National Organization for Women

NOW was created in 1966 to turn the promise of legal equality into enforceable change. Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, and 48 other women and men established the organization at a conference of the National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C.¹ The founders argued that women’s exclusion from employment, education, politics, and public institutions required an organized civil-rights response rather than gradual social adjustment.

The immediate setting was the federal government’s uneven enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. NOW pressed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to treat sex discrimination as seriously as racial discrimination, while also challenging discriminatory practices through public campaigns and legal action. Its founding statement called for women to participate fully in the mainstream of American society and to share equal partnership with men.²

NOW has pursued equality through both institutional advocacy and highly visible direct action. Its work has addressed employment discrimination, reproductive rights, childcare, educational access, violence against women, lesbian rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The organization supported litigation and lobbying around laws such as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, and it helped make reproductive freedom a central feminist civil-rights issue.³

The 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality demonstrated NOW’s capacity to turn policy demands into a national spectacle. Organized around the fiftieth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, the strike called for equal opportunity, free childcare, and reproductive freedom; marches and demonstrations took place in cities across the country.⁴ NOW has also used amicus briefs, voter mobilization, local chapters, and national conferences to connect federal policy with community campaigns.

NOW’s membership and agenda broadened substantially after its founding. Early leadership was disproportionately white and middle class, and Black feminists and other women of color criticized the organization for insufficient attention to racism, economic inequality, and differences among women. The organization gradually incorporated stronger positions on racial justice, class, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and violence, although debates over representation and priorities have remained part of its history.

Feminist disagreements also appeared over pornography, prostitution, lesbian visibility, separatism, and the proper relationship between electoral politics and independent protest. NOW generally favored a rights-based, coalition-oriented strategy: securing legal protections while building pressure through demonstrations and local organizing. Its institutional feminism therefore operated alongside, rather than replacing, labor activism, Black feminism, lesbian-feminist organizing, reproductive-rights groups, and many other movements that shaped the broader women’s movement.

NOW’s early history included men as well as women, reflecting its claim that sex equality was a democratic and civil-rights concern rather than a women-only interest.¹ Its first national officers included Aileen Hernandez, a labor and civil-rights activist who became the organization’s second president, and Richard Graham, one of the male founders. The organization also built a chapter structure that enabled campaigns to persist after national demonstrations ended.

The ERA became a particularly durable part of NOW’s identity. Congress approved the amendment in 1972 and sent it to the states, but the ratification deadline passed without the required number of states; Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia later ratified it, creating continuing constitutional and legal arguments about deadlines and certification.⁵ NOW’s history thus includes not only landmark victories but also campaigns whose legal status and political meaning remain contested.

Second-wave feminism

A broad period of feminist organizing in the United States, generally associated with the 1960s through the 1980s, focused on legal, economic, social, and reproductive equality.

Title VII

The section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Title IX

The federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance.

Equal Rights Amendment

A proposed amendment to the United States Constitution stating that equality of rights may not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.