National
Organization for Women (NOW) Statement of Purpose, 1966
We, men and women, who hereby constitute ourselves as the
National Organization for Women, believe that the time has come
for a new movement toward true equality for all women in
America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as
part of the world-wide revolution of human rights now taking
place within and beyond our national borders.
The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full
participation in the mainstream of American society now,
exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in
truly equal partnership with men.
We believe the time has come to move beyond the abstract
argument, discussion and symposia over the status and special
nature of women which has raged in America in recent years; the
time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions
that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity
and freedom of which is their right, as individual Americans,
and as human beings.
NOW is dedicated to the proposition that women, first and
foremost, are human beings, who like all other people in our
society, must have the chance to develop their fullest human
potential. We believe that women can achieve such equality only
by accepting to the full the challenges and responsibilities
they share with all other people in our society, as part of the
decision-making mainstream of American political, economic and
social life.
We organize to initiate or support action, nationally, or in any
part of this nation, by individuals or organizations, to break
through the silken curtain of prejudice and discrimination
against women in government, industry, and professions, the
churches, the political parties, the judiciary, the labor
unions, in education, science, medicine, law, religion and every
other field of importance in American society. Enormous changes
taking place in our society make it both possible and urgently
necessary to advance the unfinished revolution of women toward
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 greatest part of their lives to child-rearing; yet
childbearing and rearing which continues to be a most important
part of most women's lives -- 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 and in mass-production
industries based upon routine unskilled labor. 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.
Despite all the talk about the status of American women in
recent years, the actual position of women in the United States
has declined, and is declining, to an alarming degree throughout
the 1950's and '60s. Although 46.4% of all American women
between the ages of 18 and 65 now work outside the home, the
overwhelming majority -- 75% -- are in routine clerical, sales,
or factory jobs, or they are household workers, cleaning women,
hospital attendants. About two-thirds of Negro women workers are
in the lowest paid service occupations. Working women are
becoming increasingly -- not less -- concentrated on the bottom
of the job ladder. As a consequence full-time women workers
today earn on the average only 60% of what men earn, and that
wage gap has been increasing over the past twenty-five years in
every major industry group. In 1964, of all women with a yearly
income, 89% earned under $5,000 a year; behalf of all full-time
year round women workers earned less than $3,690; only 1.4% of
full-time year round women workers had an annual income of
$10,000 or more.
Further, with higher education increasingly essential in today's
society, too few women are entering and finishing college or
going on to graduate or professional school. Today, women earn
only one in three of the B.A.'s and M.A's granted, and one in
ten of the Ph.D.'s.
In all the professions considered of importance to society, and
in the executive ranks of industry and government, women are
losing ground. Where they are present it is only a token
handful. Women comprise less than 1% of federal judges; less
than 4% of all lawyers; 7% of doctors. Yet women represent 51%
of the U.S. population. And, increasingly men are replacing
women in the top positions in secondary and elementary schools,
in social work, and in libraries -- once thought to be women's
fields.
Official pronouncements of the advance in the status of women
hide not only the reality of this dangerous decline, but the
fact that nothing is being done to stop it. The excellent
reports of the President's Commission on the Status of Women and
of the State Commissions have not been fully implemented. Such
Commissions have power only to advise. They have no power to
enforce their recommendations; nor have they the freedom to
organize American women and men to press for action on them. The
reports of these commissions have, however created a basis upon
which it is now possible to build.
Discrimination in employment on the basis of sex is now
prohibited by federal law, in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964. But although nearly one-third of the cases brought
before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the
first year dealt with sex discrimination and the proportion is
increasing dramatically, the Commission has not made clear its
intention to enforce the law with the same seriousness on behalf
of women as of other victims of discrimination. Many of these
cases were Negro women, who are the victims of the double
discrimination of race and sex. Until now, too few women's
organizations and official spokesmen have been willing to speak
out against these dangers facing women. Too many women have been
restrained by the fear of being called "feminist."
There is no civil rights movement to speak for women, as there
has been for Negroes and other victims of discrimination. The
National Organization for Women must therefore begin to speak.
We believe that the power of American law, and the protection
guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to the civil rights of all
individuals, must be effectively applied and enforced to isolate
and remove patterns of sex discrimination, to ensure equality of
opportunity in employment and education, and equality of civil
and political rights and responsibilities on behalf of women, as
well as for Negroes and other deprived groups.
We realize that women's problems are linked to many broader
questions of social justice; their solution will require
concerted action by many groups. Therefore, convinced that human
rights for all are indivisible, we expect to give active support
to the common cause of equal rights for all those who suffer
discrimination and deprivation, and we call upon other
organizations committed to such goals to support our efforts
toward equality for women.
We do not accept the token appointment of a few women to
high-level positions in government and industry as a substitute
for a serious continuing effort to recruit and advance women
according to their individual abilities. To this end, we urge
American government and industry to mobilize the same resources
of ingenuity and command with which they have solved problems of
far greater difficulty than those now impeding the progress of
women.
National
Organization for Women (NOW) Statement of Purpose, 1966
continued
The
We believe that this nation has a capacity at least as great as
other nations, to innovate new social institutions which will
enable women to enjoy true equality of ,opportunity and
responsibility in society, without conflict with their
responsibilities as mothers and homemakers. In such innovations,
America does not lead the Western world, but lags by decades
behind many European countries. We do not accept the traditional
assumption that a woman has to choose between marriage and
motherhood, on the one hand, and serious participation in
industry or the professions on the other. We question the
present expectation that all normal women will retire from job
or profession for 10 or 15 years, to devote their full time to
raising children, only to reenter the job market at a relatively
minor level. This in itself, is a deterrent to the aspirations
of women, to their acceptance into management or professional
training courses, and to the very possibility of equality of
opportunity or real choice, for all but a few women. Above all,
we reject the assumption that these problems are the unique
responsibility of each individual women, rather than a basic
social dilemma which society must solve. True equality of
opportunity and freedom of choice for women requires such
practical, and possible innovations as a nationwide network of
child-care center which will make in unnecessary for women to
retire completely from society until their children are grown,
and national programs to provide retraining for women who have
chosen the care for their own children full-time.
We believe that it is as essential for every girl to be educated
to her full potential of human ability as it is for every boy --
with the knowledge that such education is the key to effective
participation in today's economy and that, for a girl as for
boy, education can only be serious where there is expectation
that it be used in society. We believe that American educators
are capable of devising means of imparting such expectations to
girl students. Moreover, we consider the decline in the
proportion of women receiving higher and professional education
to be evidence of discrimination. This discrimination may take
the form of quotas against the admission of women to colleges,
and professional schools; lack of encouragement by parents,
counselors and educators; denial of loans or fellowships; or the
traditional or arbitrary procedures in graduate and professional
training geared in terms of men, which inadvertently
discriminate against women. We believe that the same serious
attention must be given to high school dropouts who are girls as
to boys.
We reject the current assumptions that a man must carry the sole
burden of supporting himself, his wife, and family, and that a
woman is automatically entitled to lifelong support by a man
upon her marriage, or that marriage, home and family are
primarily woman's world and responsibility -- hers to dominate
-- his to support. We believe that a true partnership between
the sexes demands a different concept of marriage an equitable
sharing of the responsibilities of home and children and of the
economic burdens of their support. We believe that proper
recognition should be given to the economic and social value of
homemaking and child-care. To these ends we will seek to open a
reexamination of laws and mores governing marriage and divorce,
for we believe that the current state of "half-equality" between
the sexes discriminates against both men and women, and is the
cause of much unnecessary hostility between the sexes.
We believe that women must now exercise their political rights
and responsibility as American citizens. They must refuse to be
segregated on the basis of sex into separate-and-not-equal
ladies auxiliaries in the political parties, and they must
demand representation according to their numbers in the
regularly constituted part committees -- at local, state, and
national levels -- and in the informal power structure,
participating fully in the selection of candidates and political
decision-making, and running for office themselves.
In the interest of the human dignity of women, we will protest,
and endeavor to change, the false image of women now prevalent
in the mass media, and in the texts, ceremonies, laws, and
practices of our major social institutions. Such images
perpetuate contempt for women by society and by women for
themselves. We are similarly opposed to all policies and
practices -- in church, state, college, factory, or office
• which, in the guise of protectiveness, not only deny
opportunities but also foster in women self-denigration,
dependence, and evasion of responsibility, undermine their
confidence in their own abilities and foster contempt for women.
Now will hold itself independent of any political party in order
to mobilize the political power of all women and men intent on
our goals. We will strive to ensure that no party, candidate,
president, senator, governor, congressman, or any public
official who betrays or ignores the principle of full equality
between the sexes is elected or appointed to office. If it is
necessary to mobilize the votes of men and women who believe in
our cause, in order to win for women the final right to be fully
free and equal human beings, we so commit ourselves.
We believe that women will do most to create a new image of
women by acting now, and by speaking out in behalf of their own
equality, freedom, and human dignity -- not in pleas for special
privilege, nor in enmity toward men, who are also victims of the
current, half-equality between the sexes -- but in an active,
self-respecting partnership with men. by so doing, women will
develop confidence in their own ability to determine actively,
in partnership with men, the conditions of their life, their
choices, their future and their society.
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