In 1969 Betty Freidan thought it was a good idea to commemorate the 50th
Anniversary of the adoption of the Nineteenth
Amendment, which effectively gave American women the right to
vote. Freidan, the acknowledged founding
mother of the modern Feminist
Movement, was inspired by Alice Paul and
the National Women’s Party who’s
relentless and daring militancy pushed the long sought dream of suffrage to reality. In turn she inspired the Women’s Marches that
protested attacks on hard-fought for gains that drew
hundreds of thousands to the National Mall in 2013.
Freidan began advocating and trying
to organize “something big, something so big it will make national
headlines” to galvanize the movement to new levels almost a year in advance. She encountered a lot of resistance,
even in the National Organization for
Women (NOW), the country’s main
feminist organization of which she was a founder. Many members and leaders regarded a mass
protest as too radical. It
also reflected tensions in the movement, barely 10 years old, between middle
class white women and professionals and younger radicals comfortable
with confrontation through experience in the anti-war movement
and who were tending toward separatism.
In the eyes of some older activists
these young Women’s Libbers as they were mocked in
the press, had already done damage to the movement with small, attention
grabbing protests. Most famous was
the Bra Burning Protest held outside
the Miss America Pageant in
1968. The media had seized on
that with a frenzy and Bra Burner
had become synonymous with all feminists in the minds of much of the
public.
While the NOW Board of Directors was slow to sign on, Friedan plunged ahead
trying to plan and organize the event.
At first she used almost leaderless consciousness
raising groups, a hallmark of ‘60’s feminism. But sessions soon broke down in controversy
between factions. Even a
month before the planned protest it was still mired almost to stalemate
between the middle class “founders” and the young radicals.
Eventually Friedan’s prestige
among both groups and some careful compromising won out. NOW endorsed the action and the Call
went public.
The next hurdle was getting a permit
from the City of New York for a
planned march down Fifth Avenue,
the sight of historic suffrage demonstrations before World War I. The city flatly refused. In response Friedan defiantly recast
the protest as the Strike for Women’s
Equality and vowed to go on with or without a permit.
Publicity surrounding the refusal galvanized
support among activists of both factions.
Around the country NOW chapters and independent radical feminist
groups planned actions in a score of cities.
In New York the Strike was set for
Tuesday, August 26, 1970 at 5 pm to accommodate the thousands of women office
workers who would pour out of Manhattan
buildings at that hour. Police attempted to confine the
raucous protest to the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue. NOW signs demanding equal pay for
equal work, abortion access, and other mainstream issues,
mixed with homemade signs both whimsical and angry. Friedan and other leaders could only speak
through bullhorns and were often drowned out by spontaneous
chanting. The crowd soon swelled to
over 20,000 and the police could not keep them out of the streets. Although few, if any, arrests were
made, TV film footage broadcast later that night and the next day made
it look like a near riot.
Meanwhile events in other cities
were creative and often even more outrageous.
In Detroit, women
staged a sit-in in a men’s restroom, protesting unequal
facilities for men and women staffers. In Pittsburgh, women threw eggs at a radio host who
dared them to show their liberation. Women in Washington, D.C. staged a march down Connecticut Avenue behind a banner reading “We Demand
Equality”…[and] government workers organized a peaceful protest and
staged a teach-in, which educated people about the injustices
done to women, mindful that it was against the law for government
workers to strike… in Minneapolis,
women famously gathered and put on guerrilla
theater, portraying key figures in the national abortion debate and
classic stereotypical roles of women in American society; women were portrayed
as mothers and wives, doing dishes, rearing children and
doting obnoxiously on their husbands, all while wearing heels
and an apron.—Wikipedia
Prestigious news commentators were not even handed in their coverage. Eric
Sevareid of CBS News compared
the movement to an infectious disease and ended his report claiming that
the women of the movement were nothing more than “a band of braless
bubbleheads.” Another CBS stalwart Howard K. Smith was equally harsh
saying women had no grounds at all to protest. Small wonder that within days of the event a
CBS poll showed two-thirds of American women did not feel they were oppressed.
It first it looked like the older
feminists had been right after all. The
demonstrations had “played into the hands” of opponents of equality. Friedan did not think so. She brazenly declared the event a success. “It exceeded my wildest dreams. It’s now a
political movement and the message is clear.”
It turned out after the initial
fuss died down, she was right. The
appalling response by the mainstream media actually drove the warring factions
of the movement together, if still somewhat uneasily. Militancy was adopted by more and more
mainstream women. NOW and other
organizations were geared up for more political action and unafraid of
confrontation. Within a decade most
Americans had accepted much of what had been a “radical” agenda in 1969.
Despite its central part in
the evolution of the Feminist Movement, the Women’s Strike for Equality is not well
remembered today.
