Women Fight for Equality

1. Experiences in the workplace

-many women didn't have the same jobs or could get the same jobs that men had
-few women had jobs (only about one out of three women worked for wages)
-the women that did have jobs were paid very poorly
-women were rarely promoted to manager type jobs
-the publicly announces facts (the above) made women realize that they should have the same rights or opportunities as men

2. Experiences in social activism

-men lead most of the organization and women were given lesser roles
-when they would protest men would just "brush them aside"
-they had group discussions because they noticed this problem where they talked about their lives and realized that all their problems with discrimination and sexism weren't unique

3. "Consciousness raising"

-these group discussions allowed women to talk about their personal lives and the problems that they were having
-it made them realize that in all of the stories told they all had the same problems: discrimination and sexism

4. Feminism

-was the theory behind the women's movement
-literally it is the belief that women should have the same economic, politcal, and social equality with men
-this theory had great momentum in the mid-1800s and sprung up again in the 1960s because of the political activism

5. Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique

-The Feminine Mystique was spot on when talking about how women felt and it helped "to galvanize women" throughout America
-Betty Friedan helped to create the National Organization for Women (NOW) which pushed for things like child-care help and to get more rights for women, it made women push for rights during the 1960s

6. Civil Rights Act of 1964

-the act prohibited discrimination based on race, religion,gender and created EEOC
-however women saw that the EEOC wasn't forcing enough or pushing enough for women in the work place so it led to the creation of NOW

7. National Organization for Women (NOW)

-was made to pursue women's goals
-pushed for child-care facilities that would enable women to get a better education and work/get a job

8. Gloria Steinem and Ms. Magazine

-Gloria Steinem founded the National Women's Political Caucus, she pushed women to get in a political office
-the Ms. Magazine was partly made by Steinem and it it dealt with contemporary issues in a feminist perspective

9. Congress

-passed the Higher Education Act which banned any discrimination on any educational program or activity recieving financial assisstance
-this led to all male colleges opening to women
-and Congress expanded the powers of EEOC to give working parents a break on tax for child care services
-passed the Equal Right Amendment in 1972 which guaranteed that both men and women would recieve the same rights and protections under law

10. Supreme Court

-they ruled in Roe v. Wade that women have the right to have an abortion in the first three months of pregnancy

11. The Equal rights Amendment would have guaranteed equal rights under the law, regardless of gender. Who opposed this amendment? Why?

The Stop-ERA compaigners, Phyllis Schlafly, religious groups, political organizations, and anti-feminists (all conservatives) opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. They opposed this amendment because they thought that the amendment would lead to "a parade of horribles." They thought that women would be drafted into the army, navy, and etcetera, the end of laws protecting homemakers, the end of husband's responsibility to provide for the family, and same-sex marriages, which they were all against. They thought that if these things happened it would cripple or possibly badly damage America and the way of life. Women would have too many rights where they would be able to take over the things men are supposed to do and possibly exclude men from their lives where they wouldn't be able to have children and therefor stop America's population from growing and becoming powerful. As the platitude "the children are our future" implies, if there were not children then there'd be no one to lead America and make America more powerful.