- Person
- Betty Friedan
- Lived
- 1921–2006
- Field
- Women’s rights
- From
- American
The story
In 1970 American women still faced wide discrimination. Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women earned about 59 cents for every dollar a man earned for similar work. In many states they could not easily obtain credit or own property without a husband, and in 43 states laws limited the hours they could work. After stepping down as president of the National Organization for Women, Betty Friedan wanted to show that the women's movement had a broad and powerful base. She said the movement needed something so big it would make national headlines.
She chose a symbolic date: August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote. Some NOW members feared the protest might fail and make the movement look foolish, but Friedan pressed ahead, recruiting women and men, liberals and conservatives. Its main goal was equal opportunity for women in jobs and education, and organizers also called for child-care centres and abortion rights. Friedan asked women to stop work for the day, from secretaries covering their typewriters to waitresses who stopped waiting tables, to highlight unequal pay and limited opportunities.
In New York City she led a march down Fifth Avenue. The city had refused to close the avenue, but the crowd spread from sidewalk to sidewalk. Estimates of its size vary, from about 20,000 to over 50,000 people; the Jewish Women's Archive puts it at forty to fifty thousand women. It was the largest gathering on behalf of women in the United States up to that time. Protests took place across the country, from about 5,000 women on Boston Common to a rally in San Francisco's Union Square and a march in Washington, D.C.
The strike was successful beyond expectations in broadening the feminist movement. Friedan declared that it had exceeded her wildest dreams and turned the cause into a political movement. That same year NOW, with Friedan leading the cause, helped bring about the Senate's rejection of Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell, who had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Feminists and scholars have described the strike as a significant spark for the second wave of feminism. It showed politicians and the press that women's equality had mass support, and August 26 is now marked as Women's Equality Day.
Why it matters
The strike proved that women's equality had mass support across the country, giving the movement new momentum in politics and the workplace.
About Betty Friedan
Author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), which named ‘the problem that has no name’, and co-founder and first president of the National Organization for Women.
More about Betty Friedan
- The Feminine Mystique sold over three million copiesBetty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique became an immediate best-seller in 1963, sold well over three million copies and was translated into a dozen languages.
- Betty Friedan scribbled NOW on a paper napkinIn 1966 Betty Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women, writing its name on a napkin in her hotel room, and served as its first president.
- Betty Friedan took on the age mystiqueIn The Fountain of Age (1993), Betty Friedan challenged the view of old age as only decline, arguing that later life can be a time of growth.
- Betty Friedan's NOW opened job listings to womenUnder Betty Friedan's leadership NOW won a 1967 executive order extending affirmative action to women and a 1968 ruling that sex-segregated help-wanted ads were illegal.
- Betty Friedan's survey of classmates changed historyIn 1957 Betty Friedan surveyed 200 of her Smith College classmates and found many suffering from what she called the problem that has no name.
Sources
- Betty Friedan Wikipedia
- Betty Friedan Jewish Women's Archive Encyclopedia
- Women's Strike for Equality Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.