Time line 5

Women’s rights 1921-present

  • Rose Schneiderman

    Rose Schneiderman
    • Rose Scheinderman, a former factory worker , dedicated labor organizer, and later on president of the Women’s Trade Union League , focused on the needs of working women post-suffrage.
    • During the great depression(1929-39), Rose called for unemployed female workers to get relief funds. She wanted domestic workers to be covered by Social Security.
  • Betty Friedan

    Betty Friedan
    • Betty Friedan broke new ground by exploring the idea of women finding personal fulfillment outside of their traditional roles.
    • She also helped advance the women's rights movement as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW).
  • Maya Angelou

    Maya Angelou
    • In 1959,at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
    • From 1961 to 1662, she was associate editor of The Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt, the only English-language news weekly in the Middle East.

    • In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
  • Barbara Walters

    Barbara Walters
    Throughout the 1960’s and ‘70’s, she developed her trademark interviewing style through long-standing jobs on NBC’s Today show and ABC’s 20/20.
    In 1997, Barbara Walters premiered a since popular talk show called The View.
  • The Second Sex

    The Second Sex
    The Second Sex was credited with igniting the second-wave of the Women's Movement. Published in 1949, it covered how women had been treated throughout history. French author and existentialist Simone de Beauvoir wrote it in 14 months and published it in two volumes. The book made the Vatican's List of Prohibited Books (a list of publications deemed heretical).
  • The Feminine Mystique

    The Feminine Mystique
    A nonfiction book published in 1963, The Feminine Mystique sparked the second-wave of the Women's Movement in the United States, a movement that lasted until the early 1980s and, unlike the first-wave's focus on the one issue of suffrage, expanded its agenda to a wide variety of issues such as sexuality, reproductive rights, the workplace, and more.
  • Title VII of the Civil Rights Act

    Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
    Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in employment based on race and sex. At the same time ,the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is established to investigate complaints and impose penalties.
  • Ms. (Magazine)

    Ms. (Magazine)
    Ms. is an American liberal feminist magazine co-founded by second-wave feminists and sociopolitical activists Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes. During its heyday in the 1970s, it enjoyed great popularity but was not always able to reconcile its ideological concerns with commercial considerations.
  • The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

    The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
    The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The amendment died in 1982 when it failed to achieve ratification by a minimum of 38 states.
  • Title IX

    Title IX
    Title IX of the Education Amendments bans sex discrimination in schools. Patsy Mink was one of the principal authors of Title IX, which resulted in the dramatic increase of the enrollment of women in athletics programs and professional schools .
  • The Pregnancy Discrimination Act

    The Pregnancy Discrimination Act
    The Pregnancy Discrimination Act bans employment discrimination against pregnant women. Under the Act, a woman cannot be fired or denied a job or a promotion because she is or may become pregnant, nor can she be forced to take a pregnancy leave if she is willing and able to work.
  • Ban on women in combat

    Ban on women in combat
    -Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the ban on women serving in combat roles would be lifted. The move reverses the 1994 rule that prohibited women from serving in combat.