The women's movement: history, impact, and key developments

¶ … WOMEN'S MODERN HISTORY

Women's Issues

Critical Moments in Women's Modern History

Critical Moments in Women's Modern History

In the United States of America, for the first time in its short history, there is a convention held in Seneca Falls, NY for women's rights.

In Brooklyn, NY, Margaret Sanger opens the first clinic to offer birth control in the United States. The clinic was shut down and she was arrested ten days later.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act formally makes illegal discrimination with respect to employment on the basis of race and sex. Title VII simultaneously establishes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Women have held the position of Secretary of State to the President of the United States.

The convention for women's rights is included on the timeline because this is the first time in the prominent country of the U.S.A. that women have formally gathered under the transparent intention to articulate their experience and to formalize complaints regarding their systemic mistreatment. A few of the documents composed at signed by women and men at this convention served as a notice to the culture and to the world, as well as served as springboards for further organized activity toward the promotion of equality for women in society.

The first birth control clinic in Brooklyn is significant as well. This clinic appears approximately thirty years after the first event. Regardless that the place was shut down and the proprietor arrested, the events served as good public relations for women and women's issues. Sangers continued to be an activist for women's rights, specifically women's reproductive rights, and the incident at her clinic helped serve as precedent for future legislation regarding birth control and women.

The event in 1964 was chosen for a few reasons. One reason is that now, terms such as Title VII (and Title IX), as well as the EEOC are fairly common place. These terms are no longer common place for professionals in the workplace. Many employers advertised in job postings that they are EEO employers in compliance with the EEOC as a selling point. Yet, just about fifty years ago, Title VII and the EEOC were brand spanking new. The event was chosen to point out how a concept that we now take for granted was once a novel idea, meaning that behaviors that went against Title VII ran rampant all over causing numerous traumas and acts of violence and discrimination against women. These behaviors went unchecked until fifty years ago.