Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Development & Impact of Feminism during 1960s + 70s - Coggle Diagram
Development & Impact of Feminism during 1960s + 70s
Equal Pay
1963-1974
More women entered the workforce during the Second World War, often in war production industries like munitions and aircraft factories.
The number of working women also decreased as traditional expectations of women's role as housewives and mothers re-emerged.
In 1963, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law.
He had to overcome opposition from big business and the US Chamber of Commerce, who argued that it would massively increase the overheads of businesses.
In 1974, women earned only 60 cents on average for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.
It took a number of lawsuits to make more progress, but although the pay gap has narrowed since the 1960s, by 2013 women still, on average, earned only 78 cents on the dollar.
The National Organization for Women
1966-70s
Known as NOW for short, this was set up in 1966.
It aimed to achieve equal rights for women and girls through grassroots activism.
NOW held its first national conference in Washington DC in October 1966.
1960s-70s
○ NOW became widely-known by the end of the 1960s.
○ It had published its own Bill of Rights, which equal opportunities in education and employment, better maternity leave conditions and an end to sexual discrimination.
○ Under the presidency of Betty Friedan, author of the influential but controversial book The Feminine Mystique, NOW lobbied Congress and the Senate on various women's rights issues.
○ By the early 1970s the group had 40,000 members.
○ One of NOW's major political goals was the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution which proposed banning discrimination based on sex.
○ The Amendment was passed by the Senate but several individual states refused to ratify it.
○ This was partly down to determined anti-feminist campaigning by figures like Phyllis Schafly, as well as anti-abortion campaigners.
Some of its main campaign issues were set out, including:
○ the low employment status of most women, especially black women who often worked in very low-paid jobs in the service industry
○ the gender pay gap
○ the low proportion of women entering higher education
○ the very low percentage of women in the high-status professional jobs like judges, lawyers and doctors
○ the prevalence of sexual discrimination
○ the continued expectation that women should carry on the vast majority of housework and childcare
Roe vs Wade
1960s-70s
This was a landmark decision in 1973 that legalised abortion in the USA.
Before the case, individual states had their own laws on access to abortion.
Many outlawed it unless the mother's life was in danger, which contributed to a high number of illegal abortions which often damaged women's health or even killed them due to the unsanitary conditions in which the abortions were carried out.
As women's rights became more openly discussed in the 1960s and early 70s, public support for legalised abortion grew and many states chose to relax their rules.
Some states' abortion laws were also highly ambiguous, making doctors reluctant to carry out abortions for fear of inadvertently breaking the law.
Texas abortion law stated it was illegal unless the mother's life was in danger.
The case ended up before the Supreme Court, which ruled that the laws of Texas (and the similar laws of certain other states) were unconstitutional and that women's fundamental right to choose should be protected in law.
However, abortions only became legal if they were carried out during the first trimester.