Second-Wave Feminism

Feminists sought equal treatment in employment and pay, an end to sex discrimination in law, access to contraception and abortion, child care, equality in marriage, and the Equal Rights Amendment, which declared that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged … on account of sex.”

Some women worked through institutions: President Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, documented discrimination in a 1963 report. Friedan’s best-selling The Feminine Mystique named “the problem that has no name” — the dissatisfaction of many middle-class housewives. In 1966 Friedan, Pauli Murray, and Aileen Hernandez founded NOW, whose first campaign pressed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination and ended sex-segregated help-wanted ads. Consciousness-raising groups declared that “the personal is political.” Mostly African American welfare mothers organized the National Welfare Rights Organization in 1966. NOW’s Women’s Strike for Equality marked the fiftieth anniversary of woman suffrage in 1970.

Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP ERA campaign, backed by evangelical Christians and other religious conservatives, celebrated the role of homemaker and turned the tide against the amendment by 1977. The movement also divided internally as women of color challenged white feminists’ racism and lesbians sought a larger role; Friedan herself was criticized for calling lesbians in the movement a “lavender menace.”

Feminists won enforcement of anti-discrimination law in employment, changes in divorce law, and, in Roe v. Wade (1973), a constitutional right to abortion. The ERA passed Congress in 1972 and was quickly ratified by thirty states.

The ERA stalled three states short of ratification and expired in 1982. Abortion became one of the most divisive issues in American politics, and in 2022 the Supreme Court overruled Roe.