The World Split Open (3 page)

President Johnson extends affirmative action to women.

The Conference for a New Politics ridicules young feminists' demands.

The Chicago Women's Liberation Group begins meeting.

New York Radical Women also forms.

Barbara Avedon and other women organize Another Mother for Peace with the slogan, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.”

NOW adopts a Bill of Rights for Women.

Women on welfare begin to organize. In California Alicia Escalante starts the East Los Angeles Welfare Rights Organization and later founds the Chicano National Welfare Fights Organization. Black activist welfare recipients such as Johnnie Tillmom, Etta Horn, and Beulah Sanders join forces in the National Welfare Rights Organization to educate women about applying for benefits and lobbying for respect within the system as well as for job-training and day care programs. By 1969 there are 22,000 members, but the NWRO lacks funds to continue beyond 1975.

1968  January 15. New York feminists bring a dummy of “Traditional Womanhood” to the all-women's Jeanette Rankin Brigade demonstration against the war in Vietnam in Washington, D.C., and state their intention to bury her. For the first time, feminists use the slogan “Sisterhood is Powerful.”

In Chicago, over two hundred women from thirty-seven states and Canada meet for the First National Women's Liberation Conference.

New York Radical Women begin process of “consciousness-raising.”

Shirley Chisholm is elected first African-American woman representative (D-NY) to Congress.

New York NOW members picket the
New York Times
to end sex-segregated classified advertising.

The Women's Equity Action League is formed by women who leave NOW to pursue feminist goals other than abortion.

The National Abortion Rights Action League is formed.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy are assassinated. Students and young people in Mexico, France, Germany, and dozens of other countries rally, protest, and demand social and economic change.

In August, U.S. students are beaten in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, and Soviet troops trample “Prague Spring.”

Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement
, first newsletter from WLM, is published by Joreen (Jo Freeman) in Chicago. In New York, radical feminists publish
Notes from the First Year.
Feminist publications sweep across the nation. Between 1968 and 1973, five hundred publications appear.

IRS allows widows and single or divorced women over thirty-five to receive head-of-household status with deductions.

Dorothy Lee Bolden organizes the National Domestic Workers Union.

New York women's liberationists protest against the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. Ground zero for myth of bra burning.

1969  Gay men resist police raid at the Stonewall Bar in New York City, launching the gay liberation movement.

The Boston Women's Health Collective publishes a pamphlet,
Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women.
In 1973, it is published as a book.

Accuracy in Media (AIM), a right-wing watchdog on “liberal bias,” is formed.

Members of Redstockings disrupt a hearing on abortion laws of the New York State legislature when the panel of witnesses turns out to be fourteen men and one nun. They demand repeal, not reform, of abortion laws.

NOW celebrates Mother's Day with the slogan “Rights, Not Roses.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation begins widespread infiltration of the women's movement at all levels.

1970  The great media blitz begins, with stories all year long on the new women's movement.

Pat Mainardi offers a proposal for “wages for housework.”

California is first state to adopt “no-fault” divorce, which ends up impoverishing older women who have no skills.

The North American Indian Women's Association is founded.

Toni Cade publishes
The Black Woman.

Bella Abzug is elected to Congress.

Feminists stage sit-ins at
Newsweek
and
Ladies' Home Journal
and file an antidiscrimination suit against
Time, Life, Fortune
, and
Sports Illustrated.
The Feminist Press is started.

Major classic works appear in 1970 and 1971: Germaine Greer,
The Female Eunuch;
Vivian Gornick and Barbara Moran, editors,
Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness;
Shulamith Firestone,
Dialectics of Sex;
Kate Millett,
Sexual Politics;
Robin Morgan,
Sisterhood Is Powerful;
Celestine Ware,
Woman Power.

In Wisconsin, the first AFL-CIO conference meets to discuss the status of women in unions. It endorses the ERA and opposes state protective legislation.

On August 26, fifty thousand women march to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the suffrage amendment in New York. Feminists drape a huge banner over the Statue of Liberty that says “Women of the World Unite.” In forty-two states, women participate in the “Strike for Equality.”

Maggie Kuhn forms the Gray Panthers to fight for older citizens' rights.

NOW sues 1,300 corporations.

WEAL files class action suit against more than one hundred colleges and universities.

The Lutheran Church in America and the America Lutheran Church allow women to be ordained.

The Episcopal Church permits women deacons, but not ordination for women.

Barbara Herman is the first woman cantor, in a Reform Jewish temple in New Jersey.

National Right to Life Committee is established by the Catholic Church to block liberalization of abortion laws.

Hawaii, Alaska, and New York become the first states to liberalize their abortion laws.

Barbara Seaman and others disrupt the Senate subcommittee's hearing on the Pill, protesting that most witnesses are male doctors and that women are being used as “guinea pigs” in testing.

Forty-six editorial staff women win a settlement in their suit charging sexual discrimination at
Newsweek
magazine.

Women on the staff of RAT take over the New York radical underground newspaper.

Sit-in at
Ladies' Home Journal
by one hundred women leads to a special supplement in the August, 1970, issue.

The Congress to Unite Women meets in New York City. Lesbians stage the Lavender Menace Action, one of the first asserting the right to be public lesbians.

Chicana feminists in California found the
Comision Feminil Mexicana Nacional.
They start a model service center for working women. Founders include Gracia Molina Pick, Francisca Flores, Graciella Oivares, and Yolanda Nova.

Singer Janis Joplin dies of a heroin overdose.

1971  New York Radical Feminists hold a “Speak-out on Rape,” in which women disclose their personal experiences.

New York NOW forms a “Baby Carriage Brigade” to demonstrate its support of women's right to deduct child care expenses. “Are Children As Important As Martinis?” is their slogan.

Norman Mailer's
Prisoner of Sex
, a sophisticated and highly publicized attack on the women's movement, is published.

On her first day as representative from New York, Bella Abzug demands that all U.S. troops be withdrawn from Vietnam.

Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others help found the National Women's Political Caucus to support more women candidates.

First Feminist Women's Health Center founded in Los Angeles by Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman.

The National Press Club allows women to become full members. Berkeley, California, initiates women's studies in primary schools.

The Professional Women's Caucus files a class action sexual discrimination suit against every law school in the country receiving federal funds.

President Richard Nixon vetoes the Comprehensive Child Development Bill, passed by both houses of Congress, which would have provided $2 billion for child care.

Three hundred and forty French women sign a petition, “Manifesto of 340 Bitches,” declaring they have had an abortion.

The FBI reports that the increase in women's crime rate is up sharply over that in men's.

1972  Puerto Rican women hold their first national conference.

The Equal Rights Amendment passes both houses of Congress; ratification is necessary by 1979.

Congress passes Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act to enforce sex equality in education, which forces educational institutions to support women's sports.

Congress passes the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which prohibits sex discrimination in employment.

Ms.
magazine is launched.

Representative Shirley Chisholm runs for the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States and loses.

In San Francisco, Margo St. James organizes COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) to improve the working conditions of prostitutes.

Phyllis Schlafly attacks the ERA in her newsletter and forms a new organization, “StopERA.”

Midge Decter, neoconservative, publishes an attack against the women's movement in
The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women's Liberation.

Jesse Helms is elected to the U.S. Senate.

The country debates whether Maude, a fictional character in a television sitcom, should have a late-life abortion.

NOW launches an attack on sexism in schoolbooks, with its pamphlet
Dick and Jane As Victims.

For the first time, a girl wins a soap box derby. She apologizes.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is extended to cover administrative, professional, and executive employees.

The Feminist Press starts the
Women's Studies Newsletter.
(In 1977, the National Women's Studies Association formed; by 1978 there are over 15,000 courses.)

Women's issues, including the right to abortion, are included in the platform of La Raza Unida, a Mexican-American political movement.

Marlo Thomas and friends produce the record
Free to Be . . . You and Me
, the first record of nonsexist, multiracial songs, poems, and stories for children.

Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro, and members of the Feminist Art Program of the California Institute of the Arts open a seventeen-room
Womanhouse
exhibit, viewed by 4,000 people.

The first conference of Older Women's Liberation (women over thirty) is held in New York City.

1973  In its
Roe v. Wade
decision, the Supreme Court establishes a woman's right to abortion.

Congress allows the first female page in the House of Representatives.

Singer Helen Reddy wins a Grammy Award for her song “I Am Woman,” which becomes a kind of informal anthem of the movement.

AT&T agrees to end discrimination in women's salaries and to pay retroactive compensation to women employees.

The National Black Feminist Organization is formed.

More than three hundred women from twenty-seven countries attend an International Feminist Planning Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their goal is to create an international movement through global conferences.

Conservative Judaism permits women to be counted in making up the minyan, or ten people necessary for congregational worship. Dr. Mary Daly's book,
Beyond God the Father
, rejects male divinity and questions all received religious wisdom.

George Gilder's
Sexual Suicide
, a sustained attack against the women's movement, is published.

Billie Jean King's efforts succeed when the U.S. Tennis Association announces that the U.S. Open will award equal prize money to women and men.

Bernice Reagon Johnson forms an a cappella group,
Sweet Honey in the Rock
, which emphasizes songs about civil rights and social justice.

Redwood Records, a women's music record company, is founded, and issues Holly Near's
Hang in There.

In Los Angeles, the first West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference is held.

Office workers form Women Employed in Chicago, Women Office Workers in New York, and 9-5 in Boston. Union Wage in San Francisco had been formed in 1971.

First U.S. battered women's shelters open.

Attorney Marian Wright Edelman founds Children's Defense Fund. Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match.

The Supreme Court outlaws sexually-segregated classified ads.

The AFL-CIO National Convention endorses the ERA.

The Government Printing Office style book accepts Ms. as a prefix.

Dr. Benjamin Spock renounces his earlier views on child care and revises his classic book.

Stewardesses for Women's Rights formed to support job rights, a dignified public image, and health issues of female flight attendants.

The National Association for the Repeal of Abortion, founded in 1969, changes its name to the National Abortion Rights Action League and makes its goal the preservation of the 1973 Supreme Court Decision.

1974  The Freedom of Information Act passes.

Congress passes the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which allows married women to get credit in their own name for the first time.

Over one thousand colleges and universities offer women's studies courses and eighty have full programs.

Helen Thomas, after covering Washington for thirty years, is finally named White House reporter for UPI and becomes the first woman to hold this position.

Little League, for the first time, allows girls to compete in baseball. Diana Russell publishes
The Politics of Rape.

The Mexican American Women's National Association (MANA) is founded. It is pro-choice, against forced sterilization, and starts a successful Hermanitas (“Little Sisters”) program.