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1961 – President Kennedy established a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (US). 

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1961 – President Kennedy established a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (US). 

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Kennedy established a commission relating to issues concerning women.

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1961 – Limited access to contraceptive pill granted y some women (AUS)

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1961 – Limited access to contraceptive pill granted y some women (AUS)

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Initially available only to married women.

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/the-pill

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1962 – Indigenous Australian women allowed to votes in elections (AUS)

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1962 – Indigenous Australian women allowed to votes in elections (AUS)

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In 1962 the Menzies government amended the "Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918", this amendment allowed all Indigenous Australians to vote in Federal Elections

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_of_Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_peoples#:~:text=For%20a%20time%20Aboriginal%20people,vote%20in%20Australian%20federal%20elections.

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Indigenous Australians granted the right to vote | Australia's Defining Moments Digital Classroom | National Museum of Australia

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For much of Australia's political history, tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people couldn't vote in state or federal elections. In 1962 the Australian Parliament passed a landmark Act to give all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the option to enrol and vote in federal elections.

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1963 - The Equal Pay Act of 1963 passed (US).

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1963 - The Equal Pay Act of 1963 passed (US).

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equal pay was introduced.

https://www.investopedia.com/equal-pay-act-1963-5207271#:~:text=The%20Equal%20Pay%20Act%20of%201963%20is%20a%20U.S.%20law,Labor%20Standards%20Act%20of%201938.

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The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a federal law meant to ensure that men and women receive equal pay for equal work.

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1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by Congress and signed by President Johnson (US)

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1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by Congress and signed by President Johnson (US)

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It was a Civil Rights act that prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools and public accommodations, and employment discrimination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#:~:text=The%20final%20vote%20was%20290,House%20on%20July%202%2C%201964.

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1965 – Merle Thornton chains herself to a pub to protest women prohibited from drinking in public bars (AUS)

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1965 – Merle Thornton chains herself to a pub to protest women prohibited from drinking in public bars (AUS)

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Rosalie Bognor and Merle Thornton chained themselves to the bar at the Regatta Hotel in 1965 because the bartender refused to serve them.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-27/merle-thornton-revisits-regatta-hotel-50-years-after-protest/6355004#:~:text=Rosalie%20Bognor%20and%20Merle%20Thornton,for%20police%20to%20remove%20them.

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This photo is why I love women.

This photo is why I don't fear growing older.

This photo is one of the reasons I'm a feminist.

Here I am (on the right), clearly delighted to be standing beside Merle Thornton at a recent lunch to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the day she did something remarkable.

On March 31, 1965, Merle and her best friend Rosalie Bogner strolled into the public bar of Brisbane's iconic Regatta Hotel and asked for a drink.

What happened next would become the stuff of legend, because 50 years ago, when Merle and Rosalie stood at the bar politely requesting a beer, they were told no.

No, because they were women.

No, because 50 years ago it was illegal in Queensland for hotels to serve women in public bars of hotels, or any other area not designated as the "Ladies Lounge'' (if they had one), where they would presumably all politely sip their shandies and talk about apricot chicken.

But Merle and Rosalie didn't want to sit in the Ladies Lounge, they wanted to sit where they damn well pleased, and so when the somewhat flustered bartender said no, he could not, and would not serve them, Merle and Rosalie did not beat a quiet, blushing retreat to The Ladies Lounge.

Instead, they calmly produced some chains and padlocks, placed them around their ankles, and chained themselves to the bar's foot rail. They refused to budge.

As you do.

As you do when you're a smart woman with fire in your belly and a mischievous glint in your eye, and you've had it up to here of being kept out of places and conversations because you might turn up in a dress to enter them.

So Merle and Rosalie stood their ground when the bartender said "no", and the hotel management was called in.

They stood their ground when the boys in blue (and in those days it was ALL BOYS in blue) turned up and threatened to arrest them.

They stood their ground not because they particularly wanted to have a beer in the public bar - for Merle and Rosalie it was never about, of course, alcohol consumption.

Instead it was about something far more insidious.

"It was about women being excluded from participating in public and social life", says now 85-year-old Merle, then and now an academic and activist.

It was about women being stopped from joining in.

The protest, and the publicity that went with it, led to the formation of the Brisbane activist group Equal Opportunities for Women, widely credited for its part in overturning the so-called "marriage bar'' within the Commonwealth Public Service.

It seems unthinkable now, but at that time women in the public service were required to resign when they got married.

A lot of things seem unthinkable now, and if wasn't for women like Merle, and the men who supported them, these things would still be so.

When I joined RendezView one of the questions asked was whether or not I considered myself a feminist. My answer was that I was concerned the debate had become all about what feminism looked like, as opposed to what it felt like.

I said it felt like freedom.

Freedom to choose, to get an education, to drive a car, to receive a fair wage - and to enjoy a frosty beer on a hot Queensland day with the woman who helped make it possible to do so, at the bar named in her honour.

To me, that day, enjoying a beer and a laugh with Merle, along with some robust debate, it felt like an older woman and a younger one standing with their arms around each other with warmth and strength, shoulder to shoulder.

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Two friends walk into a bar. They don't get served. No, this isn't a joke

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This photo is why I love women. This photo is why I don't fear growing older. This photo is one of the reasons I'm a feminist. Here I am (on the right), clearly delighted to be standing beside Merle Thornton at a recent lunch to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the day she did something remarkable.

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1966 – 28 women formed the National Organization for Women (NOW). (US)

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1966 – 28 women formed the National Organization for Women (NOW). (US)

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The NOW was a commision founded by 28 women in 1966, the commision campagned for consitutional equality, economic justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, racial justice and also against violence against women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Organization_for_Women#:~:text=The%20National%20Organization%20for%20Women%20(NOW)%20was%20founded%20in%201966,October%201966%20NOW%20Organizing%20Conference%2C

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The National Organization for Women ( NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It is the largest feminist organization in the United States with around 500,000 members. NOW is regarded as one of the main liberal feminist organizations in the US, and primarily lobbies for gender equality within the existing political system. NOW campaigns for constitutional equality, economic justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and racial justice, and against violence against women.

There were many influences contributing to the rise of NOW. Such influences included the President's Commission on the Status of Women, Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, and the passage and lack of enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting sexual discrimination).

The President's Commission on the Status of Women was established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy, in hopes of providing a solution to female discrimination in education, work force, and Social Security. Kennedy appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as the head of the organization. The goal of action was to reconcile those wanting to advance women's rights in the workforce (such as advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment) and those advocating women's domestic role needing to be preserved (such as organized labor groups). The commission was a way to settle the tension between opposing sides.

Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in response to her own experiences. She was a feminist long before her book, by educating herself and deviating from the domestic female paradigm. The book's purpose was to fuel movement to a women's role outside of domestic environment. Acknowledging some satisfaction from raising children, cooking, and rearranging house decor was not enough to suffice the deeper desire for women to achieve an education. The book is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. It was published on February 19, 1963, by W. W. Norton. In an interview, Friedan specifically notes,

There was no activism in that cause when I wrote Feminine Mystique. But I realized that it was not enough just to write a book. There had to be social change. And I remember somewhere in that period coming off an airplane [and] some guy was carrying a sign... It said, "The first step in revolution is consciousness." Well, I did the consciousness with The Feminine Mystique. But then there had to be organization and there had to be a movement. And I helped organize NOW, the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus and NARAL, the abortion rights [organization] in the next few years.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in 1966 by 28 women at the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in June (the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women), and another 21 women and men who became founders at the October 1966 NOW Organizing Conference, for a total of 49 founders. Both conferences were held in Washington, D.C. The 28 women who became founders in June were: Ada Allness, Mary Evelyn Benbow, Gene Boyer, Shirley Chisholm, Analoyce Clapp, Kathryn F. Clarenbach, Catherine Conroy, Caroline Davis, Mary Eastwood, Edith Finlayson, Betty Friedan, Dorothy Haener, Anna Roosevelt Halstead, Lorene Harrington, Aileen Hernandez, Mary Lou Hill, Esther Johnson, Nancy Knaak, Min Matheson, Helen Moreland, Pauli Murray, Ruth Murray, Inka O'Hanrahan, Pauline A. Parish, Eve Purvis, Edna Schwartz, Mary-Jane Ryan Snyder, Gretchen Squires, Betty Talkington and Caroline Ware.

They were inspired by the failure of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; at the Third National Conference of State Commissions on the Status of Women they were prohibited from issuing a resolution that recommended the EEOC carry out its legal mandate to end sex discrimination in employment. They thus gathered in Betty Friedan's hotel room to form a new organization. On a paper napkin Friedan scribbled the acronym "NOW". The 21 people who became founders in October were: Caruthers Berger, Colleen Boland, Inez Casiano, Carl Degler, Elizabeth Drews, Mary Esther Gaulden (later Jagger), Muriel Fox, Ruth Gober, Richard Graham, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Lucille Kapplinger (later Hazell), Bessie Margolin, Margorie Palmer, Sonia Pressman (later Fuentes), Sister Mary Joel Read, Amy Robinson, Charlotte Roe, Alice Rossi, Claire R. Salmond, Morag Simchak and Clara Wells.

The founders were frustrated with the way in which the federal government was not enforcing the new anti-discrimination laws. Even after measures like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers were still discriminating against women in terms of hiring women and unequal pay with men. Women's rights advocates saw that these legal changes were not being enforced and worried that without a feminist pressure group, a type of " NAACP for women", women would not be able to combat discrimination. NOW was created in order to mobilize women, give women's rights advocates the power to put pressure on employers and the government, and to promote full equality of the sexes. It hoped to increase the number of women attending colleges and graduate schools, employed in professional jobs instead of domestic or secretarial work, and appointed to federal offices. NOW's Statement of Purpose, which was adopted at its organizing conference in Washington, D.C., on October 29, 1966, declares among other things that "the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings." NOW was also one of the first women's organizations to include the concerns of black women in their efforts.

Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray wrote NOW's Statement of Purpose in 1966; the original was scribbled on a napkin by Friedan. Also in 1966, Marguerite Rawalt became a member of NOW, and acted as their first legal counsel. NOW's first Legal Committee consisted of Catherine East, Mary Eastwood, Phineas Indritz, and Caruthers Berger; it was the first to sue on behalf of airline flight attendants claiming sex discrimination.

In 1968 NOW issued a Bill of Rights, which they had adopted at their 1967 national conference, advocating the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, enforcement of the prohibitions against sex discrimination in employment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, maternity leave rights in employment and in Social Security benefits, tax deduction for home and child care expenses for working parents, child day care centers, equal and non- gender-segregated education, equal job training opportunities and allowances for women in poverty, and the right of women to control their reproductive lives. The NOW bill of rights was included in the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.

In 1969, Ivy Bottini, who was openly lesbian, designed the logo for NOW, which is still in use today. The first time lesbian concerns were introduced into NOW also occurred in 1969, when Bottini, who was then president of the New York chapter of NOW, held a public forum titled "Is Lesbianism a Feminist Issue?". However, NOW president Betty Friedan was against lesbian participation in the movement. In 1969, she referred to growing lesbian visibility as a "lavender menace" and fired openly lesbian newsletter editor Rita Mae Brown, and in 1970 she engineered the expulsion of lesbians, including Bottini, from NOW's New York chapter. In reaction, at the 1970 Congress to Unite Women, on the first evening when all four hundred feminists were assembled in the auditorium, twenty women wearing T-shirts that read "Lavender Menace" came to the front of the room and faced the audience. One of the women then read their group's paper " The Woman-Identified Woman", which was the first major lesbian feminist statement. The group, who later named themselves "Radicalesbians", were among the first to challenge the heterosexism of heterosexual feminists and to describe lesbian experience in positive terms.

In 1971, NOW passed a resolution declaring "that a woman's right to her own person includes the right to define and express her own sexuality and to choose her own lifestyle", as well as a conference resolution stating that forcing lesbian mothers to stay in marriages or to live a secret existence in an effort to keep their children was unjust. That year, NOW also committed to offering legal and moral support in a test case involving child custody rights of lesbian mothers. In 1973, the NOW Task Force on Sexuality and Lesbianism was established. Del Martin was the first open lesbian elected to NOW, and Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were the first lesbian couple to join NOW.

Anti-discrimination

NOW also helped women get equal access to public places. For example, the Oak Room held men-only lunches on weekdays until 1969, when Friedan and other members of NOW staged a protest. As well, women were not allowed in McSorley's Old Ale House's until August 10, 1970, after NOW attorneys Faith Seidenberg and Karen DeCrow filed a discrimination case against the bar in District Court and won. The two entered McSorley's in 1969 and were refused service, which was the basis for their lawsuit for discrimination. The case decision made the front page of The New York Times on June 26, 1970. The suit, Seidenberg v. McSorleys' Old Ale House (1970, United States District Court, S. D. New York), established that, as a public place, the bar could not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The bar was then forced to admit women, but it did so "kicking and screaming". With the ruling allowing women to be served, the bathroom became unisex. But it was not until sixteen years later that a ladies room was installed.

Carole De Saram, who joined NOW in 1970 and was later president of the New York chapter, led a demonstration in 1972 to protest discriminatory banking policies. She encouraged women to withdraw savings from a Citibank branch in protest of their practices, causing a branch to close. NOW led numerous similar protests, and in 1974, their actions led directly to the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

Advocacy of the Equal Rights Amendment was also an important issue to NOW. The amendment had three primary objectives, which were:

Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Efforts were proven successful when Congress passed the amendment in 1972. However, simply passing the amendment in the two houses of Congress did not mean the work was finished. NOW had to direct the efforts of getting the amendment ratified in at least three-fourths of the states (38 out of the 50 states).

In response to opposing states denying the ratification of the amendment, NOW encouraged members to participate in marches and economic boycotts. "Dozens of organizations supported the ERA and the boycott, including the League of Women Voters, the YWCA of the U.S., the Unitarian Universalist Association, the United Auto Workers (UAW), the National Education Association (NEA), and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)."

As strong as the support was, it was to no avail to the opposition from various groups. These groups included select religious collectives, business and insurance interests, and most visibly was the STOP-ERA campaign led by antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly argued on the premise that creating equality in the work force or anywhere else would hinder the laws that are instilled for the mere protection of these women. The safety of women was a higher priority than ensuring there is equality in financial and social scenarios. The predicament over the Equal Rights Amendment was not a fight between men and women who abhor men, but rather two groups of women advocating different perspectives on the nature of their lives. The rivalry was sparked in speeches, such as that of Schlafly who began her dialogue by thanking her husband for allowing her to participate in such an activity.

Even though the efforts did not prove to be enough to have the amendment ratified, the organization remains active in lobbying legislatures and media outlets on feminist issues.

Abortion being an individual woman's choice has come into the forefront since the Supreme Court case of in 1973. The decision of the court was that it ultimately was the woman's choice in reproduction. However, according to the National Organization for Women, decisions following the 1973 landmark case had substantially limited this right, which culminated in their response to encourage the Freedom of Choice Act. The controversy over the landmark case ruling was initiated in the two cases, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and Gonzales v. Carhart. These two cases consequently banned abortion methods after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and Gonzales v. Carhart both dealt with the question of whether the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was unconstitutional for violating the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment expressed in the Roe v. Wade case. This act ultimately meant that the concept of partial-birth abortion as defined in the Act as any abortion in which the death of the fetus occurs when "the entire fetal head [...] or [...] any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother" is banned. The Supreme Court ultimately decided 5-4 that it was not unconstitutional and did not hinder a woman's right to an abortion.

National Organization for Women claimed it was a disregard to a basic principle stemming from Roe v. Wade, which was to only have legislative restriction on abortion be justified with the intention of protecting women's health. Hence, the support for the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which primary purpose was to safeguard a woman's access to abortions even if the Roe v. Wade ruling is further disregarded. As of 2013, there are seven states that have made the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) state law. FOCA will consequently supersede any other law prohibiting abortion in those seven states. They are: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, Wisconsin, Maine, and Washington. In addition, Maryland, Nevada, and Washington were the only three states to adhere via ballot initiative.

Succeeding in the enactment of FOCA would ultimately mean fulfilment of three goals for the National Organization for Women. First, asserting a woman's reproductive right. Second, disseminate information to the public audience about threats posed in the two court cases mentioned above. Third, through the dissemination of information to the public, this in return would mobilize efforts to support female rights in multiple areas that will be presented in the future.

Women's Strike for Equality

On August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment which granted women the right to vote, NOW officially sponsored the Women's Strike for Equality, a nationwide demonstration for women's rights. Approximately 10,000 women took to the streets of New York City's Fifth Avenue for the strike and about 50,000 participants, mostly women, in total all throughout the country. Time described the event as "easily the largest women's rights rally since the suffrage protests". The organizers of the strike approved three main goals: free abortion care, 24/7 childcare centers, and equal opportunity in jobs and education. Other goals included passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, political representation, and no forced sterilization. Public reaction and media coverage were mixed. Many spectators called the demonstrators anti-feminine, "ridiculous exhibitionists," "a band of wild lesbians", or Communists, but the event was generally uninterrupted. The strike was a major success. Weeks after the event, NOW's membership rose by 50 percent, and a CBS News poll found that four out of five people had heard or read about women's liberation.

NOW supports the Equal Rights Amendment and works to give women explicit protections in the United States Constitution.

NOW advocates for economic justice.

NOW supports safe and legal abortion, affordable birth control and other contraception, and reproductive health education.

NOW works to end violence against women.

NOW has been involved in the civil rights struggle since the 1966 and advocates for equal opportunities for women of color in all areas of society, such as employment, education & health care.

LGBTQIA+ rights

NOW supports LGBTQIA+ rights as one of its core issues. NOW president Terry O'Neill has said the struggle against transphobia is a feminist issue. NOW has affirmed that "trans women are women, trans girls are girls." In a further statement NOW said that "trans women are women. They deserve equal opportunity, health care, a safe community & workplace, and they deserve to play sports. They have a right to have their identity respected without conforming to perceived sex and gender identity standards. We stand with you." NOW has said that "'debate' about trans girls and women in school sports spreads transphobia and bigotry through the false lens of 'fairness'" that amounts to a hate campaign.

Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray wrote the organization's Statement of Purpose in 1966. The statement described the purpose of NOW as "To take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men." The six core issues that NOW addresses are abortion and reproductive health services access, violence against women, constitutional equality, promoting diversity/ending racism, lesbian rights, and economic justice, with these issues having various sub-issues. The organization goes about creating these changes through laborious lobbying, rallies, marches, and conferences. NOW focuses on a variety of issues deploying multiple strategies, causing it to be an organization in which a comprehensive goal is envisaged and performed.

Priorities mentioned above were pursued to ultimately secure constitutional amendments guaranteeing these rights. Even though discrimination on the basis of sex was illegal, the federal government was not taking an active role in enforcing the constitutional amendments and the new policies. NOW sought to apply pressure to employers, local governments, and the federal government to uphold anti-discrimination policies. Through litigation, political pressure, and physical marches, NOW members held an authoritative stance leading to recognition in court cases, such as NOW v. Scheidler and Weeks v. Southern Bell.

NOW v. Scheidler revolved around the issue of racketeering to gain support for anti-abortion groups. NOW was suing the groups for utilization of violence and the threat of violence for garnering support. The violence varied from physical barriers into entrances of abortion clinic to arson and bombings of those clinics. The plaintiff accused the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN) of unethically seizing the right of women to make decisions about their own bodies and argued that this right needed to be defended. The case was a success in terms of the class action suit "brought against terrorists by those they had terrorized".

However the case was dismissed based on the mere definition of racketeering because racketeering must have an economic inclination, and there was no evidence to prove PLAN had this financial intention. This does not mean it was not a significant case. It brought light and recognition to National Organization for Women and its goals. If anything, it galvanized the organization to strengthen its tactics.

Weeks v. Southern Bell had the same effect, but this is an example where those galvanized efforts proved beneficial. This concerned discriminatory practices against women in the workplace. Lorena Weeks, employee of Southern Bell, claimed she was being discriminated against via exclusion to higher paying positions within the company. Sylvia Roberts acted as her attorney, supporting Week's grievances with the accusation of the company's violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII is enabled to "protect individuals against employment discrimination on the bases of race and color, as well as national origin, sex, and religion". With this premise, Weeks, with the aid of Sylvia Roberts, succeeded in 1969 after making an appeal. The trial not only served as the triumph of National Organization for Women, but brought to life legislation made to the intentions of organizations, such as NOW.

NOW published a national newsletter, Do It NOW, beginning in 1970, edited by Muriel Fox. From 1977, the journal has been known as the National NOW Times ( ISSN 0149-4740).

The following women have led the National Organization for Women:

1. Betty Friedan (1966-1970)

2. Aileen Hernandez (1970-1971)

3. Wilma Scott Heide (1971-1974)

4. Karen DeCrow (1974-1977)

5. Eleanor Smeal (1977-1982)

6. Judy Goldsmith (1982-1985)

7. Eleanor Smeal (1985-1987)

8. Molly Yard (1987-1991)

9. Patricia Ireland (1991-2001)

10. Kim Gandy (2001-2009)

11. Terry O'Neill (2009-2017)

12. Toni Van Pelt (2017-2020)

13. Christian Nunes (2020-present)

NOW has been criticized by various anti-abortion, conservative, and fathers' rights groups. During the 1990s, NOW was criticized[who? ] for having a double standard when it refused to support Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against former Democratic President Bill Clinton, while calling for the resignation of Republican politician Bob Packwood, who was accused of similar assault by 10 women. The Jones suit was later dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, ruling that Mrs. Jones' allegations, even if true, would not qualify as a case of sexual harassment. Jones appealed but later dropped her suit after reaching a settlement out of court for $850,000. Judge Webber Wright later held President Clinton in contempt of court for giving "intentionally false" testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in the Paula Jones lawsuit, marking the first time that a sitting president has been sanctioned for disobeying a court order.

NOW is regarded as one of the main liberal feminist organizations in the US, and primarily lobbies for gender equality within the existing political system. NOW has been criticized for not supporting anti-abortion feminists. Some members, such as LA NOW chapter president Tammy Bruce left NOW, saying they oppose putting liberal and partisan policy positions above equality for all women. Tammy Bruce has attacked NOW for not doing enough to advocate for international women's rights, but instead attacking the George W. Bush White House for their conservative positions. Accusations of putting politics above feminism began in 1982, the year the ERA was defeated, when NOW, under President Judy Goldsmith, fiercely opposed Reaganomics and endorsed the Democratic opponent of Republican feminist Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick due to Fenwick's support of Ronald Reagan's economic agenda.

Additionally, Deborah Watkins, who was once the President of the Dallas Chapter of NOW, left NOW in 2003 to found, in the same year, the Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter of the National Coalition for Men, stating she grew tired of what she considered "hypocrisy" and "male bashing" at NOW.

NOW was criticised by Fox News' Megyn Kelly in 2014 for by putting Little Sisters of the Poor on their 'Dirty 100" list'.

A Guide to the San Antonio Chapter of the National Organization for Women Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries (UTSA Libraries) Special Collections.

Additional Records of the National Organization for Women, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Elaine Latourell Papers. 1970-1977. 8.42 cubic feet (9 boxes). At the Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. Contains records from Latourell's service as a leader of the National Organization for Women between 1970 and 1980.

Inventory of the Texas Chapter of the National Organization for Women Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries (UTSA Libraries) Special Collections.

National Organization for Women (NOW), San Diego Chapter Records, 1964-1984, San Diego State University Special Collections.

National Organization for Women, San Jose/South Bay Chapter Records, San Jose State University Special Collections.

National Organization for Women. Springfield (Mass.) Chapter, at Smith College.

Records, 1959-2002 (inclusive), 1966-1998 (bulk). Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

National Organization for Women, Maryland Chapter records at the University of Maryland libraries

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National Organization for Women - Wikipedia

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The National Organization for Women ( NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It is the largest feminist organization in the United States with around 500,000 members.

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1967 – The National Organization for Women was formally incorporated. Membership was up to 1035 (US).

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1967 – The National Organization for Women was formally incorporated. Membership was up to 1035 (US).

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founded by a group of activists who wanted to end sex discrimination

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/06/30/day-history-national-organization-women-was-founded

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October 29, 1966: The National Organization for Women’s Statement of Purpose Was Adopted

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The statement expressed the organization’s main goals in addressing and fighting the unequal treatment of women in society.

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1967 – Aboriginal women recognized as citizens due to referendum (AUS)

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1967 – Aboriginal women recognized as citizens due to referendum (AUS)

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The referendum changed the status of Aboriginal Women in Australia, officially making them citizens

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2017/May/The_1967_Referendum

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Saturday 27th of May marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum in which Australians voted overwhelmingly to amend the Constitution to allow the Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people and include them in the Census of Population and Housing conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, commencing with the 1971 Census.

The referendum put the following question to the Australian people:
Do you approve the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled 'An Act to alter the Constitution so as to omit certain words relating to the people of the Aboriginal race in any state and so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the population'?
The proposed law (Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) 1967) sought to give the Commonwealth Parliament power to make laws with respect to Aboriginal people wherever they lived in Australia. It also sought to make it possible to fully include Aboriginal people in the national five-yearly census. The amendment deleted part of section 51 (xxvi) of the Constitution and repealed section 127.

Turnout for the referendum was almost 94 per cent, and the result was a strong 'Yes' vote, with a significant majority in all six states and an overall majority of almost 91 per cent. The results of the referendum vote are set out below:

The referendum also put a separate question on a proposed law seeking to remove the connection in the Constitution between the number of members of the House of Representatives and the number of senators; this question was not carried. The estimated cost of the referendum was $1,041,000 (approx. $12.9m in 2016 prices).
Background
The reasons for the previous and explicit exclusion of Aboriginal people by sections 51 (xxvi) and 127 of the Constitution are not entirely clear. However, the effect of this exclusion was the implementation by the states of policies that could broadly be termed 'assimilationist', and laws that resulted in Aboriginal peoples' dispossession, oppression and alienation.

Following longstanding calls for greater Commonwealth involvement in Indigenous affairs, in the 1960s the pressure for change built rapidly. In the face of evidence that assimilationist policies had failed, and with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal activists drawing attention to the denial of civil rights and discrimination that these policies entailed, the plight of Aboriginal people became a significant political issue. Activists ran petition campaigns to amend the Constitution in support of Indigenous civil rights, and bills seeking to amend the Constitution in favour of Aboriginal people were debated in the Federal Parliament.

In 1967, in response to a Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) petition calling for a referendum on sections 51 and 127 of the Constitution, the Holt Coalition Government introduced the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) Bill 1967 to the Parliament. The legislation was passed unanimously.

Because no parliamentarian had voted against the proposals relating to Aborigines, the Government only prepared a 'Yes' case for the referendum. The campaign for a 'Yes' vote gained widespread support among the Australian public and this was reflected in the final vote.
Impact
The significance of the 1967 Referendum has been somewhat obscured by a number of myths. These include the misconceptions that the Referendum granted Aboriginal people citizenship, the right to vote, wage equality and access to social security, among other things.

In terms of its practical significance, perhaps the main achievement of the Referendum was to raise the expectations of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people regarding Aboriginal rights and welfare.

The Referendum also had a great deal of symbolic significance. As John Gardiner-Garden has observed, the event 'has come to act as a form of historical shorthand for a decade of change which began in the early 1960s and ended in the early 1970s'. The Referendum signalled a general shift in the way that Australian governments approached Indigenous issues, away from assimilationist policies towards policies based around self-determination, reconciliation and, more recently, 'closing the gap'.
Further reading
J Gardiner-Garden, The origin of Commonwealth involvement in Indigenous Affairs and the 1967 Referendum, Background paper, 11, 1996-97, Parliamentary Library, Canberra, 1997.

J Gardiner-Garden, The 1967 Referendum-history and myths, Research brief, 11, 2006-07, Parliamentary Library, Canberra, 2007.

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), ' The referendum Australia had to have ', AIATSIS website.

National Museum Australia, ' The Referendum, 1957-67 ', Collaborating for Indigenous Rights 1957-1973 website.

Parliamentary Library, Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia, 44th Parliament, Parliamentary Library, Canberra, 2014.

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Saturday 27th of May marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum in which Australians voted overwhelmingly to amend the Constitution to allow the Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people and include them in the Census of Population and Housing conducted by the Austra

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1968 – A group of 400 feminists protested the Miss America Pageant, drawing global media attention. However, contrary to popular myth, no bras were actually burned (US).

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1968 – A group of 400 feminists protested the Miss America Pageant, drawing global media attention. However, contrary to popular myth, no bras were actually burned (US).

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Women organized the first protest against Miss America, they were responding not only to the pageant and its antiquated, misogynistic attitudes toward women and beauty

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fifty-years-ago-protestors-took-on-miss-america-pageant-electrified-feminist-movement-180967504/

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Miss America pageant is under new leadership after a sexist email scandal. But the pageant has a long history of controversy-including the 1968 protests

By Roxane Gay, illustration by Johanna Goodman

Smithsonian Magazine |

The Miss America pageant has never been a progressive event, but in 1968, it sparked a feminist revolution. As women organized the first protest against Miss America, they were responding not only to the pageant and its antiquated, misogynistic attitudes toward women and beauty, but also to how the United States, as a whole, treated women.

The 1968 uprising was conceived by a radical feminist named Carol Hanisch, who popularized the phrase, "The personal is political." Disrupting the beauty contest, she thought, in the summer of that year, "just might be the way to bring the fledgling Women's Liberation Movement into the public arena."

Like so many things, the Miss America pageant began as a marketing scheme. Held in Atlantic City just after Labor Day, it started in 1921 as a way for newspapers to increase their circulation and for the resort's businesses to extend their profitable summer season. Newspapers across the country held contests judging photographs of young women, and the winners came to Atlantic City for a competition where they were evaluated on "personality and social graces." There was no equivocating. Women's beauty-white women's beauty-was a tool.

Since its inception, the pageant has evolved in some ways and not so much in others. The talent competition was introduced in 1938 so that perhaps the young women could be judged on more than just their appearance, but with that small bit of progress came regression. That same year, the pageant chose to limit eligibility to single, never-married women between the ages of 18 and 28. The kind of beauty the pageant wanted to reward was very specific and very narrow-that of the demure, slender-but-not-too-thin woman, the girl next door with a bright white smile, a flirtatious but not overly coquettish manner, smart but not too smart, certainly heterosexual. There was even a "Rule 7," abandoned in 1940, that stated that Miss America contestants had to be "of good health and of the white race." The winner spent the year doing community service, but also peddling sponsors' products and, later, entertaining U.S. troops.

To Hanisch and the other protest organizers, the pageant was an obvious target. On August 22, the New York Radical Women issued a press release inviting "women of every political persuasion" to the Atlantic City boardwalk on September 7, the day of the contest. They would "protest the image of Miss America, an image that oppresses women in every area in which it purports to represent us." The protest would feature a "freedom trash can" into which women could throw away all the physical manifestations of women's oppression, such as "bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, and representative issues of Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, Family Circle, etc. " The organizers also proposed a concurrent boycott of companies whose products were used in or sponsored the pageant. Male reporters would not be allowed to interview protesters, which remains one of the loveliest details of the protest.

The organizers also issued a document offering ten reasons why they were protesting, with detailed explanations-a womanifesto, if you will. One contention was "the degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol." Another was racism, since a woman of color had never won-and there had never been a black contestant. "Nor has there ever been a true Miss America-an American Indian," they wrote. They also protested the military-industrial complex and the role of Miss America as a "death mascot" in entertaining the troops. They pointed to the consumeristic nature of corporate sponsorship of the pageant and the valuing of beauty as a measure of a woman's worth. They lamented that with the crowning of every new Miss America, the previous winner was forced into pop culture obsolescence. They rejected the double standard that contestants were forced to be "both sexy and wholesome, delicate but able to cope, demure yet titillatingly bitchy." The pageant represented the elevation of mediocrity-American women were encouraged to be "unoffensive, bland, apolitical"-and instilled this impoverished ambition in young girls. "NO MORE MISS AMERICA," the womanifesto proclaimed.

The organizers obtained a permit, detailing their plans for the protest, including barring men from participating, and on the afternoon of September 7, a few hundred women marched on the Atlantic City boardwalk, just outside the convention center where the pageant took place. Protesters held signs with such statements as "All Women Are Beautiful," "Cattle parades are demeaning to human beings," "Don't be a play boy accessory," "Can make-up hide the wounds of our oppression?"

The protesters adopted guerrilla theater tactics, too. One woman performed a skit, holding her child and pots and pans, mopping the boardwalk to exemplify how a woman's work is never done. A prominent black feminist activist and lawyer, Florynce Kennedy, who went by Flo, chained herself to a puppet of Miss America "to highlight the ways women were enslaved by beauty standards." Robin Morgan, also a protest organizer, later quoted Kennedy as comparing that summer's violent protests at the Democratic National Convention to throwing a brick through a window. "The Atlantic City action," Kennedy continued, "is comparable to peeing on an expensive rug at a polite cocktail party. The Man never expects the second kind of protest, and very often that's the one that really gets him uptight."

The freedom trash can was a prominent feature, and the commentary about its role in the protest gave rise to one of the great misrepresentations of women's liberation-the myth of ceremonial bra-burning. It was a compelling image: angry, unshaven feminists, their breasts free from constraint, setting fire to their bras as they dared to demand their own liberation.

But it never actually happened. In fact, officials asked the women not to set the can on fire because the wooden boardwalk was quite flammable. The myth can be traced back to the New York Post reporter Lindsy Van Gelder, who, in a piece before the protest, suggested protesters would burn bras, a nod to the burning of draft cards. After other Post writers reported the idea as fact, syndicated humor columnist Art Buchwald spread the myth nationwide. "The final and most tragic part of the protest," he wrote, "took place when several of the women publicly burned their brassieres." He continued to revel in his misogyny, writing, "If the average American female gave up all her beauty products she would look like Tiny Tim and there would be no reason for the American male to have anything to do with her at all." In a handful of sentences, Buchwald neatly illustrated the urgent need for the protest.

During the actual pageant that evening, some of the protesters, including Carol Hanisch, sneaked into Boardwalk Hall and unfurled a banner reading, "Women's Liberation," while shouting, "Women's Liberation!" and "No More Miss America!" Their action gave the burgeoning movement an invaluable amount of exposure during the live broadcast.

At midnight on September 8, a few blocks away at the Atlantic City Ritz-Carlton, the inaugural Miss Black America competition was held. If the Miss America pageant wouldn't accommodate black women and black beauty, black folk decided they would create their own pageant. After his daughters expressed their desire to become Miss America, the Philadelphia entrepreneur J. Morris Anderson created Miss Black America so his children's ambitions would not be thwarted by American racism. The 1968 winner, Saundra Williams, reveled in her win. "Miss America does not represent us because there has never been a black girl in the pageant," she said afterward. "With my title, I can show black women that they too are beautiful." In 1971, Oprah Winfrey participated in Miss Black America as Miss Tennessee. The pageant, which continues today, is the oldest pageant in the country for women of color.

While the 1968 protests may not have done much to change the nature of the Miss America pageant, they did introduce feminism into the mainstream consciousness and expand the national conversation about the rights and liberation of women. The first wave of feminism, which focused on suffrage, began in the late 19th century. Many historians now credit the '68 protest as the beginning of feminism's broader second wave.

As feminists are wont to do, the organizers were later relentless in critiquing their own efforts. In November 1968, Carol Hanisch wrote that "one of the biggest mistakes of the whole pageant was our anti-womanism...Miss America and all beautiful women came off as our enemy instead of our sisters who suffer with us."

History is cyclical. Women are still held to restrictive beauty standards. Certainly, the cultural definition of beauty has expanded over the years, but it has not been blown wide open. White women are still upheld as an ideal of beauty. In the Miss America competition, women are still forced to parade around in swimsuits and high heels. "The swimsuit competition is probably the most honest part of the competition because it really is about bodies; it is about looking at women as objects," Gloria Steinem said in the 2002 film Miss America.

History is cyclical. As we look back on these 1968 protests, we are in the midst of another significant cultural moment led by women. After the election and inauguration of President Trump, millions of women and their allies marched in the nation's capital and in cities around the world to reaffirm women's rights, and the rights of all marginalized people, as human rights. They marched for many of the same rights the 1968 protesters were seeking. A year later, we are in the midst of a further reckoning, as women come forward to share their stories of workplace sexual harassment and sexual violence. And, for the first time, men are facing real consequences for their predation. The connective tissue between 1968 and now is stronger than ever, vibrantly alive.

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Fifty Years Ago, Protesters Took on the Miss America Pageant and Electrified the Feminist Movement

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By Roxane Gay, illustration by Johanna Goodman Smithsonian Magazine | The Miss America pageant has never been a progressive event, but in 1968, it sparked a feminist revolution. As women organized the first protest against Miss America, they were responding not only to the pageant and its antiquated, misogynistic attitudes toward women and beauty, but also to how the United States, as a whole, treated women.

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1969 - No fault divorce was established as legally legitimate (US)

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1969 - No fault divorce was established as legally legitimate (US)

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No fault divorce meant that there was no need to show proof of wrongdoing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_divorce

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1969 – First abortion rights granted for some (AUS)

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1969 – First abortion rights granted for some (AUS)

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Legislation in 1969 legalised abortion when necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of the woman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Australia#:~:text=South%20Australia,-In%20South%20Australia&text=Legislation%20in%201969%20legalised%20abortion,be%20born%20with%20serious%20handicaps.

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1970 – NYC elected Bella Abzug, a leader in the feminist movement, to Congress (US).

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1970 – NYC elected Bella Abzug, a leader in the feminist movement, to Congress (US).

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She was part of a feminist movement was elected to the US congress

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bella-Abzug

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Bella Abzug, née Bella Savitsky, (born July 24, 1920, New York, N.Y., U.S.-died March 31, 1998, New York City), U.S. congresswoman (1971-77) and lawyer who founded several liberal political organizations for women and was a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War and a supporter of equal rights for women.

The daughter of Russian-Jewish émigrés, Bella Savitsky attended Hunter College (B.A., 1942) and Columbia University Law School, where she specialized in labour law and became editor of the Columbia Law Review. She earned her L.L.B. in 1947 and was admitted to the New York bar the same year. In 1945 she married Martin M. Abzug.

Over the next 23 years Abzug divided her time between the practice of law-focusing mainly on civil rights and labour law-and work on behalf of various causes, especially those of peace and disarmament. Among those defended by Abzug were individuals charged in Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist crusade. In 1961 Abzug founded Women Strike for Peace, and she chaired the organization from 1961 to 1970. In the late 1960s, as the growing involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War became a focus of public protest, she supported Senator Eugene McCarthy's challenge to Democratic incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Elected to the House of Representatives for New York City's 19th district in 1970, Abzug was a founder and chair of several of the country's first and foremost liberal political organizations for women. She supported the Equal Rights Amendment, a women's credit-rights bill, abortion rights, and child-care legislation. Her brash and flamboyant manner earned Abzug the nicknames "Battling Bella," "Hurricane Bella," and "Mother Courage," among others.

In 1971, with Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisholm, Abzug cofounded the National Women's Political Caucus, which aimed at increasing the participation of women in government. She was reelected to the House in 1972 and 1974 from the redrawn 20th district but relinquished the seat in 1976 to run for the Senate; she was defeated by Daniel P. Moynihan. The following year Abzug lost a primary election for mayor of New York City and in 1978 she lost a special election for a vacated congressional seat.

After playing a prominent role at the National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas, in November 1977, Abzug was named cochairman of the National Advisory Committee on Women by President Jimmy Carter. She was dismissed in January 1979 for openly criticizing the Carter administration.

Abzug returned to private law practice in 1980 but continued her political and public activities. She presided over Women USA, a grassroots political action organization, was a contributor to magazine, and worked as a daily news commentator for the Cable News Network. Gender Gap: Bella Abzug's Guide to Political Power for American Women (cowritten with Mim Kelber) appeared in 1984. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.

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Bella Abzug, née Bella Savitsky, (born July 24, 1920, New York, N.Y., U.S.-died March 31, 1998, New York City), U.S. congresswoman (1971-77) and lawyer who founded several liberal political organizations for women and was a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War and a supporter of equal rights for women.

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1970 - The Women's Strike for Equality March took place on Aug. 26, 1970 (US).

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1970 - The Women's Strike for Equality March took place on Aug. 26, 1970 (US).

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19th Amendment granted women the right to vote, 50,000 feminists paraded down New York City’s Fifth Avenue with linked arms, blocking the major thoroughfare during rush hour.

https://time.com/4008060/women-strike-equality-1970/

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1970 – Germaine Greer’s significant books The Female Eunuch was published (AUS and internationally)

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1970 – Germaine Greer’s significant books The Female Eunuch was published (AUS and internationally)

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Her book played an influential role in the feminist movement, it was sold out in 6 months.

https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/reading-australia/the-female-eunuch-by-germaine-greer

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When Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch was published in 1970, it created a sensation. Within six months, it had almost sold out its second print run and had been translated into eight languages. Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, the influence of which critics see in Greer's book, had come out in France in 1949. The Feminine Mystique, by American psychologist Betty Friedan, had been published in 1963 and was credited with sparking feminism's second wave. Sexual Politics, a radical literary critique of masculine portrayal of women by another American, Kate Millett, also came out in 1970.

The Female Eunuch, however, was unique. It was a mixture of scholarship, stream of consciousness, and fiery populist polemic, peppered with statistics and quotations from classic literature, fitfully footnoted and full of shocking language. Thin on theory, it was a passionate and frequently self-contradictory call to arms. Greer did not advocate equality with men, but liberty for all. She thought as little of women alienated by patriarchy as she did of the men who profited from it: even a little less, perhaps, because men's grip on ascendancy was at least self-serving. Indeed, some feminists criticised the book as misogynistic. Greer was seen as a child of privilege who admired men more than women, perhaps the legacy of her relationship with her own parents - an absent father, an abusive mother - who figure in frequent personal references in the book.

Many women, however, credited The Female Eunuch with giving them insight into their own lives that empowered and changed them forever. It described women's subjective experience of a world in which men's experience was set as the objective benchmark. It described women's bodies, not as objects of male voyeurism, but as they felt from the inside. That included subjects that 'nice' women did not mention, such as menstruation, hormonal changes, pregnancy, menopause, sexual arousal, and orgasm. She also drilled deep into the mythologies of romance and marriage and motherhood, and the way women were conditioned from infancy to serve men within those socially and legally sanctioned institutions. Sex roles were not biological, she maintained, but man-made, and made so cleverly that women came to believe they desired their own repression.

'Many women ... credited The Female Eunuch with giving them insight into their own lives that empowered and changed them forever'

In her foreword to the twenty-first anniversary edition, Greer acknowledged the changes that had occurred in women's lives in the intervening years, the 'many new breeds of women upon the earth', from female bodybuilders and marathon runners to female army officers to women who write unsparingly about their own sex lives. She wrote about the ubiquity of women's magazines talking frankly about sex, the widespread availability of contraception and a new recognition of geriatric sex. 'What more could women want?' she asked rhetorically, and replied: 'Freedom, that's what. Freedom from being the thing looked at rather than the person looking back. Freedom from self-consciousness.' Freedom from constraining clothes, from the duty to stimulate jaded male palates, and much more. Decades later, into the twenty-first century, the rise of slut culture and the pornification of women's fashions and behaviour, almost, it would seem, as a backlash against the second wave of feminism her book exemplified, is proving her right. Even formal structural change, such as equal rights legislation, has not guaranteed improvement. In 2015, the Australian Government announced that the gender pay gap had risen to 18.8 per cent, up from previous lows of fifteen per cent.

Greer was born in Melbourne in January 1939 and educated at the Star of the Sea convent school in the bayside suburb of Gardenvale. She earned her first degree in English and French at Melbourne University, her masters on the poet Byron at Sydney, and her PhD, on love and marriage in Shakespeare, at Cambridge. She pursued extracurricular interests: in Sydney, she was a member of the libertine Sydney Push; in Cambridge she joined the Footlights theatre group. She wrote for the notoriously satirical Sydney magazine Oz, and was a co-founder and editor of the Amsterdam-based pro-pornography paper, Suck. She was photographed naked for the cover of Oz, which annoyed some feminists. They may not have realised, however, that she had struck an agreement that the male editors should also pose nude, but they reneged: a comment on sexual double standards, even among radicals, in itself.

The Female Eunuch was published while Greer was a lecturer in English literature at Warwick University, where she is still emeritus professor in English Literature and Comparative Studies. It was her first book and catapulted her into celebrity. It is unorthodox in structure: divided into four parts, called Body, Soul, Love, and Hate, and each part divided into very specificsubsections such as Bones, Curves, and Hair, for example, in Body, and Altruism, Egotism, and Obsession in Love. On many of the pages, black-bordered boxes contain quotes spanning centuries of mostly masculine views of women, which form a kind of running slide show alongside her text. Some are beyond ghastly, such as Baudelaire's post-coital description of the 'gluey-sided leather bag of pus' beside him; a few are sympathetic, such as Engels's description of the modern family, based on 'the open or concealed slavery of the wife'.

In her introductory Summary, Greer flags her direction. The ambitions of the old suffragettes, who won women the vote and entry into professions in the earlier twentieth-century, were too limited, she suggests: 'The genteel middle-class ladies clamoured for reform, now ungenteel middle-class women are calling for liberation.' She also flags her Marxism. While the suffragettes had faith in the existing political system and merely demanded admittance to it, the New Left, the 'forcing house' of many political movements including second-wave feminism, demands much more: the coming of the classless society and the withering of the state. Not for her Betty Friedan's reformist National Organization for Women in the United States. Greer wants every woman to revolt. She expected the strongest criticism to come from 'my sisters of the left' she writes, 'because of my fantasy that it might be possible to leap the steps of revolution and arrive somehow at liberty and communism without strategy or revolutionary discipline. But if women are the true proletariat [an unattributed reference to Engels] the truly oppressed majority, the revolution can only be drawn nearer by their withdrawal of support for the capitalist system.' She is referring specifically to the withdrawal of (under)paid labour in industry, but also, tangentially, in the home.

'She thought as little of women alienated by patriarchy as she did of the men who profited from it: even a little less, perhaps, because men's grip on ascendancy was at least self-serving'

Greer begins The Female Eunuch with Body, she writes, in order to establish with certainty the degree of inferiority and natural dependence of women. She doesn't hark back to some fabled golden age, but spends chapters outlining the reality of women's lives that has always existed. Nor does she extol any notion of sisterhood: the women she describes are competitive with each other. In fact she finds little to laud in femininity at all, even while she is demanding the elevation of the feminine.

Few cultural figures escape her critique since they have built the terrain women must negotiate. While she praises Maslow for being able to see the feminine in his 'self-actualising' personalities, she hops into Freud for his whole castration construct. She provides a gloss on his explanation of 'woman': '(D)uring the necessary interval between maturity and mating, she expresses her sexuality in passive fantasies; only when impregnated is she completed, for the child signifies her lost genital and her achievement, the fantasies fade, the masochism-narcissism is replaced by energy in the protection and socialization of the child.' Greer continues: 'It is quite a neat description of an existing mechanism, and it has proved seductive even to female theorists, who did not dare to counterpoise their subjective experience against what seemed to be objective fact. Besides, it had a moral weight.'

And yet, Greer herself approaches Freudian terminology in her definition of the female 'eunuch' as a woman separated from her libido and from natural desire, fattened and made docile like a castrated animal, and deprived of any capacity for action. A key difference, of course, is that Freud thought he was describing essence, while Greer is describing social conditioning. This is why revolution, not reform, is required. Women have to cast off their conditioning in its entirety: the power imbalance of subordination to men, but also the internalised self-loathing that is assuaged and hidden by all the paraphernalia of patriarchal capitalism designed to enhance women's objectified beauty and emotional quiescence: make-up, distorting clothing, feminine hygiene products, inescapable imprisonment in stifling marriages, sexual competitiveness among themselves and - something she underlines repeatedly - increasing and increasingly unnecessary consumerism.

The gloves really come off in the final section, Hate. No one, neither men nor women, she makes the reader realise, is happy in the existing system. 'Women have very little idea how much men hate them,' is her startling first line. She writes of boys and girls in an average English industrial town: the boys scoring sexual favours wherever they can and despising the girls who give them what they want. 'They do not think more highly of the unavailable girls, for they find in such exclusivity only the desire to strike a harder bargain: these are the bitches, the others are the slags. A man is bound to end up with one or the other. Marriage is viewed with fatalism, soon you are sure to find yourself screwed permanently into the system, working in a dead-end job to keep a fading woman and her noisy children in inadequate accommodation in a dull town for the term of your natural life.'

What Greer imagines as possible is exploratory and rather wild. She throws open windows rather than seriously outlining possibilities: few of her suggestions are practicable or even significant. Perhaps women could live and raise their children together, somewhere pleasant like the rolling landscapes of Italy, with local people to tend house and garden. (She doesn't say whether those local people would be liberated too.) Women should taste their own menstrual blood, in order to overcome inculcated disgust for their own bodies: after all no-one thinks twice about sucking a bleeding lip or finger. As Linda Colley wrote in the London Review of Books in 1999: 'Properly and historically understood, Greer is not primarily a feminist. More than anything else, she should be viewed as a utopian.'

The Female Eunuch is of its time in substance and style: slogans like 'Right on!' are amusingly anachronistic now. Greer recommends cooperatives and cooperative actions but, ever the intellectual, she also sees hippies as 'limp'. Read as a document of its time, however, The Female Eunuch provides an illuminating benchmark. It is remarkable to realise how far women have come in the West in those scant forty-five years. But it is also remarkable to remember how unrealistically optimistic feminists were in the 1970s. They believed that wholesale change to the sexual organisation of Western society would come soon, and via women seizing political and economic power not merely by men ceding it. Greer could not have predicted the collapse of manufacturing in the West, which has lost many working-class women steady jobs; nor could she have foreseen the demise of unionism and the rise of zero-hours contract labour. And she certainly couldn't have predicted the recent turn in women's fashion - the ultra-high heels, the ultra-revealing clothing, the Brazilian waxes, the emaciation - which has weakened women physically and made them even more complicit in their own sexual objectification. Greer would have hoped her exposure of the truths about women's subjugation would have hastened its end.

Some of her ideas are still shocking today, for the wrong reasons. She blames domestic violence for example, on the women who suffer it and lets the men off easily: 'The degree of inebriation which is bitterly upbraided by women is so slight that it may be all but imperceptible. Much of the violence which drinking men wreak upon their women is provoked by their voiced or unvoiced reproaches.' She discusses frigidity as a punishing expression of resentment that wives mete out to husbands. And the worst part is the circle of emotional dysfunction it creates in men: they feel both bestial and grateful when they are grudgingly allowed sex. Hypochondria is another expression of resentment, 'often motivated by continual reproach and not organic at all'. In many places she seems to understand how men tick, but believes that few other women - ordinary women - do. She, by contrast, understands and even in places sympathises with masculinity and, as an extraordinary woman, can rise above its demands.

The Female Eunuch was written, in fact, by an extraordinary woman and it remains a landmark text. A seminal feminist work, it is also an important historical record of a period of dramatic social, political, and economic change.
References
Colley, Linda. 'Stubble and Breath', Cusk, Rachel. 'The Female Eunuch, 40 years on', Presser, Harriet B. 'Feminism and the Status of Women', London Review of Books, 15 July, 1999 The Guardian, 20 November, 2010.
Diamond, Arlyn. 'Elizabeth Janeway and Germaine Greer', The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 13, No. 1/2, Woman: An Issue (Winter-Spring, 1972).
Fogarty, Michael P. Review of
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan; Patriarchal Attitudes by Eva Figes; The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer; Sexual Politics by Kate Millet; Woman's Estate by Juliet Mitchell; Family Planning Perspectives Vol. 4, No. 2 (April, 1972). Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement by Robin Morgan; Voices from Women's Liberation by Leslie B. Tanner, International Review of Vol. 19, No. 1, The Education of Women (1973).Nowra, Louis. 'The Better Self? Germaine Greer and "The Female Eunuch"', The Monthly, March, 2010.

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miriam cosic writes about germaine greer's 'the female eunuch' for australian book review as part of the reading australia project

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Reading Australia: 'The Female Eunuch' by Germaine Greer

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When Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch was published in 1970, it created a sensation. Within six months, it had almost sold out its second print run and had been translated into eight languages. Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, the influence of which critics see in Greer's book, had come out in France in 1949.

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1971 – Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, providing a platform for feminist ideas to reach a wider audience (US).

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1971 – Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, providing a platform for feminist ideas to reach a wider audience (US).

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Few realized it would become the landmark institution in both women’s rights and American journalism that it is today.

https://msmagazine.com/about/

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Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded in 1971 by journalist and social/political activist Gloria Steinem. It was the first national American feminist magazine. The original editors were Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Mary Peacock, Margaret Sloan-Hunter, and Gloria Steinem. Beginning as a one-off insert in magazine in 1971, the first stand-alone issue of Ms. appeared in January 1972, with funding from New York editor Clay Felker. It was intended to appeal to a wide audience and featured articles about a variety of issues related to women and feminism. From July 1972 until 1987, it was published on a monthly basis. It now publishes quarterly.

At its peak in the 1970s, Ms. enjoyed great success but was not always able to reconcile its ideological concerns with commercial considerations. Since 2001, the magazine has been published by the Feminist Majority Foundation, based in Los Angeles and Arlington, Virginia.

The first cover of Ms. magazine

The first preview of Ms. magazine was published in December 1971 by magazine. The cover, illustrated by Miriam Wosk, depicts a pregnant version of the Hindu goddess Kali using eight arms to hold a clock, skillet, typewriter, rake, mirror, telephone, steering wheel, and an iron. 300,000 test copies of the magazine sold out in three days, and generated 26,000 subscription orders within the next few weeks. Steinem advocated for this cover as she liked the imagery of a woman juggling multiple facets of life, something that Ms. magazine would focus on. Additionally, the cover displays a Hindu goddess to convey messages of neutrality and female universality.

Ms. was viewed as a voice for women by women, a voice that had been hidden from and left out of mainstream media. The magazine's first publication as an independent issue included articles about women who had experience with abortions, promoting the removal of sexist wording from the English language, and literature focused on helping women realize they could stand up for themselves against social norms.

Co-founder Gloria Steinem explained the motivation for starting Ms. magazine, stating: "I realized as a journalist that there really was nothing for women to read that was controlled by women, and this caused me along with a number of other women to start Ms. magazine." Steinem wanted a publication that would address issues that modern women cared about instead of just domestic topics such as fashion and housekeeping. Steinem originally wanted Ms. to be a newsletter but was convinced to make it into a magazine by her peers. Patricia Carbine thought a magazine was better because of the money from advertisers and that it could reach their audience with its portable, visually pleasing, easy format. The creators of Ms. expected there to be significant participation of the general public as well as readers. For example, the first issue published in 1972 included a feature titled "We have had abortions", a list of famous women acknowledging that they have gone through this particular medical operation. The feature had a coupon for readers to include their own names as part of this list. In addition, readers frequently interacted with the magazine through sending in letters to the editors about the personal importance of Ms. magazine.

As to the origin of the name chosen for the magazine, she has stated: "We were going to call it Sojourner, after Sojourner Truth, but that was perceived as a travel magazine. Then we were going to call it Sisters, but that was seen as a religious magazine. We settled on Ms. because it was symbolic, and also, it was short, which is good for a logo." "Lilith" and "Bimbo" were considered titles for the magazine as well. At this time, Ms., an alternative to Miss or Mrs. that neutralized a women's marital status, was not well known or defined by the media. "Ms." was being promoted by Sheila Michaels. In particular, when Michaels suggested the use of Ms. in 1969, in a lull during a WBAI-radio interview with The Feminists group, a friend of Steinem heard the interview and suggested it as a title for her new magazine.

Gloria Steinem placed Wonder Woman, in costume, on the cover of the first independently published issue of Ms. v1 #1, July 1972 ( Warner Communications, DC Comics' owner, was an investor), which also contained an appreciative essay about the character. Steinem was offended that the world's most famous female superhero had had her powers removed in the most recently published comics. The progressive author Samuel R. Delany wrote two issues of the Wonder Woman comic book in 1972, during this controversial period in the publication's history when the lead character abandoned her superpowers and became a secret agent. Delany was initially supposed to write a six-issue story arc that would culminate in a battle over an abortion clinic, but the story arc was canceled after Steinem led a lobbying effort protesting the removal of Wonder Woman's powers, a change predating Delany's involvement. Scholar Ann Matsuuchi concluded that Steinem's feedback was "conveniently used as an excuse" by DC management. Wonder Woman's powers and traditional costume were restored in issue #204 (January-February 1973).

Joanne Edgar wrote the cover story for the 1972 issue with Wonder Woman. She described her personal relationship with comic books and applied issues women were facing such as power dynamics and gender discrimination at the work place to the character.

Ms. featured Wonder Woman on the cover of their magazine in 1972 with the title "Wonder Woman For President". Steinem wanted to lobby DC comics to display Wonder Woman as a feminist hero because she felt that new images of Wonder Woman in the 1960s objectified her. By including Wonder Woman on the cover of Ms., Steinem was able to encourage Dick Giordano to reinstate Wonder Woman's truth lasso, bracelets, and her origin story.

The Ms. cover wanted to embrace the traits of compassion that Wonder Woman had as well as her belief in justice. Tim Hanley, a comic historian, commented on how the Ms. cover, emphasized unity and "sisterhood". While some women were in support of Wonder Woman being an icon of second-wave feminism, others critiqued Ms. for displaying a woman with "superhuman" or unachievable qualities. However, the Ms. editors were worried about featuring actual female public figures on their covers early on due to their worry of tokenizing them as the symbol of the feminist movement.

Jill Lepore reflected on Ms. magazine's cover with Wonder Woman by calling it the connection between first-wave feminism and second-wave feminism. Wonder Woman was inspired by the efforts of the women's suffrage movement and by the work of women in the Great Depression.

"The Housewife's Moment of Truth", the first cover story for Ms. magazine, was written by Jane O'Reilly. O'Reilly's article spoke for feminist strength and the opposition against the repression of wives in society and the home. The article also helped introduce the idea of "click!", or the realization a woman acquires when she realizes the demands being pushed upon her to act, work and behave in a certain way can be fought against.

In 1972, Ms. published the names of 53 women who admitted to having had abortions when the procedure was illegal in most states of the country. The Ms. petition included a tear-out section for women to remove, sign and send back to the magazine. The tear-out section stated:

The attitudes and laws against abortion in this country are causing untold suffering. Approximately one million American women had "illegal" abortions in 1971 - many of them self-induced or performed by the unqualified, some of them fatal. I have had an abortion. I publicly join millions of other American women in demanding a repeal of all laws that restrict our reproductive freedom.

Signatories included Billie Jean King, Judy Collins, Anaïs Nin, Gloria Steinem, Susan Sontag, and Nora Ephron. The petition drew on evidence that around 25% of American women had chosen to have an abortion, despite its variable legal status. Called the American Women's Petition, the Ms. petition was inspired by the Manifesto of the 343 that had been published the previous year in which 343 French women publicly declared that they had had an abortion, which was also illegal in France at the time. In 1973, the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States would legalize abortion throughout the country.

The petition was the inspiration for a similar campaign by Ms. in 2006, as well as an amicus brief signed by more than 100 American lawyers in support of overturning the abortion regulations at issue in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt.

The January 1973 edition featured Shirley Chisholm and Sissy Farenthold on the cover with the title: "The Ticket That Might Have Been."

From 1974 to 1977, Ms. collaborated with public broadcasting and, with the help of a grant from the Corporation for Public Funding, produced the television series Woman Alive!. The show was formatted to reflect the magazine, and consisted of short documentaries made by independent women filmmakers, interviews, and entertainment segments.

A 1976 cover story on battered women made Ms. the first national magazine to address the issue of domestic violence. The cover photo featured a woman with a bruised face.

From 1972 until 1988, Suzanne Braun Levine served as editor of Ms.

In conjunction with other efforts towards feminist language reform, Ms. challenged the common holiday phrase "Peace on earth, good will to men" by changing the salutation to "Peace on earth, good will to people." In its earliest years, the magazine's December cover proclaimed this altered holiday message in bold, colorful designs by Brazilian designer Bea Feitler, as well as in editorial addresses from Steinem.

Over its long history, the magazine has featured articles written by and about many women and men at the forefront of business, politics, activism, and journalism. The magazine's investigative journalism broke several landmark stories on topics including overseas sweatshops, sex trafficking, the wage gap, the glass ceiling, date rape, and domestic violence.

The type of feminist that Ms. attracted is most often labeled as a "cultural" feminist, those interested in changing the deep rooted gender norms within American culture. Ms. magazine editors represented this background as they did not identify as women in politics or political feminists; rather, they were activists, writers, and graduates of all women's colleges. Though the editors represented a small fraction of feminists in the 1970s, Ms. strove to represent the term "female universality", a phrase that encompassed representation of all women no matter their socio-economic status, race, religion, or political beliefs.

In 1987, Ms. was bought by Fairfax, an Australian media company, which appointed the head of its US arm, Sandra Yates, to oversee the magazine's editorial and financial turnaround. In 1989, concerned about a perceived "Cher cover"-centered editorial direction under Anne Summers, American Feminists bought it back and began publishing the magazine without ads.

Robin Morgan and Marcia Ann Gillespie served respective terms as Editors in Chief of the magazine. Gillespie was the first African-American woman to lead Ms. For a period, the magazine was published by MacDonald Communications Corp., which also published Working Woman and Working Mother magazines. Known since its inception for unique feminist analysis of current events, Ms. magazine's 1991 change to an ad-free format also made it known for exposing the control that many advertisers assert over content in women's magazines.

In 1998, Gloria Steinem, Marcia Ann Gillespie and a group of female investors created Liberty Media (not the cable/satellite conglomerate of the same name) and brought the magazine under independent ownership. It remained ad-free and won several awards, including an Utne award for social commentary. With Liberty Media facing bankruptcy in November 2001, the Feminist Majority Foundation purchased the magazine, dismissed the staff, and moved the editorial headquarters from New York to Los Angeles. Formerly bimonthly, the magazine has since published quarterly.

In 2005, under editor-in-chief Elaine Lafferty, Ms. was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Martha Mendoza's article "Between a Woman and Her Doctor". Despite this success, Lafferty left the magazine after only two years following various disagreements including the editorial direction on a cover story on Desperate Housewives, and a perceived generation gap towards third-wave feminists and grunge.

Another "We Had Abortions" petition appeared in the October 2006 issue as part of the issue's cover story. This time, the petition contained signatures of more than 5,000 women declaring that they had had an abortion and were "unashamed of (the) decision", including actresses Amy Brenneman and Kathy Najimy, comedian Carol Leifer, and Steinem herself.

In 2017, Ms. celebrated its 45th anniversary of publication. In honor of this event, Ms. made a reference to their very first issue in 1972 that featured Wonder Woman on the cover. This choice was based on Wonder Woman's belief in "sisterhood and equality", something Ms. states is a "driving value" for feminist beliefs not only when the magazine first began, but in today's society.

Ms. magazine and women of color

Steinem, herself, was inspired by many women of color throughout her career in activism. Most notably, Steinem worked with Flo Kennedy and Shirley Chisholm for advocating for women's rights. Steinem founded Ms. magazine with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, who was involved in child-welfare activism as well as the Civil Rights Movement. In 1973, Ms. featured a cover of Shirley Chisholm titled as "The Ticket That Might Have Been...". At the same time, Ms. magazine was also criticized for the lack of diversity displayed in its content, especially towards the end of their era of influence in the late 1980s. In 1986, author Alice Walker, a contributor to Ms., resigned, citing the lack of diversity on the magazine's covers and its limited features of women of color. Walker had previously written an article in 1975 titled "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston", which was credited to have created new interests in Black female writers. The editors of Ms. admit, as they reflect back on their influence in the 1970s, that their publications were perceived as "elitist" at times due to their staff but the content was always meant to be inclusive. In 1975, Ms. magazine had a cover of Pam Grier and in 1979 they had Michelle Wallace on the cover. Though Ms. did feature covers of Black women, magazines such as created during a similar time period focused more on Black female empowerment. There has been no association found between Black feminist media organizations such as the Kitchen Table Press and the Combahee River Collective with Ms.

From 1993 to 2001, during Marcia Ann Gillespie's tenure, the voices and perspectives of women of color and inclusion of diverse feminists and opinions dramatically increased.

As of 2020, Ms. magazine has features and columns that highlight the work of Black women. For example, Janell Hobson, a Ms. Scholar, works on the Black Feminist in Public series highlighting intersectionality in the media.

Ms. and Indigenous women

Steinem was greatly influenced by the activism of Wilma Mankiller, a member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. Mankiller joined the board of Ms. Foundation for Women in 1973 and was awarded the title of Woman of Year by Ms. in 1987. Steinem and Mankiller were friends, advisors, and colleagues. Mankiller focused on indigenous women's rights and collaborated with Steinem on this issue as well. The magazine's coverage of issues affecting the indigenous community has increased over the last couple of years. For example, Ms. covered the passage of legislation to protect indigenous women such as the Savannah Act and the Not Invisible Act.

On January 10, 2008, the American Jewish Congress released an official statement which was critical of Ms. magazine's refusal to accept from them a full-page advertisement honoring three prominent Israeli women: Dorit Beinisch (president of the Supreme Court of Israel), Tzipi Livni ( Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel), and Dalia Itzik (speaker of the Knesset).

The New York Jewish Week reported that a number of Jewish feminists, including Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance founder Blu Greenberg, were mostly disappointed with the decision by Ms. to reject the ad.

However, Katherine Spillar, executive editor of Ms., responded to these criticisms on the magazine's website, rejecting claims of anti-Israel bias. She argued that the proposed advertisement was inconsistent with the magazine's policy to accept only "mission-driven advertisements from primarily non-profit, non-partisan organizations", suggesting that the advertisement could have been perceived "as favoring certain political parties within Israel over other parties, but also with its slogan 'This is Israel', the ad implied that women in Israel hold equal positions of power with men". Spillar stated that the magazine had "covered the Israeli feminist movement and women leaders in Israel ... eleven times' in its last four years of issues".

Contributors have included:

Joy Picus, Los Angeles City Council member, 1977-93, a Ms. Woman of the Year in 1985

Yolanda Serrano, HIV/AIDS activist, a Ms. Woman of the Year in 1988

1. Mclellan, Dennis (July 2, 2008). "Clay Felker, 82; editor of New York magazine led New Journalism charge". Los Angeles Times.

2. Gloria: In Her Own Words (2011 documentary, directed by Peter Kunhardt)

3. ^ Farrell, Amy Erdman (2011). "From a Tarantula on a Banana Boat to a Canary in a Mine: "Ms. Magazine" as a Cautionary Tale in a Neoliberal Age". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 30 (2): 393-405. JSTOR 23349341.

4. ^ Bradley, Patricia (2004). Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975. University Press of Mississippi. p. 172.

5. ^ Arteaga, Meliss (2017-06-20). "Today in Feminist History: The New York Times Says "Ms."". Ms. Magazine.

6. McAvennie, Michael; Dolan, Hannah, eds. (2010). "1970s". DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle. Dorling Kindersley. p. 154. ISBN 978-0-7566-6742-9. After nearly five years of Diana Prince's non-powered super-heroics, writer-editor Robert Kanigher and artist Don Heck restored Wonder Woman's... well, wonder.

7. ^ Matsuuchi, Ann (2012-01-01). "Wonder Woman Wears Pants: Wonder Woman, Feminism and the 1972 'Women's Lib' Issue". Colloquy. 24: 118-142.

8. Woman Alive! Collection, 1974-1977: A Finding Aid. MC 421. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Accessed May 18, 2020.

9. ^ "Suzanne Braun Levine - The Clayman Institute for Gender Research". Archived from the original on 2013-10-04.

10. ^ Stevenson, Ana (2016-12-18). ""Peace on earth good will to people": Holiday reflections on Ms. Magazine". Australian Women's History Network.

11. ^ Sheelah Kolhatkar (April 14, 2005). "'Desperate Housewives' Causes Another Breakup". New York Observer.

12. Carroll, Rebecca (2018-12-10). "What I See: Gloria Steinem, Shoulder to Shoulder With Women of Color (Published 2018)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

13. ^ Ain, Stewart (January 16, 2008). "Feminist Moment Of Truth Ms. magazine's refusal to print pro-Israel ad raises questions about the 'Palestinianization' of the women's movement". The Jewish Week. Archived from the original on January 20, 2008.

14. Katherine Spillar, Ms. magazine (January 14, 2008). "Statement of Katherine Spillar, executive editor Ms. magazine concerning the AJC ad". Archived from the original on November 8, 2017.

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Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded in 1971 by journalist and social/political activist Gloria Steinem. It was the first national American feminist magazine. The original editors were Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Mary Peacock, Margaret Sloan-Hunter, and Gloria Steinem.

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1972 – National Council for Aboriginal and Islander women established (AUS)

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1972 – National Council for Aboriginal and Islander women established (AUS)

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Victoria formed a council in the 1960s, other states followed afterwards.

https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/features/indigenous-rights/organisations/expansion-folder/national-council-aboriginal-islander-women#:~:text=In%20the%20late%201960s%20Geraldine,and%20Islander%20Women%20was%20formed.

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1972 – Contraceptive pill readily available (AUS)

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1972 – Contraceptive pill readily available (AUS)

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Gough Whitlam abolished the luxury tax on all contraceptives, and placed the pill on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme list, reducing its cost to $1 per month.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/jun/06/rachel-cooke-fifty-years-the-pill-oral-contraceptive

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ast year, Virago republished Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel The Group, with a new introduction by the author of Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell. The Group is a novel which some of my dearest friends consider to be a) seminal and b) as racy, in its way, as Peyton Place, so I went out and bought the new edition, and read it over the course of a lazy weekend. Did I like it? Oh yes. The story of eight female graduates choosing careers and husbands (though not necessarily in that order) in 1930s New York, it is wonderfully funny, savage and piercing, with a gossipy kind of a plot that pulls you along rather in the manner of Carrie Bradshaw on the trail of a fine pair of spike heels. The travails of its characters - the wife who must shop for dinner before work in order that she can get straight to the stove when she comes home - still feel marvellously modern. But something else struck me about it, too: the detailed and intimate way in which it deals with the problem of contraception. For all the undoubted punch of her writing, there are moments down at the family planning clinic when McCarthy seems to be writing an encouraging manual as much as a novel.

Let us agree, for a moment, that there is such a thing as the women's novel. In women's novels of the late 20th and early 21st century, we see this aspect of women's lives only rarely. Of course characters still fall in love, and they have sex, plenty of it sometimes. But if they menstruate, no one ever mentions it; and if they visit a family planning clinic, they do it off the page, well out of sight of the gentle reader. In The Group, however, biology, and how to pull a fast one on it, are centre stage. Early on in the novel, one of the group, Dottie, goes to bed with a man to whom she is not married, Dick. She is a virgin - "she had never seen that part of a man, except in statuary and once, at the age of six, when she had interrupted Daddy in his bath" - and it shows. Too shy to mention contraception, Dick, more experienced, employs the oldest method of all, "coitus interruptus... a horrid nuisance". Afterwards, as Dottie is preparing to leave, he tells her to get herself a "pessary" (this is American for a diaphragm). "When you get yourself fixed up, you can bring your things here and I'll keep them for you," he says, a reference to the fact that in 1930s America, as in 1930s Britain, diaphragms were not the kind of thing unmarried women left lying around in their top drawers, where, depending on their circumstances, their staff, mother or girlfriends might find them.

Dottie, then, goes to a clinic to pick up her "new device", one discovered by the birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger in Holland and imported into the US for the first time. There follows a long and detailed account of the fitting of the diaphragm. Dottie is gung ho about getting herself "fixed up", but not so gung ho as to be entirely unruffled by the experience of squatting girdleless on a surgery floor in front of a complete stranger, and there is an embarrassing moment when, observed by both doctor and nurse, the diaphragm, covered in jelly, flies out of her hand, crossing the room like a tiny bat. Afterwards, nervously thrilled at the step she has taken, Dottie tries to call Dick. He isn't home. She leaves a message, telling him that she is waiting for him in Washington Square. But he doesn't come. Eventually, as dusk falls, Dottie discreetly places her precious packages beneath the bench on which she has spent her afternoon, and heads for Fifth Avenue and a taxi.

McCarthy's novel was published three years after the pill was approved by the US authorities in 1960, but several years before it was widely available (well into the 1970s, women in Britain and America were still pretending to be married in order to get a prescription; some used to pass around the same battered wedding ring in the doctor's waiting room). Its explicit descriptions, for the day, of jelly-covered discs of rubber thus foreshadow the coming openness at the same time as they reflect the widespread fear, ignorance and shame which many women, in 1963, still felt when it came to sex. From the late 1950s until the mid-70s, there were lots of novels like this, outwardly controversial and racy but also heavy with the misery and conflict that came with sex before the advent of the pill. Only then, in fiction as in the world, the anxiety, the unappetising "equipment" seemed suddenly to disappear. Now, 21st-century women's novels deal with the IVF clinic, not contraception.

Fifty years after its birth, we take the pill entirely for granted; we think about what it erased forever not at all. For sure, it is sometimes the subject of newspaper stories. But less often than of old, and only when it has been dubiously linked to yet another health scare. (From time to time, of course, the odd relic will bemoan its effect on our morals, usually at the behest of the Daily Mail. Last month it was the turn of Raquel Welch on CNN. The pill has destroyed marriage, she said: "Seriously, folks, if an ageing sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it's gotta be pretty bad.") We do not talk about it; we do not celebrate it. In the 20-24 age group, two-thirds of British women take it every morning, as unthinkingly as they dial their boyfriends on their mobile phones. It is just another convenience, and what their grandmothers and great-grandmothers went through is straight out of the history books.

"Young women don't realise what hell it was [before the arrival of the pill]," says the fashion designer Mary Quant. "The perpetual anxiety. It was a real revolution." Was she an early adopter? "Oh yes, it was quite wonderful. Of course it was hellishly difficult to get hold of at first. There was a lot of pretending one was married when one went to the doctor, and a minor disadvantage was that the early pills made one put on a couple of pounds. But that was nothing! Who cared? The other forms of contraception were so hellish." She squeals at the memory. "I remember going to a doctor in Chelsea for a Dutch cap. 'It's quite easy,' she said. 'When you dress for dinner, just pop this in!'"

The novelist Margaret Drabble, whose 1967 novel Jerusalem the Golden also features a diaphragm scene, agrees that the pill changed everything; that the revolution associated with its arrival has not been mythologised down the years. "The other methods were quite remarkably unreliable," Drabble recalls, "and fairly repulsive, and the people who worked in the clinics fitting them were rather unfriendly and punitive. I remember going to be fitted for a cap, and I had a child in a pushchair, and the woman asked me why on earth I was there. By the time the pill was available I already had three children; I think I would have had a child a year if I hadn't started taking it. So, yes, it made a very considerable difference to one's life. You were able to make a choice, you were able to look after yourself, and I was pleased to do so.

Drabble says her generation had been afraid of getting pregnant. "People were very afraid of abortion; it threatened you. The pill also meant people were able to keep the integrity of the family. Of course people had affairs before the pill, but with more anxiety, and there were mixed children, and some told, and some didn't tell. Afterwards that was no longer the case."

In 1960, shame was still a powerful force, pill or no pill. In the same year, Lynne Reid Banks published her first novel, The L-Shaped Room. Considered shocking at the time, it tells the story of a failed actress, Jane Graham, who, having fallen pregnant and been turned out of the family home by her disgusted father, goes to live in a dingy, bug-ridden bedsit at the top of a squalid boarding house in Fulham. "When I wrote it I had never been pregnant," says Reid Banks. "I based the story on a girl who had the flat next to mine. But my mother was so worried about my reputation that she begged me to publish under an assumed name. 'Everyone will think it's you,' she said. I laughed merrily. But she was right."

Reid Banks never took the pill. By the time it was available she was married and busy having a family. "However, about the fear of unwanted pregnancy I can talk. This fear in itself was quite an effective contraception, even for our boyfriends, who, if they were the right sort, were as scared as we were of getting us into trouble. It meant that 'going all the way' was something many of us only did when either things got out of control, or in the course of what was called 'the search' - ie, affairs were morally justified when you thought he might be 'the one' or could deceive yourself into thinking so. We used to 'pet' like mad: by the hour, and very inventively, and inevitably getting ourselves into a fine old state. I followed the nothing-below-the-waist rule most of the time." What was that like? "It was pretty stressful, and probably very bad for us."

The story of the pill's development is well-rehearsed. But still, it bears repeating. That the scientist most strongly associated with the project, Gregory Pincus, was able to work on the drug at all was nothing short of a minor miracle. Among his more powerful enemies were both the Catholic church - then, as now, implacably opposed to contraception - and large sections of the political establishment (thanks to Joe McCarthy's war on communism, birth control was widely regarded as part of a Bolshevik conspiracy). Nor was the law on his side. In Massachusetts, where he worked, anyone caught providing contraception faced a possible prison sentence - a situation which persisted until 1972. Pincus's major problem, however, was money. The drug companies considered the idea of a contraceptive pill to be a (possibly dangerous) shot in the dark, and most universities were unwilling to risk damaging their reputations by backing such controversial research.

In 1950, Pincus met Margaret Sanger. Sanger was a Catholic whose mother had died at 50, after 18 pregnancies. "You caused this," she told her father, over the coffin. "Mother is dead from having too many children." After training as a nurse, Sanger began dreaming of a magic pill that would prevent pregnancy, and it was she who first coined the term birth control, in 1914. Three years later, at a suffrage meeting, she met Katharine McCormick, famously only the second woman ever to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McCormick was a rich feminist (she was married to the heir to the International Harvester Co fortune and, when he was declared legally insane, was awarded control of his estate), and one wholly committed to the cause of finding a way to help women limit their families, with or without their husbands' help. Sanger suggested that she bankroll Pincus, and she agreed. In the course of her lifetime she gave the project the equivalent of more than $12m.

By the time of his meeting with Sanger, Pincus, an expert on the process of reproduction, had already attracted attention with his work to create "fatherless rabbits" (he had succeeded in creating a rabbit embryo in a Petri dish). Spurred on by Sanger, he now began studying the effect of the oral administration of progesterone (synthesised by scientists in Mexico from wild yams) on animals. The results of these studies suggested that the idea of an oral contraceptive for humans was feasible, and it was this line of inquiry that McCormick, by now 76 years old, agreed to fund (not only that, but she moved from California to Massachusetts, the better to keep an eye on developments: "Freezing in Boston for the pill," she wrote in 1953).

But testing the administration of progesterone on humans would require someone with clinical experience. Pincus enlisted the help of Dr John Rock, then the US's leading infertility expert (Rock was a devout Catholic, with five children and 19 grandchildren). Rock had been experimenting with progesterone to help women conceive. The progesterone was used to suppress ovulation for four months. Then it was suddenly withdrawn, causing a kind of rebound effect. Using hormones to prevent pregnancy worked on the same lines: the progesterone prevented the release of an egg, only in this instance it would be used for a longer time frame.

Some of the clinical trials were carried out, controversially, in poor countries such as Puerto Rico, and later Haiti. As Lara V Marks points out in her 2001 history of the pill, Sexual Chemistry, this was complex work. Much depended on the instruction researchers gave to their volunteers. In Haiti, many of the women were illiterate and innumerate. To ensure they remembered their medication, researchers hit on the idea of giving them rosary beads, which they were to move individually each day after they had taken it. But even this was not foolproof: a number of the women wore the beads in the belief that they alone provided protection against pregnancy. Nevertheless, when women did remember to take it, the pill proved effective, and in 1957 it was approved for the treatment of "female disorders" (30 states still had laws forbidding the promotion of birth control, so for a while it wore a disguise).

In 1959 the pharmaceutical company Searle applied to the FDA for approval of a pill that would be marketed as a contraceptive called Enovid - this pill also contained a tiny amount of oestrogen, to prevent bleeding - and on 9 May 1960 approval was finally granted. Women were elated, and would not be put off either by its side-effects or by the rumours of the effect it would have on their long-term health. The poignant and beseeching letters that Pincus and his colleagues had received from women while they were still working on the pill ("I am 30 years old. Have six children, oldest little over seven... My health don't seem to make it possible to go on this way...") were replaced by joyful thanks. In Britain, more than one woman likened being prescribed the pill to winning the pools.

This is not to say that there weren't problems. The early pill was a blunt instrument and had side-effects including headaches, nausea, dizziness, bloating, even thrush. Early on, its use was linked to cancer and to thrombosis. (Over time, hormone levels were refined and its side-effects reduced. Nowadays the average pill's oestrogen content is a third of what it used to be, the progesterone a 10th or less.) Nor was every woman a fan. The American feminist Gloria Steinem has always insisted that the pill's effect on the wider sexual revolution was overstated, and perhaps she has a point (social mores changed for a variety of complex reasons, of which the pill was only one). Germaine Greer believes its advent meant that "a morally neutral reason" for refusing penetrative sex had ceased to exist: "Women no longer had an acceptable reason for refusing the kind of sex that was most likely to be brutish and short. Once they had made the investment in sexual activity by taking a daily medication in order to be available, there was no sense in being unavailable. Having accepted the idea of themselves as sexually active, they had to be sexually active or be failures." In other words, she believes that it benefited men far more than it did women.

Other women note that, in spite of the pill, unwanted pregnancies still occur. As she revealed in a recent BBC4 documentary series, Susan Brownmiller, the American feminist and author of Against Our Will, the classic book about rape, had several illegal abortions overseas during the 1960s; you might assume she would be strongly on the side of the pill. But no. "People are still getting pregnant," she says. "The pill only suits a woman who is on a regimen, who has a regular sex life. And who does have a regular sex life? Basically that means the middle classes. The rest [of the population], that's a lot of women. I just don't think the pill has reached, or will reach, everybody. I never used it because I was having an irregular sex life. Some people don't expect to have sex that often. Sex just... comes up [occasionally]. Those women don't take a pill every day."

For Brownmiller the issue now is increasing the availability of emergency (ie morning-after) contraception, and of abortion. "The issue then [in the 1960s] was abortion, and it is now. A lot of people are still afraid of having an abortion. They're more afraid of that than they are of having a child. I just don't think that the pill is the best form of birth control, and that's before we even get on to the question of STDs [sexually transmitted diseases, against which the pill is no protection]." Brownmiller feels that it is those who can't get pregnant who now dominate the media. "This pro-natalism. I haven't seen anything like it since the 1950s. Everything is baby, baby, baby." In this context, she believes, abortion rights become more vulnerable, and abortion itself more taboo.

The fact is, though, that the pill is used by an awful lot of women: some 3.75 million are currently using it in the UK alone (worldwide, more than 200 million have used it since it was first approved). Used properly, it is 99% effective. Most side-effects can be avoided by changing the type of pill you take. Best of all, in spite of what you read in certain newspapers, it is extremely safe, its benefits far outweighing the risks. The pill reduces the risk of cancer of the ovary, uterus and colon. It may also protect against pelvic inflammatory disease and reduce the risk of fibroids, ovarian cysts and non-cancerous breast disease. Last March the Royal College of GPs published the results of research which studied 46,000 women over almost 40 years. It found that women who have taken the pill were also less likely to die from cancer, heart disease or stroke.

"It has so many benefits, from protecting against ovarian cancer to helping to alleviate painful periods," says Peter Bowen-Simpkins of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. "In developing countries, where anaemia is a huge problem, the pill can help to reduce blood loss. Only smokers over 35, or the obese - those with a BMI of over 30 - are at increased risk from coronary heart disease if they take the pill, but we've known that since 1975."

Why, then, is it still associated, in some women's minds, with risk and side-effects? "Because the newspapers don't always look at underlying reasons," says Bowen-Simpkins. "I remember a story when a mother of seven dropped dead. The headline said: 'Judge blames pill'. But if you looked behind the story, she was a smoker and she was obese. Such things are incredibly rare anyway, but 3 million people read that, and it was bad publicity."

Bowen-Simpkins points out that some newer forms of hormonal contraception - in essence, the pill in another format - have even fewer side-effects than the pill because the hormones in them are of a lower dose. Moreover, because a contraceptive patch releases hormones straight into the bloodstream, its effectiveness is not reduced if you vomit or have diarrhoea (the hormones in the pill must be absorbed by the stomach). Ditto the contraceptive ring, which releases hormones into the bloodstream via the vaginal wall.

For my own part, when, if, I do stop to think about the pill, I cannot feel anything but deep gratitude. I started taking it when I went to university - Marvelon, in a pale blue blister pack - and it was blissful to be released, overnight, from the monthly dread, from the sickly, stomach-churning days of waiting and wondering and hoping. After college, when I was advised to stop taking it, my childhood migraines having unaccountably returned (there is an increased risk of deep vein thrombosis in migraine sufferers), I was devastated. This news ruined all sorts of things which I'd better not go into here. But then - oh, joy - a new brand of progesterone-only pill came on the market which was almost as effective as the traditional combined pill and suitable for migraine sufferers. I take Cerazette to this day, and thanks to a decade of doing without - the pill, I mean - I have never got to the point where I take it for granted. I'm not exaggerating. Popping it actually makes me cheerful.

But I also think about my grandmothers. Both of them came from large families and, as girls, both had to live with the sometimes harsh consequences of being, as Hardy put it in Jude the Obscure, "too many". My maternal grandmother was one of seven and, along the way, siblings were sometimes, well... lost. A brother went to Canada to seek his fortune and was never seen again. A sister died as a little girl, an event then so common my grandmother did not think to mention it for years and years, not even to her own daughter. My paternal grandmother, meanwhile, was the eldest of 10. She was clever and would have liked to have been educated, but her parents, needing her help at home, insisted that she leave school as soon as she turned 13. She spent the rest of her childhood dandling babies, stirring pans, and forcing sodden washing through the family mangle. I wonder: do the naysayers and doom merchants even know what a mangle is?

Rachel Cooke is a feature writer at The Observer

Fay Pownall, 24, public servant I'm on a pill called Yasmin. As well as the freedom it's allowed me, it's had an incredibly positive effect on my hormone imbalance. Friends of mine have had contraceptive implants, but they don't appeal to me. It's the action of actually taking the pill that gives me a sense of security. Without it I'd have a much more nerve-racking life.

Katherine Jackson, 49, sole trader When I first went on the pill at 19, I felt slightly intimidated by what it stood for - it meant I was taking sex seriously. I took it again after the birth of my first child but didn't consider returning to it after the birth of my second. It seemed more sensible, since we had completed our family, to make a more permanent decision, so my husband had the snip. My youth would have been very different without the pill. It gave me sexual independence - it meant that I was allowed to make my own decisions.

Johanne Wang-Holm, 23, actor I started taking the pill, Femodette, when I was 16 - and I haven't looked back since. For me it's incredibly useful in that it controls my periods: it's less about contraception. I'd consider swapping to the injection at some point, as I like the idea of skipping periods altogether, but I doubt I'll ever go through with it. It does seem important to feel like my whole system's still working. I do wonder if sex with strangers is more common since it was invented, but I think society has changed around it. The most important thing is that it gave women a sense of control. A choice.

Nicky Anderson, 22, actor The pill is an incredibly positive thing - the element of control it gives women, over their sexuality and their life. It increases equality between the sexes, allowing women to concentrate on pleasure rather than reproduction. There are reports about the male pill, but even when it arrives I think women would prefer to be in control of their own contraception - men can still always walk away from a pregnancy. As much as people talk about how the pill's revolutionised women's lives, problems in gender relations still exist. The problems now, as opposed to before the pill, are just different; they've evolved. There are new games to play.

Philippa Hawghton, 22, student I broke up with my boyfriend, but I stayed with the pill. I'm on Microgynon, which, because it gave me really regular periods, has made my life so much easier. Before I started taking it I was slightly unsure - I was happy in myself, with my body, and didn't want that to change, but I didn't regret it. Now it's just part of my daily routine - I take it before brushing my teeth.

This article was amended on 20 September 2011 to remove one interviewee.

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ast year, Virago republished Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel The Group, with a new introduction by the author of Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell. The Group is a novel which some of my dearest friends consider to be a) seminal and b) as racy, in its way, as Peyton Place, so I went out and bought the new edition, and read it over the course of a lazy weekend.

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1973 – Roe v. Wade changed the landscape in women’s fights for control over their own bodies (US)

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1973 – Roe v. Wade changed the landscape in women’s fights for control over their own bodies (US)

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It decriminalized abortion nationwide in the US, allowing women to get an abortion with legal repurcussions.

https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/roe-v-wade

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Roe v. Wade Overturned: How the Supreme Court Let Politicians Outlaw Abortion

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The Supreme Court has eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion - but we're taking every step we can to keep abortion accessible.

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1973 – ‘Battle of the sexes’ tennis match won by Billy Jean King (US).

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1973 – ‘Battle of the sexes’ tennis match won by Billy Jean King (US).

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Top women's player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men's player.

https://notice.aenetworks.com/#:~:text=On%20September%2020%2C%201973%2C%20in,1%20ranked%20men%27s%20player.

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illie Jean King's entrance on to a Houston tennis court on 20 September 1973 was more suited to a Las Vegas stage than a sports stadium. The top-ranked 29-year-old player arrived atop a gold throne framed by flamingo-pink feathers and carried by four shirtless men. Her opponent, the 55-year-old former No1 player Bobby Riggs, arrived on a rickshaw pulled by models dubbed "Bobby's Bosom Buddies." This wasn't a regular tennis match. It was the Battle of the Sexes.

The Astrodome was packed with just over 30,000 people - a record for any tennis game - and the atmosphere was more Super Bowl than Wimbledon. Fans drank champagne, cheerleaders danced, and a band played each player's theme song: I Am Woman for King and Conquest for Riggs. Some men wore T-shirts featuring cartoon pigs supporting Riggs that read "I am a male chauvinist," while women in the audience held signs that read "I love BJK."

King wore a wool cardigan over her tennis dress, wire-framed round glasses, and a giddy smile. "A very attractive young lady," one broadcaster said, his voice reaching out to the 90 million Americans watching the match on TV. "If she ever let her hair grow down to her shoulders and took her glasses off, you'd have somebody vying for a Hollywood screen kiss."

Though King wasn't normally a flashy dresser, she wore blue suede running shoes and a dress with a sequined patch for the occasion. Riggs wore a bright yellow sports jacket with the words "Sugar Daddy" emblazoned across the back.

King didn't mind the gimmicks. She knew that beneath the circus-like spectacle, the match had the potential to change the lives of women everywhere.

ater this year, a Hollywood version of the Battle of the Sexes starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell will be released, but it's hard to imagine a similar match happening today. Though there have been other male v female tennis matches, none have been based on the sexist premise that a woman's athletic worth depends on whether or not she can beat a man. In 1973, feminism wasn't mainstream and women couldn't even apply for their own credit cards. Today we have female powerhouses such as Sheryl Sandberg, Beyoncé, and Hillary Clinton. Last year, the women's US Open final sold out before the men's. Nobody would suggest that Serena Williams isn't a world-class athlete if she failed to win in straight sets against Pete Sampras.

Billie Jean King before her match with Riggs in Houston. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

When King battled Riggs, she was fighting a widespread cultural attitude that women were inferior to men. She knew a theatrical face-off was the perfect means through which to grab the nation's attention and change their minds. But since today's players don't need to shift public opinion, their battles have become more bureaucratic. While that's a sign of progress, critics say activism within the sport has become more cautious and fragmented.

hen Riggs first challenged King to a Battle of the Sexes, she declined. But when the No1 women's player, Margaret Court, accepted his challenge and lost, King knew the equal rights movement badly needed a victory. Leading up to the event, Riggs spouted sexist rhetoric like a broken faucet. He said women belonged "in the bedroom and the kitchen," that they didn't have the "emotional stability" to be athletes, and that he planned to "set the women's lib movement back about another 20 years" by beating King.

As King bounced the ball before her first serve in Houston, she knew a win would prove women - from athletes to housewives - weren't the weaker sex.

She won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

"Had I lost, women's tennis would have suffered, Title IX could have been hurt and the women's movement would have been damaged," King said today in an email. "I ... knew it was very important I win the match if I wanted people to take women's tennis - and women - seriously."

That same year, King formed the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), and the US Open became the first tournament to offer equal prize money. Thanks to generations of female players who continued the fight, all Grand Slam tournaments have offered equal prize money since 2007. That makes tennis an exception among major sports, but it's still no feminist paradise.

In most tournaments, women earn 20% less than men. Equal pay is regularly opposed by male players and industry heavyweights, most recently by former Indian Wells CEO Raymond Moore, who said female tennis players "ride on the coattails of the men," and Novak Djokovic, who said men deserve higher prize money because their matches are more popular.

During Grand Slams, fewer women's matches are held on main-stage courts. Women receive less media coverage than the men, and the coverage they do get is all too often sexist. After winning matches, Eugenie Bouchard has been asked about her taste in men and to twirl around to showcase her outfit. Journalists and commenters have described Serena Williams as a "gorilla," "savage," and " built like a 'monster truck.'" And problems aren't limited to players. Only three of the top 50 women's players have female coaches, and there's only a few women in powerful organizational positions.

In short, there's still a lot to fight for. But experts worry that the spirit of activism among players has changed for the worse.

ow that society doesn't believe all women should stay at home and baste turkeys, tennis activism has shifted from changing public opinion to challenging policy. The best example of a 21st-century activist is Venus Williams, who helped the WTA win a decades-long fight to secure equal pay at Wimbledon in 2007.

The tennis star didn't stage a protest with other players or organize an attention-grabbing press conference. Instead, Williams showed up to a board meeting full of Grand Slam execs, asked them to close their eyes, and said: "Imagine you're a little girl. You're growing up. You practice as hard as you can, with girls, with boys. You have a dream. You fight, you work, you sacrifice to get to this stage. You work as hard as anyone you know. And then you get to this stage, and you're told you're not the same as a boy." The next year, she published an op-ed in the Times arguing for equal pay, which helped persuade Tony Blair to endorse the cause.

Williams targeted the powers-that-be rather than society at large. Selena Roberts, author of a book about the Battle of the Sexes, says the tennis champ's choice not to use flashy stunts to effect change is a sign of societal progress. "In 1973 ... the entire world was so behind [in terms of equal rights] you had to do something on a grand scale to elicit attention," she says. "Venus pointed out to Wimbledon, 'You're so far behind the rest of the word it's ridiculous.'" Nicole LaVoi, who teaches sport and exercise psychology at the University of Minnesota, thinks the evolution toward activism that focuses on substantive policies is positive for the equal rights movement. "The Battle of the Sexes match was a lot about creating public awareness on a big scale ... but most people know that real social change comes in the boardrooms and at the organizational level," she says. "It's not just taking [views] to the court of public opinion."

While today's players focus on important bureaucratic battles, they have lost some of the solidarity characteristic of a previous generation. In 1970 King and eight other female players dubbed "the Original Nine" created women-only tournaments to protest male-run tournaments that paid them six times less prize money. Today's players tend to speak up individually rather than as a group.

Emma Stone and Steve Carell in the Hollywood film Battle of the Sexes, which is set for release later this year. Photograph: Allstar/Fox Searchlight Pictures

The internet provides the perfect vehicle to amplify single voices. Andy Murray recently defended equal pay in a Twitter spat with Ukrainian player Sergiy Stakhovsky. Nicole Gibbs, a 23-year-old player, regularly blogs and tweets about women's rights and sexism - "I have had countless individuals, men and women alike, suggest to me that tennis skirts are the principal driver of revenue on the women's tour" - which has garnered praise from King. Others players speak up in the media. When a reporter asked Serena Williams about being one of the greatest female athletes of all time, she shot back: "I prefer 'one of the greatest athletes of all time.'" After former Indian Wells CEO Moore said men have "carried this sport," Serena Williams told a press conference that her US Open tickets had sold out before the men's finals and called the former tennis player's remarks offensive "not only to a female athlete but every woman on this planet."

The upside of magnifying individual voices is that players have drawn attention to issues that matter to them outside of the sport. Kristi Tredway, a gender-studies professor and former professional tennis player, says of Serena Williams: "Instead of distancing herself from issues that affect her and people like her personally, as most black players did in the past, Serena really owns who she is and what she has the power to accomplish, both in tennis and for racial equality in America."

But there are downsides to independent activism. Tredway says athletes could achieve their goals more easily if they advocated as a unit. "The WTA and ATP aren't going to suspend their top players if there are lots of them involved in a singular social activism focus," she says. "They are far more likely to do so if it is just one or two players." The United States Lawn Tennis Association (now the USTA) threatened to ban the Original 9 from Grand Slam events but never took action. Recently, the US women's soccer team filed an equal-pay complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and wore T-shirts that read "#EqualPayEqualPlay" to games.

LaVoi says that, unfortunately, today's players aren't interested in joining a movement. "It's kind of like everybody for themselves," she says. "There are few athletes outside of the Williams sisters and the national women's soccer team that will fight for the collective good."

Gibbs, the young tennis athlete, has noticed fellow players' reluctance to express solidarity with her activism. In a recent panel with King and former champ Chris Evert, she discussed defending equal pay on Twitter: "I had multiple girls in the locker room come up to me and say: 'Hey, I saw your tweets last night, your messages, but my coach told me not to get involved;' or: 'I didn't think it was smart for me to get involved.' I think there is far too much worrying about what other people are going to think when you're campaigning for equality as a woman."

Many players shy away from activism because of money. Corporate sponsors are more wary than ever of athletes who speak their minds about social and political issues. According to Tredway, athletes from King's era had more political freedom, before the 1980s when product promotion by sports stars really took off. "Endorsements really can control a player," she says. "They are bound by their allegiance to the corporations that endorse them, so they don't engage in social activism."

But others blame the lack of collective action regarding equal rights on plain old apathy. "Today's players are not as interested in anything beyond tennis," King wrote in an email. "Those that do get involved in social issues tend to do so after their careers and that is a shame."

LaVoi says some athletes have the delusional sense that equality has already been achieved. "A lot of young women today are completely clueless about Title IX and the battles our foremothers fought," she says. "They have no idea why they should fight for gender equality."

But exactly how players can effectively advocate in a modern context is difficult to figure out.

The fight for equal rights in tennis needs a more unified front and more passionate voices. But while the 1970s were a golden era for women's rights crusaders within the sport, experts caution that today's players should not borrow too heavily from that generation, either. While the Battle of the Sexes was a massive win for women, a similar showdown could have a regressive effect on gender roles if it happened today. "I think [it] would actually be just like a caricature of the women's movement and in some ways could be more sexist than empowering," says Cheryl Cooky, an associate professor of American studies whose research focuses on gender and sports. "What would it mean that 40-plus years later we're still doing the same kind of performative display of women's advocacy?"

The last person to call for another Battle of the Sexes was Donald Trump. The president has been accused by 15 women of sexual assault, so it's no surprise that he wanted to Make Tennis Great Again by proving that female players are yuge losers. In 2000, he offered a $1m prize for a match between either of the Williams sisters and John McEnroe at his Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. The week before, McEnroe talked a Riggs-like game, saying that "a lot of male college kids and members of the seniors' tour could beat the sisters."

At the time, 20-year-old Venus had won both Wimbledon and the US Open. She had landed a $40m contract with Reebok and was disrupting white tennis culture with her beads and braids. Nobody could question her talent and strength.

Forty years ago, King's genius was recognizing the wider cultural importance of beating a man in tennis. In the 21st century, Venus knew the feminist power move was to decline a similar match altogether. Her response was a form of activism in itself.

"I don't know if I could fit him in my schedule right now,'" Williams told reporters about squaring off against McEnroe. "I don't think it's fair to put a 20-year-old against a 40-something person. So, I'll let that pass."

A version of this story first appeared in Racquet, a new quarterly tennis magazine that celebrates the art, ideas, style and culture that surround tennis

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Four decades after the Battle of the Sexes, the fight for equality goes on

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illie Jean King's entrance on to a Houston tennis court on 20 September 1973 was more suited to a Las Vegas stage than a sports stadium. The top-ranked 29-year-old player arrived atop a gold throne framed by flamingo-pink feathers and carried by four shirtless men.

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1974 – The Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, enabling a woman to take out a credit card in her own name, rather than her husband’s (US).

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1974 – The Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, enabling a woman to take out a credit card in her own name, rather than her husband’s (US).

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The Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed allowing women to open their own bank accounts/credit cards in their own name instead of their husdbands.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/women-and-credit-in-the-1970s-the-equal-credit-opportunity-act-became-law-a-key-step-in-financial-freedom-for-women-2020-08-03

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The Equal Credit Opportunity Act

Women have come a long way in the past century in terms of legal rights, although reality has often fallen short of legal promises. Women earned a constitutional right to vote nationwide in 1920, for example, but many continued to be denied that right for decades due to racist state laws, violence and the lack of availability of bilingual election materials, among other things. A 1963 federal law prohibited gender-based discrimination in wages, but the pay gap has yet to close.

Still, a key step in women's financial freedom came with the passage in 1974 of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which granted women the right to obtain credit cards separate from their husbands.
More from this series:
The law barred several shady credit practices, including lender discrimination based on race, sex, age, nationality or marital status. Before it was passed, women could be denied access to their own credit cards by issuers. Passage of this act wasn't simply a success in gender equality; it was also necessary for practical reasons. The idea that single women wouldn't be able to obtain credit while making an income was absurd enough, but women who are married and choose to stay home with children should also be able to establish credit. In the event of divorce or death of a spouse, having your own credit is crucial.

Strides in the workplace

Women made other great strides in the '70s, particularly in the office. In 1977, the courts recognized sexual harassment in the workplace, although it wasn't defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission until 1980. And the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 made it illegal to fire a woman for being pregnant, which was previously common practice.
Also read: Tax rules have been largely written by rich, white men - and it shows, researchers say
While both of these accomplishments made it easier for women to thrive in the workplace, it arguably shouldn't have taken so long to get these basic workplace protections in place. Women are crucial earners to their families, with 41% of mothers as the sole or primary breadwinners for their families, as of 2017, including 68.3% of Black mothers, 41% of Latina mothers and 36.8% of white mothers. Job protection in the case of pregnancy and recourse for workplace sexual harassment are absolutely necessary for women to continue to work and provide for themselves and their families.

Pop culture
Also read: How to plan for the unique financial challenges women face
Pop culture is indicative of the times, and '70s television brought the issue of gender inequality into the spotlight with shows like "Alice" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." "Alice" was about a single mother who had to support herself and her son by working in a diner under a chauvinistic boss. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was about a single working woman in her 30s who had recently ended a relationship with a man whom she financially supported through medical school. Both shows featured episodes about pay inequality, where the eponymous women discovered that their male counterparts made higher salaries than them.

Pop culture in the 1970s showed women as breadwinners, dealing with inequality in the workplace and pay discrimination. Although Alice and Mary were TV characters, they opened up a dialogue among women to talk about these once-taboo topics with episodes that could be considered progressive even by today's standards.

More from NerdWallet:

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Women and credit: In the 1970s, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act became law- a key step in financial freedom for women

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The Equal Credit Opportunity Act Women have come a long way in the past century in terms of legal rights, although reality has often fallen short of legal promises. Women earned a constitutional right to vote nationwide in 1920, for example, but many continued to be denied that right for decades due to racist state laws, violence and the lack of availability of bilingual election materials, among other things.

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1974 - Minimum wage extended to women through the Arbitration Commission (AUS).

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1974 - Minimum wage extended to women through the Arbitration Commission (AUS).

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Australian unions and the newly elected Whitlam government lobbied the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission

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Equal pay protest, Melbourne Town Hall, 20 February 1969

1969 ACAC ruling

It wasn't until 1969 that any real progress was made. In that year, the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union and other workers' groups brought a case to the ACAC against the Meat and Allied Trades Federation (and others) arguing for equal pay for all employees.

The ruling of the commission, which applied nationally, established the general female award minimum wage at 85 per cent of the male wage.

This was in recognition of the 'breadwinner' component of male pay rates, which assumed that men needed to be paid extra to provide for their family as married women generally did not work outside of the home.

The ruling stipulated that in cases where men were performing work usually reserved for females, they were entitled to a higher wage than their female colleagues.

The 1969 decision did, however, secure equal pay for women in instances where they were assessed as doing exactly the same work as men in traditionally male roles. For example, women who worked on an abattoir floor handling meat were now paid the same wage as the men they worked with.

All other women received the nationally instituted 85 per cent. For instance, women who held office jobs in the same abattoir would earn less than their male colleagues.

Research completed in time for the 1972 review of this decision noted that only 18 per cent of women were assessed as performing work equal to that of a man, therefore severely limiting the number of female workers who actually benefited from the part of the 1969 ruling that allowed for wage equality between the sexes.

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It wasn't until 1969 that any real progress was made. In that year, the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union and other workers' groups brought a case to the ACAC against the Meat and Allied Trades Federation (and others) arguing for equal pay for all employees.

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1975 – ‘No fault divorce’ passes under the Family Law Act (AUS).

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1975 – ‘No fault divorce’ passes under the Family Law Act (AUS).

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No fault divorce meant that there was no need to show proof of wrongdoing.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6404955/no-end-in-sight-to-family-law-woes/

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So, once again the Family Law Act is to be reviewed just two years after the last review...

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1975 – Australian International Women’s Day March 8th March (AUS

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1975 – Australian International Women’s Day March 8th March (AUS

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Taken on 8 March 1975 during International Women's Year, at the first International Women's Day rally held in Australia.

https://www.naa.gov.au/learn/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/society-and-culture/gender-and-sexuality/international-womens-day-rally-melbourne

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International Women's Day rally, Melbourne

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This black-and-white photograph was taken on 8 March 1975 at the first International Women's Day rally held in Australia.

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1976 – Reclaim the night protests occur in Europe to protest sexual violence

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1976 – Reclaim the night protests occur in Europe to protest sexual violence

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It was part of the second wave of feminism. Women marched and protested in cities across Europe.

https://www.historyrevealed.com/eras/20th-century/womens-lib-the-second-wave-of-feminism/

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Much like the suffragettes before them, the activists of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) of the 1960s-80s realised that it was deeds, not words, that would win the day. They discovered that they would need to employ shock tactics in their fight, which largely focused on gaining equality in the workplace, in the family and for rights over their own bodies.

Of course, this direct action went hand in hand with more practical and administrative activism, but it was the subversive and spectacular acts that made it impossible for the world to ignore the inequality they suffered.

Second-wave feminism emerged in the US in the 1960s. When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, in which she called out "the problem that has no name" - a widespread unhappiness among the middle-class housewives of America - she opened something of a Pandora's box. The discontent that she shone a light on was not restricted to the US. Feminists around the world were waking up.

The first action on this side of the pond might, today, seem almost stereotypically polite. In June 1968, 187 female sewing machinists at Ford's Dagenham factory went on strike. They objected to the fact that they were classed as 'unskilled' workers, despite the fact - writes Emmeline Pankhurst's great-granddaughter Helen in her book Deeds not Words - "that they needed to pass a skills test to be employed".

This classification meant that they earned less than men in equivalent work. The act may seem civilised enough, but for women to strike at this time took courage and came after years of asking, in vain, for their roles to be reclassified.

On 28 June 1968, all 187 machinists travelled to London and marched the streets of Whitehall before meeting up with MP Barbara Castle, the Employment Secretary. They brokered a deal that ended their three-week strike and which would, ultimately, lead to the momentous Equal Pay Act of 1970.

But it was not exactly a glorious victory for the strikers; their conditions were much improved, but they were still considered 'unskilled'. They were not reclassified or given equal pay until they striked again in 1984.

Many more controversial feminist strikes followed, including the Night Cleaners' Campaign of 1970-72, which sought to unionise the victimised and underpaid women who cleaned London's office blocks at night, and the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories strike of 1976-78, headed up by Jayaben Desai: "A small, middle-aged woman [who] led the 'strikers in saris' on a two-year battle that included a hunger strike," says Helen Pankhurst in Deeds Not Words.

This fight for better working conditions saw, for the first time in UK history, Asian women at the forefront of a major industrial action. But, more immediately, the Ford strike inspired thousands of activists to come together into what would eventually become the WLM.

At the end of the sixties, this emerging group of women and feminist thinkers was ready to fight for equality. They had lived through a remarkable era of rapid social and cultural change - many were realising that the sexual liberation that the decade brought did not necessarily bring with it the women's liberation that had been imagined.

Women were still expected to earn less while they worked; to give up work when they got married or became pregnant (being sacked upon announcing a pregnancy was not uncommon); to settle down and be good housewives; and to serve their husbands and children. To see any effective change, they had to get organised and be more than a little bit daring.

Flour power

At the end of February 1970, some 600 activists arrived at Ruskin College, Oxford. Men manned the crèche and made the sandwiches for lunch, while the women settled down for three intensive days of feminist discourse. It was the first conference of its kind in the UK (another seven would follow), and the discussions were groundbreaking.

Delegates from around the world spoke to the engaged and excited audience. They narrowed their objectives down to four key demands, which they believed would benefit all women in all walks of life: equal pay; equal educational and job opportunities; free contraception and abortion on demand; and free 24-hour nurseries.

These were formally adopted at the following conference the next year (a further three were added at a later conference). But it wasn't all talk, no action. They also planned a demonstration that would capture the whole world's attention.

In November of 1970, anyone turning on their television to watch the Miss World contest would have been presented with a different spectacle to the one scheduled. Activists descended upon the Royal Albert Hall, the venue for the pageant, to disrupt the event in protest of the way it objectified women. And disrupt it they did, pelting the stage, hosts and participants with flour bombs, tomatoes and stink bombs.

People watching at home even went out into the streets to join the protests, and they caused so much chaos that the event had to be abandoned. Five activists were arrested. Though the press coverage of the protest and the ensuing trials was incredibly negative, Women's Lib had never been so popular.

Just a few months later, on 6 March 1971, 4,000 women took to London's streets for the first Women's Lib march. The WLMs demands were brandished on banners, while the mob waved washing lines and chanted "One, two, three, four, we want a bloody damn sight more!" They descended on 10 Downing Street to hand over a petition, which called for the government to meet their four demands, after which the march culminated with a series of speakers at Trafalgar Square.

In the months that followed, away from the dramatic spotlight of direct action, there were more practical, local activists working tirelessly for the cause. Hundreds of groups and campaigns emerged, with membership of London's Women's Liberation Workshop reportedly rising from 16 to 66 groups.

Such groups would have ranged from refuges that offered women security in the face of domestic violence to basic centres where women could gain free family planning and legal advice. At these hubs, feminist publications were also circulated.

Newsletters and leaflets communicated local feminist news, while magazines such as Spare Rib and, later, Shocking Pink, helped to communicate the messages of the movement, report on any political progress and threats, and to organise and report on direct action - of which there was plenty to discuss.

Though it does not appear among the initial demands, one of the WLM's great achievements was in making violence against women - a largely invisible crime - visible and impossible to ignore.

There was much activity on this front: rape crisis centres were established, anti-rape conferences were held and, by 1977, there were some 170 Women's Aid refuges in Britain. Arguably, the centre of activity on this front was Leeds, where the most extreme example of violence against women could be found - the Yorkshire Ripper, later discovered to be Peter Sutcliffe, was at large.

Between 1975 and 1980, Sutcliffe murdered 13 women and assaulted seven more. At the time, the police advised that women should not go out at night, especially not without a male escort. This was hardly the message to send to a group of empowered women, and it was perceived as an extension of victim-blaming: why curfew the potential victims as opposed to the potential perpetrators?

To the feminists of the Leeds area, this could not be borne. Inspired by similar marches in Europe and in Edinburgh, on 12 November 1977 the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group organised a women-only 'Reclaim the Night' march through the city, with supporting marches elsewhere throughout the country.

Brandishing torches and banners reading 'No curfew on women - curfew 0n men', some 130 Leeds women marched a route that covered man of the sites of Sutcliffe's attacks. This march was controversial for more than just the intended reasons - the organisers were later accused of racism, as there was a lack of sensitivity to issues of diversity, and also sexism, as these marches excluded men and trans people.

Separate agendas

Such rifts had long divided the feminist community, and continue to do so to this day. It is small wonder, then, that through the sixties and seventies, feminism developed a remarkable number of branches.

In her book Radical Feminism, Finn Mackay lists liberal feminism, socialist feminism, anarcho-feminism, black feminism, womanism, eco-feminism, radical feminism, lesbian feminism, separatist feminism, pro-feminism and revolutionary feminism as just some of the schools recognised today.

National lesbian feminist conferences began in 1974, the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent formed in 1978 and, in 1979, Southall Black Sisters was founded, in order to support all black and Asian women in the fight against racism and domestic violence.

The extent and diversity of feminist support and action at this time was incredible. The primary concerns had increased from the four demands, too. Objectives ranged from political representation to abortion rights and combating racist immigration laws. There were only a handful of topics that truly united them all, but one of them was violence against women.

Into the 1980s, such campaigns increased and became more militant. Activists occupied the office of The Sun newspaper, "to protest at the use of rape stories for titillation", explain Joni Lovenduski and Vicky Randall in their book Contemporary Feminist Politics. They also shattered the windows of strip clubs and, in Leeds, "a woman campaigner drove her car through the front of a sex shop".

It is perhaps all the more alarming then that, today, two more waves of feminism down the line, violence against women, and the sexual coercion of women, are still everyday occurrences. As more and more Harvey Weinstein-like stories pour out of Hollywood, the statistics from the UK deliver just as much cause for concern. According to the March 2016 Crime Survey for England and Wales, 26 per cent of women are victims of domestic abuse in their lifetimes; 21 per cent experience stalking and 20 per cent will be subject to a sexual assault.

As the Time's Up campaign says on its website: "The clock has run out on sexual assault, harassment and inequality in the workplace. It's time to do something about it." The activists of second-wave feminism would surely agree.

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Women's Lib: The Second Wave of Feminism

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Much like the suffragettes before them, the activists of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) of the 1960s-80s realised that it was deeds, not words, that would win the day. They discovered that they would need to employ shock tactics in their fight, which largely focused on gaining equality in the workplace, in the family and for rights over their own bodies.

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1978 - The Pregnancy Discrimination Act passed (US).

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1978 - The Pregnancy Discrimination Act passed (US).

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To amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy.

https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/pregnancy-discrimination-act-1978#:~:text=To%20amend%20Title%20VII%20of,on%20the%20basis%20of%20pregnancy.

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Pregnancy Discrimination and Maternity Rights - Equal Means Equal

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Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, yet pregnant women, especially those in low-wage and physically demanding jobs, are routinely fired or forced off the job. The national legal advocacy organization, A Better Balance, takes on cases of soon-to-be mothers fired for requesting minor accommodations, such as permission to sit during a long shift, an extra restroom break, or temporary relief from heavy lifting to avoid pregnancy complications.

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1979 – Unpaid maternity leave granted for all birthing people (AUS)

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1979 – Unpaid maternity leave granted for all birthing people (AUS)

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It enabled pregnant women to receive maternity leave pay.

https://atui.org.au/2022/03/australian-unions-win-maternity-leave-1979/

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Trade unions have a long and proud history of campaigning for parental leave to support working families.

Before the 1970s there was no single general standard of maternity or paternity leave.

In 1973, union advocacy spurred the Whitlam Labor Government to introduce three-months paid maternity leave for federal public servants.

In 1979, the ACTU brought a test case to the Arbitration Commission which led to the introduction of 52 weeks maternity leave. This was highly controversial at the time and was opposed by many employers and conservative groups. Some historians have even labelled it: 'one of the most divisive test cases ever taken to the Arbitration Commission'.

The ACTU's case was argued for by ACTU Advocate, Jan Marsh. Jan worked closely with the ACTU's small research team at the time to prepare the case. Jan has said, ' It was very much a team effort'

Jan Marsh argued for a guaranteed leave period that would protect pregnant workers and recent mothers from discrimination by their employers.

There was a concern at the time that if individual employers were responsible for paying maternity leave, that this would result in even greater discrimination against women in the workforce. ACTU policy at the time stated that it should be a government responsibility to provide funded support for mothers (expanded since to all parents).

The Commission's ultimate decision was for 52 weeks of unpaid leave, a decision that applied to 1. 5 million women workers.

This was an important advance, enshrining new protections for women workers who were pregnant or had recently given birth. But it meant the campaign for government-paid guaranteed leave continued.

Later reflecting on this case, Jan Marsh said:
"We had a better chance taking it one step at a time ... It was quite controversial but the argument for unpaid leave was the first step. "I would have expected paid maternity leave to have been more widespread (now) given that it was first raised 30 years ago, notwithstanding the source of the payment."
Major milestones of the union campaign since 1979 have included:

‒ 1985: this right to a leave period was extended to adopted mothers.

‒ 1990: this right to a leave period was extended to fathers, creating parental leave.

‒ 2001: casual workers were able to access this right after a union-led submission to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.

Unions were relentless advocates for the paid parental leave that was implemented in 2011. This included leading a community campaign to harness the massive amount of support for the scheme.

In under a month, right before the Senate was due to vote on the Bill, over 25,000 people signed the petition to support the scheme in a sign of the mass support that existed.

These changes came because of working people, organised in their unions, campaigning tirelessly for them.

These changes were not easy, and took decades to realise. This is often the case. But when you are in a union you are part of a community, you know that someone will always have your back, and you are not alone.

This was vital in the struggle for working families to have decent rights to time with their families.

And the campaign continues!

Australian unions know that for many of us, bringing a child into the world will be one of the most significant moments in our lives. We deserve the right to experience and savour these moments while being free to support our partners without the fear of financial hardship or loss of work.

That's why members of Australian Unions are fighting for change. Within the next five years, we want to legislate a paid parental leave scheme that:

Provides 52 weeks paid leave at full wage replacement with equal access for both parents

Removes the concept of 'primary' and 'secondary' carers and lets parents share entitlements as they see fit

Gives a bonus of two weeks paid leave to parents who take equal amounts of leave to share the caregiving duties.

Find out more: https://www.australianunions.org.au/2021/11/18/were-taking-action-for-fairer-paid-parental-leave/

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Australian unions win maternity leave - 1979 - Australian Trade Union Institute

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Trade unions have a long and proud history of campaigning for parental leave to support working families. Before the 1970s there was no single general standard of maternity or paternity leave. In 1973, union advocacy spurred the Whitlam Labor Government to introduce three-months paid maternity leave for federal public servants.

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1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court (US).

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1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court (US).

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Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/sandra-day-oconnor-first-woman-supreme-court/#:~:text=Sandra%20Day%20O%27Connor%20was,as%20a%20Supreme%20Court%20justice.&text=During%20the%201980%20presidential%20campaign,to%20the%20U.S.%20Supreme%20Court.

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Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-) was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006, and was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. A moderate conservative, she was known for her dispassionate and meticulously researched opinions. For 24 years, Sandra Day O'Connor was a pioneering force on the Supreme Court and will always be remembered as acting as a sturdy guiding hand in the court's decisions during those years-and serving a swing vote in many important cases. In 2009 her accomplishments were acknowledged by President Obama who honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Born on March 26, 1930, in El Paso, Texas. Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to serve as a justice on the United States Supreme Court in 1981. Long before she would weight in on some of the nation's most pressing cases, she spent part of her childhood on her family's Arizona ranch. O'Connor was adept at riding and assisted with some of ranch duties.

Did you know? On September 21, 1981, O'Connor was confirmed by the U.S. Senate with a vote of 99-0.

After graduating from Stanford University in 1950 with a bachelor's degree in economics, Sandra Day O'Connor attended the university's law school. She received her degree in 1952 and worked in California and Frankfurt, Germany, before settling in Arizona.

In Arizona, Sandra Day O'Connor worked as the assistant attorney general in the 1960s. In 1969, she made the move to state politics with an appointment by Governor Jack Williams to state senate to fill a vacancy. A conservative Republican, O'Connor won re-election twice. In 1974, she took on a different challenge. O'Connor ran for the position of judge in the Maricopa County Superior Court.
READ MORE: How Sandra Day O'Connor's Swing Vote Decided the 2000 Election
As a judge, Sandra Day O'Connor developed a solid reputation for being firm, but just. Outside of the courtroom, she remained involved in Republican politics. In 1979, O'Connor was selected to serve on the state's court of appeals. Only two years later, President Ronald Reagan nominated her for associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. O'Connor received unanimous approval from the U.S. Senate. She broke new ground for women in the legal field when she was sworn in as the first female justice on the Supreme Court.

As a member of the court, Sandra Day O'Connor was considered to be a moderate conservative. She tended to vote in line with her politically conservative nature, but she still considered her cases very carefully. In opposition to the Republican call to reverse the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights, O'Connor provided the vote needed to uphold the court's earlier decision. Many times she focused on the letter of law, not the clamoring of politicians, and voted for what she believed best fit the intentions of the U.S. Constitution.

Sandra Day O'Connor retired from the court on January 31, 2006. Part of her reason for retiring was to spend more time with her husband, John Jay O'Connor. The couple has been married since 1952 and has three sons. She divides her time between Washington, D.C., and Arizona.

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Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-) was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006, and was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. A moderate conservative, she was known for her dispassionate and meticulously researched opinions.

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1984 – 1986 – The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act helped improve worker rights for Australian women (AUS)

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1984 – 1986 – The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act helped improve worker rights for Australian women (AUS)

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The act made sure that women had the same acess to jobs, services and accomodation as men.

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/sex-discrimination-act

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Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women, Senator Susan Ryan, 1984

Legislation

The Bill extended to all areas of employment and education and many services, mirroring and building on existing laws in NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

The legislation was intended to promote equality between women and men by:

prohibiting discrimination (both direct and indirect) based on gender when it came to employment, pay, promotion exclusion or unfair dismissal. This was later extended to marital status, pregnancy (or possible pregnancy) and breastfeeding.

It also sought to protect women from discrimination when enrolling or studying at an educational institution, when seeking to rent or buy property, or accessing services such as banking and insurance, utilities, or government or professional services.

It made sexual harassment illegal - the first time in Australia such protection had been legislated.

Importantly, it also created the Office of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner. The impressive occupants of this position have often successfully kept issues of importance to women on the political and social agenda.

Protest

Though the principles underpinning the legislation seem entirely reasonable to most Australians today, the Sex Discrimination Bill met with, according to Susan Ryan, 'sustained, vociferous and irrational opposition from powerful sectors of the community'.

Ryan found the extent of opposition surprising, especially given that the more contentious provisions of her 1981 private member's Bill - the affirmative action measures - had been deferred for later legislation (passed in 1986), and that there was little new in the Bill apart from the sexual harassment provisions.

However, the government did not control the senate, and some members, such as independent senator Brian Harradine, had objections. This forced the government to make changes.

The superannuation and insurance sectors were given a temporary exemption to allow them to catch up with new regulations, and partial exemptions were provided for the church and the military.

Nonetheless, support for the bill was largely bipartisan and, after 17 hours of debate, it was finally passed.

The Act commenced on 1 August 1984.

Impact and limitations of the Act

The Sex Discrimination Act had a profound impact on women's position in Australian society, in real terms and symbolically.

It encouraged more women to seek an education and employment, which raised families incomes. Women began taking more senior positions in the workforce and were promoted to more visible roles, and single mothers had more opportunities.

It made it possible for women to have both a work and a family life, and paved the way for further developments, such as paid parental leave.

However, the Act has certain drawbacks. Among these is the fact that it is complaint based, which means it is up to the aggrieved individual to lodge a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission, which offers conciliation services but does not have the power to, say, force an organisation to reinstate a person to their job.

For binding orders, a complainant has to go to the Federal Court or Federal Circuit Court - no small matter for someone who has lost their job or endured sexual harassment at work.

Some critics still say Australia has a long way to go in terms of true equality and representation. The numbers of women in parliament remains low, and they are under-represented in senior management positions, especially in the private sector.

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The Bill extended to all areas of employment and education and many services, mirroring and building on existing laws in NSW, Victoria and South Australia. The legislation was intended to promote equality between women and men by: prohibiting discrimination (both direct and indirect) based on gender when it came to employment, pay, promotion exclusion or unfair dismissal.

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2005 – Law of provocation abolished. (AUS)

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2005 – Law of provocation abolished. (AUS)

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Provocation was abolished as a partial defence to murder in Victoria in 2005.

https://www.gotocourt.com.au/criminal-law/vic/provocation-in-victoria/#:~:text=Provocation%20was%20abolished%20as%20a,amounts%20to%20a%20partial%20defence.

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www.researchgate.net needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.

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2008 – Abortion decriminalised in Victoria (AUS)

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2008 – Abortion decriminalised in Victoria (AUS)

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Abortion bill passed in 2008, allowing women to get abortions without legal repurcussions.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-10-11/vic-parliament-passes-abortion-bill/538304

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After a marathon sitting week, the Victorian Parliament has finally passed legislation to decriminalise abortion.

The Upper House debated the bill for four consecutive days and nights, and last night a final vote was counted. It passed 23 votes to 17.

All amendments were rejected, including a proposal to exempt doctors who object to abortions from having to refer their patients onwards.

Abortion will now be removed from the Crimes Act and a woman can freely choose to terminate a pregnancy up to 24 weeks gestation. Late term abortions will require the consent of two doctors.

Women's Affairs Minister Maxine Morand says it is an historic moment.

"We now have clarity and certainty for women and health practitioners in Victoria and that is fundamentally and incredibly important," she said.

She says the lengthy parliamentary debate may be the longest in history.

"It'd be hard to find a bill that has been debated as long as this in the history of the Victorian Parliament," she said.

"I might even have a look at what we can compare it with, but it's certainly a unique moment in time."

Liberal MP Wendy Lovell says she is relieved abortion is no longer a crime.

"It's actually historic that it's happened in October 2008, because it was October 1908 that women were given the vote," she said.

"So 100 years later, women have again won the right to be in control of their own bodies."

Both sides of the parliamentary debate praised the respect and restraint shown by the other side.

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After a marathon sitting week, the Victorian Parliament has finally passed legislation to decriminalise abortion. The Upper House debated the bill for four consecutive days and nights, and last night a final vote was counted. It passed 23 votes to 17.

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2010 – Julia Gillard is sworn in as Australia’s first female Prime Minister (AUS)

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2010 – Julia Gillard is sworn in as Australia’s first female Prime Minister (AUS)

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She held office as leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). She is the first and only female prime minister in Australian history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Gillard#:~:text=Julia%20Eileen%20Gillard%20AC%20(born,prime%20minister%20in%20Australian%20history.

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2011- Australia's first national paid parental leave scheme (AUS)

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2011- Australia's first national paid parental leave scheme (AUS)

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It encouraged women to return to work after having children.

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/feb/17/paid-family-leave-transformed-australian-business-its-now-under-threat

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Before the advent of paid parental leave, the majority of new mothers in Australia quit their jobs so they could cash out holiday pay to help fund those first few months at home.

At Westpac Bank, only 32% of mothers were returning to work after having a baby in 1995. Two years later, the figure had shot up to 53% - undoubtedly because the bank launched a paid maternity leave scheme.

Today, almost all (96% of women) return to work, says Shenaz Khan, Westpac Group general manager, enterprise HR, strategy and service. "We are able to retain that knowledge and experience," she says.

The bank's offer of 13 weeks' leave for primary carers (or half pay for 26 weeks) is offset by the savings it has made by plugging the "brain drain" of its talented women.

Khan says it can cost up to 2.5 times a woman's salary to replace her if she leaves because of the money spent on recruitment, retraining and inducting people into the business. "And in specialist roles, where skills are hard to find, those costs are significantly higher," she says.

When looking at the value of paid parental leave, Westpac is a good example, as it has one of the longest-running schemes in the country. The business community was agog when Westpac became the first publicly listed Australian company to offer the leave 22 years ago.

"It was quite a shock to the industry because it was revolutionary back in 1995," Khan says.

The then CEO, Bob Joss, was trying to turn around a struggling bank and a brand that had been battered by financial scandal and a painful run of foreclosures - particularly on famers.

He asked his group executive, people and performance, Ann Sherry (now the chief executive of Carnival Cruises), to find something that would make the bank an "employer of choice" and she convinced him that paid maternity leave would do the trick - and that it could be paid for by the increase in staff retention.

Sherry has said that before paid parental leave women left the workforce because they needed the money they got when they cashed out their benefits.

"Having babies is an expensive business and they couldn't afford to be off work for 12 months and paying the mortgage, and kitting out the house," Sherry said in an interview with this reporter, 14 months ago.

Even though there had been longstanding resistance by businesses to pay maternity leave, Westpac's move changed the landscape.

"It was like a domino effect," Sherry said. "Other businesses couldn't bear for Westpac to get a march on them, so lots of major businesses in Australia just folded and all introduced it."

The chief executive of the Diversity Council Australia, Lisa Annese, is another Westpac alumnus. She was working as a graduate recruit at the bank when the paid parental leave was launched. "It was really innovative stuff at the time," she says. "And now organisations compete with each other for who has got the best paid parental leave scheme because there is a war for talent in many industries.

"Any organisation could crunch numbers and it is a no-brainer."

There are some impressive examples out there: the freight company Aurizon's "shared care" program allows male employees to take primary care of their child for at least 13 weeks at half pay while their partner returns to work. This is on top of the primary carer's parental leave and is available even when the father (or secondary carer) works for another company.

The real estate advertising company REA Group offers 26 weeks at full pay, along with 12 weeks' paid leave for secondary carers (comprised of six weeks at half pay and six weeks at full pay). It also pays superannuation for the entire period up to 12 months.

The tech consultancy ThoughtWorks employs 300 people in Australia and has been offering paid parental leave since 2008. In Australia, women make up only 28% of the information and communication technology workforce, but 49% of the workforce at ThoughtWorks is female.

Its regional group managing director, Ange Ferguson, sees the 18 weeks' leave as a tool to encourage and retain women in the industry. "The cost to source and hire is significant, and the benefit we gain from policies that increase both attraction and retention, as well as the uplift to awareness of our brand as an employer make it easily worthwhile."

In 2011 the federal government launched its own paid parental leave scheme, paying families 18 weeks' salary at minimum wage rates. This could be paid on top of employer-paid schemes, for those who had access to them. Around half of private-sector employers have a paid parental scheme, according to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

But this "hybrid" arrangement has been under attack from the Coalition government since 2015, when the then treasurer, Joe Hockey, characterised it as "double dipping" and "basically fraud" by parents.

Those employee and employer groups who support access to both schemes say the government's contribution provides a minimum standard and helps top up employer contributions so they start to approach the 26 weeks of paid leave recommended by the World Health Organisation.

The average leave provided by employers is about 10 weeks and the total amount of paid parental leave provided to Australian families is low by world standards.

Those families who rely solely on the government scheme actually receive less than two months' pay at the national average rate - because they are paid at minimum wage rates, rather than their actual salary.

The Turnbull government's latest threat to disallow access to employer and government schemes at the same time appears, at present, to be stymied by the Nick Xenophon's Team's decision not to support the government's childcare and welfare "omnibus" bill.

According to submissions to the Senate inquiry into paid parental leave, if the government was to succeed in the future, the likely result would be that large employers would find ways to make up the difference - which could be an average of $5,600.

Smaller employers, however, would be more likely to scrap their own schemes and allow the government to make all the payments. In those families made worse off, parents may find themselves returning to work earlier than they would have liked - with the added concerns about the wellbeing of mothers and children and the difficulties and costs of childcare.

Annese says the proposed changes are likely to act as a disincentive for employer-funded schemes: "It might demoralise employers from being generous and it will end up costing the government more money because more women will need to access the scheme in a more dependent way.

"There is no advantage to it and, in fact, it could be argued that it could be a disincentive for organisations who are still working out how to attract and retain young parents in the workplace."

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Paid family leave transformed Australian business - it's now under threat

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Before the advent of paid parental leave, the majority of new mothers in Australia quit their jobs so they could cash out holiday pay to help fund those first few months at home. At Westpac Bank, only 32% of mothers were returning to work after having a baby in 1995.

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2016 – First Indigenous woman elected to House of Representatives (AUS)

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2016 – First Indigenous woman elected to House of Representatives (AUS)

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First Indigenous female member of the House of Representatives, elected in 2016. She was also the first and only Indigenous member of the New South Wales Parliament, having been elected in 2003.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1718/Quick_Guides/IndigenousParliamentarians#:~:text=Indigenous%20federal%20parliamentarians&text=Linda%20Burney%20(House%20of%20Representatives,having%20been%20elected%20in%202003.

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2019 – Abortion decriminalised in NSW (AUS)

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2019 – Abortion decriminalised in NSW (AUS)

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Abortion bill passed in 2019, allowing women to get abortions without legal repurcussions.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-26/abortion-decriminalised-in-nsw-as-bill-passes-lower-house/11549436

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Abortion has been decriminalised in NSW after a final vote in the Lower House which the Premier missed because she had to "run the state".

The bill was given the final tick of approval in the Lower House and abortion has now been removed from the Crimes Act

The Catholic Church said today was a "dark day" for NSW and a "defeat for humanity"

Premier Gladys Berejiklian was not in the chamber when the final vote took place

Last night the controversial bill, which has been the source of public and political debate over the past eight weeks, passed the upper house 26 votes to 14.

This paved the way for it to be reintroduced to the Lower House today.

Ms Berejiklian, who faced significant public criticism from conservative figures over the bill, was not in the chamber for the final vote.

But she later defended her absence.

"I had to run the state," she said.

She pointed out that the bill had passed on the voices and said she would have been there to cast a vote if a division was called.

"When I am required to be in the chamber I am and I had full confidence that the house would resolve it in a positive way," Ms Berejiklian said.

MPs who had voiced opposition said they were more comfortable with its amended condition and even voted in favour of it this morning.

Deep divisions in the Liberal Party have been revealed since Independent MP Alex Greenwich announced the introduction of the bill in July.

Liberal MP Tanya Davies, the strongest opponent of the bill, even plotted a leadership spill against Ms Berejiklian last week, but later backed down.

Earlier this month Ms Davies and fellow backbencher Kevin Connolly threatened to move to the crossbench if their concerns were not met, but today they said they would both remain in the Liberal Party.

"I think at the end of this process, we have achieved a better bill," Ms Davies said.

"I can confirm that I will be remaining as a member of the Government on the Government benches moving forward."

'Defeat for humanity'

Throughout the debate, conservative and religious groups attacked the Government for trying to "rush" the bill through without enough public consultation.

Ms Berejiklian intervened several times to allow more time for debate.

Federal Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, and former prime minister Tony Abbott, were both high-profile opponents of the bill, with Mr Joyce describing it as the "slavery debate of our time".

But NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro said he was proud to be part of a Government that had decriminalised abortion.

"What we've achieved last night is historic for the state, decriminalising abortion, taking it out of criminal act and putting it in the health act where it should be, and not treating women like criminals," he said.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

The moment abortion legislation passed NSW Parliament

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher described it as a "dark day" for the state.

"The new abortion law is a defeat for humanity," he said.

"[It] may be the worst law passed in New South Wales in modern times, because it represents such a dramatic abdication of responsibility to protect the most vulnerable members of our community."

The Archbishop acknowledged the hundreds of protesters who maintained a vigil outside Parliament House, sometimes overnight, during the debate.

Members of the Legislative Council spent more than 50 hours whittling 102 amendments to the bill down to just nine before voting on it late last night.

"It's been a very long journey but it's also been a very important journey for a very important issue that people across NSW care about deeply," said Labor MP Penny Sharpe, who cosponsored the bill.

"This is a massive step forward for women in NSW, it's long overdue and I just want to thank everyone who has been involved in getting us here."

Tony Abbott speaks during an anti-abortion rally in Hyde Park.(AAP: James Gourley )

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Abortion decriminalised in NSW, Premier misses crucial vote

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Abortion has been decriminalised in NSW after a final vote in the Lower House which the Premier missed because she had to "run the state".

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2021 – Abortion decriminalised in South Australia (AUS)

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2021 – Abortion decriminalised in South Australia (AUS)

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the Termination of Pregnancy Act 2021 becomes law in South Australia today.

https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/2022/7/7/abortion-law-finally-comes-into-effect-in-south-australia#:~:text=More%20than%2015%20months%20after,abortion%20care%20across%20the%20state.