What was the women's movement?

The women's movement was the long American struggle for equal rights for women, encompassing the suffrage campaign of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the modern feminist movement that arose in the 1960s and 1970s. The first wave of the movement is often dated from the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York on July 19 and 20, 1848, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and about 300 others adopted the Declaration of Sentiments demanding equal rights, including the right to vote. Activists such as Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and Lucy Stone built the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 and pushed for state and federal voting rights for the next 50 years. The campaign culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 18, 1920, granting women the right to vote nationwide.

The second wave of the women's movement began in the early 1960s, often dated to the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963, which described what she called the problem that has no name among educated suburban housewives. President John F. Kennedy created the Commission on the Status of Women in 1961, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, and its 1963 report documented widespread discrimination. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, banning sex-based wage differences, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned employment discrimination on the basis of sex. The National Organization for Women was founded by Friedan and others in 1966.

Activists won major victories. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 banned sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and transformed women's athletics. The Equal Rights Amendment passed Congress on March 22, 1972 but failed to win ratification by the required three-fourths of states by its 1982 deadline. The Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973, recognizing a constitutional right to abortion, which the court overturned in 2022. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 amended Title VII to prohibit pregnancy-based discrimination. Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court in 1981, and Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman nominated for vice president by a major party in 1984. The movement continues with debates over equal pay, family leave, harassment, and reproductive rights.