Key Events of Feminism During the 1960s in the U.S.

Key Events of Feminism During the 1960s in the U.S. 1960 May 9: The Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive, commonly known as the Pill, for sale as birth control in the United States. 1961 November 1: Women Strike for Peace, founded by Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson, drew 50,000 women nationwide to protest nuclear weapons and U.S. involvement in war in southeast Asia.December 14: President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order establishing the Presidents Commission on the Status of Women. He appointed former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to chair the commission. 1962 Sherri Finkbine traveled to Sweden for an abortion after learning that Thalidomide, a tranquilizer drug she had taken, caused extensive deformities to the fetus. 1963 February 17:  The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was published.May 23: Anne Moody, who later wrote Coming of Age in Mississippi, participated in a Woolworths lunch counter sit-in.June 10: The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy.June 16: Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in outer space, another Soviet first in the U.S.-U.S.S.R. space race. 1964 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including the Title VII prohibition of discrimination based on sex by private employers including employment agencies and unions. 1965 In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down a law restricting access to contraception for married couples.The Newark Museum exhibit Women Artists of America: 1707-1964 looked at womens art, often neglected in the art world.Barbara Castle becomes the first UK female minister of state, appointed to become the Minister of Transport.July 2: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began operations.December: Pauli Murray and Mary Eastwood published Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII in the George Washington Law Review. 1966 The National Organization for Women, known as NOW, was founded.NOW set up task forces to work on key womens issues.Marlo Thomas began starring in the television sitcom That Girl, about a young, independent, single career woman. 1967 President Johnson amended Executive Order 11246, which dealt with affirmative action, to include sex discrimination on the list of prohibited employment discrimination.The feminist group New York Radical Women formed in New York City.June: Naomi Weisstein and Heath Booth held a free school at the University of Chicago on womens issues.  Jo Freeman was among the attendees and was inspired to organize a womans session at the National Conference of New Politics.  A womans caucus of NCNP formed, and when that was belittled from the floor, a group of women met at Jo Freemans apartment a group that evolved into the Chicago Womens Liberation Union.Jo Freemans newsletter Voice of the womens liberation movement gave a name to the new movement.August: The National Welfare Rights Organization formed in Washington D.C. 1968 NOW formed a special committee to launch a major campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment.Shirley Chisholm became the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.The Womens Equity Action League broke off from NOW to avoid the controversial issues of sexuality, reproductive choice, and the Equal Rights Amendment.The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) was founded.The National Welfare Rights Organization was founded, with 22,000 members by the next year.Women at the Dagenham (UK) Ford factory stage a strike for equal pay, nearly stopping work at all the UK Ford automobile plants.Women for the first Seattle womens liberation group after a male organizer for SDS at a meeting said that balling a chick together enhanced the political consciousness of poor white young men.  A woman in the audience had called out, And what did it do for the consciousness of the chick?February 23: The EEOC ruled that being female was not a bona fide occupational quali fication of being a flight attendant. September 7: The Miss America Protest by New York Radical Women at the Miss America pageant brought widespread media attention to womens liberation. 1969 The Abortion Counseling Service of Womens Liberation began operating in Chicago under the code name Jane.The radical feminist group Redstockings began in New York.March 21: Redstockings staged an abortion speakout, insisting that womens voices be heard on the issue instead of only male legislators and nuns.May: NOW activists marched in Washington D.C. for Mothers Day, demanding Rights, Not Roses.

A Brief History of Women in Higher Education

A Brief History of Women in Higher Education While more women than men have attended college in the U.S. since the late 1970s, female students were largely prevented from pursuing higher education until the 19th century. Before then, female seminaries were the primary alternative for women who wished to earn a higher degree. But women’s rights activists fought for higher education for female students, and college campuses turned out to be fertile ground for gender equality activism. Female Grads During the 17th and 18th Centuries Before the formal desegregation of mens and womens higher education, a small number of women graduated from universities. Most were from wealthy or well-educated families, and the oldest examples of such women can be found in Europe. Juliana Morell earned a law doctorate in Spain in 1608.Anna Maria van Schurman attended the university at Utrecht, Netherlands, in 1636.Ursula Agricola and Maria Jonae Palmgren were admitted to college in Sweden in 1644.Elena Cornaro Piscopia earned a doctor of philosophy degree at the University of Padua, Italy, in 1678.Laura Bassi earned a doctor of philosophy degree at the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1732, and then became the first woman to teach in an official capacity at any European University.Cristina Roccati received a university degree in Italy in 1751.Aurora Liljenroth graduated from college in Sweden in 1788, the first woman to do so. U.S. Seminaries Educated Women in the 1700s In 1742, the Bethlehem Female Seminary was established in Germantown, Pennsylvania, becoming the first institute of higher education for women in the United States. It was founded by the Countess Benigna von Zinzendorf, daughter of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, under his sponsorship. She was only 17 years old at the time.  In 1863, the state officially recognized the institution as a college and the college was then permitted to issue bachelor’s degrees. In 1913, the college was renamed the Moravian Seminary and College for Women, and, later, the institution became co-educational. Thirty years after Bethlehem opened, the Moravian sisters founded Salem College in North Carolina. It since became the Salem Female Academy and is still open today. Womens Higher Ed at the Turn of the 18th Century In 1792, Sarah Pierce founded the Litchfield Female Academy in Connecticut. The Rev. Lyman Beecher (father of Catherine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Isabella Beecher Hooker) was among the lecturers at the school, part of the republican motherhood ideological trend. The school focused on educating women so that they could be responsible for raising an educated citizenry. Eleven years after Litchfield was established, Bradford Academy in Bradford, Massachusetts, began admitting women. Fourteen men and 37 women graduated in the first class of students. In 1837, the school changed its focus to only admit women.   Options for Women During the 1820s In 1821, Clinton Female Seminary opened; it would later merge into the Georgia Female College. Two years later, Catharine Beecher founded the Hartford Female Seminary, but the school did not survive beyond the 19th century. Beechers sister, writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, was a student at Hartford Female Seminary and later a teacher there.  Fanny Fern, a children’s author, and newspaper columnist, also graduated from Hartford. Lindon Wood School for Girls was founded in 1827 and continued as Lindenwood University. This was the first school of higher education for women that was located west of the Mississippi. The next year, Zilpah Grant founded Ipswich Academy, with Mary Lyon as an early principal. The purpose of the school was to prepare young women to be missionaries and teachers. The school took the name Ipswich Female Seminary in 1848 and operated until 1876. In 1834, Mary Lyon established the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts. She then started the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1837. Mount Holyoke received a collegiate charter in 1888, and today the schools are known as Wheaton College and Mount Holyoke College. Schools for Female Students During the 1830s Columbia Female Academy opened in 1833. It later became a full college and exists today as Stephens College. Now called Wesleyan, Georgia Female College was created in 1836 specifically so women could earn bachelor’s degrees. The following year, St. Mary’s Hall was founded in New Jersey as a female seminary. It is today a pre-K through high school named Doane Academy. More Inclusive Higher Ed From the 1850s Onward In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York. She was the first woman in America admitted to a medical school and the first in the United States to receive a medical degree. The next year, Lucy Sessions made history when she graduated with a literary degree from Oberlin College in Ohio. She became the First African-American female college graduate. Oberlin was founded in 1833 and admitted four women as full students in 1837.  Only a few years later, more than a third (but less than half) of the student body were women. After Sessions earned her history-making degree from Oberlin, Mary Jane Patterson, in 1862, became the first African-American woman to earn a bachelors degree. Higher education opportunities for women really expanded during the late 1800s. The Ivy League colleges had been solely available to male students, but companion colleges for women, known as the Seven Sisters, were founded from 1837 to 1889.