Women’s studies scholars identify several stages of the American Women’s Movement. The first stage, suffrage/voting rights, began with the Seneca Falls women’s rights convention in 1848 through decades of work by women’s activists, suffragettes and the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. (Edwards, Women & Music, p. 211.) The second stage, initiated by Betty Friedan’s famous book The Feminine…

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A major issue of the women’s rights movement was passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The ERA was first proposed in 1923. Women’s groups worked for its passage for about six decades. It was finally passed by Congress in 1972; however, it was never ratified by the constitutionally required two-thirds (38) of the states. The ERA “died” in 1982…

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The sexual revolution (liberated sexual activity) of the 1960s and onward was part, but certainly not the only part, of the Women’s Movement. It was a product of advances in contraceptive techniques such as the birth control pill for women, the availability of legal abortions and the “hippie” revolution, where young women rejected the restraints surrounding women’s sexual activites common…

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Probably the most significant issue of the Women’s Movement, and certainly the most controversial and emotional, was the call for reform of abortion laws. In 1967, only Colorado had liberalized its 19th-century legal statute that made abortion a criminal offense. New York joined Colorado in 1970 and by mid-1971 eleven other states had enacted laws that permitted abortion in the…

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