing food and running mimeograph machines.
It wasn't long before these young women began forming
their own "women's liberation" organizations
to address their role and status within these progressive
movements and within society at large.
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