National Organization for Women (NOW)

The National Organization for Women, founded in 1966, brought together feminist activists demanding equal rights for women.

In the immediate post-World War II years, the momentum for women’s STATUS and rights, evident in the early 20th century, waned. Many of the feminist organizations that sprouted in prior decades continued their work in subtle fashion, as the media celebrated the contented suburban housewife and declared feminism dead. The monumental importance of women’s labor contributions during the war effort in the 1940s was put aside as the traditional domestic role of women reemerged.

Prompted by numerous studies on the position of women in society and the workplace, President John F. Kennedy established the President’s Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. Unfortunately, many regarded the commission as merely a means for Kennedy to pay off his political debts to those women who supported his campaign. The commission was hardly a force for reform. Led by Esther Peterson, assistant secretary of labor and director of the Women’s Bureau, it worked to block the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in Congress in 1963. Women did achieve a landmark success, however, with the inclusion of a clause banning discrimination based on gender as well as race in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, established to enforce Title VII, came under fire from feminist activists for its handling of sex discrimination cases. This growing dissatisfaction peaked at the third annual conference of the Commission on the Status of Women in Washington, D. C., in June 1966, with a call for a national civil rights organization to actively protect the interests of women. It was during the conference that a group of women, including Dorothy Haener of the United Auto Workers, Yale law professor Pauli Murray, and Mary Eastwood of the U. S. Department of Justice, gathered in the Washington Hilton hotel room of Betty Friedan, outspoken feminist and author of The Feminine Mystique, a landmark book exploring the frustration of the modern woman forced to seek fulfillment in traditional female roles. After much debate, the group agreed on the need for an organization, defined what its purpose would be, and, at the final session of the conference, established the National Organization for Women (NOW).

By October 1966, when the first NOW conference convened, over 300 women and men had joined the membership, naming Kay Clarenbach of the Wisconsin Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women the organization’s chair. The members in attendance worked to hammer out a statement of purpose, in which they pledged that the organization would work to ensure the equal rights of women, and to “give active support to the common cause of equal rights for all those who suffer discrimination and deprivation.”

The formation of NOW, and its development into the largest women’s activist organization in the country, with over 250,000 members, strengthened the spirit of feminism and sparked a national movement to secure equal rights for women. Throughout the remainder of the 1960s and 1970s, the National Organization for Women added more causes to its initial platform of ending employment discrimination against women. NOW campaigned heavily, and successfully, for women’s abortion rights and pregnancy employment leave options. Through lobbying and litigation, NOW achieved great success in securing more child care options for working women, and ensured the passage of state-level equal rights amendments and comparable worth legislation, guaranteeing equal pay for equal work for women.

NOW continues to campaign for the rights of women in the workplace and in other parts of American society, often taking its movement outside of the United States to focus attention on the discrimination faced by women in less-developed areas of the world.

Further reading: Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of the Women's Movement in America (New York: Free Press, 1989); Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell Publishing, 1963).

—Guy R. Temple