This is a Timeline of second-wave feminism, from its beginning in the mid-twentieth century, to the start of Third-wave feminism in the early 1990s.
Timeline
1960s
1960 Enovid was approved for sale in the United States 9 May 1960 as a contraceptive pill by the Food and Drug Administration. (It had been approved three years earlier for menstrual symptoms.) Within three years, 2.3 million women are using "The Pill", as it became known, in the United States. The arrival of the pill ushered in and coincided with the second wave of feminism.
1961 The [American] Presidential Commission on the Status of Women was created; its report found discrimination against women in every aspect of American life and outlined plans to achieve equality. Specific recommendations for women in the workplace included fair hiring practices, paid maternity leave, and affordable childcare.
1962 The non-fiction book Sex and the Single Girl was released in the U.S. and sold two million copies in three weeks. Author Helen Gurley Brown encouraged women to become financially independent, and to become sexually active before marriage.
1963
Twenty years after it was first proposed, the Equal Pay Act became law in the U.S., and it established equality of pay for men and women performing equal work. However, it did not originally cover executives, administrators, outside salespeople, or professionals. In 1972, Congress enacted the Education Amendments of 1972, which (among other things) amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to expand the coverage of the Equal Pay Act to these employees, by excluding the Equal Pay Act from the professional workers exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was published, became a best-seller, and laid the groundwork for the second-wave feminist movement in the U.S.Addison, Heather; Goodwin-Kelly, Mary Kate; Roth, Elaine (2009). Motherhood misconceived: representing the maternal in U.S. film. SUNY Press. p. 29 Alice S. Rossi presented "Equality Between the Sexes: An Immodest Proposal" at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences conference. Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy bunny in a New York Playboy Club, and published the exposé "A Bunny's Tale" in Show magazine in two installments in May and June, 1963.
1964 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law in the U.S., and it barred employment discrimination on account of sex, race, etc. by private employers, employment agencies, and unions. However, the Bennett Amendment, a US labor law provision in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, §703(h) was passed to limit sex discrimination claims regarding pay to the rules in the Equal Pay Act of 1963. It says an employer can "differentiate upon the basis of sex" when it compensates employees "if such differentiation is authorized by" the Equal Pay Act. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964; in its first five years, 50,000 complaints of gender discrimination were received.
1965
Casey Hayden and Mary King published "Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo", detailing women's inequality within the civil rights organization SNCC. The U.S. Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut struck down the only remaining state law banning the use of contraceptives by married couples. The "Woman Question" was raised for the first time at a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) conference. EEOC commissioners were appointed to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Among them there was only one woman, Aileen Hernandez, a future president of the National Organization for Women.Wright, Susan (2005), The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Landmark Antidiscrimination Legislation, The Rosen Publishing Group The term "sexism" was most likely coined November 18, 1965, in a report by Pauline M. Leet during the "Student-Faculty Forum" at Franklin and Marshall College. quoting
1966 Twenty-eight women, among them Betty Friedan, founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) to function as a civil rights organization for women. Betty Friedan became its first president. The group is now one of the largest women's groups in the U.S. and pursues its goals through extensive legislative lobbying, litigation, and public demonstrations. Barbara Jordan was elected to the Texas Senate. She was the first African-American woman in the Texas legislature.TEXT_Allen, Ashley Flight attendants filed Title VII complaints about being forced to quit when they married, got pregnant or reached age 35.
1967
Due to the Abortion Act 1967, abortion in Britain was made legal under certain criteria and with medical supervision. In 1967, "The Discontent of Women", by Joke Kool-Smits, was published; the publication of this essay is often regarded as the start of second-wave feminism in the Netherlands. American feminist Valerie Solanas wrote and published SCUM Manifesto. (The author, PhD from English department, University of Notre Dame, was research fellow, Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University).Castro, Ginette, trans. Elizabeth Loverde-Bagwell, American Feminism: A Contemporary History (N.Y.: N.Y. Univ. Press, 1990 ()), p. 264 (Chronology) (trans. from Radioscopie du féminisme américain (Paris, France: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1984) (French)) (author prof. Eng. lang. & culture, Univ. of Bordeaux III, France). Executive Order 11375 expanded President Johnson's 1965 affirmative action policy to cover discrimination based on sex, resulting in federal agencies and contractors taking active measures to ensure that all women as well as minorities have access to educational and employment opportunities equal to white males. Women's liberation groups sprang up all over America. The pill made the cover of TIME magazine. NOW began petitioning the EEOC to end sex-segregated want ads and adopted a Bill of Rights for Women. Senator Eugene McCarthy introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. Senate. Seattle Radical Women, a socialist feminist organization, formed in November by a combination of New Left and Old Left women.((cite web|url=http://historylink.org/File/2152)) New York Radical Women was formed by Shulamith Firestone and Pam Allen.Maren Lockwood Carden, The New Feminist Movement (1974, Russell Sage Foundation) Anne Koedt organized American "consciousness raising" groups.Feminist Revolution, p. 147–148 The [American] National Welfare Rights Organization was formed.
1968 Robin Morgan led members of New York Radical Women to protest the Miss America Pageant of 1968, which they decried as sexist and racist. The first American national gathering of women's liberation activists was held in Lake Villa, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. The EEOC issued revised guidelines on sex discrimination, making it clear that the widespread practice of publishing "help wanted" advertisements that use "male" and "female" column headings violates Title VII. New York feminists buried a dummy of "Traditional Womanhood" at the all-women's Jeannette Rankin Brigade demonstration against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. For the first time, feminists used the slogan "Sisterhood is Powerful". The first public speakout against abortion laws was held in New York City. Notes from the First Year, a women's liberation theoretical journal, was published by New York Radical Women. NOW celebrated Mother's Day with the slogan "Rights, Not Roses". Mary Daly, professor of theology at Boston College, published a scathing criticism of the Catholic Church's view and treatment of women entitled "The Church and the Second Sex".Greer, Germaine, The Female Eunuch (N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1st ed. in U.S. 1971, © 1970 & 1971), p. 306 ("The summer ... was ... momentous for the women's movement ... [partly] because Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol.... S.C.U.M. ... was big news, battling ... for the front page."). 850 sewing machinists at Ford in Dagenham, which is in Britain, went on strike for equal pay and against sex discrimination. This ultimately led to the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970, the first legislation in the United Kingdom aimed at ending pay discrimination between men and women. The term "second-wave feminism" itself was brought into common parlance by journalist Martha Lear in a New York Times Magazine article in March 1968 titled "The Second Feminist Wave: What do These Women Want?" She wrote, "Proponents call it the Second Feminist Wave, the first having ebbed after the glorious victory of suffrage and disappeared, finally, into the great sandbar of Togetherness."
1969 The case Weeks v. Southern Bell marked a major triumph in the fight against restrictive labor laws and company regulations on the hours and conditions of women's work in the U.S., opening many previously male-only jobs to women. The American radical organization Redstockings organized.Willis, "Radical Feminism and Feminist Radicalism", p. 124. Members of Redstockings disrupted a hearing on abortion laws of the New York Legislature when the panel of witnesses turned out to be 14 men and a nun. The group demanded repeal, not reform, of laws restricting abortion. NARAL Pro-Choice America, then called The National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), was founded. California adopted a "no fault" divorce law, allowing couples to divorce by mutual consent. It was the first state to do so; by 2010 every state had adopted a similar law. Legislation was also passed regarding equal division of common property.
1970s
1970 American feminist Kate Millett published her book, Sexual Politics. Australian feminist Germaine Greer published her book, The Female Eunuch.Wilde, W. H.; Hooton, Joy and Andrews, Barry (1994) . The Oxford companion to Australian Literature (2nd ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p. 271. . "... the book became almost a sacred text for the international women's liberation movement of the 1970s, notwithstanding sporadic criticism of aspects of its ideology from some feminists." In Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co., a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled jobs held by men and women must be "substantially equal" but not "identical" to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act, and that it is therefore illegal for employers to change the job titles of women workers in order to pay them less than men. Sisterhood Is Powerful, An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement edited by the American feminist Robin Morgan, is published. The American women's health book Our Bodies was first published as a newsprint booklet for 35 cents. The Canadian parliament's Royal Commission on the Status of Women (established 1967) produced its report, leading to the establishment of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. A Ladies' Home Journal sit-in protested "women's magazines" as sexist. The North American Indian Women's Association was founded. Chicana feminists founded Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional. In Italy, Rivolta Femminile ("Women's Revolt") formed and published a manifesto. American feminist Toni Cade Bambara published The Black Woman. On August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of woman suffrage in the U.S., tens of thousands of women across the nation participated in the Women's Strike for Equality, organized by Betty Friedan and thought up by Betty Jameson Armistead to demand equal rights. Feminist leader Bella Abzug was elected to the U.S. Congress, famously declaring "A woman's place is in the House". President Richard Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have established federally funded childcare centers throughout the U.S. The AFL–CIO met to discuss the status of women in unions. It endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment and opposed state protective legislation. The Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church allowed women to be ordained.