Feminism

From The Reader's Companion to US Women's History: "Before passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in October 1974, most women had difficulty obtaining credit without a male cosigner. In the 1960s, as women increasingly entered the work force, they demanded individual access to consumer credit."

From From Suffrage to the Senate: America's Political Women:
"Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits institutions receiving federal funds from practicing gender discrimination in educational programs or activities. It was the first comprehensive federal law to prohibit sex discrimination against students and employees in these institutions."

Case decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with Doe v. Bolton, this decision legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. The decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun and based on the residual right of privacy, struck down dozens of state antiabortion statutes.

Part of the Brookings "Gender Equality" Series, this essay by Janet Yellen reviews women's gains in the workplace, which accelerated during the Second Wave in the 1970s.

Writer and feminist leader. As a result of surveys of female college graduates, she came to identify certain problems that women were experiencing in their lives.

From Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography: Best known as the author of the founding text of second-wave feminism, Le Deuxième Sexe (1949, [The Second Sex]), Simone de Beauvoir has been called the “emblematic intellectual woman of the twentieth century.”

Birth control advocate She moved to New York City (1912) where she became active in the women’s labour movement and the Socialist Party. She concluded that control over childbearing was the key to female emancipation, and was appalled by women’s ignorance of contraception, which she experienced first-hand working as a practical nurse in New York City (1912).

Gloria Steinem was famous for her wit and incisive commentaries on women’s rights, her invention of the neutral term Ms. for single women, and her critiques of the family and gender roles.