Founded in 1966, the National Organization for Women is an American activist organization that promotes equal rights for women.
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in hiring or promotion based on race, color, religion, national orientation, or sex, led to the founding of NOW. To investigate discrimination complaints, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established. In its early years, the EEOC focused its work on racial, rather than gender, discrimination. In response, Betty Friedan, author of the 1963 best-seller The Feminine Mystique, and others attending the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in Washington, D. C., in 1966, formed the National Organization for Women. Initiated by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the commission had been under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, and three years had passed since its 1963 report, American Women, The Report of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, which asserted that, despite having won the right to vote, women were discriminated against in virtually every aspect of life. These findings had been reinforced by the reports of various state commissions on the status of women.
The 1966 conference delegates were prohibited from passing resolutions recommending that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforce its legal mandate to end sex discrimination. In protest, Friedan invited a group of 29 women to her hotel room one night to discuss alternative strategies. Attendees decided that the only answer was to form a separate civil rights organization dedicated to achieving full equality for women. Kathryn Clarenbach, head of the Wisconsin Commission on the Status of Women, was named interim coordinator, and a statement of purpose was drafted, aimed at bringing women into full participation in equal partnership with men.
NOW’s first organizing conference was held October 29-30, 1966, in Washington, D. C. More than 300 women and men gathered to put together an organizational structure and philosophy for what Friedan termed “the unfinished revolution.” Kathryn Clarenbach was elected NOW’s first chairperson and Betty Friedan, NOW’s first president. NOW was incorporated officially in Washington, D. C., on February 10, 1967, after finalization of its national constitution and bylaws by an appointed committee.
In 1967 NOW filed suit against the EEOC to force it to comply with its own rules, and also sued the nation’s largest 1,300 companies for sex discrimination. At its second national conference, NOW drew up a bill of rights for women, called for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution, and the repeal of laws restricting access to abortion and contraceptive devices. The issue of abortion created division within the organization, with dissenters believing NOW should avoid controversial issues and focus strictly on economic discrimination.
NOW focused on all aspects of sex discrimination, initiating task forces to deal with the problems of women in law, employment, religion, education, poverty, politics, and their image in the media. Committees were also organized to handle membership, finance, legislation and legal activities, and public relations.
While pursuing civil rights tactics of demonstrations and marches, NOW also became involved in legal suits involving gender equality. In 1969 NOW demonstrated for Women’s Studies programs. In the spring of 1969, the first women’s studies course was introduced at Cornell University, and the first full-fledged women’s studies program was established at the University of California, San Diego. Also in 1970 NOW won an important case in Week v. Southern Bell, in which the courts ruled that, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination on the basis of sex unconstitutional, and removed the legal restriction on women lifting more than 30 pounds at their place of employment. On August 26, 1969, NOW organized the Women’s Strike for Equality, although this demonstration had mixed success. That same year, NOW chapters began picketing newspapers to make “Help Wanted” ads gender neutral, a policy soon adopted by newspapers across the country.
In the 1970s, however, as ideological divisions within the feminist movement emerged, especially over political feminism and cultural feminism, these tensions spilled over into NOW. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, many feminists became increasingly militant, declaring that “equal opportunity” was not enough; instead, they called for a cultural and political revolution that empowered women. This became especially apparent in the New York NOW chapter headed by Ti-Grace Atkinson. Radical feminists also raised the call for gay and lesbian rights. In 1970, Betty Friedan led opposition to a NOW resolution calling for lesbian rights, but Friedan would be defeated by Aileen Hernandez, former EEOC commissioner, for the presidency. Friedan denounced this shift in NOW to supporting lesbian rights. She warned of a “lavender menace” within NOW, declaring that NOW should not be about sex, but about “equal opportunity in jobs.” In 1971, NOW members, including Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Gloria Steinem, formed the National Women’s Political Caucus, a nonpartisan coalition of women in politics, but the divisions within the larger organization emerged in this group as well. The fight became particularly bitter between Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms. magazine, and Friedan.
NOW focused on three issues in the 1970s—reproductive rights, ERA, and lesbian rights. Lesbian rights was the focus of the 1975 convention, and the 1984-88 conventions. In 1979 NOW was involved in winning an important legal case for lesbian rights in Belmont v. Belmont, in which the court gave child custody to a lesbian mother and her gay partner.
Following the defeat of ERA in 1982, NOW sought to change its image as a militant feminist organization to a mainstream organization. NOW continued to struggle for reproductive rights and lesbian rights, but its strategy focused on political lobbying and legal battles. In 1994 NOW won another important case in NOW v. Scheidler, which applied the Racketeer Ineluenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against antiabortion demonstrators.
With more than 800 chapters across the country, NOW was the largest women’s rights organization in the United States in 2009. Both men and women are part of the 500,000-membership base. The national offices are in Washington, D. C.
See also birth control; eeminism; women’s rights and status.
Further reading: Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 1987); Roslind Rosenberg, Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992).
—Michele Rutledge
World History
