Introduction
The status of women as less than men is memorialized in the United States’ Dec-
laration of Independence, which asserted, “All men are created equal.” The use of
the word “men” was deliberate and referred specifically to white, land-owning
males. The Declaration purposely excluded women, people of color, religious
minorities, and the poor. Despite this, women, including women of color and
sexual minorities, have lobbied, fought, and died for their full humanity to be
recognized by the government and their fellow citizens. Beginning in 1948,
women began to or ga nize more formally on behalf of women’s rights. What is now
considered the first convention for women’s rights organized by women was held
in the small town of Seneca Falls, New York. At this gathering, 68 women and 32
men signed the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Inde
pendence, which professed, “All men and women are created equal.” Taken for
granted in the 21st century, this new Declaration was greeted with hostility and
was quite controversial. Over 70 years later, women were finally granted the right
to vote with the passing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920.
Despite these gains, women were still denied full legal status or civil rights for
decades to come.
As late as the 1960s, women were still denied many basic rights and faced many
obstacles to full equality. Women could not keep their job while pregnant, file a
claim for workplace sexual harassment, refuse to have sex with their husband, serve
on a jury, get a credit card on their own, or even run in the Boston Marathon. Not
until more than 50 years after the 19th Amendment would there be another surge
of activism on behalf of women’s rights. Journalist Betty Friedan’s book The Femi-
nine Mystique (1963), which described the disaffected life of many suburban women,
calling it the “problem that has no name,” is widely credited for igniting what came
to be known as the Women’s Liberation Movement. Women demanded legal status
equal to that of men. Now known as the second wave of feminism, the movement