1970s Women's Movement

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World War II had effects on everyone but it changed women’s lives radically, which lead into the second wave of feminism known as the women’s movement of the 1960s through the 1970s. The women’s movement is a varied social movement because it covers women’s family, sexuality, and especially their work (History.com). At the peak of this movement in the 1960s women sought to use law and legislation to overturn political and economical inequality. The women’s movement was influential in getting rid of the discrimination and harassment issues that women faced on the job. With the role of women changing in the 1960’s, more women were entering the workforce and with that increasing the frustration of women regarding gender inequality in salary,…show more content…
“Writing about gender roles of the 1950s, Betty Freidan once defined the ’suburban housewife’ as ’the dream image of the young American woman.’ Just as prescriptive literature of the 19th century geared to middling classes emphasized women’s ’true’ place in society as mother and wife, the 1950s saw an ideal perpetuated in books, magazines, movies, television, songs, and ads the depicted the white middle-class woman fulfilled only by happy marriage,” (historymatters.gmu.edu). Some examples of this bombardment was hit television shows Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, which gave false advertisement of the typical family in the sixties and also the popular song You Don’t Own Me by Lesley Gore. “Most young women, at least in the middle class, expected to have access to the same careers and to receive the same compensation as men. It was no longer surprising to see women leaders in formerly ‘men’s’ fields like television production (Oprah Winfrey), diplomacy (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), or the Supreme Court (Justices Sandra Day O’Conor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Even conservative Republicans recruited female candidates and urged them to be as aggressive on the stump as men,” (Isserman and Kazin…show more content…
“Initially, women energized by Friedan’s book joined with government leaders and union representatives who had been lobbying the federal government for equal pay and for protection against employment discrimination.” They had established that polite requests were not working and they would need their own group, basically an equal to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People but for women. In June of 1966 the NOW was born, (History.com). In 1966, Betty Friedan wrote the NOW statement, “We, men and women who hereby constitute ourselves as the National Organization for Women, believe that the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of world-wide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders. The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men…” (NOW.org). Since 1966, NOW has been working to make sure that the partnership with men and women is
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