Social change 1950-2000 - EduqasWomen's rights groups and the expanding roles of women

In the 1950s, more women began to challenge their roles as mainly housewives and mothers. Many wanted to begin their own professional careers, in jobs that were more traditionally male occupations.

Education

As a result of changes in education, such as more women being accepted into universities, women were staying in school until they were older and were therefore able to obtain more qualifications. By 1960, around 1.3 million women were in university.

New technology

Changes in technolgy allowed had an effect on women's lives. Labour-saving devices saved time and effort. Items such as refrigerators and washing machines were now much more affordable, due to the high demand caused by increased consumerism.

The contraceptive pill

The contraceptive pill became available from 1960. It meant that women could now have more control over when or if they had children. However, the pill only became available to women across America after the 1972 Eisenstadt v Baird ruling by the Supreme Court.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the 1963 Equal Pay Act

Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of President Franklin D Roosevelt, had campaigned for women’s rights for years. She was initially against John F Kennedy becoming president. However, she later endorsed him and campaigned for him to get elected in 1961, in return for him setting up the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. The aim of the commission was to investigate the position of women in America in 1961. Eleanor Roosevelt was put in charge of the commission, although she died before the final report was released.

The commission’s report showed that women were mostly in poorly paid jobs, earning less than 60 per cent of what men were paid. It also showed that 93 per cent of doctors, 95 per cent of business managers and 96 per cent of lawyers were men. This led to President Kennedy passing the Equal Pay Act in 1963, to end discrimination in pay. This was an important step forward in women’s rights in America. This then led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal for any form of discrimination to take place in any workplace.

Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan was a journalist who did research into how women felt about their lives in the early 1960s. She published her findings in a book called The Feminine Mystique (1963), which quickly became a best-seller. It was a very controversial book as it challenged the idea that women’s home lives made them happy. It also showed the frustrations that many educated women felt about being trapped at home in what Friedan called ‘comfortable prisons’.

Friedan argued that women should have equal rights to men. However, she was disappointed by the limited changes that resulted from the 1963 Equal Pay Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as she believed they would not end discrimination.

National Organization for Women (NOW)

The civil rights movement and free speech activists at universities convinced some women that they needed to do more to achieve equality with men. Feminists including Betty Friedan set up the National Organization for Women (NOW) in June 1966. They wanted the government to do more to enforce laws to end discrimination against women and help to provide them with better career opportunities. To achieve this, they went on marches, organised strikes and petitions, fought legal cases against discrimination, and worked to persuade politicians to get their ideas turned into laws.

By the early of the 1970s NOW had:

• around 40,000 members
• managed to get $30 million in backpay for women who had not been paid properly between 1966 and 1970
• organised demonstrations and strikes in support of women’s rights across the USA

NOW wanted an amendment to be added to the Constitution to guarantee equal rights for women. These rights included:

• laws to guarantee maternity leave from work when women had children
• laws to ensure women had access to contraception and abortion
• laws to provide equal access to education and employment opportunities

Not all women agreed with NOW's actions. Some thought NOW was too extreme, while others thought that NOW wasn’t addressing the issues facing poorer and black American women, as it was mainly white middle-class women who created NOW. There were also some feminists who thought that the actions of NOW had not gone far enough.

Women’s liberation movement

The more extreme feminists, who thought that NOW had not gone far enough in its demands, were referred to as the women’s liberation movement. They wanted to more openly challenge discrimination. Many of them did not want anything to do with men and challenged male dominance of business and the media. They rejected makeup and bras as they saw them as things that had been invented by men to control women. They also tried to highlight businesses they thought were sexist by organising sit-ins or deliberately breaking sexist rules.

One of the most notorious protests by the women’s liberation movement was at the Miss America beauty pageant in 1968. Protesters gave out leaflets and shouted feminist slogans outside where the competition was taking place, arguing that it was degrading for women. They also drew media attention by throwing away their bras and makeup, and symbolically crowning a sheep as Miss America.

While protests like this drew a lot of attention to the movement, they also made the movement seem too extreme to some people. More moderate feminists thought it distracted the media and politicians from legal attempts to improve rights for women.