Background Many influences contributed to the rise of NOW. Such influences included the
President's Commission on the Status of Women,
Betty Friedan's 1963 book
The Feminine Mystique, and the passage and lack of enforcement of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting
sexual discrimination). The President's Commission on the Status of Women was established in 1961 by
John F. Kennedy, in hopes of providing a solution to female discrimination in education, work force, and Social Security. Kennedy appointed
Eleanor Roosevelt as the head of the organization. The goal was to reconcile those wanting to advance women's rights in the workforce (such as advocates of the
Equal Rights Amendment) and those advocating women's domestic role needing to be preserved (such as organized labor groups). The commission was a way to settle the tension between opposing sides. Betty Friedan wrote
The Feminine Mystique in response to her own experiences; the book's purpose was to fuel movement to a women's role outside of domestic environment. Acknowledging some satisfaction from raising children, cooking, and rearranging house decor was not enough to suffice the deeper desire for women to achieve an education. The book is widely credited with sparking the beginning of
second-wave feminism in the United States. It was published on February 19, 1963, by
W. W. Norton. In an interview, Friedan specifically notes, Both conferences were held in Washington, D.C. They thus gathered in Betty Friedan's hotel room to form a new organization. Women's rights advocates saw that these legal changes were not being enforced and worried that without a feminist pressure group, a type of "
NAACP for women", women would not be able to combat discrimination. NOW was created to mobilize women, give women's rights advocates the power to put pressure on employers and the government, and to promote full equality of the sexes. It hoped to increase the number of women attending colleges and graduate schools, employed in professional jobs instead of domestic or secretarial work, and appointed to federal offices. NOW's Statement of Purpose, which was adopted at its organizing conference in Washington, D.C., on October 29, 1966, declares among other things that "the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings." NOW was also one of the first women's organizations to include the concerns of black women in their efforts. Also in 1966,
Marguerite Rawalt became a member of NOW, and acted as their first legal counsel. NOW's first Legal Committee consisted of
Catherine East,
Mary Eastwood,
Phineas Indritz, and Caruthers Berger; it was the first to sue on behalf of airline flight attendants claiming sex discrimination. In 1968 NOW issued a Bill of Rights, which they had adopted at their 1967 national conference, advocating the passage of the
Equal Rights Amendment, enforcement of the prohibitions against sex discrimination in employment under
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
maternity leave rights in employment and in Social Security benefits, tax deduction for home and child care expenses for working parents, child day care centers, equal and non-
gender-segregated education, equal job training opportunities and allowances for women in poverty, and the right of women to control their reproductive lives. The NOW bill of rights was included in the 1970 anthology ''
Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement'', edited by
Robin Morgan.
Lesbian rights In 1969,
Ivy Bottini, who was openly lesbian, designed the logo for NOW, which is still in use today. The first time lesbian concerns were introduced into NOW also occurred in 1969, when Bottini, who was then president of the New York chapter of NOW, held a public forum titled "Is Lesbianism a Feminist Issue?". However, NOW president
Betty Friedan was against lesbian participation in the movement. In 1969, she referred to growing lesbian visibility as a "lavender menace" and fired openly lesbian newsletter editor
Rita Mae Brown, and in 1970 she engineered the expulsion of lesbians, including Bottini, from NOW's New York chapter. In reaction, at the 1970 Congress to Unite Women, on the first evening when all four hundred feminists were assembled in the auditorium, twenty women wearing T-shirts that read "Lavender Menace" came to the front of the room and faced the audience. One of the women then read their group's paper "
The Woman-Identified Woman", which was the first major lesbian feminist statement. The group, who later named themselves "
Radicalesbians", were among the first to challenge the heterosexism of heterosexual feminists and to describe lesbian experience in positive terms. In 1971, NOW passed a resolution declaring "that a woman's right to her own person includes the right to define and express her own sexuality and to choose her own lifestyle", as well as a conference resolution stating that forcing lesbian mothers to stay in marriages or to live a secret existence in an effort to keep their children was unjust. That year, NOW also committed to offering legal and moral support in a test case involving child custody rights of lesbian mothers.
Activism Anti-discrimination NOW also helped women get equal access to public places. For example, the
Oak Room held men-only lunches on weekdays until 1969, when Friedan and other members of NOW staged a protest. As well, women were not allowed in
McSorley's Old Ale House's until August 10, 1970, after NOW attorneys
Faith Seidenberg and
Karen DeCrow filed a discrimination case against the bar in District Court and won. The two entered McSorley's in 1969 and were refused service, which was the basis for their lawsuit for discrimination. The case decision made the front page of
The New York Times on June 26, 1970. The suit, ''Seidenberg v. McSorleys' Old Ale House'' (1970, United States District Court, S. D. New York), established that, as a public place, the bar could not violate the
Equal Protection Clause of the
United States Constitution. The bar was then forced to admit women, but it did so "kicking and screaming". With the ruling allowing women to be served, the bathroom became unisex, and it took 16 years for the ladies room to be installed.
Carole De Saram, who joined NOW in 1970 and was later president of the New York chapter, led a demonstration in 1972 to protest discriminatory banking policies. She encouraged women to withdraw savings from a Citibank branch in protest of their practices, causing a branch to close. NOW led numerous similar protests, and in 1974, their actions led directly to the passage of the
Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Advocacy of the
Equal Rights Amendment was also an important issue to NOW. The amendment had three primary objectives, which were:Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.Efforts were proven successful when Congress passed the amendment in 1972. However, simply passing the amendment in the two houses of Congress did not mean the work was finished. NOW had to direct the efforts of getting the amendment ratified in at least three-fourths of the states (38 out of the 50 states). In response to opposing states denying the ratification of the amendment, NOW encouraged members to participate in marches and economic boycotts. "Dozens of organizations supported the ERA and the boycott, including the
League of Women Voters, the
YWCA of the U.S., the
Unitarian Universalist Association, the
United Auto Workers (UAW), the
National Education Association (NEA), and the
Democratic National Committee (DNC)." Even though the efforts did not prove to be enough to have the amendment ratified, the organization remains active in lobbying legislatures and media outlets on feminist issues.
Abortion Abortion being an individual woman's choice has come into the forefront since the Supreme Court case of
Roe v. Wade in 1973. The decision of the court was that it ultimately was the woman's choice in reproduction. However, according to the National Organization for Women, decisions following the 1973 landmark case had substantially limited this right, which culminated in their response to encourage the
Freedom of Choice Act. The controversy over the landmark case ruling was initiated in the two cases,
Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and
Gonzales v. Carhart. These two cases consequently banned abortion methods after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and
Gonzales v. Carhart both dealt with the question of whether the 2003
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was unconstitutional for violating the
Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment expressed in the
Roe v. Wade case. This act ultimately meant that the concept of partial-birth abortion as defined in the Act as any abortion in which the death of the fetus occurs when "the entire fetal head [...] or [...] any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother" is banned. The Supreme Court ultimately decided 5–4 that it was not unconstitutional and did not hinder a woman's right to an abortion. National Organization for Women claimed it was a disregard to a basic principle stemming from
Roe v. Wade, which was to only have legislative restriction on abortion be justified with the intention of protecting women's health. Hence, the support for the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which primary purpose was to safeguard a woman's access to abortions even if the
Roe v. Wade ruling is further disregarded. As of 2013, there are seven states that have made the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) state law. FOCA will consequently supersede any other law prohibiting abortion in those seven states. They are: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, Wisconsin, Maine, and Washington. In addition, Maryland, Nevada, and Washington were the only three states to adhere via ballot initiative.
Women's Strike for Equality On August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment which granted women the right to vote, NOW officially sponsored the Women's Strike for Equality, a nationwide demonstration for women's rights. Approximately 10,000 women took to the streets of New York City's
Fifth Avenue for the strike and about 50,000 participants, mostly women, in total all throughout the country. The organizers of the strike approved three main goals:
free abortion care, 24/7
childcare centers, and
equal opportunity in jobs and education. and no
forced sterilization. Public reaction and media coverage were mixed. Many spectators called the demonstrators anti-feminine, "ridiculous exhibitionists," "a band of wild lesbians", or
Communists, but the event was generally uninterrupted. ==Core issues==