Unit 7: Social Movements of the 1960s

The Women's Movement

Media Covering Anti-war Protest

The women's movement in the 1960s was started by three groups of women and an accident. The first was a group of professional women who were appointed to a Commission on the Status of Women by President Kennedy in 1961. Most were not feminists until they began to investigate the situation for women in the United States. They found that women in the U. S. were not equal with men, and the situation of some women was shocking. So they recommended that Commissions be established in all 50 states, and the number of women working on Commissions soon grew to over 1000.

The second group were mostly white housewives and mothers who read Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963. The book changed the way large numbers of women—between 10000 and 20000—thought about themselves and other women.

The third group were young activists in the civil rights and anti-war movements. They believed the male leaders of these movements were discriminating against women in the movement. They became known as the "women's liberation" group, or "women's lib", used radical tactics and received a great deal of bad publicity. This group found strong support among large numbers of young activists from other organizations.

The accident was a word in the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. The law made discrimination in employment based on race or sex illegal, adding women to those groups not to be discriminated against.

Mrs. Rosa Parks

From these three groups and the almost accidental word, began the women's movement. There was, of course, a long history of women working for equal rights before this, just as there had been a long history of Afro-American effort for equal rights. In 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed by the first two groups. Many radical, active feminists joined as the movement grew stronger. Many of the radicals were young women, both black and white, who had worked in the civil rights movement and were critical of the leadership for discriminating against women. Women were strong leaders and organizers, they said, but the men only allowed them to cook and do secretarial work.

The changes women worked for included changes in economic practices, such as not only asking equal pay for equal work, but also equal opportunity for jobs in fields such as science and technology, management and politics. Women also wanted changes in social practices and attitudes which would acknowledge that women were not inferior to men in intelligence or ability.

To educate the public and gain support for their objectives, women used many of the same tactics used by the civil rights and anti-war movements and added some of their own tactics. The newspapers and TV made the women in the movement seem to be men-hating women who did not want to be feminine. Women worked hard in the 1970s to change this image.

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