Friedan, NOW, women's liberation, abortion — and Schlafly

What the specification asks for

“Betty Friedan, Eleanor Roosevelt, NOW, women's liberation movement and abortion. Phyllis Schafly and opposition to the women's movement.” — examined through change and continuity. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

Where the movement started

Eleanor Roosevelt chaired Kennedy's Presidential Commission on the Status of Women from 1961 until her death in 1962. Its 1963 report documented systematic discrimination in pay, employment and law, and it established state commissions that became the movement's early organisational network. Her own position was more complicated than a modern reader expects: she had opposed an Equal Rights Amendment for decades because it would have removed the protective labour laws that limited women's hours and conditions, and she came to support it only late.

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) named what she called the problem that has no name — the dissatisfaction of educated suburban women confined to domesticity. It sold in enormous numbers and it was written about, and for, a particular constituency: white, married, college-educated and middle class. That limitation is a fair criticism and it was made at the time by black and working-class women, and it does not diminish the book's effect.

The Equal Pay Act passed in 1963. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination on grounds of sex — a provision added to Title VII by Howard Smith, a Virginia segregationist, apparently expecting the addition to sink the bill. It did not, and the single most powerful instrument of American sex-discrimination law arrived as a wrecking amendment.

NOW, liberation, and the courts

The National Organization for Women was founded in 1966 after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declined to enforce the sex provisions of Title VII seriously. Friedan was its first president and its method was the civil rights method applied to sex: litigation, lobbying, and pressure on federal agencies.

Women's liberation was a separate, younger and more radical strand emerging from the civil rights and student movements, where women had frequently found themselves doing the clerical work. It used consciousness-raising groups, direct action — the 1968 Miss America protest, at which no bra was burned — and the argument that the personal is political.

The achievements between 1963 and 1973 were substantial: the Equal Pay Act, Title VII, Title IX in 1972 requiring equality in federally funded education including sport, the legalisation of contraception for unmarried people in 1972, and Roe v Wade in January 1973, which held that the constitutional right to privacy covered a decision to terminate a pregnancy within a framework tied to viability. Women's participation in law and medical schools rose steeply within a decade.

Schlafly and the defeat of the ERA

The Equal Rights Amendment passed the House in 1971 and the Senate in 1972 by overwhelming margins, with the support of both parties, and 22 states ratified within a year. It needed 38.

Phyllis Schlafly founded STOP ERA in 1972. Her argument, made in her strongest form because a learner who cannot state it cannot answer it, was that the amendment would remove protections women currently held: exemption from military conscription and combat, alimony and preferential custody in divorce, protective labour legislation, and separate public facilities. She argued that it would transfer power over family law from state legislatures to federal courts, and that it was being promoted by professional women whose interests were not those of homemakers.

The method was organisation. She built a network of church-based volunteers who lobbied state legislators directly — the constitutional pressure point, since ratification is a state matter — and who arrived with home-baked bread. She won the argument in exactly the places it had to be won.

Ratification stalled at 35 states, three short, and the extended deadline expired in June 1982; five states also voted to rescind. The ERA is the option's evidence that a mass movement can be defeated by another mass movement rather than by an establishment, and a learner who treats the 1960s and 1970s as steady progress cannot explain 1982.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1961–63

Eleanor Roosevelt chairs the Commission on the Status of Women; it reports in 1963. Why this date: The state commissions it created became the movement's first network.

1963

The Feminine Mystique published; Equal Pay Act passed. Why this date: Argument and legislation in the same year, and the book's audience is a fair criticism to state.

1964

'Sex' added to Title VII by a segregationist congressman. Why this date: The most effective piece of American sex-discrimination law arrived as a wrecking amendment.

1972

The ERA passes Congress; Title IX enacted; STOP ERA founded. Why this date: The movement's high point and the beginning of its defeat, in the same year.

January 1973

Roe v Wade. Why this date: A court ruling rather than legislation, which is why it remained politically contested.

June 1982

The ERA deadline expires three states short. Why this date: The defeat, and the reason the strand exists on the specification.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 35 of 38 — States that ratified the ERA before the deadline expired.
• Over 60 per cent — Public support for the ERA in polling through the 1970s. (Polling varied by wording; the point is that majority support was not sufficient because ratification is a state-legislature process.)
• 10 years — From congressional passage in 1972 to the expiry of the extended deadline in 1982.
• About 59 cents — Women's median full-time earnings per dollar earned by men around 1970. (The figure varies by measure and year; use it as an order of magnitude.)

The people to place

• Betty Friedan — Author of The Feminine Mystique and first president of NOW.
• Eleanor Roosevelt — Chaired the Commission on the Status of Women; long opposed the ERA over protective legislation.
• Phyllis Schlafly — Founded STOP ERA in 1972 and organised the state-level campaign that defeated it.
• Howard Smith — Virginia segregationist who added 'sex' to Title VII, apparently to sink the 1964 bill.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'backlash' reading: The women's movement's defeat over the ERA was part of a broader conservative reaction that also ended the civil rights coalition, and it was organised, funded and religious in character. Contested by The reading that the ERA failed on its own terms — an amendment requiring 38 state legislatures is vulnerable to a well-organised minority — and that the movement's substantive gains in law, education and employment continued through the same decade..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Schlafly argued that women should have fewer rights.

This: She argued that the ERA would remove protections women held — draft exemption, alimony, separate facilities — and would move family law from state legislatures to federal courts. A learner who cannot state that cannot explain why she won.

Not this: The women's movement failed because the ERA failed.

This: Title VII, Title IX, the Equal Pay Act and Roe all stand in the same period, and women's entry into law and medicine rose steeply. The ERA is one defeat inside a decade of substantial legal change.

Two things students merge

Blurred: NOW and women's liberation.

The distinction: NOW was a lobbying and litigation organisation modelled on the NAACP; women's liberation was younger, more radical, organised in small groups and came out of the student and civil rights movements. They disagreed about method and about how much of the existing order needed changing.

Blurred: Legislation and constitutional amendment.

The distinction: Title VII and Title IX are statutes passed by Congress; the ERA required ratification by 38 state legislatures. That procedural difference is why the statutes survived and the amendment did not, and it is the answer to the strand's essential question.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer explains the ERA's defeat structurally. National majority support is irrelevant to a process that requires 38 state legislatures, and Schlafly built a church-based volunteer network aimed precisely at those legislatures — so the amendment was beaten not by public opinion but by a better understanding of where the decision was actually taken.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (a) (6 marks — “What impression does the author give about …? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.”); Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The ratification arithmetic. Explaining that 38 state legislatures were required, and that Schlafly organised at that level, answers why a nationally popular amendment failed — and it is the specific most candidates lack.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain two reasons for the growth of the women's movement in the 1960s. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
2. Explain two reasons why the Equal Rights Amendment was not ratified. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Describe two achievements of the women's movement in the years 1963–73. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'The women's movement in the USA was a failure.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'Phyllis Schlafly was the main reason for the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: Berkeley, SDS and the anti-Vietnam movement
• Next lesson, in key topic 5: The scandal: break-in, cover-up, tapes and resignation
• Key topic 4 · Other protest movements: students, women, anti–Vietnam · A divided union: civil rights in the USA, 1945–74 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of A divided union: The Red Scare and McCarthyism · Civil rights in the 1950s · The impact of civil rights protests, 1960–74 · Nixon and Watergate