Women’s Liberation? What is Women’s Liberation? It is a circumstance that took place a long time ago.

Women’s Liberation was a time period, where courageous women fought and are still fighting for their rights to be treated as "equals". Women didn’t want to be treated any differently than anyone else. The bulk of Women’s Liberation, was in the mid 1960’s and into the 1970’s. Women thought that they needed, for once to be treated as equals. They wanted to start getting jobs, and to leave the housework behind. The whole process actually started way back, when women started to fight for the right to vote. They fought for a long time, about eighty years! Until they got the right to vote in 1919, they didn’t have any other individual rights, other then having babies. Then it went into somewhat of a hibernation, only for a little while thought. Women came back in to the picket lines in the early 1960’s. Then it really started to take shape.

Women’s Liberation, is a movement that is still quite prominent. This was a time for women to stand up and to defend their rights, and to get them. Many women were livid, and wanted to get their rights. Women were tired of standing aside, and doing all the housework. They wanted to have the chance to go to work, earn money, and be noticed. Women’s Liberation started, when women started to emerge, with small protests. Women wanted equal pay, and the right to be treated equally.

This was an explosive beginning from women. Women could, for once, have the same rights as a man. As these women began to harp about their "God given right" to be treated equally, men began to get nervous. Some men didn’t like the idea of women starting to show up in their work place. These men were known by women as "Male Chauvinists". "Male Chauvinists" were men that women’s groups referred to and, these were the men that didn’t "believe" in women going to work and getting paid for it. Some men believed that the women needed to go back to work at home; taking care to the children, cooking, and cleaning. Some men thought they weren’t supposed to do anything like that, and the women were supposed to do all of the house work. Today, most women are at work and they are those "Chauvinist" bosses. Then women started rallies and protests and one of the main supporters was N.O.W.

When women, wanted their "freedom" to be recognized, The National Organization for Women, (N.O.W.) was right behind them. N.O.W. was and still is the largest feminist organization in the United States. The main objective of N.O.W., is to increase the educational, political, and employment opportunities for women. N.O.W. was founded just as the Women’s Rights movement and other political parties reached their peaks in the 1960’s. Betty Friedan was the founder of the National Organization for Women. Betty Friedan was N.O.W.’s first president (1966). In 1969, N.O.W. helped win a U.S. 5^th circuit court ruling that stated women, could not be bared from jobs that included heavy lifting, such as construction. N.O.W. has given many women across the country hope and the reason to go on.

Betty Friedan was one of the key leaders in the fights for Women’s Rights. She wrote the Feminine Mystique, (1963) which was an influence on women and lead them to have the will to "fight". Another role player in the Liberation Movement, was a women named Gloria Steinem. She often wrote that a liberation of women would, in the end, lead to the liberation of men as well. Gloria Steinem said, "Some of us have become the men we wanted to marry." What she meant by that, is that women are changing and the men better get used to it, because women aren’t going to stop.

Many women faced job struggles. They had to deal with derisive comments in the work place from men, they also didn’t get paid as much as they should have. Men in the same job position, go more money then a women who had the same or better qualifications for the job. In fact men got paid 1/3 more then women did and they still do, due to the cancellation of the Equal Rights Amendment. That was called the "Glass Ceiling". To deal with this there was an idea called Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action is a program that would remedy past discrimination against women, minorities, and other, by in creasing the opportunities in employment. Strategies for Affirmative Action included the job opportunities related to occupational mobility within the workplaces. Yet many employers did not do this. There were some employers who did it voluntarily, but in other cases it had to be established by the law. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Executive order 11246, amended by Executive order 11375 in 1967, provided legal basis for Affirmative Action for women in employment in the U.S., What that means in that Title VII prohibits discrimination by the employer or labor union, to judge anyone by the color of their skin, race, religion, sex, or national origin. This only started in the late 1960’s and only after intense pressure from Women’s Organization’s. Executive Order 11246. was signed into law by President Johnson, but this only barred the discrimination of race, color, religion, and national origins, and did not include the discrimination of sex. This was short lived. In 1967, Executive Order 11375k expanded Order 11246, to include women. But Women’s Organization’s did not gain enforcement of sex discrimination until 1973. Women went through a lot to get treated as coequals.

Women throughout the country were rallying for equal rights along with equal pay. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, required equal pay for equal work. Then of course women gained the Civil Right’s Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on gender, as well as race. Even though women had these gains, women were still are denied jobs, which lead them to bring their cases to court. Women were also angered by rude attitudes, and used attention-getting techniques to get change. In 1968, a group of women staged a protest outside of the Miss America pageant to criticize the contest’s emphasis on physical appearance and the traditional female roles. Many women at the protest, also threw curlers, girdles, and copies of Ladies’ Home Journal into a "Freedom trashcan".

There was also a controversy over abortion. It was a very important political issue in the late 60’s and gained power from Women’s Movements. Pro-life advocates, believed that an unborn baby had the right to love and that it was wrong to interfere with pregnancy; whereas, Pro-choice advocates believed that a women had the right to decide whether or not to have an abortion. Many states had laws against abortion, which lead women to have an abortion done illegally. Abortion be came legalized in 1973, in a Supreme Court ruling with Roe v. Wade., which stated, every women had the right to end a pregnancy during the first three months.