Postwar[edit]

Once World War II ended in 1945, women munitions workers were expected to give up their jobs to returning male veterans and go back home to have and raise children put off by the war.[203] In 1946, 4 million women were fired from their jobs.[203] But for many women, work was an economic necessity, and they simply went back to the sort of low-paying jobs they had held before the war.[203] However, most people in the 1950s felt that ideally women should be homemakers and men should be breadwinners.[204] A booming economy helped to make this possible; by the mid-1950s, 40% of Americans were living in the suburbs with, on average, 3.8 children, two cars and two television sets.[204] Although 35% of women did go to college in the 1950s, most attended not to learn skills but to find a husband.[204] Furthermore, although 46% of women worked during the 1950s, 75% of them worked in simple clerical or sales jobs.[204]The average working woman in the 1950s earned 60% of the average working man's salary.[204] However, there were still advances for women in the military. The Army-Navy Nurse Act of 1947 made the Army Nurse Corps and Women's Medical Specialist Corps part of the regular Army and gave permanent commissioned officer status to Army and Navy nurses.[61] In 1948 Congress passed the Women's Armed Forces Integration Act, which authorized women to enlist in the military alongside men, rather than in their own separate units, although women were still not allowed to serve in combat.[205][206] Furthermore, in 1948 Executive Order 9981 ended racial segregation in the armed services.[61] In 1949 the Air Force Nurse Corps was established (the Air Force itself was created in 1947).[61] That same year, the first African-American women enlisted in the Marine Corps.[61] The Korean War was fought from 1950 until 1953.[61] Many servicewomen who had joined the Reserves following World War II were involuntarily recalled to active duty during the Korean War.[61] 540 Army nurses (all military nurses during the Korean War were female) served in the combat zone and many more were assigned to large hospitals in Japan during the war.[61][207] One Army nurse (Genevieve Smith) died in a plane crash en route to Korea on July 27, 1950, shortly after hostilities began.[61][207] Navy nurses served on hospital ships in the Korean theater of war as well as at Navy hospitals stateside.[61] Eleven Navy nurses died en route to Korea when their plane crashed in the Marshall Islands.[61] Air Force nurses served stateside, in Japan and as flight nurses in the Korean theater during the war.[61] Three Air Force nurses were killed in plane crashes while on duty.[61] Many other servicewomen were assigned to duty in the theater of operations in Japan and Okinawa.[61]

Civil rights[edit]
Women were heavily involved in lesbian rights and civil rights throughout the 1950s. In 1955 the first national lesbian political and social organization in the United States, called Daughters of Bilitis, was founded by four lesbian couples in San Francisco (including Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon).[208] On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and volunteer secretary for the NAACP, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a

white man, as required by law at the time; shortly after this a bus boycott began, inspired by her actions, advocating for an end to all segregated busing.[209][210] The night of Rosa Parks' arrest, with her permission, Mrs. Jo Ann Robinson stayed up mimeographing 35,000 handbills calling for a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. Prior to Rosa Parks' action, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith had refused to give up their seats on buses to white women, but their cases were rejected by civil rights lawyers as they were not considered sympathetic enough.[211][212][213][213] Aurelia Shines Browder refused to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama in April 1955, and she filed suit against the city and its Mayor W.A. "Tacky" Gayle.[214][215] It was on her case, known as Browder v Gayle, that the Supreme Court ruled in 1956 that segregated busing was unconstitutional, thus ending the bus boycott.[214] Aurelia Browder was the lead plaintiff in the case, and Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith were the other plaintiffs.[214][216]

Status of women[edit]
Yet women still occupied a lower position than men in many sectors of American life. In 1957, the National Manpower Council (NMC) at Columbia University published its study, "Womanpower, A Statement by the National Manpower Council with Chapters by the Council Staff".[217] It was a comprehensive look at the experience of women in the labor force, their employment needs, and the implications of both for education, training, and public policy.[217] This NMC analysis called women "essential" and "distinctive" workers and recommended that the Secretary of Labor establish a committee to review "the consequences and adequacy of existing Federal and state laws which have a direct bearing on the employment of women."[217] But this suggestion was not acted upon by the Eisenhower Administration.[217] In 1959, three landmark books on women were published: "A Century of Struggle" by Eleanor Flexner, the first professional history of the 19th century women's movement, which contained an implicit call to arms; "A Century of Higher Education for American Women" by Mabel Newcomer, which disclosed that the relative position of women in the academic world was in decline; and "Women and Work in America" by Robert Smuts, which drew attention to the fact that "the picture of women's occupations outside the home between 1890 and 1950 had changed in only a few essentials.[217] In reaction to such findings, by 1961, President John F. Kennedy was under pressure to establish a President's Commission on the Status of Women.[217] Esther Peterson, Assistant Secretary of Labor and director of the Women's Bureau, and the highest ranking woman in the Kennedy Administration, wanted such a commission.[217] Along with equal pay legislation, it had long been on the agenda of labor movement women and it was in that movement that Peterson's working career had been concentrated.[217] Another wish of the women's movement, effective birth control, came true as in 1961 the first birth control pill, called Enovid, received FDA approval and went on the market.[218] Women's organizations, notably the American Association of University Women and Business and Professional Women, had been proposing a women's rights commission for many years; they found a champion in Eleanor Roosevelt, who

backed the proposal when she met with Kennedy at the White House after his election.[217] The establishment of the Commission may also have been regarded by Kennedy as an expedient way to pay off his political debts to the women who had supported his campaign but were disappointed with his poor record of appointments of women to his administration.[217] There was also a desire to have Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most respected women in the country, associated with the Kennedy Administration.[217]Roosevelt had only reluctantly supported JFK's presidential candidacy after her first choice, Adlai Stevenson, lost the nomination.[217]However, she agreed to be the Chairperson of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, which was held from 1961 until 1963.[217] The Commission's Report, called "The American Woman" and issued in 1963, noted discrimination against women in the areas of education, home and community services, employment, social insurance and taxation, and legal, civil and political rights.[219] The report also recommended continued network-building.[219] President Kennedy implemented two Commission recommendations that established an Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women and a Citizens' Advisory Council on the Status of Women, composed of twenty private citizens appointed by the President.[219] These two groups co-sponsored four national conferences of state commissions on the status of women.[219] Another important event of 1963 was the publication of Betty Friedan's influential book "The Feminine Mystique", which is often cited as the founding moment of second-wave feminism.[220] This book highlighted Friedan's view of a coercive and pervasive post-World War-II ideology of female domesticity that stifled middle-class women's opportunities to be anything but homemakers.[220] Friedan's book is credited with sparking second-wave feminism by directing women's attention to the broad social basis of their problems, stirring many to political and social activism.[220] Also in 1963, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, which amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit pay discrimination because of sex.[221] It requires the employer to pay equal wages to men and women doing equal work on jobs requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility, which are performed under similar working conditions.[221] Another accomplishment for feminism in 1963 was that feminist activist Gloria Steinem published her article I Was a Playboy Bunny, a behind the scenes look at the sexist treatment of Playboy bunnies, which was one of her first major assignments in investigative journalism.[222] There were several political firsts for women in the 1960s. On November 22, 1963, following the assassination of President Kennedy, federal judge Sarah T. Hughes administered the Presidential Oath of Office to Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One, the only time a woman has done so, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court normally has this honor. 1964 was the first year in which more women voted in a Presidential election than men; more women have voted than men in every Presidential election since.[223] One of the most important advances for women's rights in this decade was not begun by a feminist. On Saturday, February 8, 1964, while the Civil Rights Act was being debated on the

House floor, Howard W. Smith of Virginia, Chairman of the Rules Committee and staunch opponent of all civil rights legislation, rose up and offered a one word amendment to Title VII, which prohibited employment discrimination.[224] He proposed to add "sex" to that one title of the bill in order "to prevent discrimination against another minority group, the women,".... (110 Cong. Rec., February 8, 1964, 2577).[224] This stimulated several hours of humorous debate, later called "ladies day in the House", before the amendment was passed by a teller vote of 168 to 133.[224] Howard W. Smith later confessed to his colleague, Congresswoman Martha Griffiths, "Martha, Ill tell you the truth. I offered it as a joke."[225] The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in charge of the enforcement of Title VII, ignored sex discrimination complaints, and the prohibition against sex discrimination in employment went unenforced for the next few years.[226] One EEOC director called the prohibition "a fluke...conceived out of wedlock," and even the liberal magazine "The New Republic" asked, "Why should a mischievous joke perpetrated on the floor of the House of Representatives be treated by a responsible administration body with this kind of seriousness?"[226] In 1966, at the third National Conference of State Commissions on the Status of Women, the conference organizers did not allow resolutions or actions of any kind meant to abolish discrimination against women, so some women who were attending decided to form an advocacy organization of their own.[227] Cornering a large table at the conference luncheon, so that they could start organizing before they had to rush for planes, each of those women chipped in five dollars, Betty Friedan wrote the acronym NOW on a napkin, and the National Organization for Women was created.[227] Its first meeting was held on June 28, 1966 in Betty Friedan's hotel room, with 28 women attending.[228] At its first conference in October 1966, Friedan was elected NOW's first president, and her fame as the author of the bestselling book The Feminine Mystique helped attract thousands of women to the organization.[228] Friedan drafted NOW's original Statement of Purpose, which began, "The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men."[228] Furthermore, in 1966, Congresswoman Martha Griffiths admonished the EEOC on the floor of Congress for their failure to enforce the prohibition against sex discrimination in employment.[229] Employment discrimination against women began to be taken more seriously in the late 1960s. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnsonissued Executive Order 11375, which declared that federal employers must take affirmative action to ensure that employees receive equal treatment and opportunities regardless of gender, race, color, or religion.[230] In 1968 the EEOC, following two years of protests by NOW, banned all help wanted ads which specified which sex a job applicant should be, except those jobs for which being a certain sex was a bona fide occupational requirement (such as actress), opening many hitherto unattainable jobs to

women.[231] The Supreme Court ruled the ban legal in Pittsburgh Press Co. v Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, 413 U.S. 376 (1973).[232]

1960s[edit]
There were several other feminist advances in the late 1960s, in both conservative and liberal circles. In 1968 conservative women separated from NOW and organized Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) to campaign for equal opportunities for women in education, economics, and employment, while avoiding issues such as abortion, sexuality, and the Equal Rights Amendment.[233] Also in 1968, liberal activist Robin Morgan led a protest of the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City;[234] at the protest a group of about one hundred women tossed items that they considered symbolic of womens oppression into a Freedom Trash Can, including copies of Playboy, high-heeled shoes, corsets, and girdles.[235] They also crowned a sheep as Miss America.[234] Lindsy Van Gelder, a reporter for the Post, wrote a piece about the protest in which she compared the trash-can procession to the burning of draft cards at antiwar marches.[235] However, the rumor that women burned their bras at the protest is not true.[235] Litigation for women's rights now began to have a serious impact on American life. In 1970 California adopted the nations first no-fault divorce law, which was intended to promote equality between men and women.[236] By 2010, all 50 states had legalized no-fault divorce, with New York being the last state to do so.[237] In 1969 the case Weeks v Southern Bell was decided in favor of Lorena Weeks, who had applied for a better job as a switchperson, but had her application rejected because, her union boss said, "the man is the breadwinner in the family, and women just do not need this type of job."[238] Weeks filed a complaint with the EEOC, but the phone company cited a Georgia law that prohibited women from lifting anything heavier than 30 pounds, although the 34-pound manual typewriter Weeks used as a clerk had to be lifted by hand onto her desk every morning and stored away every night.[238] After the case was decided, she received $31,000 in back pay and got the job.[238] In the 1971 Supreme Court case Reed v Reed, the Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal for any state to prefer all men over all women as administrators of assets. This was the first time in history that the Supreme Court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution applied to differential treatment based on legal sex.[239] In addition to litigation, feminist activists also began to form their own institutions to propagate their ideals. In 1971 Rep. Bella Abzug,Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem founded the National Women's Political Caucus to advocate for more women and feminists in elective office.[240] Also in 1971, Gloria Steinem and others began publishing Ms. Magazine, the first national feminist magazine.[241] The first three hundred thousand copies of Ms. sold out in eight days; the magazine name comes from the fact that the title Ms. was originally popularized by feminists in the 1970s to replace Miss and Mrs. and provide a parallel term to Mr., in that both Ms. and Mr. designate gender without indicating marital status.[242] In 1972, former NOW members Pat Goltz and Cathy

Callaghan foundedFeminists for Life, with the goal of eliminating the root causes that they felt drove women to abortion, contending that abortion violated core feminist principles of justice, non-discrimination and nonviolence.[243][244] One of the most important feminist successes of the early 1970s was when Nixon signed into law the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.[245] The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 gives the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) authority to sue in federal courts when it finds reasonable cause to believe that there has been employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.[245] In the case of public employment, the EEOC refers the matter to the United States Attorney General to bring the lawsuit.[245] Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 requires gender equity in every educational program that receives federal funding including but not limited to sports.[246] However, the feminist movement did have some notable setbacks around this time. In 1972 President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1972, which many feminists advocated and which would have established both early-education programs and after-school care across the country, with tuition on a sliding scale based on a familys income bracket, and the program available to everyone but participation required of no one.[235] The Equal Rights Amendment passed the Senate and then the House of Representatives in 1972, and on March 22, 1972, it was sent to the states for ratification.[247] However, it was not ratified before the deadline for ratification passed, and therefore never became law.[247] The most influential ERA opponent was Phyllis Schlafly, rightwing leader of the Eagle Forum/STOP ERA, who claimed that the ERA would deny a womans right to be supported by her husband, privacy rights would be overturned, women would be sent into combat, and abortion rights and same-sex marriages would be upheld.[247]Furthermore, some states'-rights advocates thought the ERA was a federal power grab, and business interests such as the insurance industry opposed a measure they believed would cost them money.[247] Opposition to the ERA was also organized by fundamentalist religious groups.[247] Pro-ERA advocacy was led by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and ERAmerica, a coalition of nearly 80 other organizations.[2