Liberating the Family 11.21.23

• HIS 379 The Family in America

Liberating the Family

The History of Family in America (HIST 379)
Dr. Caitlin Wiesner
Main Hall Room 213
November 21, 2023 (Week 11)

From Civil Rights to 

Women's Liberation

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate complaints of racial and sexual discrimination in employment

1/3rd  of the cases brought before the EEOC in 1964 dealt with sex discrimination.

Although nearly half of all American women between the ages of 18 and 65 worked outside the home in 1964, 75% worked in “unskilled jobs”: clerical, sales, factories, or domestic service.

In 1964, 89% of women who worked full time earned less than $5,000 a year.

Discuss: Betty Friedan, 

"The Problem That Has No Name" (1963)

How does Friedan describe the “problem that has no name”? What does it have to do with the American family?

What might be the solution to the “feminine mystique” described by Friedan?

1942: Graduated from Smith College

1943: Withdrew from PhD Program in Psychology at UC- Berkeley

1946: Took a job as a labor journalist for United Electrical Workers 

1947: Married Carl Friedan

1952: Fired from UE News after becoming pregnant with her second child

1963: Published The Feminine Mystique

National Organization for Women (NOW) 

Statement of Purpose, October 1966

“...enormous changes taking place in our society make it both possible and urgently necessary to advance the unfinished revolution of women towards true equality, now. With a life span lengthened to nearly 75 years it is no longer either necessary or possible for women to devote the greater part of their lives to childrearing; yet childbearing and rearing…still is used to justify barring women from equal professional and economic participation and advance. Today’s technology has reduced most of the productive chores which women once performed in the home... This same technology has virtually eliminated the quality of muscular strength as a criterion for filling most jobs, while intensifying American industry’s need for creative intelligence. In view of this new industrial revolution created by automation in the mid-twentieth century, women can and must participate in old and new fields of society in full equality — or become permanent outsiders.”

1972: EEOC drafted guidelines that required employers to treat disabilities resulting from pregnancy, such as miscarriage, abortion, or childbirth and recovery, in the same manner as other temporary disabilities. 

1973: Supreme Court rules in Pittsburgh Press v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations that sex-segregated job listings are discriminatory and unconstitutional. 

1974: Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) allows women to apply for and receive credit cards in their own name without their husband as a cosigner.

1978: Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) amends Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of pregnancy or childbirth. 

As greater numbers of single African American mothers applied for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the 1962 Amendments to the Social Security Act tightened restrictions and vested caseworkers with the authority to reduce or suspend welfare benefits for "moral violations"

“Welfare is like a super-sexist marriage. You trade in a man for the man. But you can't divorce him if he treats you bad. He can divorce you, of course, cut you off anytime he wants. But in that case, he keeps the kids, not you. The man runs everything. In ordinary marriage, sex is supposed to be for your husband. On A.F.D.C., you're not supposed to have any sex at all. You give up control of your own body. It's a condition of aid. You may even have to agree to get your tubes tied so you can never have more children just to avoid being cut off welfare… As far as I'm concerned, the ladies of N.W.R.O. are the front-line troops of women's freedom.”

- Johnnie Tillmon, 

President of the National Welfare Rights Organization

“Welfare is a Woman’s Issue,” Ms. Magazine (1972)

 In 1969, the NWRO demonstrated for a guaranteed annual income as its top priority that promised $5,500 annually for a family of four. 

President Richard Nixon responded with a Family Assistance Plan (FAP) that would replace welfare with a guaranteed annual income of $1,600, which Congress rejected

What is the “tangle of pathology,” and how does it explain the continued poverty of African Americans in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement? 

What does Moynihan suggest will solve the "tangle of pathology" facing African Americans?

Toni Cade Bambara, 

"The Pill: Genocide or Liberation?" (1969) 

“... one tall, lean dude went into deep knee bends as he castigated Sisters to throw away the pill and hop to the mattress and breed revolutionaries and mess up the man’s genocidal program… So what about the pill? Does it liberate or not?...Does it make us accomplices in the genocidal plot engineered by the man or does it not? Does dumping the pill necessarily guarantee the production of warriors? Should all Sisters dump the pill or some? What’s the Brother’s responsibility in all this?...

…I think most women have pondered, those who have the heart to ponder at all, the oppressive nature of pregnancy, the tyranny of the child burden. The stupidity of male-female divisions, the obscene nature of employment discrimination. And day-care and nurseries being what they are, paid maternity being rare…poverty so ugly…the abortion fatalities being what they are… the pill gives her choice, gives her control over at least some of the major events in her life. And it gives her time to fight for liberation in those other areas. But surely there would be no need to shout in her ear about dumping the pill if the Brother was taking care of business on a personal plane and analyzing the whole issue of liberation on a political plane. Men are invariably trying to create a woman who will answer all their needs, assuage their fears, boost their morale, confirm their romantic fantasies, lull them into the comforting notion that they are ten steps ahead because she is ten paces behind." 

Reproductive Rights and 

Women's Liberation

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) overturned state laws prohibiting the sale of contraception because this violated a married couple's right to privacy. 

Roe v. Wade (1973) decriminalized elective abortions in the first trimester. It did not guarantee women the right to an abortion.

In 1970, African American women were sterilized at twice the rate of white women (9 per 1,000 versus 4 per 1,000).

In 1974, African American and Puerto Rican feminists in NYC founded the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA) 

A fact is an objective and incontrovertible piece of information.
Evidence is the application of one or more facts to support an argument.
An argument is a subjective claim made to expand an area of knowledge.

We will begin discussion of readings each class with an FAQ (Fact, Argument, Question) Exercise. All students will free write the following:

     A fact that stood out to you in the reading (please include page number)
    An explanation of how that fact works as evidence for the historian’s argument
    A question that the reading raised for you

A fact is an objective and incontrovertible piece of information.
Evidence is the application of one or more facts to support an argument.
An argument is a subjective claim made to expand an area of knowledge.

FAQ (Fact, Argument, Question) Exercise

All students will free write the following:

1.  A fact that stood out to you in the reading (please include page number)
2. An explanation of how that fact works as evidence for the historian’s argument
3. A question that the reading raised for you

Discussion: Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s (2012)

Part II: The Subjection of Women

1.  How did the women’s liberation movement challenge the idea of “breadwinner liberalism”? According to feminists, what should the relationship be between mothers, the labor market, and the state?
2.  Why did feminists seek a “negative” version of reproductive rights? What consequences did this have for non-white women and conservatives?
3.  What comparisons can be made between gay men’s fight for “sexual citizenship” (Chapter 3) and the lesbian feminists? How did these groups challenge the ideal of the American family?
4.