I can't, but this is how it was, HERE, in the grand ole usa, just a short time ago!
recent feminism/suffrage history
recent feminism/suffrage history
57. Shaping a New America
Rat
Rat, an underground radical feminist newspaper. This cover from a 1970 issue.
"Say it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud." -soul singer James Brown
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." women's rights leader Gloria Steinem
"We have a power that comes from the justice of our cause." -farm workers leader Cesar Chavez
"If they close up all the gay joints in this area, there is going to be all out war." -gay rioter at Stonewall
"The miracle today is communication. So let's use it." -John Lennon, 1969
John Lennon
John Lennon's peaceful lyrics typified the feelings of a generation. "Imagine no possessions / I wonder if you can / No need for greed or hunger / A brotherhood of man / Imagine all the people / Sharing all the world..." -from "Imagine"
As awareness was being raised across America about civil rights for African Americans, it was only natural that other groups who felt marginalized by the American mainstream to make demands of their own. Not since the drive for suffrage had a drive for women's rights met with much success. A new feminist movement emerged in the 1960s pressing for modern reforms.
With few exceptions, women were excluded from the highest paying jobs, earning only a fraction of the wages of their male counterparts. The 1950s cult of the housewife discouraged women from holding full-time jobs and from seeking higher degrees. The call for legality and availability of birth control options like the pill galvanized many of feminists. Eventually, the right to obtain a safe, legal abortion became a new milestone. These demands and others led to the proposal of an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which would forever ban sex discrimination in the nation's laws and practices.
...Shaping a New America [ushistory.org]
Modern Feminism [ushistory.org]
57a. Modern Feminism
"The Donna Reed Show"
Before the 1960s, traditional American society encouraged young women to find happiness and fulfillment through marriage and homemaking. Television shows like "The Donna Reed Show" presented an image of domestic bliss in a pleasant suburban setting.
"Motherhood is bliss." "Your first priority is to care for your husband and children." "Homemaking can be exciting and fulfilling."
Throughout the 1950s, educated middle-class women heard advice like this from the time they were born until they reached adulthood. The new suburban lifestyle prompted many women to leave college early and pursue the "cult of the housewife." Magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping and television shows such as "Father Knows Best" and "The Donna Reed Show" reinforced this idyllic image.
But not every woman wanted to wear pearls and bring her husband his pipe and slippers when he came home from work. Some women wanted careers of their own.
In 1963, Betty Friedan published a book called The Feminine Mystique that identified "the problem that has no name." Amid all the demands to prepare breakfast, to drive their children to activities, and to entertain guests, Friedan had the courage to ask: "Is this all there is?" "Is this really all a woman is capable of doing?" In short, the problem was that many women did not like the traditional role society prescribed for them.
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer burst onto the feminist scene in 1970 with her book The Female Eunuch. In it, Greer urged women to break down the societal barriers of the era. Her 1999 book, The Whole Woman, continued with this theme, telling women that it was "time to get angry again."
Friedan's book struck a nerve. Within three years of the publication of her book, a new feminist movement was born, the likes of which had been absent since the suffrage movement. In 1966, Friedan, and others formed an activist group called the National Organization for Women. NOW was dedicated to the "full participation of women in mainstream American society."
They demanded equal pay for equal work and pressured the government to support and enforce legislation that prohibited gender discrimination. When Congress debated that landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in employment on account of race, conservative Congressmen added gender to the bill, thinking that the inclusion of women would kill the act. When this strategy backfired and the measure was signed into law, groups such as NOW became dedicated to its enforcement.
Like the antiwar and civil rights movements, feminism developed a radical faction by the end of the decade. Women held "consciousness raising" sessions where groups of females shared experiences that often led to their feelings of enduring a common plight.
In 1968, radical women demonstrated outside the Miss America Pageant outside Atlantic City by crowning a live sheep. "Freedom trash cans" were built where women could throw all symbols of female oppression including false eyelashes, hair curlers, bras, girdles, and high-heeled shoes. The media labeled them bra burners, although no bras were actually burned.
The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan's 1963 work The Feminine Mystique noted that society placed women almost exclusively in the role of the homemaker and then challenged women with the question "Is this all there is?" The book proved to be a catalyst for a women's rights movement and by 1966, Friedan had established the National Organization for Women.
The word "sexism" entered the American vocabulary, as women became categorized as a target group for discrimination. Single and married women adopted the title Ms. as an alternative to Miss or Mrs. to avoid changing their identities based upon their relationships with men. In 1972, Gloria Steinem founded a feminist magazine of that name.
Authors such as the feminist Germaine Greer impelled many women to confront social, political, and economic barriers. In 1960, women comprised less than 40 percent of the nation's undergraduate classes, and far fewer women were candidates for advanced degrees. Despite voting for four decades, there were only 19 women serving in the Congress in 1961. For every dollar that was earned by an American male, each working American female earned 59¢. By raising a collective consciousness, changes began to occur. By 1980, women constituted a majority of American undergraduates.
As more and more women chose careers over housework, marriages were delayed to a later age and the birthrate plummeted. Economic independence led many dissatisfied women to dissolve unhappy marriages, leading to a skyrocketing divorce rate.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, invoking the memory of her mother, evokes the mood of the women's rights movement: "I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve, and daughters are cherished as much as sons."
57b. The Fight for Reproductive Rights
Birth control pills
Introduced in 1960, birth control pills gave women the opportunity to choose to deter pregnancy.
The consequences of sexual relations between women and men simply were not fair.
An old double standard dictated that men were rewarded for sexual prowess and women suffered a damaged reputation. Males were encouraged to "sow a few wild oats" while women were told "good girls don't."
Most of all, if a relationship resulted in pregnancy, it was the woman who was left with the responsibility. For decades, pioneers like Margaret Sanger fought for contraceptives that women would control. With the introduction of the birth control pill to the market in 1960, women could for the first time deter pregnancy by their own choice.
The fight for reproductive freedoms was intense. Organized religions such as the Roman Catholic Church stood firm on their principles that artificial contraceptives were sinful. Many states in the early 1960s prohibited the sale of contraceptives even to married couples.
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was a pioneer in the struggle for a woman's right to birth control in an era when it was illegal to discuss the topic. She was arrested or charged with lawlessness many times for both her publications and her New York City clinics.
In a landmark decision, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled such laws were unconstitutional. Setting a precedent, the Court determined that a fundamental right to privacy exists between the lines of the Constitution. Laws prohibiting contraceptive choice violated this sacred right. The ban of prohibitive laws was extended to unmarried couples in Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972). A federal judge imparted the right to purchase contraceptives to unmarried minors in 1974.
The pill made it finally possible for American women to separate sexuality and childbearing. Masters and Johnson, a pioneering research team in the field of human sexuality, challenged entrenched beliefs that women did not enjoy sex and were merely passive partners.
Reports of premarital sex increased dramatically as the "sexual revolution" spread across America. Young couples began cohabiting living together before marriage in greater and greater numbers. Critics denounced the tremendous change in lifestyle.
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
With the advent of the "sexual revolution" during the late 60s and early 70s, American culture began to create new boundaries of what was and was not acceptable. In 1969, Midnight Cowboy became the first X-rated film to win Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Director and Picture.
But those in favor of this new trend maintained that young people were simply more open and honest about activities that had traditionally transpired behind closed doors and shielded from public scrutiny. As attitudes toward sexuality relaxed, the entertainment industry rode the wave. Courts were more permissive with pornographic materials and the movies and television pressed new boundaries with controversially suggestive content. "R-rated" and even "X-rated" films became commonplace.
Inevitably the reproductive struggle took aim at laws that restricted abortion. Throughout the 1960s, there was no national standard on abortion regulations, and many states had outlawed the practice. Feminist groups claimed that illegality led many women to seek black market abortions by unlicensed physicians or to brutally perform the procedure on themselves.
In 1973, the Supreme Court heard the case of the anonymous Jane Roe, an unmarried Texas mother who claimed the state violated her constitutional rights by banning the practice. By a 7-2 vote, the Court agreed. Since Roe v. Wade, the battle lines have been drawn between pro-choice supporters of abortion rights and pro-life opponents who seek to chisel away at the Roe decision.
The Fight for Reproductive Rights [ushistory.org]
Birth control and the black community in the 1960s: genocide or power politics?
by Simone M. Caron
Birth control in the 1960s became a hotly debated focal point in the public discourse on sexuality. Although much of the dialogue centered around Catholic opposition to so-called state sponsored immorality, a new dimension to the controversy emerged when some black spokespersons accused birth control advocates of promoting nothing less than "black genocide." Government funding of contraception by the mid 1960s brought the debate to a new height. A strange alliance developed between Black Power advocates and cultural conservatives represented by the Roman Catholic Church. Simultaneously, a rift occurred between male genocide theorists and black women and their supporters. The case of Pittsburgh mirrors these national developments. Two black men in Pittsburgh, Dr. Charles Greenlee, a national spokesman for the genocide theory, and William "Bouie" Haden, a militant leader of the United Movement for Progress, allied with Fr. Charles Owen Rice, a white Catholic priest at Holy Rosemary parish, to lead an anti-birth control campaign between 1966 and 1969. Their combined efforts led Pittsburgh to reject federal funds for birth control clinics, making it the only major city to turn down such resources for this purpose. The ensuing battle revealed a significant polarization between Black Power males interested in political power and black women concerned with the welfare of themselves and their children. The organized protest of black women overpowered genocide theorists and forced the city to reverse its position and accept federal funds for clinics in depressed neighborhoods. While suspicion among black power males of white atte...
