National Organization for Women

United States 1966

Synopsis

Unionists played a prominent role in forming the National Organization for Women (NOW) in October 1966, but middle-class, professional women dominated NOW in its early years. Unlike radical feminists of the period, NOW members sought change through the political system. One of their first campaigns was to get the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's ban on sex discrimination. NOW argued that protective laws for women no longer served women's best interests.

Women union leaders differed with NOW's position on key issues. They were ambivalent about Title VII's strong enforcement and sought to retain at least some protective measures for women. Although NOW was one of the chief supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment, unionists struggled to explain how its enactment might harm women in low-wage service and industrial jobs. They charged that NOW did not consider the needs of working-class women. Moreover, unionists opposed NOW when it sought to safeguard the recently won employment gains of women and minorities in the face of a deep recession in the mid-1970s by calling for a modification of the traditional seniority concept of "last hired, first fired." The Coalition of Labor Union Women argued that such a change would be divisive to workers and punish veteran employees unfairly.

The two organizations grew considerably closer by the later 1970s, when NOW began to devote more resources to economic concerns such as the minimum wage and full-employment legislation. Reacting to pressure from rank-and-file women unionists who sought gender equality, union leaders reversed their long-standing opposition to the ERA.

Timeline

• 1946: First true electronic computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), is built.
• 1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted and sentenced to death for passing U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets.
• 1956: Workers revolt against communist rule in Poland, inspiring Hungarians to rise up against the Soviets. Soviet tanks and troops crush these revolts.
• 1959: Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev engage in their famous "kitchen debate" in Moscow. Later in the year, Khrushchev visits the United States, signaling an improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations.
• 1962: Publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring heightens Americans' awareness of environmental issues. A year later, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan helps to usher in a feminist revolution.
• 1966: As a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Miranda v. Arizona, law officers are now required to inform ar-restees of their rights.
• 1966: In August, Mao Zedong launches the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," which rapidly plunges China into chaos as armed youths plunder the countryside, rooting out suspected foreign collaborators and anti-Chinese elements. Along with rifles and other weapons, these Red Guards are armed with copies of Mao's "Little Red Book."
• 1969: Assisted by pilot Michael Collins, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon on 20 July.
• 1971: Pentagon Papers, based on a secret Defense Department study of the Vietnam War, are published.
• 1976: Striking a blow in favor of affirmative action, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that minorities are entitled to retroactive job seniority. The Court also holds that the death penalty is not necessarily cruel or unusual punishment, thus reversing a decade-old ruling.
• 1981: President Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor of Arizona to become the first female Supreme Court justice.

Event and Its Context

NOW's Stance on Employment Issues in Its Early Years

The wider, national battle for gender equality gathered political force only with the emergence of the second-wave feminist movement in the late 1960s. Unionists played a fundamental role in defining the shape and character of this movement. Union women, joining with upper-class women from the small, conservative National Woman's Party (NWP), and younger, liberal activists, formed the National Organization for Women (NOW) in October 1966. The Equal Pay Act and the report of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, both of which appeared in 1963, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 energized this new wave of feminists to protest what its members viewed as the EEOC's unwillingness to provide equal employment conditions for women. Among its founding members were unionists Aileen Hernandez, Dorothy Haener, Caroline Davis, Betty Talkington, and others. Despite the presence of these unionists in the early years of NOW, the organization was dominated by middle-class, professional women who were often at odds with unionists over such issues as continued enforcement of protective laws, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and maintaining union seniority systems. NOW and labor movement leaders viewed each other warily: the former were hostile to unions, often viewing them as nothing more than bastions of male supremacy; the latter saw feminists as unappreciative of the importance unions played in the lives of working women. Some key figures in NOW, such as Betty Friedan, had radical union and left-wing pasts, but they did not make feminist claims as unionists.

In general, mainstream feminists considered women's economic status in a gender rather than in a class context. Unlike the radical feminists of the period, NOW members sought to use the political system to effect reform. There was cause for optimism in the heady days of the 1960s. Responding to NOW pressure, for example, President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 amended an executive order banning discrimination on the basis of race by government contractors to include a prohibition on sex discrimination as well. More than any other issue at the time, feminists sought a full enforcement of Title VII. They argued that the protective laws for women, many of which dated back to the early twentieth century, hindered the ability of women workers to gain access to equal pay, seniority, and job assignment with men. The EEOC's commissioners balked, maintaining that some protective laws might override Title VII's seemingly clear mandate that there be no discrimination.

Despite pressure on EEOC officers to reevaluate their Title VII guidelines, feminists were unable to meet with most commissioners. The two identifiably feminist commissioners at the EEOC, Aileen Hernandez and Richard Graham, left in 1966. These were temporary setbacks, however. By 1968 the cumulative effect of EEOC data pointing to the prevalence of sex discrimination and the pressure of feminists forced the recalcitrant commission to modify its policies. Commissioners returned to their original practice of determining the legality of protective laws on a case-by-case basis instead of ignoring the issue altogether; they ruled that separate retirement ages for men and women violated Title VII. Separate want ads became unlawful. The next year, EEOC policymakers finally bowed to pressure and released new guidelines mandating that Title VII superseded all state protective laws for women.

NOW and Organized Labor

The relationship between NOW and the labor movement during NOW's first decade of existence was characterized by distrust. Whereas rank-and-file women were in accord with many of NOW's positions, older female union activists continued into the 1970s to argue the need for protective laws. They underestimated the new economic and social forces that were shaping working women's lives. Most of these unionists were approaching middle age by 1969; they had been out of the workforce for at least a decade, often in appointed union staff positions in Washington, D.C.

Rank-and-file women unionists, however, rejected protective laws and fully embraced Title VII. The nearly 2,500 women charging sex discrimination against their unions and employers during the EEOC's first year alone (27 percent of the total complaints) did not create a formal association. They helped to change the labor movement's stance on gender equality and to legitimize NOW's efforts by unloosing an avalanche of discrimination charges. A minority of older activists joined them in their quest for equality, most notably EEOC commissioner Aileen Hernandez. Before her appointment to the commission, Hernandez had been the West Coast education director for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. After she left the EEOC, Hernandez was elected NOW president.

NOW's championing of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) put it at odds with most of labor's leadership as well. The ERA had existed in one form or another since the 1920s but had failed to gather significant support when it came up for annual renewal in Congress. Most reform groups and labor unions opposed it on the grounds that it would negate protective laws and threaten the economic status of working women. When it reappeared in the late 1960s, it found new life as a key component in the battle for gender equality. With the passing of the pro-ERA baton from the NWP to a new generation of feminists, the amendment took on a different meaning in the context of second-wave feminism. For the vast majority of feminists, the ERA was the centerpiece of their agenda, the ultimate expression of gender equality. The EEOC and judicial decisions against protective laws, the failure to interest courts in testing the Fourteenth Amendment as a substitute for the ERA, and the Nixon administration's Women's Task Force energized receptive feminists. For the first time the ERA gained grassroots support, passed the U.S. Senate (1972), and went to the states for ratification.

Union leaders did not flood the pro-ERA camp during this period, and many came to back the amendment by the mid-1970s reluctantly, and some not at all. They resisted supporting the ERA long past the point at which it had become clear that state protective laws for women were invalid. They risked alienating longtime allies over the matter, arguing that justice for working women came in the form of protective laws, not in measures demanding equal treatment. Despite evidence to the contrary, union activists continued to view the ERA as the work of conservative NWP members. Those having the most to lose from the elimination of protective laws for women rejected the ERA in the fiercest manner. This was especially true for unionists in organizations with a high percentage of women members, such as the Garment Workers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and the Hotel and Restaurant Workers unions. They presented their case against the ERA in what they asserted were practical terms: their members needed at least some of the protective measures to make their difficult working lives a bit easier.

Rank-and-file women unionists used public protests and worked through their own unions and ultimately proved decisive in bringing their labor organizations to back the ERA. At hearings in 1970, most labor leaders present testified against the ERA while women from various unions protested their unions' stance at a press conference. Labor leaders gave their approval to the amendment: by the time the AFL-CIO convention delegates backed a resolution approving the ERA in 1973, most large labor unions had made the ERA's passage a their goal.

Although they were in accord with middle-class feminists on key issues and at odds with their own leaders, NOW seemed to win few working-class members in this period, however. What little research there is on rank-and-file women unionists' relationship with NOW indicates that, with the exception of local chapters such as one in Chicago, there was little working-class support for NOW. Union women saw it as too removed from their own concerns and communities. Union leaders criticized NOW's efforts on behalf of women workers through the 1970s. They charged that NOW did not expend enough resources on economic issues affecting lower-paid working women. When they did—for example, advocating strong EEOC enforcement—they ignored the valuable role labor played in educating its members on equality and offering the grievance procedure as a tool to fighting discrimination. The debate over seniority and affirmative action points to the fault lines among union women and NOW leaders in the mid-1970s. With the massive layoffs during the economic recession, the EEOC, NOW, and other liberal and civil rights organizations proposed that the traditional collective bargaining guarantee of "last-hired, first-fired" be suspended so as to preserve the recent hiring gains of women and minorities. This plan met with scorn from male and female unionists alike on the grounds that it would undercut labor's already diminished strength.

NOW and unionists averted a damaging break over the issue with the Supreme Court's Franks v. Bowman Transportation ruling in 1976, in which the justices left the traditional seniority system intact but ordered that measures be taken to provide a "rightful-place" remedy (i.e., retroactive seniority to the date of discrimination) for victims of unequal treatment. The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), formed in 1974 by industrial, service, skilled trades, and government unionists, and NOW worked together on the ERA and comparable-worth campaigns. For their part, CLUW delegates supported abortion rights at their 1977 convention. With an even greater number of women in the workforce, NOW leaders gave greater attention to workplace issues such as minimum wage legislation and National Labor Relations Act reform, two items of key importance to organized labor.

Key Players

Friedan, Betty (1921-): Friedan, who is best known as the author of The Feminine Mystique and was NOW's first president, was a labor journalist in the 1940s and early 1950s. She began writing under her maiden surname Goldstein while at0Smith College; she later worked for the United Electrical Workers, a left-wing union.

Haener, Dorothy (1917-2001): Haener was a high-level staff member in the United Automobile Workers' (UAW) Women's Bureau in the 1960s and a founding member of NOW. Along with fellow UAW member Caroline Davis, she lobbied the EEOC for ful| enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Hernandez, Aileen (1926-): Hernandez was a union organizer and West Coast Education Director of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union before being appointed as the only woman commissioner of the EEOC in 1965. She was the only African American woman serving as a commissioner until the arrival of Eleanor Holmes Norton in the late 1970s. Hernandez was a founding member of NOW and the organization's president in the late 1960s.

See also: Civil Rights Act of 1964; Coalition of Labor Union Women; Equal Pay Act; Equal Rights Amendment and Protective Legislation.

Bibliography

Books

Deslippe, Dennis A. "Rights, Not Roses": Unions and the Rise of Working-Class Feminism, 1945-80. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Gabin, Nancy F. Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935-1975. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Harrison, Cynthia. On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945-1968. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Hartmann, Susan M. The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Horowitz, Daniel. Betty Friedan and the Making of "The Feminist Mystique": The American Left, The Cold War, and Modern Feminism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

Additional Resources

Other

"Step by Step: Building a Feminist Movement, 1941-1977."Joyce Follet, producer; Mimi Omer, coproducer. Close-captioned video. Worthington, MA: Step-by-Step, 1998.

—Dennis A. Deslippe