Chapter 31 Section 2 Study Guide

How did each of the following helped create or advance the women's rights movement?

1. Experiences in the Workplace: only one out of three women worked for wages in the 1950s, but by the 1960s the number had increased by 40%. At the time, though , there were "women's jobs" and "men's jobs'; women were generally nurses, social work, teaching, retail sales, etc. This was mostly ignored until President Kennedy's Presidential Commission on the Status of Women showed that women working the same jobs earned far less and were rarely appointed to management positions. This made many women realize how unequal they really were in society.

2. Experiences in Social Activism: Women who were involved in Civil Rights era activism realized there, that women were treated unfairly even by groups that were meant to equalize people. In organizations such as the SNCC, men did most of the major work and planning while women were assigned lesser roles and were ignored by men when they protested this. This inspired many women to organize groups to talk about problems women faced in society...

3. "Consciousness Raising": ...in these groups, women shared their experiences with each other and were able to discover that they were not the only ones feeling unequal, and were shown that there was a frequent pattern of sexism in all of their lives.

4. Feminism: The belief that women should have economic, political and social equality to men, gained popularity in the mid-1800s and ended up with women winning the vote in 1919. After women won the vote, feminism declined, but was reawakened in the 1960 because of the political activism of the time. Inspired women to fight for their rights.

5. Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: A best seller in the 1960s, The Feminine Mystique expressed the feelings of many women at the time who weren't content with their roles in society and made many women more inspired to be active about it; by the end of the 1960s many women were working together to change things.

6. Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination based on gender, race, religion, or national origin. It also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which handled discrimination claims.

7. National Organization for Women (NOW): Many women felt that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the EEOC didn't adequately handle women's problems, and so NOW was established by activist Gloria Steinem and 28 other women. it pushed for the creation of childcare programs that would allow mothers to pursue educations and jobs, pressured the EEOC to pursue cases of gender discrimination in employment more vigorously, which prompted the EEOC to make it illegal for jobs to be sex segregated.

8. Gloria Steinem and Ms. Magazine: Steinem helped to found the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971, a group that encouraged women to seek political office. She also founded Ms. Magazine, a magazine that looked at contemporary issues from a feminist perspective.

9. Congress: Congress passed a ban on gender discrimination in "any education program or activity receiving federal finance" in 1972, as a part of the Higher Education Act. It also expanded the powers of the EEOC and gave working parents tax break for child care expenses.

10. Supreme Court: In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe. v. Wade that a woman had the right to an abortion in her first trimester. Many thought that this decision would cool the public debate on the topic, but it is still a controversial topic.