Essay Series 6.5: The movement toward women’s equal rights realized major successes, while history has erased women’s contributions to other civil rights struggles.

Beginning in the mid-1900s, advocates renewed their efforts to gain expanded civil rights for people of color, women, lesbians, and gay men. Each of these movements has involved women, whose roles have been minimized except for their leadership of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Some examples of this follow. Then this essay focuses on progress in achieving more rights for girls and women starting in the 1960s.

Civil Rights for Minority Populations

Men were the publicly facing leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, which advocated for racial justice in the United States. Women’s work in this movement and its dismissal of their concerns and contributions were among the reasons that the Women’s Liberation Movement of the mid-1900s began.⁴⁷⁰

Many of the men who were civil rights leaders minimized the contributions of Black women, who have long been the backbone of progressive politics.⁴⁷¹ These women have organized, protested, strategized, gotten out the vote, and volunteered. However, the men who were leaders ignored the women’s work and their policy priorities.⁴⁷² Dorothy Height, who was a Civil Rights Movement leader and a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, wasn’t allowed to speak from the podium. Height said that men in leadership didn’t take women’s participation in the movement seriously. Another example of minimization involves Rosa Parks. She had worked for the Montgomery, Alabama Chapter of the NAACP⁴⁷³ for 12 years before refusing to give up her bus seat for White people.⁴⁷⁴ When I “learned” about Rosa Parks many years ago, I formed the erroneous impression that she was a housekeeper who was too exhausted to give up her seat, not that she was one of the leaders of the NAACP in the state and that her decision was a strategic one.

Civil Rights for Lesbians and Gay Men

The story of the 1969 Stonewall Inn Uprising, which galvanized the Gay Rights Movement, is usually told as if it were men who first rebelled against the police raids on this Manhattan bar. The bar permitted dancing, while most other bars didn’t, and the Stonewall Inn was a haven for gay men, transgender people, drag queens, lesbians, sex workers, and homeless young people. Two transgender women and a lesbian, who were also people of color, likely started the rebellion and probably were the first to fight against the police during a raid. The Stonewall Uprising lasted for days. Over time, the Stonewall story came to focus on the role of gay White men.⁴⁷⁵

Women’s Liberation Movement

In the United States, a 1962 poll reported that almost all women expected to be married by age 22 and most wanted to have four children.⁴⁷⁶ One year later, Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique helped begin a new phase of the women’s rights movement. Her book focused on middle-income-class White women’s boredom and frustration with being confined to domestic roles. Her ideas caught fire with this group and others.⁴⁷⁷

The Women’s Liberation Movement’s goals included equal pay, education, and job opportunities for women; free contraception and abortion on demand; and 24-hour child care.⁴⁷⁸ Achievement of these goals would have helped women to gain a socioeconomic status equivalent to men. Women won the right to birth control and other reproductive health care, including abortion; rules against harassment and discrimination in employment; and easier access to divorce and education in the 1960s and 1970s.

As women gained more economic opportunities and freedom to divorce, marriages broke up. This resulted in disruption of the status quo. Often, women didn’t want to be in marriages where partnerships were unequal or where their husbands abused them or their children. In the long run, after states passed no-fault divorce laws, women’s suicide rates decreased by up to 20 percent; men’s rates didn’t change. Domestic violence rates decreased by 30 percent for women; rates also decreased for men. Men murdered fewer women in states after no-fault divorce laws.⁴⁷⁹

Equal Rights Amendment

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was a major goal of the Women’s Liberation Movement, passed both houses of Congress in 1972, 49 years after it was first introduced. It overwhelmingly passed the House and the Senate with substantial support from Republicans and Democrats. The Amendment stated, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." It also would have granted Congress the power to enforce the provisions of the amendment. Most of the 38 states that needed to ratify it did so within a few years. By 1978, the ERA was three states short of ratification, so Congress extended the time limit for this to 1982.⁴⁸⁰ I remember thinking about this vote at the time and feeling that it was totally logical that women should have equal rights to men. Who could be against this and why?

Three more states ratified the Equal Rights Amendment by 2020, bringing the total to 38 states. However, the ERA's legal status remains uncertain due to the expired deadline and rescission attempts.

Opposition to the Amendment

Phyllis Schlafly led an effective opposition to the ERA, even though she had a prominent career outside the home. She said that if the Amendment passed, women would:

1. Lose their husband’s economic support

1. Neglect their household duties

1. Endanger their children

1. Work in unsafe environments

1. Be sent into combat

1. Lose privacy in bathrooms and other public places.⁴⁸¹

Many church groups supported Schlafly’s cause, as did antifeminists and businesses. Businesses did so because they feared the cost of equal pay for equal work. By 1982, the ERA had failed to become law. As Phyllis Schlafly’s life and retrograde movement demonstrate, women in power don’t always work to improve the lives of other women.⁴⁸²

Opposition to the ERA also developed because younger women’s rights advocates dismissed the traditional housewife’s role. Traditional women considered themselves to be the bedrock of the family and the ones responsible for raising the next generation. These traditional women didn’t want to be considered tired domestic drudges.⁴⁸³ And who can blame them for feeling that way?

Traditional wives were also afraid of losing their husbands to younger women and their access to financial security through their marriages. Women were getting divorced while their ability to get alimony was fading. During the 1970s, only 14 percent of divorced women were awarded any sort of spousal support, and only half of them actually received it from their ex-husbands.⁴⁸⁴ Traditional wives were right to worry about financial security then and now.

Reflections

How I wish the Equal Rights Amendment had passed because we are at a precarious turn in the United States. Women’s human rights are under threat, including their right to vote. This affects men too. As women have gained rights, men have benefited. For example, if their partners have a good education and access to equal pay, men and children are more financially secure and more likely to have health insurance.

I remain sympathetic to women wanting to lead traditional lives, if they choose to do so freely. However, women making these choices risk a lot if their partners fail to provide for them or their children during or after marriage. Women or men who choose to focus on traditional domestic tasks could consider entering into some type of legal agreement that would provide financial protections for the economically dependent spouse and their children.

How have the gains of the Women’s Liberation Movement affected you and your families?