National Organization For Women

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Founded in 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) has approximately 500,000 contributing members and roughly 550 chapters across the United States. NOW maintains a diverse policy agenda and tactical repertoire. It has employed legal, legislative lobbying, electoral, and protest tactics, leading campaigns not only for the legal equality of women and for the equal rights amendment but also against sexual harassment, for the maintenance of women’s access to abortion clinics and against clinic violence, against domestic violence and rape, and for poor women’s rights.

Many individuals contributed to the organization’s founding, including activists in the union movement and the civil rights movement as well as men and women working within the federal bureaucracy. They shared a common concern that the newly created Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was refusing to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination against women in the workplace. Women’s rights advocates like Richard Graham and Aileen Hernandez, both EEOC commissioners, sought a spokesperson to lead an organization similar to the NAACP, an advocacy organization for African Americans, that would be dedicated to women’s equality issues.

Betty Friedan was one individual recruited to take on this role. A freelance writer who often wrote on women’s and labor issues, Friedan had gained significant media attention as a result of The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963. NOW was formed after members of the National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women (and Friedan, who attended with a press pass) attended a frustrating annual meeting in 1966 where attendees were stymied in their attempts to pass resolutions demanding changes at the EEOC. Twenty-eight women and men constituted the original founders, and Friedan became NOW’s first president. She and Pauli Murray wrote the organization’s original statement of purpose, which said in part that the purpose of NOW was “to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men” (Carabillo, Meuli, and Bundy Csida 1993, p. 47). From NOW’s inception its leaders were determined that the organization would operate independently from established political institutions, such as political parties, which they believed had paid only lip service to women’s equality. They also insisted that the group must be an activist rather than an educational organization. Organizationally speaking, NOW is among the most democratic of progressive social organizations. All members are eligible to become voting delegates to vote for national board members and officers at national conventions and to vote on resolutions pertaining to NOW’s goals and strategies.

NOW’s earliest actions centered on pressuring the EEOC to uphold Title VII. Drawing largely on the resources and talents of the organization’s founders, NOW initially focused on attracting media attention and on lobbying executive agencies and legislators on this issue. Soon, however, the group’s members (now including members of the women’s liberation movement) and some leaders argued that these tactics—long used by organizations like the NAACP—had failed to produce results. Consequently over the course of its founding period (1966–1971), NOW began to incorporate mass mobilization and protest activities into its tactical repertoire along with legislative lobbying, the campaign to ratify the equal rights amendment, and electoral activism. NOW also began to focus on broader goals, including abortion rights and lesbian rights.

The campaign to ratify the equal rights amendment (ERA) is one of NOW’s best-known endeavors. NOW’s leaders were not immediately successful in convincing members to participate in this challenge, however, and as a result the organization did not focus intently on the measure until 1978. The ERA was not ratified by its 1982 deadline, falling short by only three states. The campaign nevertheless proved a potent mobilizing force, swelling NOW’s ranks to over 200,000 members and exposing members and leaders to multiple tactics, including lobbying, protest, state-level politics, electoral politics, mobilization, and fund-raising, that for many were their first experience in politics.

Among the longest-serving of NOW’s presidents is Eleanor Smeal, who was elected three times and presided from 1977 to 1982 and from 1985 to 1987. Smeal led the organization during the latter stages of the equal rights amendment campaign and spearheaded NOW’s increased investment in electoral politics, coining the term gender gap. She founded the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1987. Patricia Ireland led NOW for ten years (1991–2001) and extended the organization’s involvement in elections, most notably during the 1992 Year of the Woman. She also led campaigns against sexual harassment and in 1996 worked against the revocation of welfare benefits for poor women. Ireland’s priorities also included lesbian and gay rights. In 2001 Kim Gandy became president of NOW.

SEE ALSO Friedan, Betty; Women and Politics; Women’s Liberation; Women’s Movement

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barakso, Maryann. 2004. Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Carabillo, Toni, Judith Meuli, and June Bundy Csida. 1993. Feminist Chronicles, 1953–1993.Los Angeles: Women’s Graphics.

Freeman, Jo. 1975. The Politics of Women’s Liberation: A Case Study of an Emerging Social Movement and Its Relation to the Policy Process. New York: David McKay.

Mansbridge, Jane J. 1986. Why We Lost the ERA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Maryann Barakso