Clemson University
Sept. 17, 1997
3rd Wave Feminism:
Some Main Events
Economic Equality |
Educational Equality | Sports |
Reproductive Rights |
Fighting Violence | Gays and Lesbians
Special Law passed for Women's Rights
Equal Pay Act introduced in Congress by
Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas
-
Equal Pay
Act finally passes Congress
1964
Title VII of Civil Rts Act prohibits sex discrim. in employment (in businesses
of 25+)- Griswold vs. Conn. struck down by SupCt; rt to privacy assures married couples access to contraception
- Masters and Johnson publish Human Sexual Response
- Flight attendants file suit re firings for marriage, pregnancy or age
- White v. Crook strikes down Alabama law excluding women from jury duty
- ERA introduced again
- Colorado 1st state to liberalize abortion laws -- rape, incest, mo's health, or defective child; NC & CA follow
- NOW: picketing and notarized complaint agnst NYT sex-segregated want-ads
- LBJ signs executive orders banning sex discrim in federal employment, allowing promotion past Colonel
- NYRW (Radical Women) founded; later splits into WITCH & Redstockings
- Several different state laws requiring longer prison sentences for women struck down
- EEOC issues guidelines forbidding male/female want ads
- Shirley Chisholm 1st black women elected to House of Rep.
- Rosenfeld vs. Southern Pacific supercedes state laws agnst overtime & heavy lifting for women
- WEAL (Women's Equity Action League) formed to fight sex discrim in education
- "Women's Lib" groups begin appearing -- spin-off from student activism
- Nixon signs Exec Order requiring Affirmative Action in federal gvmt.
- NARAL founded at 1st national conference on abortion laws
- NOW: "Public Accommodations Week" : demos agnst Oak Room NYC, Polo Lounge LA
- Canada legalizes abortion and homosexuality
- Weeks v. Southern Bell strikes down weight-lifting rule of 30 lbs (typewriter heavier than that)
- EEOC establishes guideline striking down all protective labor laws applicable only to women
- 1st Women's Law course taught at NYU Law School
- WEAL files class-action suit agnst sex discrim in higher ed, including sports
- San Diego State establishes first WS BA degrees program
- Hawaii legalizes abortion; NY legal first 2 trimester; Alaska repeals existing restr. law
- Women charge Newsweek wi sex discrim; sue Time Inc; sit-in at Ladies' Home Journal
-
ERA forced out of Committee to House
of Rep
- Kate Millett, Sexual Politics published
- House Subcommittee on Education: hearings on sex discrim
- WEAL files sex discrim agnst entire state education system of Florida; all US Med School s
- NOW files sex discrim agnst 1300 corporations wi no Affirm Action plans
- Women's Strike for Equality (50,000 march in NYC)
-
NYC passes
law agnst sex discrm in public accommodations
- 1st women's professional tennis tour
- Title X of Public Health Service Act provides funding for family planning info for low-income
- Mass. law against sale of birth control to unmarried struck down
- NWPC (National Women's Political Caucus) founded; sues all law schools in U.S. receiving federal funds
- 1st girls appointed as Senate pages
- Phillips v. Martin Marietta cannot refuse woman employment b/c small children unless also refuse men
- NOW files charges agnst entire U.S. public school system to draw attention to sex discrim in ed (teachers & school admins specifically exempted frm coverage by Equal Pay Act & Ti. VII Civil Rts Act)
-
ERA passes House of Rep [354-23]
- Nixon vetos federally funded day care
- Ms. appears as insert in NY magazine
- Boston Women's Health Collective, Our Bodies Ourselves: A Course by & for Women
-
Reed v Reed forbids
men arbitrary preference as estate executors (argued by Ruth Bader Ginsberg)
- EEOC files 23,000-page report wi FCC charging AT&T "largest oppressor of women workers in U.S."
-
ERA passes Senate [84-8] (deadline
for state ratification 1979)
- Shirley Chisholm runs for Presidency
-
Equal Employment
Opportunity Act empowers EEOC to take legal action to enforce Ti VII of 1964
Civil Rights Act
-
*Title IX of Education Amendments Act outlaws sex discrim in educational
institutions; this includes collegitate sports
-
Equal Pay
Act extended to cover executive, administrative, and professional personnel
-
Numerous court
cases challenge mandatory pregnancy leave, statutes, and policies
- 6 state legislatures pass ERA
- NOW issues booklet against sexism in elementary school textbooks
1973 Roe V. Wade invalidates state laws agnst abortion in 1st trimester on
grounds of right to privacy- Universities begin establishing academic-athletic scholarships for women
- AT&T signs $38 million sex discrimination settlement with EEOC & Dept. of Labor
- SupCt. prohibits sex-segregated advertizing
- AFL-CIO endorses ERA; 30 states have ratified ERA
- First battered women shelters opened in Minnesota and Boston
- U.S. Tennis Assoc. gives equal prize$ to women in U.S. Open; Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs
- NOW demonstrates agnst Little League World Series; suits filed; NJ rules no girls illegal
Equal Credit Opportunity Act outlaws credit discrim on basis of sex or marital
status- Weak guidelines for compliance wi Title IX finally published by HEW
- Ella Grasso, 1st woman elected Governor in her own right (Conn.)
- Gay-rts, anti-discrim laws passed in Alfred NY and St. Paul Minn.
- First women ordained as priests in Episcopal church
-
Fair Housing
Act of 1968 extended to prohibit sex discrim
- NOW, WEAL & NEA (Ntnl Education Assoc) file suit agnst U.S. gvmt for failing to enforce Ti IX
- Conference on Rape organized by national Black Feminist Organization and NY Women Against Rape
- Against Our Will by Susan Browmiller was published (bookdeefines rape as a crime of violence r.t. of sexuality)
- The American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
- Redbook magazine surveys sexual harassment in the workplace. Replies from 9,000 young women (in their 20s and 30s) showed that 90% thought the problem was "serious."
- The Episcopal Church officially recognized ordination of 15 women as priests
- Battered Wives by Del Martin was published. -- the first major report on this wide-spread form of violence against women. MS counts about ten shelters for battered women in the US.
- NASA starts training women to be astronauts
- First Women's Caucus held in Congress
- Iris Riveria refuses to make coffee for her boss and is fired (later rehired due to protests) Her case is first use of term "sexual harassment"
Passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Bill outlaws
firing, not hiring, or not promoting women because of pregnancy- Nancy Kasselbaum elected to the US Senate, 1st woman senator not the widow of a congressman
- NOW organizes boycott of states where ERA has not passed
- Deadline for ratification of ERA extended
- 100,000 march for ERA in DC
- First national conference on pornography
First national march for gay rights attracted over 100,000 marchers to Washington.- Tens of thousands of demonstrators in NYC commemorate the 10th anniversary of the "Stonewall Riot," which many consider to be the beginning of the gay rights movement .
- For the first time in history the presidents of all seven sisters colleges were women
- Anti-porn demonstration in Times Square
- Judy Chicago completes The Dinner Party
- Thirty-three percent of all high school athletes were female-a 600% increase since the early 70's
- The Women's Committee of the Directors Guild released statistics showing that of the 7,332 movies released by major American studios between 1949 and 1979, only 14 were directed by women.
- Democratic party agrees to equal representation of women and men on all committees
- President Reagan endorses the Human Life Amendment (HLA), a constitutional amendment which would ban abortion, the IUD, and some forms of the birth control pill.
the Equal Rights Amendment is defeated: three states short
of ratification.- Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to pass a law that prohibited discrimination against homosexuals
- Department of Health and Human Services is barred from implementing the "squeal rule" requiring government funded clinics to notify parents when teenagers seek prescription contraceptives
- Washington State "comparable worth" case
-
Montana became
the first state to ban sex discrimination in all types of insurance.
- Christine Craft sues TV station for firing her because she was deemed "too unattractive, too old and not deferential enough to men."
- in Grove City College v. Bell , the U. S. Supreme Court accepted the Reagan Administration position that Title IX banned sex discrimination only in the specific programs within an educational institution that directly received Federal funding.
- Incidents of violence or harassment of clinics reported to the National Abortion Federation (NAF) totaled 123 in 1983. Within the first ten weeks of 1984, such incidents numbered 59
- Emily's List founded to raise money for pro-choice, Democratic candidates
- In 1979, only five states-Oregon, Iowa, Nebraska, New Jersey and Delaware-had statutes permitting the prosecution of husbands who raped their wives. Since 1979- and the growth of the feminist movement-new laws or court decisions made marital rape a criminal offense in 18 additional states and the District of Columbia. In 1985, 15 more states were considering similar statutes.
-
Merritor Savings Bank v. Vinson : Supreme Ct affirmed that sex harassment
on job is sex discrim and violation of Title VII of Civil Rts Act
- The Supreme Court ruled against the right to privacy for gay men and lesbians in Bowers v. Hardwick, thereby upholding a Georgia statute which criminalized consensual sodomy.
- More than 33% of U.S. medical school students are women, up from 9% in 1969
- At Harvard University, only 54, or 7%, of the 787 tenured faculty were women. Forty-two percent of the undergraduates were women.
- The Handmaid's Tale , a novel by Margaret Atwood, published
- The third edition of Arthur Janson's History of Art, the standard college art history textbook, incorporated female artists for the first time.
- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional an Indianapolis ordinance authored by Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, that had defined pornography as discrimination against women.
- Congress approved stricter federal rape laws. The single crime of rape was now replaced by four gradations; penalties were based on the severity of the crime; and the marital rape exemption was abolished.
- The National Gay and Lesbian Rights March drew 500,000 to Washington, DC. More than 5 times the size of the 1979 lesbian and gay rights march, it was ignored by Congress a few days later when it passed repressive Helms and Dannemeyer amendments restricting AIDS spending.
-
As in 1986, 1985, and 1984, Rep.
Rose Mary Oakar's (D-OH) pay equity bill, Rep. Patricia Schroeder's (D-CO)
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and the Civil Rights Restoration Act
were blocked.
- France became the first Western nation to approve the use of RU-486, the abortion pill.
- Lambda Delta Lambda, a lesbian sorority, was officially recognized by UCLA, the first Greek-letter system gay sorority or fraternity to be approved by a university.
- " Operation Rescue," organized by Randall E. Terry to blockade access to abortion clinics
- President George Bush vetoed a bill approved by the U.S. House and Senate that would permit the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions for poor women who were victims of "promptly reported" rape or incest
- A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend approval of Norplant, a long-acting contraceptive, that protects a woman from pregnancy for up to five years when implanted under the skin.
- "Mommy Track" by Felice Schwartz article published in Harvard Business Review
- Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania signed a package of anti-choice legislation, including a 24-hour waiting period for abortions, spousal notification, and a ban on abortions performed after the 24th week of pregnancy.
- Mark Lepine gunned down 14 women engineering students at the University of Montreal
- President Bush I vetoed the "Family and Medical Leave Act"
- In Hodgson v. Minnesota, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ruled that states may require that pregnant teenage girls either notify both biological parents before having an abortion or seek a judicial authorization through "judicial bypass."
- A study by the Institute of Medicine reported that the United States had fallen significantly behind other countries in developing new methods of birth control. Approximately 750,000 of the abortions performed annually in this country resulted from contraceptive failure
- IBM announced that it would spend $3 million in 1991 to build five child-care centers
- Ms. magazine was reborn as a bi-monthly with no advertisements
- Ohio Governor Richard F. Celeste granted clemency to 25 women prisoners who he said had committed crimes because they were victims of battering or other forms of physical or emotional abuse
- Iron John, A Book About Men by Robert Bly was published and became the bible of a "men's movement."
- Susan Faludi publishes Backlash
- William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson rape trials
- U.S. Supreme Court in Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, declared that employers could not exclude women from jobs in which exposure to toxic substances could harm a developing fetus
- The U.S. Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan upholds a "gag rule," barring clinics from counseling women on abortion, even if the continued pregnancy threatened a woman's life or health.
- In the Gulf War, women were 35,000 of the 540,000 U.S. troops.
- The U. S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to open combat positions for women aviators.
- Thelma & Louise struck a nerve with women who made it a sleeper hit of the year.
- Governor Norm Bangerter of Utah signed into law the nation's most restrictive abortion legislation. The law stated that all abortions were illegal and made exceptions only for the mother's life, grave damage to the mother's medical health, grave fetal defects, and rape or incest and only during the first 20weeks
- Tailhook Association Convention in Las Vegas.
- In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the Supreme Court reaffirmed what it called the "essential holdings" of Roe that women have a constitutional right to choose abortion prior to fetal viability, but declared that states also have a "compelling" interest in potential human life throughout pregnancy and upheld a series of restrictions.
- Record-breaking number of women elected to Senate (six) provokes installation of women's restroom in the Senate!
- Congress passed a Family Medical Leave bill which President BushI vetoed
- The Senate Judiciary Committee reported that there were about a million attacks on women in the previous year by their husbands or lovers and another 3 million violent domestic crimes that went unreported.
- Twenty years after the passage of Title IX prohibiting sex discrimination in education, a report issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) documented the persistence of bias in favor of men. For every woman who got a chance to play Division I college sports, there were 2.24 men; for every woman who received a scholarship, 2.26 men did; and for every $1 paid to a men's basketball coach, the women's coach received 55 cents.
- Women are now paid 71 cents for every dollar paid to men. The range is from 64 cents for working-class women to 77cents for professional women with doctorates. Black women earned 65 cents, Latinas 54 cents.
- Women owned business employ more workers in the United States than the Fortune 500 companies do worldwide.
- Women win all five of the gold medals
won by Americans during the Winter Olympics.
- Maya Angelou reads an original poem at President Clinton's Inauguration
- Take Our Daughters to Work Day debuts, designed to build girls self-esteem and open their eyes to a variety of career possibilities for women
-
The Family Medical Leave Act finally goes into effect. Vetoed by president Bush, it is the first bill signed by President Clinton.
Fifty states have revised their laws so that, depending on the degree of additional violence used, husbancs can be prosecuted for sexually assaulting their wives.
With the increased number of women members, the 103rd Congress passes into law thirty bills on women's issues during its first year, 33 during its second. The previous record for any year: five.
- President Clinton issues an executive order instructing the FDA "assess initiatives... [that can] promote the testing, licensing, and manufacturing of RU486."
