Women in SNCC

Women’s clubs, church groups, and organizations
throughout the North had taken notice of the violence
and discrimination against African Americans in the South

Many of these clubs held discussions, protests in solidarity
with the suffering of southern African Americans

Within these clubs, young women gained sympathies,
and respect for civil rights activists

Many joined in for the sit-ins across the South

They later joined the SNCC to help support the Civil Rights
Movement

But they were often pigeon-holed into gender defined
roles, and given little opportunity to participate in
discussions
Students for Democratic Society

Their initial mission was to overturn the capitalist hierarchies that
were resulting in wide spread poverty across the country

When the Vietnam War broke out in 1965, they found themselves at
the center of the Anti-war Movement

Many former SNCC women joined their ranks

They likewise found it to be a male dominated organization

One SDS member saw how women were often ignored to the
detriment of SDS missions and wrote a memo criticizing the
treatment of women in social activist groups
Chicano Movement & the UFW

After, the police violence during the National Chicano Moratorium
Vietnam War protest…

La Raza Unida, was established as a third-political party so that southwestern
states might be able to have Chicano political representatives

Despite the central role of female leadership in the Chicano
movement, most Chicanas ultimately chose to put the Chicano
movement before any feminist organizing

A minority of Chicana activists, especially in the 70s, advocated for job
training for women, healthcare centers, Childcare facilities, and
contraception/abortion availability

Dolores Huerta was co-founder (w/Cesar Chavez) of the United Farm
Workers

The UFW dramatically improved work conditions, pay, and educational
opportunities for farm workers and their families

The UFW Grape Boycott brought national attention and support to the
plight of farm workers
Margaret Sanger Cont. & “The Pill”

Since last discussed Sanger became extremely politically
conservative

She began to support the eugenics movement

She married a millionaire and later became a widow in 1942

Nonetheless she became she continued her quest to bring
contraception to women

1951, at a dinner party with a brilliant research scientist named
Gregory Pincus, she asked "Gregory, can't you devise some sort
of pill for this purpose?“

Sanger connected Pincus with the widow to the McCormick
reaper fortune, Catherine McCormick who donated $2 million to
the cause

In a few years, Pincus had developed an oral contraceptive

A drug that was so important it’s been dubbed simply “The Pill”
The Sexual Revolution







The Civil Rights Movement had made young people more critical of
social inequalities
Also Birth Control Pills removed the danger of unwanted pregnancy
Women were no longer quite as eager to forgo the period of
independence between school and marriage
The terror of spinsterhood no longer held as much sway
These factors opened the door to a sexual revolution
While women were granted sexual liberation and sexual equality in the
eyes of social norms, the reality was they were far from equal in all other
realms
Their counterparts in social revolutionary movements still viewed them
as The means of support with domestic duties, and as sexual partners,
but not as equals
Women’s Liberation

A more radical wave of feminism emerged in the 70s

They called the movement Women's Liberation

They were concerned with the social norms that
underpinned the sex discrimination


They felt that the male assumption that women's different
biology made her inherently inferior was the root of the issue

Because women could have children somehow they were
incapable of the power strength and responsibilities of men

But also, and possibly more damaging, sexism governed the
way women saw them selves
How does the Women’s Liberation movement differ from
the Women’s activists of N.O.W?