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• A Century After Women Gained the Right To Vote, Majority of Americans See Work To Do on Gender Equality

About three-in-ten men say women’s gains have come at the expense of men

Table of contents.

• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of the current state of gender equality and the advancement of women around the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. For this analysis, we surveyed 3,143 U.S. adults in March and April 2020, including an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel, an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses and landline and cellphone numbers. KnowledgePanel provides internet access for those who do not have it and, if needed, a device to access the internet when they join the panel. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data are weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish.

Here are the  questions used for this report , along with responses, and the report’s methodology .

References to white and Black adults include only those who are non-Hispanic and identify as only one race. Hispanics are of any race.

All references to party affiliation include those who lean toward that party. Republicans include those who identify as Republicans and independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party. Democrats include those who identify as Democrats and independents who say they lean toward the Democratic Party.

References to college graduates or people with a college degree comprise those with a bachelor’s degree or more. “Some college” includes those with an associate degree and those who attended college but did not obtain a degree.

A hundred years after the 19th Amendment was ratified, about half of Americans say granting women the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the country. Still, a majority of U.S. adults say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, even as a large share thinks there has been progress in the last decade, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Among those who think the country still has work to do in achieving gender equality, 77% point to sexual harassment as a major obstacle to women having equal rights with men. Fewer, but still majorities, point to women not having the same legal rights as men (67%), different societal expectations for men and women (66%) and not enough women in positions of power (64%) as major obstacles to gender equality. Women are more likely than men to see each of these as a major obstacle.

Many of those who say it is important for men and women to have equal rights point to aspects of the workplace when asked about what gender equality would look like. Fully 45% volunteer that a society where women have equal rights with men would include equal pay. An additional 19% say there would be no discrimination in hiring, promotion or educational opportunities. About one-in-ten say women would be more equally represented in business or political leadership.

In terms of the groups and institutions that have done the most to advance the rights of women in the U.S., 70% say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount in this regard. The Democratic Party is viewed as having contributed more to the cause of women’s rights than the Republican Party: 59% say the Democratic Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 37% say the same about the GOP. About three-in-ten (29%) say President Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 69% say Trump has not done much or has done nothing at all. These views vary considerably by party, with Republicans and Republican leaners at least five times as likely as Democrats and those who lean Democratic to say the GOP and Trump have done at least a fair amount and Democrats far more likely than Republicans to say the same about the Democratic Party.

Views of the role the feminist movement has played in advancing gender equality are positive overall, though fewer than half of women say the movement has been beneficial to them personally. About four-in-ten (41%) say feminism has helped them at least a little, while half say it has neither helped nor hurt them. Relatively few (7%) say feminism has hurt them personally. Democratic women, those with a bachelor’s degree or more education and women younger than 50 are among the most likely to say they’ve benefitted personally from feminism.

Views about how much progress the country has made on gender equality differ widely along partisan lines. About three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, while 19% say it’s been about right and 4% say the country has gone too far. Among Republicans, a third say the country hasn’t made enough progress, while 48% say it’s been about right and 17% say the country has gone too far in giving women equal rights with men.

There is also a gender gap in these views, with 64% of women – compared with 49% of men – saying the country hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. Democratic and Republican women are about ten percentage points more likely than their male counterparts to say this (82% of Democratic women vs. 70% of Democratic men and 38% of Republican women vs. 28% of Republican men).

The nationally representative survey of 3,143 U.S. adults was conducted online from March 18-April 1, 2020. 1 Among the other key findings:

More cite women’s suffrage than other milestones as the most important in advancing the position of women in the U.S. About half of Americans (49%) say women gaining the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S.; 29% cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act, while smaller shares point to the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (12%) or the availability of the birth control pill (8%) as the most important milestone.

A majority of Americans say feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of white, Black and Hispanic women. About six-in-ten or more U.S. adults say feminism has helped the lives of white (64%), Black (61%) and Hispanic (58%) women at least a little. But more say feminism helped white women a lot (32%) than say it’s done the same for Black (21%) or Hispanic (15%) women. About a quarter (24%) say feminism has helped wealthy women a lot; just 10% say it’s been equally helpful to poor women.

About four-in-ten Republican men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men. Most Americans (76%) say the gains women have made in society have not come at the expense of men, but 22% think these gains have come at the expense of men. That view is more common among men (28%) than women (17%). Republican and Democratic men are more likely than their female counterparts to say the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men. About four-in-ten Republican men (38%) say women’s gains have come at the expense of men, compared with 25% of Republican women, 19% of Democratic men and 12% of Democratic women.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that, when it comes to gender discrimination, the bigger problem is discrimination being overlooked. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the bigger problem for our country today is people not seeing gender discrimination where it really does exist; 31% say people seeing gender discrimination where it really does not exist is the bigger problem. More than eight-in-ten Democrats (85%) point to people overlooking gender discrimination as the bigger problem; 46% of Republicans say the same.

Most Americans favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, even as many don’t think this would make much difference for women’s rights. About eight-in-ten U.S. adults (78%), including majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike, say they at least somewhat favor adding the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution. When asked about the impact they think adopting the ERA would have on women’s rights in the U.S., 44% say it would advance women’s rights, while 5% say this would be a setback for women’s rights and 49% say it would not make much of a difference. Even among those who favor adopting the amendment, 44% say doing so wouldn’t have much of an impact on women’s rights (54% say it would advance women’s rights).

A majority of Americans say the country has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men

The vast majority of Americans across demographic and partisan groups agree that women should have equal rights with men. More than nine-in-ten U.S. adults say it is very important (79%) or somewhat important (18%) for women to have equal rights with men in this country. Just 3% of Americans say gender equality is not too or not at all important.

Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party (86%) are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners (71%) to say it is very important for women to have equal rights with men. Still, majorities of Republicans and Democrats, including at least two-thirds of men and women in each party, say this is very important.

When it comes to giving women equal rights with men, a majority of adults (57%) think our country has not gone far enough, while 32% say things have been about right; 10% of Americans say the country has gone too far in giving women equal rights with men.

Women (64%) are more likely than men (49%) to say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality. However, there is also a sizable party gap. Roughly three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 33% of Republicans. Instead, 48% of Republicans – compared with 19% of Democrats – say things are about right when it comes to gender equality and 17% say the country has gone too far; just 4% of Democrats say things have gone too far.

Across parties, women are more likely than men to say the U.S. has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. About four-in-ten Republican women (38%) say that gender equality has not come far enough, compared with 28% of Republican men. Still, about half of Republican men (51%) and 45% of Republican women say things are about right in the country when it comes to gender equality.

Among Democrats, 82% of women, compared with 70% of men, say the country still has work to do on gender equality. About a quarter of Democratic men (24%) say things are about right in the country when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 14% of Democratic women who say the same.

Among Democrats, those with at least some college education are more likely than those with no college experience to express dissatisfaction with the current state of gender equality. About eight-in-ten Democrats with a bachelor’s degree or more education (82%) and 77% of those with some college education say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 71% of Democrats with a high school diploma or less education. Among Republicans, there is generally more agreement across levels of educational attainment.

Overall, Americans express more dissatisfaction with the state of gender equality now than they did in 2017, when this question was last asked. Then, half said the country hadn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men, while 39% said things were about right and 10% said the country had gone too far. Attitudes have shifted among men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike.

Most Democrats and Republicans say the country has made progress in giving women and men equal rights over the last 10 years

While many Americans say there’s still work to be done to achieve gender equality, most say there’s been progress over the past decade. Majorities of men and women say the U.S. has made progress in the last 10 years when it comes to giving women equal rights with men. Still, 25% of Americans say things are the same as they were 10 years ago, and one-in-ten say the country has lost ground when it comes to equal rights for women.

Majorities of Democrats (60%) and Republicans (71%) say that, in the last 10 years, the country has made progress on gender equality. However, Democratic women are the least likely to say this: 58% of Democratic women say this, compared with 63% of Democratic men and 71% of both Republican men and Republican women. Instead, 28% of Democratic women say things are about the same as they were 10 years ago (21% of Republican women say the same).

About three-in-ten U.S. men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men

When it comes to the gains that women have made in society, most Americans (76%) say the gains have not come at the expense of men, but 22% – including 28% of men – think these gains have come at the expense of men.

Republican men (38%) are twice as likely as Democratic men (19%) to say the gains women have made have come at the expense of men. A quarter of Republican women also say this, less than the share of their male counterparts but higher than the shares of Democratic men and women (12%) that hold this view.

Among women, those without a bachelor’s degree are about twice as likely as college graduates to say gains have come at the expense of men (21% vs. 10%); educational differences are less pronounced, though still significant, among men: 30% of men with some college or less education say the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men, compared with 24% of men with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Most who say the country still has work to do on gender equality say equality is likely in the future

On the whole, the majority of Americans who say that the country has not gone far enough to give women equal rights with men think it is very or somewhat likely that women in our country will eventually have equal rights with men. More than eight-in-ten Americans who say the country hasn’t made enough progress say this is very likely (31%) or somewhat likely (53%); just 16% say they think it is not too likely or not at all likely.

Large majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats who say the country has not yet achieved gender equality say it is at least somewhat likely that men and women will eventually have equal rights, but men (37%) are considerably more likely than women (26%)  to say it is very likely.

Among Republicans who say the U.S. has work to do to achieve gender equality, 36% say gender equality is very likely, compared with 29% of Democrats. This difference is driven in part by Democratic women, who are among the least likely to say they expect men and women to eventually have equal rights. Among Democratic women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough to achieve gender equality, 23% say they think it is very likely that there will eventually be gender equality; 38% of Democratic men say the same.

Even among the small share of Americans who say the country has lost ground on gender equality in the last 10 years, 76% say it is very or somewhat likely that women will eventually have equal rights with men.

More cite equality in the workplace than any other example as a sign of a society where men and women are equal

When those who say it is important for women to have equal rights with men are asked what a society with gender equality might look like, about half give examples that focus on equality in the workplace: 45% specifically say equal pay, 19% cite no discrimination in hiring and promotion, 5% say men and women getting equal respect in the workplace, and 2% say better paid leave and paternity and maternity support are things they would expect to see in a society where women have equal rights with men.

About one-in-ten cite more or equal representation of women in leadership, with 6% specifically mentioning political leadership and 5% mentioning business leadership. Relatively few point to reproductive rights (4%) and less traditional gender norms (4%) as markers of a society where women have equal rights with men. (Respondents were asked to answer this question in their own words; for respondents who gave multiple examples, up to three responses were coded.)

For the most part, men and women who say equal rights are important have a similar picture of what a society with gender equality would look like, but a larger share of women than men cite equal pay (51% vs. 40%). Still, the gender pay gap tops the list for both men and women who say gender equality is important.

Among women, references to equal pay differ by age. Women ages 50 and older (56%) are more likely than women under 50 (45%) to mention equal pay when describing a society where men and women have equal rights.

Democrats who say gender equality is important are more likely than their Republican counterparts to cite equal pay when asked about a society with gender equality: 50% of Democrats say this, compared with 41% of Republicans. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say that more or equal representation in business and politics is a marker of equality (12% vs. 5%).

Wide party and gender gaps in views of the obstacles women face in achieving gender equality

When Americans who say the country has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men are asked about the obstacles to achieving equal rights, sexual harassment tops the list: 77% say this is a major obstacle for women. Roughly two-thirds say women not having the same legal rights as men (67%) and the different expectations that society has for men and women (66%) are major obstacles, and 64% say the same about not enough women in positions of power. Some 43% point to family responsibilities as a major obstacle, while fewer cite men and women having different physical abilities (19%) and women not working as hard as men (13%) as major obstacles. Roughly two-thirds (64%) of those who say the country has work to do on gender equality say women not working as hard as men is not an obstacle to gender equality.

Perceptions of the obstacles to gender equality vary across genders. For example, while 71% of women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men cite not enough women in positions of power as a major obstacle to gender equality, 55% of men say the same.

A majority of women who say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality also point to women not having the same legal rights as men (73%) and different societal expectations for men and women (72%) as major obstacles to women having equal rights with men. Fewer men who say this see each of these as major obstacles to gender equality (59% and 58%, respectively).

When it comes to the role sexual harassment plays in men and women having equal rights, women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to gender equality (82%) are more likely than men who say the same (72%) to cite this as a major obstacle, though large majorities of both groups say this.

Among women who say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality, those with at least a bachelor’s degree are more likely than those who have attended some college or less to say different societal expectations (81% vs. 67%) and not enough women in positions of power (80% vs. 66%) are major obstacles.

Among those who say there’s work to be done on gender equality, a majority of Democrats, but fewer than half of Republicans, see not enough women in power as a major obstacle

Among those who say there’s more work to be done in giving women equal rights with men, Democrats and Republicans differ on the extent to which certain factors are holding women back. A higher share of Democrats than Republicans point to not enough women in positions of power (72% vs. 41%), women not having the same legal rights as men (73% vs. 51%), sexual harassment (81 % vs. 66%) and different societal expectations (69% vs. 57%) as major obstacles to women having equal rights with men.

Republicans who say the country has not gone far enough to give women equal rights (27%) are more likely than similarly minded Democrats (17%) to say differences in the physical abilities of men and women are a major obstacle to women having equal rights with men, although relatively small shares of each group say this is the case. Meanwhile, there are no significant partisan gaps when it comes to views of family responsibilities (44% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans see it as a major obstacle) or women not working as hard as men (13% and 15%, respectively).

Democratic women are particularly likely to see some of these as major obstacles, while Republican men tend to be the least likely to do so. For example, 78% of Democratic women say women not having the same legal rights as men is a major obstacle to equal rights, as do 65% of Democratic men and 58% of Republican women. In contrast, 42% of Republican men say this is a major obstacle.

And while 77% of Democratic women, 65% of Democratic men and 50% of Republican women say not enough women in positions of power is a major obstacle to gender equality, just 31% of Republican men say the same.

Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to say there are problems with gender discrimination being overlooked

When it comes to gender discrimination, by more than a two-to-one margin Americans say the bigger problem for the country is people not seeing discrimination where it really does exist, rather than people seeing gender discrimination where it really does not exist (67% vs. 31%).

The vast majority of Democrats (85%) say the bigger problem is people not seeing gender discrimination where it really exists. In contrast, more Republicans say the bigger problem is people seeing discrimination where it doesn’t exist (53%) than say the people overlooking discrimination is the bigger problem (46%).

There is a wide gender gap among Republicans. While a majority of Republican men (61%) say the bigger problem is people seeing gender discrimination where it doesn’t exist, fewer than half of Republican women (44%) say the same. Democratic men are also more likely than their female counterparts to say this (19% vs. 11%), but 80% of Democratic men and 89% of Democratic women agree that the bigger problem is people overlooking gender discrimination.

More cite women gaining the right to vote than other milestones as the most important in advancing the position of women

When asked about milestones they see as important in advancing the position of women in the U.S., about half of Americans (49%) point to women gaining the right to vote as the most important milestone, a view that is more common among men (52%) than women (46%). Roughly three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act, while smaller shares say passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the availability of the birth control pill are the most important milestones in advancing the position of women (12% and 8%, respectively).

White adults, as well as those with at least a bachelor’s degree, are more likely than Black and Hispanic adults and those with less education to see women’s suffrage as the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S. Some 53% of white adults say women getting the right to vote has been a more important milestone than the passage of the Equal Pay Act, passage of the FMLA or the availability of the birth control pill. Black and Hispanic adults are about as likely to cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act as they are to cite women gaining the right to vote.

Among those with at least a bachelor’s degree, 59% see women’s suffrage as the most important milestone, compared with 48% of those with some college education and 41% of those with less education. Even so, across educational attainment, more point to women getting the right to vote than to the other milestones as the most important in advancing women’s rights in the U.S.

These differences by race and ethnicity and educational attainment are also evident when looking separately at the views of men and women. A majority of white men (57%) cite women gaining the right to vote as the most important milestone, compared with 39% of Black men and 43% of Hispanic men. And while white women are less likely than their male counterparts to say this (49% do so), even smaller shares of Black (36%) and Hispanic (38%) women point to women’s suffrage as the most important milestone.

Similarly, men with at least a bachelor’s degree (64%) are more likely than women with the same level of educational attainment (54%) to say women gaining the right to vote was the most important milestone. Both are more likely than their less educated counterparts to say this.

Views on this vary little, if at all, by age or partisanship, but Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party are about twice as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say the availability of the birth control pill has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S. (11% vs. 5%). Similar shares of Democratic women (12%) and men (11%) say this, compared with 6% of Republican women and an even smaller share of Republican men (3%).

A third of Americans know what year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote

When asked in an open-ended format what year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote, 47% offer a year between 1915 and 1925 (within five years of the correct answer), including 33% who correctly identify 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote. About three-in-ten Americans (31%) say women gained the right to vote in 1926 or later, while just 7% say this happened before 1915. (Some 14% didn’t provide an answer.) Men and women give similar answers.

Those who say women gaining the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing women’s rights in the U.S. are not necessarily more knowledgeable about the timing of this milestone. An identical share of those who cite women’s suffrage or the availability of the birth control pill as the most important milestones correctly identify 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote (38% each). Similar shares in these groups offer a year between 1915 and 1925.

Educational attainment is related to knowledge of the year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote. About six-in-ten adults with at least a bachelor’s degree (61%) give a year between 1915 and 1925, with 41% correctly identifying 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote. Smaller shares of those with some college (47%) or with a high school diploma or less education (36%) give an answer within five years of the correct year, and a third and quarter, respectively, give the correct answer.

Adults ages 65 and older are more likely than those who are younger to give an answer within five years of the correct year. More than half of those ages 65 and older (55%) say U.S. women gained the right to vote between 1915 and 1925, compared with 49% of those ages 50 to 64, 42% of those ages 30 to 49 and 47% of adults younger than 30.

Majorities say the feminist movement and the Democratic Party have done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S.

Seven-in-ten Americans say the feminist movement has done a great deal (22%) or a fair amount (48%) to advance women’s rights in the U.S.; 59% say the same about the Democratic Party, including 12% who say it has done a great deal. In contrast, most Americans say the Republican Party (61%) and Donald Trump (69%) have not done much or have done nothing at all to advance women’s rights.

Women (73%) are more likely than men (67%) to say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance the rights of women in the U.S., but large majorities of each group say this. Meanwhile, a larger share of men (40%) than women (34%) say the GOP has done at least a fair amount in this area.

There are far wider partisan gaps than gender gaps when it comes to these views. About three-quarters of Democrats and those who lean Democratic (73%) say the Democratic Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S.; fewer than half of Republicans and those who lean to the Republican Party (42%) say the same. Conversely, two-thirds of Republicans – but only 13% of Democrats – say the GOP has done a great deal or a fair amount in this area. Similarly, a majority of Republicans (59%) say Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while just 6% of Democrats say the same.

When it comes to the feminist movement’s impact, majorities of Democrats and Republicans say it has done at least a fair amount. Still, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say this (80% vs. 58%).

For the most part, views on this don’t vary considerably by gender within each party. Republican women (62%) are more likely than Republican men (55%) to say the feminist movement has done a great deal or a fair amount to advance women’s rights, but more than half of both say this. And while Democratic men are more likely than their female counterparts to say their party has done at least a fair amount, about seven-in-ten or more of each group share this view (76% of Democratic men and 71% of Democratic women). Republican men and women give similar views when it comes to how much each of the political parties and Donald Trump have done, and there are no significant differences between Democratic men and women in views of the feminist movement, the Republican Party or Trump.

Majorities say feminism has helped white, Black and Hispanic women

In addition to saying the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S., a majority of Americans think feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of specific groups of women. For example, about six-in-ten or more say feminism has helped the lives of white (64%), Black (61%) and Hispanic (58%) women at least a little, although there are more pronounced differences in the shares saying feminism has helped each of these groups a lot (32% vs. 21% and 15%, respectively). 2  Notably, just 41% of women say the movement has helped them personally.

A majority of Americans (57%) also think feminism has helped lesbian and bisexual women at least a little, including 23% who say it’s helped this group a lot. By comparison, 41% say feminism has helped transgender women, with just 11% saying this group has been helped a lot. About one-in-five (21%) say feminism has hurt transgender women, and 17% say the same about its impact on lesbian and bisexual women.

When asked about the impact of feminism on the lives of wealthy and poor women, 49% say it has helped each of these groups at least a little, but while 24% say feminism has helped wealthy women a lot , just one-in-ten say the same about the impact it’s had on the lives of poor women.

Opinions about how feminism has impacted each of these groups of women don’t differ significantly between men and women. In fact, the shares of men and women saying feminism has helped each of these groups at least a little vary only by 3 percentage points or less.

Majorities of white and Hispanic adults say feminism has helped white, Black and Hispanic women at least a little. Some 64% of Black adults also say feminism has helped white women, more than the shares who say it’s helped Black (49%) or Hispanic (48%) women. Black adults are the most likely to say feminism has helped white women a lot: 42% say this, compared with 34% of Hispanics and an even smaller share of white adults (29%).

Consistent with the difference in the shares of Republicans and Democrats who say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say feminism has helped each of these groups of women.

About four-in-ten women say feminism has helped them personally

When asked about the impact of feminism on their own lives, 41% of women say it has helped them at least a little, with one-in-ten saying feminism has helped them a lot; 7% say feminism has hurt them, while half say it has neither helped nor hurt. 3

Some 55% of women with at least a bachelor’s degree say feminism has helped them personally, compared with 41% of women with some college education and an even smaller share of those with a high school diploma or less education (30%). In turn, six-in-ten of those with no college experience and half of those with some college say feminism has neither helped nor hurt them; 36% of women with a bachelor’s degree or more education say the same.

Hispanic women (46%) are more likely than Black women (36%) to say feminism has helped them personally; white women fall somewhere in the middle (41% say feminism has helped them). There are also differences by age, with 47% of women younger than 50 saying feminism has helped at least a little, compared with 35% of those ages 50 and older.

Among Democratic women, half say feminism has helped them personally, while just 5% say it has hurt them and 43% say it has neither helped nor hurt. By comparison, 28% of Republican women say feminism has helped them, while a majority (60%) say it’s neither helped nor hurt; 9% of Republican women say feminism has hurt them.

Most Americans favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution

In January 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) , nearly half a century after it passed the Senate in 1972. While the ERA has now been ratified by three-fourths of the states, the number required for amending the U.S. Constitution, it is likely to face legal challenges as the deadline for ratification has passed.

The survey finds widespread support for adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution: About eight-in-ten Americans (78%) say they favor it, including 35% who strongly favor it being added to the Constitution. Women are more likely than men to say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the Constitution (39% vs. 31%), but about three-quarters or more in each group say they favor it at least somewhat.

Democrats overwhelmingly favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, with roughly nine-in-ten saying they favor it strongly (51%) or somewhat (37%). There’s less support among Republicans: 66% say they favor adopting the ERA, with 16% expressing strong support for this. Republican women (75%) are far more likely than Republican men (58%) to say they favor adding the ERA to the Constitution. Views on this do not differ by gender among Democrats, but they do vary across other dimensions, including educational attainment, race and ethnicity, and age.

Large majorities of Democrats across levels of educational attainment say they favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, but those with at least a bachelor’s degree are the most likely to express strong support: 62% say they strongly favor adopting the ERA, compared with 55% of Democrats with some college and a smaller share of those of those with a high school diploma or less education (37%).

Among white Democrats, 58% say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution. About four-in-ten Black and Hispanic Democrats say the same (42% each). These gaps remain when taking differences in educational attainment into account.

And while more than eight-in-ten Democrats across age groups support adopting the ERA, those ages 65 and older are more likely than those who are younger to express strong support. About six-in-ten Democrats ages 65 and older (63%) say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, compared with 46% of Democrats ages 18 to 29 and ages 30 to 49 and 52% of those 50 to 64.

These differences by age, educational attainment and race and ethnicity are present among Democratic men and women. Among Republicans, the only notable demographic split on views of adopting the ERA is along gender lines.

Many say adding the ERA to the Constitution wouldn’t make much difference for women’s rights

Despite widespread support for adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, 49% of Americans say this would not make much of a difference when it comes to women’s rights in the country; 44% say this would advance women’s rights and 5% think this would be a setback for women’s rights.

Even among those who favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, a sizable share (44%) is skeptical that this would have much of an impact, while 54% say it would advance women’s rights and just 2% see it as a potential setback. Democratic supporters of the ERA are far more likely than their Republican counterparts to say this would advance women’s rights in our country (63% vs. 38%). A majority of Republican ERA supporters (59%) say adding it to the Constitution wouldn’t make much difference.

Overall, male and female supporters of the ERA offer similar assessments of the impact adding the amendment to the Constitution would have on women’s rights; 54% of women and 53% of men who favor adopting the ERA say this would advance women’s rights in the U.S. Women ages 18 to 29 are more optimistic than women in older age groups to say adding the ERA to the Constitution would advance women’s rights. About six-in-ten women younger than 30 who support the ERA (63%) say adopting the amendment would advance women’s rights, compared with about half of older women who favor the ERA.

For the most part, adults who oppose adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution say doing so wouldn’t make much difference for women’s rights (69% say this), while 20% think this would be a setback for women’s rights and 10% say it would advance women’s rights.

• For more details, see the Methodology section of the report. ↩
• The shares who say feminism has helped each group of women at least a little may not add to the shares who say “a lot” and “a little” as shown in the chart due to rounding. ↩
• The shares of women who say feminism has helped them personally at least a little may not add to the shares who say “a lot” and “a little” as shown in the chart due to rounding. ↩

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Feminism: The Second Wave

FEMINISM : The Second Wave

The Second Wave

After the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, which granted women the right to vote, the first wave of feminism slowed down significantly. Although many of these activists continued to fight for women’s rights, the next sustained feminist movement is believed to have started in the 1960s. Much like the first wave that developed during a period of social reform, the second wave also took place amidst other social and political movements.

The Predecessor

In between the first and the second wave, French feminist author Simone de Beauvoir published a foundational book that set the tone for the next surge of women’s rights activism. Published in 1949, her book entitled “The Second Sex,” provided extensive definitions of womanhood and outlined how women have historically been treated as second to men. Originally published in France, “The Second Sex” quickly became a phenomenon and was published in the United States in 1953. Beauvoir was not only a feminist writer, but she was also considered a philosopher because her writings often answered complex and philosophical questions. In “The Second Sex,” she questions, “What is a woman?” Ultimately, she determined that “one is not born but becomes a woman.

The Instigator

Ten years after “The Second Sex” was published in the United States, American feminist writer Betty Friedan helped ignite the second feminist wave with her book “The Feminine Mystique.” Released in 1963, Friedan builds on the foundation of Simone de Beauvoir’s work. However, Friedan not only employed philosophical thought to discuss feminism, she also incorporated oral histories and her personal experiences to address the issues many women were facing. Friedan first began by researching the role of women in society to see if other women shared her feelings of dissatisfaction and “malaise” as housewives. To her surprise, she was not alone, and her interviews became the source material for her first book.

In the mid-1950s, Friedan found herself as a stay-at-home housewife after a long career as a journalist, writer, and activist. When she got married and had children, Friedan left her career and moved to the suburbs with her family. Even though she continued writing freelance, she soon realized that she was unhappy solely as a housewife. However, she felt the societal pressure to find ultimate happiness as a mother and a homemaker. In 1957 at her 15-year Smith College reunion, Friedan surveyed her classmates and found that they also were unhappy being confined to the home.

For the next five years, Friedan conducted interviews with white middle-class women who were grappling with their roles as housewives. She published her findings in “The Feminine Mystique,” and instantly became a household name. In her book she criticized the separate “sphere” of motherhood and homemaking that women were relegated to. In contrast, men were allowed to flourish in the “male sphere” of work, politics, and power. Friedan’s book encouraged women to step outside of their “sphere,” and fight gender oppression, which she called “the problem that has no name.”

The Movement Begins

Friedan’s book sold over three million copies within the first three years and quickly fueled a resurgence of the feminist movement. Middle-class women across the country began to organize to advocate for women’s social and political equality. The same year “The Feminine Mystique” was published, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into law. The new legislation stipulated that women could no longer be paid less than men for doing “comparable work” at the same job. This Act was the result of a group of women in the White House, lead by labor activist Esther Peterson. Peterson was appointed as the head of the Women's Bureau in the Department of Labor in 1961. She convinced President Kennedy to establish a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women to work towards achieving equality. The commission included revolutionary women such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Height. After collaborating with the commission, Peterson submitted a draft of the Equal Pay Act to congress on behalf of the Kennedy administration.

“Public service announcement (PSA) informing viewers of their rights under the equal pay law.”

Following the Equal Pay Act of 1963, two more legal victories propelled the fight for women’s rights forward. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court ruling of 1965 both secured rights for some feminists and encouraged them to continue to advocate for women’s equality.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevented employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin. In addition to the Civil Rights Act, the Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court ruling of 1965 prevented anyone from limiting a woman’s access to contraception or other methods of birth control. This case would be used in the famous Roe v. Wade decision, protecting a woman’s right to have an abortion in 1973.

These legal victories gave some women more autonomy in both public and private life. However, many women of color were still disenfranchised.

The Women's Liberation Movement

Early in the second wave, feminist writer Gloria Steinem gained national attention by going undercover as a Playboy Bunny. Her exposé called “A Bunny's Tale,” highlighted the sexism and low wages that women faced in these clubs. Steinem went on to become one of the most recognizable leaders of the second wave. She co-founded both “New York” and “Ms.” magazines and covered political issues ranging from abortion to rape. Steinem first spoke publicly in 1969 at an event to legalize abortion in New York State. Shortly afterwards, she began writing and publishing books that would influence a generation of feminists. Her publications accompanied a host of other feminist work that was published during the period that became the women’s liberation movement. Some of these books include; Kate Millett’s “Sexual Politics” in 1969, Juliet Mitchell’s “The Subjection of Women” in 1970, and Shulamith Firestone’s “The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution” in 1970.

In 1972, Steinem teamed up with Betty Friedan and other activists such as Congresswoman Bella Abzug and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to form the National Women’s Political Caucus. This caucus was established to support gender equality and ensure proper women’s representation in political office. At the founding meeting, Steinem delivered a speech entitled “Address to the Women of America,” where she called for a women’s revolution.

That same year, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) proposed by Alice Paul in 1923 finally passed in Congress. Unfortunately, this amendment guaranteeing equal constitutional rights for women failed to be ratified in 38 states within seven years. Supporters of the ERA continue to fight for it’s ratification today.

The Civil Rights Movement

When the second wave of feminism began, the Civil Rights Movement was already in full swing. After emancipation, African American men and women still had to fight against racism, violence, and segregation to exercise their basic human rights. In addition, even after the ratification of the 19th Amendment ensuring that both men and women were able to vote, African American men and women were still restricted from voting by Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, and grandfather-clauses. As the second surge of feminism grew, African American women were once again fighting for their rights as women, alongside their fight for freedom from racial oppression.

In 1969, Frances M. Beal published “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” detailing the experiences of African American women during the feminist movement. Her essay specifically noted the exploitation of black women in society and the different struggles between white and “non-white” feminists.

That same year, Betty Friedan stepped down as president of the organization she co-founded called the National Organization for Women (NOW). Although the organization was racially inclusive, the concerns of black women were frequently sidelined. For example, Friedan and some of the African American members clashed over Friedan’s use of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to advocate for more jobs for middle-class white women, when many African American men and women faced racially motivated job discrimination and lived below the poverty line. By the time Friedan stepped down in 1969, African American women had already started forming their own feminist organizations.

By the 1970s, black women were convening as separate feminist organizations starting with the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) in 1973. The Combahee River Collective formed in 1974 for a similar purpose, but they also focused on issues of sexuality that were often left out. Their statement notes, “we are committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression…” and the way those systems of oppression intersect.

As these women pursued their collective goals, revolutionary scholar and activist Angela Davis began publishing articles and books that would contribute to the foundation of the “Black Feminist” movement. She published an article on the harmful stereotypes of black women in society in 1972 and then followed that with her book entitled, “Women, Race & Class” in 1981. The Combahee River Collective and “Women, Race & Class” both provided a solid foundation for future feminists to study various forms of oppression.

Rethinking Feminism

”Although the women’s movement motivated hundreds of women to write on the woman question, it failed to generate in-depth critical analyses of the black female experience.” --bell hooks in “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism”

Also writing in 1981, author Gloria Jean Watkins, known as “bell hooks,” published “Ain’t I A Woman? Black Women and Feminism.” Her book provides an analysis of the current movement and a critique of mainstream feminism for excluding the concerns of black women in their overall fight for equality. Instead, she provides an inclusive method for activism through black feminism. She states, “although the focus is on the black female, our struggle for liberation has significance only if it takes place within a feminist movement that has as its fundamental goal the liberation of all people.”

After her pioneering work, many feminist writings followed that addressed the concerns and activism of women of color. One of these books was “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color” edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa in 1981. This work included several writings from black, Native American, Asian American, and Latina women feminists that advocated for their rights in the white-dominated feminist movement.

Although many African American women identified with hooks’ writing, Alice Walker introduced a new variation of black feminism called “womanism.” Coined by Walker in her 1983 book “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose,” Walker introduces readers to womanism through a collection of personal and political essays. Developed from the African American cultural significance of the word “womanish,” Walker writes that a womanist is “committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health.”

Womanism is closely aligned with black feminism and many people use the two terms interchangeably. Walker herself notes that the womanist is “a black feminist or feminist of color.” However, Walker also says: “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.” With this analogy, Walker reminds her audience that there are many different forms and shades of feminism. Walker’s novel “The Color Purple” also became a film directed by Steven Spielberg, featuring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg.

The Gay Rights Movement

Women of color weren’t the only group fighting for their voice in the larger feminist movement. During the 1960s, the gay rights movement also gained momentum as participants advocated for equal rights and unbiased information about homosexuality. The first gay rights demonstrations were held in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. as early as 1965. However, the riots at the Stonewall bar in 1969 marked a shift in LGBTQ activism. Starting on June 28, 1969, customers of the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village fought against targeted and frequent police raids.

As the movement progressed, lesbian women had concerns that were not addressed by gay rights activism. Many of these women decided to leave the male leadership of that movement to form their own lesbian organizations. These women advocated for gay rights, as well as feminist rights within organizations like Betty Friedan’s National Organization for Women (NOW). Unfortunately, many of these mainstream feminists rejected their participation. Lesbian women protested their treatment, including a demonstration at the Second Congress to Unite Women in 1970. These women called themselves the “Radicalesbians” and they read their declaration called “The Woman-Identified Woman” to the attendees. The very next year, the NOW adopted a resolution recognizing lesbian rights, and in 1973 they established the NOW Task Force on Sexuality and Lesbianism. Simultaneously, Lesbians of color like Audre Lorde started writing about their particular experiences. Lorde published "Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches" in 1984.

Bra Burning Women

The second wave of the feminist movement is not only known for the tensions between various streams of feminism. This wave is also heavily associated with the “bra-burning” protest of 1968. Although no bra-burning actually occurred, this myth continues to follow the women’s liberation movement. This rumor came from the 1968 Miss America Pageant protest in Atlantic City, New Jersey. On September 7, 1968 a few hundred women interrupted the live broadcast of the Miss America Pageant to protest beauty standards and the objectification of women. These women threw bras, high heels, Playboy magazines, and other symbolic feminine products into a “Freedom Trash Can.” Although the women did not actually ignite a fire, a reporter compared their actions to Vietnam war protesters that would burn their draft cards. This idea of bra-burning feminists followed the movement ever since and contributed to the stereotype of feminists as angry and “man-hating.”

By the late 1970s, the second wave of feminism began to lose steam. As multiple sub-groups created new organizations for themselves, other debates within feminism grew. One of the key debates was over pornography and sexual activity. Many feminists decided between being “anti-porn feminists” or “sex-positive feminists.” These debates accelerated an already dwindling larger movement. By the early 1980s, the second wave came to a close and a large-scale feminist movement would not return for another decade.

Exhibit written and curated by Kerri Lee Alexander, NWHM Fellow 2018-2020

Davis, Angela Yvonne. Women, Race & Class. London: Womens Press, 1986.

D’Emilio, John. “After Stonewall.” Queer Cultures. Eds. Deborah Carlin and Jennifer DiGrazia. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004. 3-35.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Gay, Roxane. “Fifty Years Ago, Protesters Took on the Miss America Pageant and Electrified the Feminist Movement.” Smithsonian.com, January 1, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fifty-years-ago-protestors-took-on-miss-america-pageant-electrified-feminist-movement-180967504/.

hooks, bell. Aint I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. New York: Routledge, 2015. Pp. 12

Lee, Jennifer. “Feminism Has a Bra-Burning Myth Problem.” Time Magazine, June 12, 2014. https://time.com/2853184/feminism-has-a-bra-burning-myth-problem/.

Love, Barbara J. Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975. University of Illinois Press, 2006.

Morris, Catherine, Rujeko Hockley, Connie H. Choi, Carmen Hermo, and Stephanie Weissberg. We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85: a Sourcebook. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, 2017.

Morris, Bonnie J. “History of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Social Movements.” American Psychological Association, 2009. https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/history.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Motherss Gardens: Womanist Prose. San Diego: Harvest, 1984. Pp. xii

The time is now

Women of the world, unite, explore women’s activism from generations past and present..

A single moment can spark a revolution, collective actions can transform laws, creative expression can change attitudes and an invention can alter the course of history. It’s these threads that weave together to propel the women’s movement — even in the face of obstacles. Discover how some of these strands, big and small, have shaped your lives, and the rights and lives of women and girls worldwide.

First women's rights convention

Indignant over women being barred from speaking at an anti-slavery convention, Americans Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott congregate a few hundred people at their nation’s first women’s rights convention in New York. Together they demand civil, social, political and religious rights for women in a Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.”

The women’s right to vote in particular is met with derision by the public. But a movement is born.

More than a word, feminism is a movement advocating for women’s social, political, legal and economic rights equal to those of men. Its first documented use dates back to 1837 in France, where socialist Charles Fourier uses ‘feminisme’ to describe women’s liberation in a utopian future.

By the early 1900s, it is associated with women’s suffrage, but later evolves to carry more meaning. In particular, ‘intersectional feminism’ draws attention to how women face different forms of discrimination based on factors, such as race, class, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation.

In her 1851 speech “Ain't I a woman?”, American feminist and former slave Sojourner Truth draws attention to how women experience sexism differently.

The number of signatures in a ‘monster’ 270-metre long suffrage petition presented to New Zealand’s parliament in 1873. Soon after, New Zealand becomes the first self-governing nation to allow women to vote and inspires suffragists across the globe.

A two-wheeled miracle:

The bicycle as we know it today, paves way for less restrictive clothing and greater mobility for women in some regions.

International Women’s Day: A day for women

Marked annually on 8 March, the first International Women’s Day in 1911 amasses more than one million people across Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland for women’s suffrage and labour rights. In its early years, the Day becomes a mechanism to protest World War I. Most notably, in Russia, a large women-led demonstration breaks out demanding “bread and peace!” Four days later, the Czar abdicates. Now a Russian national holiday, the Day is what some historians believe ignited the Russian Revolution.

Doctors stand up against FGM

In the first known campaign of its kind, the Egyptian Society of Physicians goes against tradition by declaring the negative health effects of Female Genital Mutilation. A practice that at least 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone, it takes until the late 20th Century before the term FGM is globally adopted and the practice explicitly classified as a form of violence. Today, the UN, grassroots women’s movements, civil society and others are working together to put an end to the practice.

Aba women’s riot

Incensed by their social standing under colonial rule, the Igbo women send palm leaves — similar to today’s Facebook invite — to their fellow sisters across Southeastern Nigeria. Together they descend in the thousands to “sit on” or make “war on” undemocratically appointed chiefs by publicly shaming them through singing, dancing, banging on their walls and even tearing down roofs. Although the backlash against protests turn deadly, it eventually forces the chiefs to resign and market tax impositions on women to be dropped.

Then and now

The changing world of work.

World War I and II drive women to take on “untraditional” jobs as men head to war. A Western cultural icon of women war workers, Rosie the Riveter has since been re-interpreted globally as a symbol of women’s empowerment.

Work hard, strike hard

What would you do without clean clothes for weeks? In 1945, Dubliners in Ireland learn the hard way. Tired of unhealthy work conditions, low wages, overtime and limited leave, around 1,500 unionized laundresses go on strike:

We leave it all to you... To gain what we are due.

Commercial laundries get hit, a big business at the time. More than three months (and lots of dirty clothes) later, the strike ends on a victory and gives all Irish workers a statutory second week of annual holidays.

The United Nations is born

Following the devastation of World War II, the United Nations forms in 1945 to foster international co-operation. Its charter enshrines gender equality:

“We the peoples…reaffirm faith…in the equal rights of men and women”

It is one of many steps the UN takes to lay a foundation for women’s rights: In 1946, the Commission on the Status of Women becomes the first global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to gender equality; and in 2010, UN Women becomes the first UN agency to champion exclusively for women’s rights.

Memorable speech

To the women of the world.

In the inaugural session of the UN General Assembly in 1946, American Eleanor Roosevelt famously reads an "open letter to the women of the world", urging for their increased involvement in national and international affairs.

Translated into more than 500 languages and dialects today, the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) for the first time in human history spells out basic rights and fundamental freedoms that all human beings — men and women alike — should enjoy.

The unforgettable butterflies

A symbol of popular feminist resistance, the Mirabal sisters — Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria — also known as Las Mariposas (the butterflies) form an opposition movement to openly protest the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. On 25 November 1960, the sisters are assassinated. The public outcry propels the anti-Trujillo movement, toppling the dictatorship within a year. The day of their brutal murders has since been marked on 25 November to raise awareness on ending violence against women.

The number of women, representing a tenth of the nation’s population, who gather at Iceland’s capital Reykjavik in 1975 to protest economic inequality. The “Women’s Day Off” puts the city’s services, schools and business at a virtual standstill.

Activists unite:

The first International Women’s Year, the first UN Decade for Women and the first world conference on women in Mexico escalates global discourse on women’s rights.

Dubbed the "Women's Bill of Rights", the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is the most comprehensive international instrument to protect the human rights of women and is the second most ratified UN human rights treaty after the Convention on the Rights of the Child with ratifications from 189 nations. Adopted in 1979, the convention legally binds signatory governments to end all forms of discrimination against women in public and private life, including in the family, and aims to achieve substantive equality between women and men — not just in laws, but also in reality on the ground.

A long ladder to the top

More than a century since the women’s suffrage movement begins and decades of vigorous activism later, women in a vast number of the world’s countries can vote by the 1980s. In contrast, women are still fighting to take on leadership positions today. How far have we come?

Women in the highest positions of state in the world

A time saver:

The “hippo water roller” allows for a more efficient means to transport clean water, easing the burden of rural women globally, often the main water collectors.

Global norms and standards play a key role in establishing benchmarks for the international community to abide by, and for countries to implement. The end of the 20th Century is marked with a number of landmark treaties and norm-setting outcomes that have transformed women’s lives.

The first international instrument to explicitly address and define forms of violence against women.

A 23-year action plan that puts people and their rights at the heart of development and recognizes women’s sexual and reproductive health as key to everyone’s well-being.

A comprehensive framework adopted at the Fourth World Conference for Women with a road map of actions under 12 critical areas to advance women's rights.

The first UN legal and political framework to recognize that war impacts women differently and to call for women’s participation in conflict prevention and resolution.

A set of eight time-bound goals unanimously adopted by world leaders to end poverty with a 15-year deadline. In 2015, the world reflects on progress and gaps, and develops its next transformative agenda: The Sustainable Development Goals.

From hunger strikes and human chains to petitions and memes, activism comes in many shapes and forms to provoke change.

Similar to the advent of the printer, radio and television, the internet and mobile phone have dramatically transformed the landscape of how people campaign. Some scholars caution that ‘passive’ involvement online (slacktivism) will decrease active involvement offline.

Okay, we are all a little guilty. But with social media often being employed as a means to organize, express outrage and draw awareness to taboo or previously silenced topics, the women’s rights movement might be proving otherwise.

A mass action for peace

A relentless civil war impels thousands of Liberian women to form a movement. Driven by activist Leymah Gbowee, the movement employs various tactics, most notably: a sex strike to pressure their men to partake in peace talks, and a sit-in on peace negotiations by women who threaten to disrobe as a means to shame and prevent male delegates from leaving without some resolution.

The movement is so successful it ends a 14-year civil war and leads to the election of Africa’s first woman head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

The Gulabi Gang: Justice for women

In Northern India’s poverty-stricken Banda ../assetsrict of Uttar Pradesh state, a handful of bamboo-wielding women take matters into their own hands when they hear of a neighbour abusing his wife. Together, they intervene, forcing the husband to acknowledge the abuse and put a stop to it. The modest movement on domestic abuse later snowballs into a statewide one: Today, a “gang” of tens of thousands of women dressed in pink (gulabi) collectively tackle social injustices against women in the state and are inspiring similar uprisings in the nation.

The power of media

Media plays a powerful role in shaping attitudes towards women and is at the same time a window into how women are viewed. While sexism in media is still plentiful, viral ads and campaigns online are challenging these very stereotypes.

Challenging the status quo

From the Arabian Peninsula to the capitals of North Africa, streams of women vigorously protest for their rights as part of a broader uprising: the pan-Arab movement. The outcry thrusts women into the global limelight, challenging perceptions of them as passive. This determination is not new though: In Morocco, tribal Soulaliyate women continue to fight for land rights; in Tunisia, activism propels gender equality being enshrined in the nation’s constitution; and in Lebanon, campaigning leads to a controversial rape law being scrapped.

Education for all

It’s a moment that wakes up the world: The attack on a school girl and education activist Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan. Surviving a gunshot wound to the head and neck, watch Malala speak as she marks her first public appearance at the UN on her 16th birthday in 2013.

3.5-5.5 Million

The estimated number of people worldwide who attend the “women’s march” on 21 January 2017 in solidarity for women’s rights. It’s one of numerous mass uprisings that mark the decade, including: in India, following the gang rape of a student; across Latin America after a succession of femicides; and in Nigeria, following the kidnapping of almost 280 school girls.

The rise of digital activism

The hashtags say it all: Women and girls want a life free of violence and a gender equal world.

• #SendeAnlat
• #BringBackOurGirls
• #YesAllWomen
• #EverydaySexism
• #WomenShould
• #NiUnaMenos
• #QuellaVoltaChe
• #BalanceTonPorc
• #FeministFriday

Today, 1 in 3 women experience violence in their lifetime; 830 women die every day from preventable pregnancy-related causes; only 1 in 4 parliamentarians worldwide are women; and it will be 2086 before we close the gender pay gap if present trends continue with no action. Gender inequality is rife. As the international community unites around the Sustainable Development Agenda, we owe it to the next generations to strive for a world where women have voice, choice and agency and enjoy the same rights as men.

Women, men, boys and girls, citizens of the world, unite!

• Women’s movements

Women’s movements have driven global and national action on gender equality. In countries and localities, advocates often have the greatest understanding of the deficiencies that women and girls face, and essential knowledge of how to advance their rights. In pushing for change and accountability, they develop leadership skills; some use these in turn to enter and transform political arenas.

Our solutions

Civil society groups are essential partners in implementing UN Women programmes, across all areas of our work. We also engage with women’s movements to help them increase their effectiveness, such as by sharing knowledge on women’s rights and successful advocacy practices. We provide support in building communication, leadership and other skills to influence political and governance processes, including those related to elections.

Other assistance encourages civil society groups to improve their internal operations so that they have a sound foundation for sustaining advocacy and maximizing results.

In Albania , UN Women helped mobilize grassroots women and civil society organizations to develop community-based scorecards. Nearly 2,000 people across seven regions—90 per cent of whom were women—participated in rating how well their communities are doing in involving women in public decision-making, stopping gender-based violence, advancing women’s economic well-being and providing social services. The scores were typically low, averaging between one and two on a scale of five, indicating just how little has been done to stop pervasive gender discrimination.

With concrete evidence in hand, women got involved in the 2011 municipal elections, announcing they would not vote unless candidates agreed to act on their concerns. In the city of Shkodra, they individually met each candidate for mayor, and the winner signed the Agreement of Women. Based on key scorecard findings, it will guide future municipal council plans and decisions, with specific commitments to expand women’s employment options and improve services for domestic violence survivors, among other issues. In Elbasan, circulation of findings to the media drew an immediate reaction from political parties, whose electoral platforms subsequently reflected women’s demands. The newly elected mayor similarly signed a pledge to respond to scorecard findings through local planning.

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What Was Women’s Liberation?

The short-lived radical movement within feminism has gotten a bad reputation for centering white women’s experiences. Is that deserved?

Fifty years ago, the Women’s Strike for Equality brought tens of thousands of women out onto the street in more than ninety cities. Shortly thereafter,  Sisterhood Is Powerful , a collection of key writings by radical women, was published. These events represent a high-water mark for women’s liberation, a hugely influential but short-lived current within feminism. As historian Sara Evans writes, over the past half-century, that movement has been enormously misrepresented .

Women’s liberation took shape in small groups all over the country starting around 1967. One of its key insights was articulated in the catchphrase “the personal is political.” Many women of all races threw themselves into the work of understanding and transforming basic facts about their own lives, as well as legal and institutional frameworks. While the August 1970 March on Washington was called by the National Organization for Women, a liberal feminist group, many of its participants were energized through participation in local women’s liberation groups.

“In many places that energy shifted very quickly from naming the problem to doing something about it,” Evans writes. “Start a journal, write a book, create a daycare center, set up softball teams and karate classes, organize clerical workers, hold a demonstration, dramatize with guerrilla theater.”

Looking back on that era, many people today see a movement made up of white, middle-class women fixated on their own problems. But Evans writes that this is a misunderstanding. In the 1960s, radical women of all races were reacting against the sexism of male leadership in leftist groups like the Black Panthers and Students for a Democratic Society. They were also applying ideas from antiracist and anticolonial struggles to their experiences as women. Evans acknowledges that this sometimes led to troubling results within majority-white women’s liberation groups.

“There is no doubt that white women too often universalized their own experience by presuming to speak to and for ‘all’ women,” she writes. “But later generations failed to notice that women of color from the beginning raised the problem of their double jeopardy, pointing out the sharp differences in experience when gender interacts with race and class.”

The energy of women’s liberation activists produced huge results in the early 1970s. Title IX banned gender discrimination in most educational institutions. Domestic violence centers and rape crisis hotlines won public funding. Employers began to address sexual harassment .

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But the intensity of women’s liberation declined under the weight of infighting, burnout, and a general cultural retreat from utopian thinking. By the mid-1970s, almost no one talked about women’s liberation anymore. Meanwhile, in most colleges and universities, intersectional analysis was still years away. Many white, privileged feminists developed theories that centered gender oppression , often at the cost of considering class and race.

“It was these academy-based theorists who fixed the perception of 1970s Second Wave feminists as white, middle-class, self-interested, and anti-sex,” Evans writes.

In today’s era of multiracial street protest, often led by Black women and other women of color, it’s worth revisiting the multiracial activism that was women’s liberation.

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Article contents

Women’s movement and women workers, post-1945.

• Dennis Deslippe Dennis Deslippe Department of American Studies, Franklin & Marshall College
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.551
• Published online: 26 February 2018

Working women and their issues played a central role in the women’s movement in the decades following World War II. Feminists lobbied, litigated, and engaged in direct action for workplace fairness. Working women, especially those in unions, joined feminist organizations and established their own organizations as well. There were fault lines within the women’s movement over the issues, strategies, and level of commitment to the causes of working women. In the first two decades after 1945, the unionists and liberal reformers who constituted the so-called Women’s Bureau Coalition (named after the U.S. Women’s Bureau) opposed the mostly affluent and conservative members of the National Woman’s Party for their support of the Equal Rights Amendment, supporting instead protective laws and policies that treated women differently from men in the workplace. With the arrival of second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, “labor feminists” clashed with the middle-class professional women at the helm of newly formed feminist organizations. As support for gender equality transformed employment practices, some labor feminists sought to retain (or extend to men) selected protective measures introduced in the early 20th century to shield women workers from the worst aspects of wage labor. In the face of harsh economic conditions in the 1970s, labor feminists again opposed other feminists for their efforts to modify the union practice of “last hired, first fired” as a way of retaining affirmative-action hiring gains.

In recent decades feminists have focused on equity measures such as comparable worth and pregnancy leave as means of addressing the unique challenges women face. In addition they have expanded their concern to lesbian and transgender workers, and, increasingly, to the needs of immigrant workers who make up an increasingly percentage of the working population.

• women workers
• labor unions
• gender equality
• gender equity
• protective laws
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Equal Pay Act of 1963

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date: 27 May 2024

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Women’s Suffrage

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 2, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Women’s Rights Movement Begins

The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War . During the 1820s and '30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had.

At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States— temperance leagues , religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti- slavery organizations—and in many of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the “Cult of True Womanhood”: that is, the idea that the only “true” woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists—mostly women, but some men—gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women’s rights. They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott .

Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, “that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

Civil Rights and Women's Rights During the Civil War

During the 1850s, the women’s rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution’s protection to all citizens—and defines “citizens” as “male”; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees Black men the right to vote.

Some women’s suffrage advocates believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women’s votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African Americans.

In 1869, a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.

Gallery: The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization’s first president.

By then, the suffragists’ approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were “created equal,” the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral “maternal commonwealth.”

This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would “ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained.”

Did you know? In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sex. The so-called Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified.

Winning the Vote at Last

Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.

Still, southern and eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a “Winning Plan” to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with a special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Woman’s Party founded by Alice Paul focused on more radical, militant tactics—hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance—aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.

World War I slowed the suffragists’ campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women’s work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men.

Finally, on August 18, 1920 , the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.

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History of the Women’s Rights Movement

Living the Legacy: The Women’s Rights Movement (1848-1998)

“ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. ” That was Margaret Mead’s conclusion after a lifetime of observing very diverse cultures around the world. Her insight has been borne out time and again throughout the development of this country of ours. Being allowed to live life in an atmosphere of religious freedom, having a voice in the government you support with your taxes, living free of lifelong enslavement by another person. These beliefs about how life should and must be lived were once considered outlandish by many. But these beliefs were fervently held by visionaries whose steadfast work brought about changed minds and attitudes. Now these beliefs are commonly shared across U.S. society.

Another initially outlandish idea that has come to pass: United States citizenship for women. 1998 marked the 150th Anniversary of a movement by women to achieve full civil rights in this country. Over the past seven generations, dramatic social and legal changes have been accomplished that are now so accepted that they go unnoticed by people whose lives they have utterly changed. Many people who have lived through the recent decades of this process have come to accept blithely what has transpired. And younger people, for the most part, can hardly believe life was ever otherwise. They take the changes completely in stride, as how life has always been.

The staggering changes for women that have come about over those seven generations in family life, in religion, in government, in employment, in education – these changes did not just happen spontaneously. Women themselves made these changes happen, very deliberately. Women have not been the passive recipients of miraculous changes in laws and human nature. Seven generations of women have come together to affect these changes in the most democratic ways: through meetings, petition drives, lobbying, public speaking, and nonviolent resistance. They have worked very deliberately to create a better world, and they have succeeded hugely.

Throughout 1998, the 150th anniversary of the Women’s Rights Movement is being celebrated across the nation with programs and events taking every form imaginable. Like many amazing stories, the history of the Women’s Rights Movement began with a small group of people questioning why human lives were being unfairly constricted.

A Tea Launches a Revolution The Women’s Rights Movement marks July 13, 1848 as its beginning. On that sweltering summer day in upstate New York, a young housewife and mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was invited to tea with four women friends. When the course of their conversation turned to the situation of women, Stanton poured out her discontent with the limitations placed on her own situation under America’s new democracy. Hadn’t the American Revolution had been fought just 70 years earlier to win the patriots freedom from tyranny? But women had not gained freedom even though they’d taken equally tremendous risks through those dangerous years. Surely the new republic would benefit from having its women play more active roles throughout society. Stanton’s friends agreed with her, passionately. This was definitely not the first small group of women to have such a conversation, but it was the first to plan and carry out a specific, large-scale program.

Today we are living the legacy of this afternoon conversation among women friends. Throughout 1998, events celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Women’s Rights Movement are looking at the massive changes these women set in motion when they daringly agreed to convene the world’s first Women’s Rights Convention.

Within two days of their afternoon tea together, this small group had picked a date for their convention, found a suitable location, and placed a small announcement in the Seneca County Courier. They called “A convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” The gathering would take place at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20, 1848.

In the history of western civilization, no similar public meeting had ever been called.

A “Declaration of Sentiments” is Drafted These were patriotic women, sharing the ideal of improving the new republic. They saw their mission as helping the republic keep its promise of better, more egalitarian lives for its citizens. As the women set about preparing for the event, Elizabeth Cady Stanton used the Declaration of Independence as the framework for writing what she titled a “Declaration of Sentiments.” In what proved to be a brilliant move, Stanton connected the nascent campaign for women’s rights directly to that powerful American symbol of liberty. The same familiar words framed their arguments: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In this Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton carefully enumerated areas of life where women were treated unjustly. Eighteen was precisely the number of grievances America’s revolutionary forefathers had listed in their Declaration of Independence from England.

Stanton’s version read, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Then it went into specifics:

• Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law
• Women were not allowed to vote
• Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation
• Married women had no property rights
• Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity
• Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women
• Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in the levying of these taxes
• Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned
• Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law
• Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students
• With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church
• Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally dependent on men

Strong words… Large grievances… And remember: This was just seventy years after the Revolutionary War. Doesn’t it seem surprising to you that this unfair treatment of women was the norm in this new, very idealistic democracy? But this Declaration of Sentiments spelled out what was the status quo for European-American women in 1848 America, while it was even worse for enslaved Black women.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s draft continued: “Now, in view of this entire disenfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, — in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

That summer, change was in the air and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was full of hope that the future could and would be brighter for women.

The First Women’s Rights Convention The convention was convened as planned, and over the two-days of discussion, the Declaration of Sentiments and 12 resolutions received unanimous endorsement, one by one, with a few amendments. The only resolution that did not pass unanimously was the call for women’s enfranchisement. That women should be allowed to vote in elections was almost inconceivable to many. Lucretia Mott, Stanton’s longtime friend, had been shocked when Stanton had first suggested such an idea. And at the convention, heated debate over the woman’s vote filled the air.

Today, it’s hard for us to imagine this, isn’t it? Even the heartfelt pleas of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a refined and educated woman of the time, did not move the assembly. Not until Frederick Douglass, the noted Black abolitionist and rich orator, started to speak, did the uproar subside. Woman, like the slave, he argued, had the right to liberty. “Suffrage,” he asserted, “is the power to choose rulers and make laws, and the right by which all others are secured.” In the end, the resolution won enough votes to carry, but by a bare majority.

The Declaration of Sentiments ended on a note of complete realism: “In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.”

The Backlash Begins Stanton was certainly on the mark when she anticipated “misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule.” Newspaper editors were so scandalized by the shameless audacity of the Declaration of Sentiments, and particularly of the ninth resolution — women demanding the vote!– that they attacked the women with all the vitriol they could muster. The women’s rights movement was only one day old and the backlash had already begun!

In ridicule, the entire text of the Declaration of Sentiments was often published, with the names of the signers frequently included. Just as ridicule today often has a squelching effect on new ideas, this attack in the press caused many people from the Convention to rethink their positions. Many of the women who had attended the convention were so embarrassed by the publicity that they actually withdrew their signatures from the Declaration. But most stood firm. And something the editors had not anticipated happened: Their negative articles about the women’s call for expanded rights were so livid and widespread that they actually had a positive impact far beyond anything the organizers could have hoped for. People in cities and isolated towns alike were now alerted to the issues, and joined this heated discussion of women’s rights in great numbers!

The Movement Expands The Seneca Falls women had optimistically hoped for “a series of conventions embracing every part of the country.” And that’s just what did happen. Women’s Rights Conventions were held regularly from 1850 until the start of the Civil War. Some drew such large crowds that people actually had to be turned away for lack of sufficient meeting space!

The women’s rights movement of the late 19th century went on to address the wide range of issues spelled out at the Seneca Falls Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth traveled the country lecturing and organizing for the next forty years. Eventually, winning the right to vote emerged as the central issue, since the vote would provide the means to achieve the other reforms. All told, the campaign for woman suffrage met such staunch opposition that it took 72 years for the women and their male supporters to be successful.

As you might imagine, any 72-year campaign includes thousands of political strategists, capable organizers, administrators, activists and lobbyists. The story of diligent women’s rights activism is a litany of achievements against tremendous odds, of ingenious strategies and outrageous tactics used to outwit opponents and make the most of limited resources. It’s a dramatic tale, filled with remarkable women facing down incredible obstacles to win that most basic American civil right – the vote.

Among these women are several activists whose names and and accomplishments should become as familiar to Americans as those of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, of course. And Susan B. Anthony. Matilda Joslyn Gage. Lucy Stone. They were pioneer theoreticians of the 19th-century women’s rights movement.
• Esther Morris, the first woman to hold a judicial position, who led the first successful state campaign for woman suffrage, in Wyoming in 1869. Abigail Scott Duniway, the leader of the successful fight in Oregon and Washington in the early 1900s.
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell, organizers of thousands of African-American women who worked for suffrage for all women.
• Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone’s daughter, who carried on their mothers’ legacy through the next generation.
• Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the early years of the 20th century, who brought the campaign to its final success.
• Alice Paul, founder and leader of the National Woman’s Party, considered the radical wing of the movement.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now a Supreme Court Justice, learned the story of the Women’s Rights Movement. Today she says, “I think about how much we owe to the women who went before us – legions of women, some known but many more unknown. I applaud the bravery and resilience of those who helped all of us – you and me – to be here today.”

After the Vote was Won After the vote was finally won in 1920, the organized Women’s Rights Movement continued on in several directions. While the majority of women who had marched, petitioned and lobbied for woman suffrage looked no further, a minority – like Alice Paul – understood that the quest for women’s rights would be an ongoing struggle that was only advanced, not satisfied, by the vote.

In 1919, as the suffrage victory drew near, the National American Woman Suffrage Association reconfigured itself into the League of Women Voters to ensure that women would take their hard-won vote seriously and use it wisely.

In 1920, the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor was established to gather information about the situation of women at work, and to advocate for changes it found were needed. Many suffragists became actively involved with lobbying for legislation to protect women workers from abuse and unsafe conditions.

In 1923, Alice Paul, the leader of the National Woman’s Party, took the next obvious step. She drafted an Equal Rights Amendment for the United States Constitution. Such a federal law, it was argued, would ensure that “Men and women have equal rights throughout the United States.” A constitutional amendment would apply uniformly, regardless of where a person lived.

The second wing of the post-suffrage movement was one that had not been explicitly anticipated in the Seneca Falls “Declaration of Sentiments.” It was the birth control movement, initiated by a public health nurse, Margaret Sanger, just as the suffrage drive was nearing its victory. The idea of woman’s right to control her own body, and especially to control her own reproduction and sexuality, added a visionary new dimension to the ideas of women’s emancipation. This movement not only endorsed educating women about existing birth control methods. It also spread the conviction that meaningful freedom for modern women meant they must be able to decide for themselves whether they would become mothers, and when. For decades, Margaret Sanger and her supporters faced down at every turn the zealously enforced laws denying women this right. In 1936, a Supreme Court decision declassified birth control information as obscene. Still, it was not until 1965 that married couples in all states could obtain contraceptives legally.

The Second Wave So it’s clear that, contrary to common misconception, the Women’s Rights Movement did not begin in the 1960s. What occurred in the 1960s was actually a second wave of activism that washed into the public consciousness, fueled by several seemingly independent events of that turbulent decade. Each of these events brought a different segment of the population into the movement.

First: Esther Peterson was the director of the Women’s Bureau of the Dept. of Labor in 1961. She considered it to be the government’s responsibility to take an active role in addressing discrimination against women. With her encouragement, President Kennedy convened a Commission on the Status of Women, naming Eleanor Roosevelt as its chair. The report issued by that commission in 1963 documented discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life. State and local governments quickly followed suit and established their own commissions for women, to research conditions and recommend changes that could be initiated.

Then: In 1963, Betty Friedan published a landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique evolved out of a survey she had conducted for her 20-year college reunion. In it she documented the emotional and intellectual oppression that middle-class educated women were experiencing because of limited life options. The book became an immediate bestseller, and inspired thousands of women to look for fulfillment beyond the role of homemaker.

Next: Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race, religion, and national origin. The category “sex” was included as a last-ditch effort to kill the bill. But it passed, nevertheless. With its passage, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established to investigate discrimination complaints. Within the commission’s first five years, it received 50,000 sex discrimination complaints. But it was quickly obvious that the commission was not very interested in pursuing these complaints. Betty Friedan, the chairs of the various state Commissions on the Status of Women, and other feminists agreed to form a civil rights organization for women similar to the NAACP. In 1966, the National Organization for Women was organized, soon to be followed by an array of other mass-membership organizations addressing the needs of specific groups of women, including Blacks, Latinas, Asians-Americans, lesbians, welfare recipients, business owners, aspiring politicians, and tradeswomen and professional women of every sort.

During this same time, thousands of young women on college campuses were playing active roles within the anti-war and civil rights movement. At least,that was their intention. Many were finding their efforts blocked by men who felt leadership of these movements was their own province, and that women’s roles should be limited to fixing food and running mimeograph machines. It wasn’t long before these young women began forming their own “women’s liberation” organizations to address their role and status within these progressive movements and within society at large.

New Issues Come to the Fore These various elements of the re-emerging Women’s Rights Movement worked together and separately on a wide range of issues. Small groups of women in hundreds of communities worked on grassroots projects like establishing women’s newspapers, bookstores and cafes. They created battered women’s shelters and rape crisis hotlines to care for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. They came together to form child care centers so women could work outside their homes for pay. Women health care professionals opened women’s clinics to provide birth control and family planning counseling — and to offer abortion services — for low-income women. These clinics provided a safe place to discuss a wide range of health concerns and experiment with alternative forms of treatment.

With the inclusion of Title IX in the Education Codes of 1972, equal access to higher education and to professional schools became the law. The long-range effect of that one straightforward legal passage beginning “Equal access to education programs…,” has been simply phenomenal. The number of women doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects and other professionals has doubled and doubled again as quotas actually limiting women’s enrollment in graduate schools were outlawed. Athletics has probably been the most hotly contested area of Title IX, and it’s been one of the hottest areas of improvement, too. The rise in girls’ and women’s participation in athletics tells the story: One in twenty-seven high school girls played sports 25 years ago; one in three do today. The whole world saw how much American women athletes could achieve during the last few Olympic Games, measured in their astonishing numbers of gold, silver, and bronze medals. This was another very visible result of Title IX.

In society at large, the Women’s Rights Movement has brought about measurable changes, too. In 1972, 26% of men and women said they would not vote for a woman for president. In 1996, that sentiment had plummeted to just over 5% for women and to 8% for men. The average age of women when they first marry has moved from twenty to twenty-four during that same period.

But perhaps the most dramatic impact of the women’s rights movement of the past few decades has been women’s financial liberation. Do you realize that just 25 years ago married women were not issued credit cards in their own name? That most women could not get a bank loan without a male co-signer? That women working full time earned fifty-nine cents to every dollar earned by men?

Help-wanted ads in newspapers were segregated into “Help wanted – women” and “Help wanted- men.” Pages and pages of jobs were announced for which women could not even apply. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled this illegal in 1968, but since the EEOC had little enforcement power, most newspapers ignored the requirement for years. The National Organization for Women (NOW), had to argue the issue all the way to the Supreme Court to make it possible for a woman today to hold any job for which she is qualified. And so now we see women in literally thousands of occupations which would have been almost unthinkable just one generation ago: dentist, bus driver, veterinarian, airline pilot, and phone installer, just to name a few.

Many of these changes came about because of legislation and court cases pushed by women’s organizations. But many of the advances women achieved in the 1960s and ’70s were personal: getting husbands to help with the housework or regularly take responsibility for family meals; getting a long-deserved promotion at work; gaining the financial and emotional strength to leave an abusive partner.

The Equal Rights Amendment Is Re-Introduced Then, in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment, which had languished in Congress for almost fifty years, was finally passed and sent to the states for ratification. The wording of the ERA was simple: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” To many women’s rights activists, its ratification by the required thirty-eight states seemed almost a shoo-in.

The campaign for state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment provided the opportunity for millions of women across the nation to become actively involved in the Women’s Rights Movement in their own communities. Unlike so many other issues which were battled-out in Congress or through the courts, this issue came to each state to decide individually. Women’s organizations of every stripe organized their members to help raise money and generate public support for the ERA. Marches were staged in key states that brought out hundreds of thousands of supporters. House meetings, walk-a-thons, door-to-door canvassing, and events of every imaginable kind were held by ordinary women, many of whom had never done anything political in their lives before. Generous checks and single dollar bills poured into the campaign headquarters, and the ranks of NOW and other women’s rights organizations swelled to historic sizes. Every women’s magazine and most general interest publications had stories on the implications of the ERA, and the progress of the ratification campaign.

But Elizabeth Cady Stanton proved prophetic once again. Remember her prediction that the movement should “anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule”? Opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, organized by Phyllis Schlafly, feared that a statement like the ERA in the Constitution would give the government too much control over our personal lives. They charged that passage of the ERA would lead to men abandoning their families, unisex toilets, gay marriages, and women being drafted. And the media, purportedly in the interest of balanced reporting, gave equal weight to these deceptive arguments just as they had when the possibility of women winning voting rights was being debated. And, just like had happened with woman suffrage, there were still very few women in state legislatures to vote their support, so male legislators once again had it in their power to decide if women should have equal rights. When the deadline for ratification came in 1982, the ERA was just three states short of the 38 needed to write it into the U.S. constitution. Seventy-five percent of the women legislators in those three pivotal states supported the ERA, but only 46% of the men voted to ratify.

Despite polls consistently showing a large majority of the population supporting the ERA, it was considered by many politicians to be just too controversial. Historically speaking, most if not all the issues of the women’s rights movement have been highly controversial when they were first voiced. Allowing women to go to college? That would shrink their reproductive organs! Employ women in jobs for pay outside their homes? That would destroy families! Cast votes in national elections? Why should they bother themselves with such matters? Participate in sports? No lady would ever want to perspire! These and other issues that were once considered scandalous and unthinkable are now almost universally accepted in this country.

More Complex Issues Surface Significant progress has been made regarding the topics discussed at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The people attending that landmark discussion would not even have imagined the issues of the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1990s. Much of the discussion has moved beyond the issue of equal rights and into territory that is controversial, even among feminists. To name a few:

• Women’s reproductive rights. Whether or not women can terminate pregnancies is still controversial twenty-five years after the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade affirmed women’s choice during the first two trimesters.
• Women’s enrollment in military academies and service in active combat. Are these desirable?
• Women in leadership roles in religious worship. Controversial for some, natural for others.
• Affirmative action. Is help in making up for past discrimination appropriate? Do qualified women now face a level playing field?
• The mommy track. Should businesses accommodate women’s family responsibilities, or should women compete evenly for advancement with men, most of whom still assume fewer family obligations?
• Pornography. Is it degrading, even dangerous, to women, or is it simply a free speech issue?
• Sexual harassment. Just where does flirting leave off and harassment begin?
• Surrogate motherhood. Is it simply the free right of a woman to hire out her womb for this service?
• Social Security benefits allocated equally for homemakers and their working spouses, to keep surviving wives from poverty as widows.

Today, young women proudly calling themselves “the third wave” are confronting these and other thorny issues. While many women may still be hesitant to call themselves “feminist” because of the ever-present backlash, few would give up the legacy of personal freedoms and expanded opportunities women have won over the last 150 years. Whatever choices we make for our own lives, most of us envision a world for our daughters, nieces and granddaughters where all girls and women will have the opportunity to develop their unique skills and talents and pursue their dreams.

1998: Living the Legacy In the 150 years since that first, landmark Women’s Rights Convention, women have made clear progress in the areas addressed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her revolutionary Declaration of Sentiments. Not only have women won the right to vote; we are being elected to public office at all levels of government. Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, in 1916. By 1971, three generations later, women were still less than three percent of our congressional representatives. Today women hold only 11% of the seats in Congress, and 21% of the state legislative seats. Yet, in the face of such small numbers, women have successfully changed thousands of local, state, and federal laws that had limited women’s legal status and social roles.

In the world of work, large numbers of women have entered the professions, the trades, and businesses of every kind. We have opened the ranks of the clergy, the military, the newsroom. More than three million women now work in occupations considered “nontraditional” until very recently.

We’ve accomplished so much, yet a lot still remains to be done. Substantial barriers to the full equality of America’s women still remain before our freedom as a Nation can be called complete. But the Women’s Rights Movement has clearly been successful in irrevocably changing the circumstances and hopes of women. The remaining injustices are being tackled daily in the courts and conference rooms, the homes and organizations, workplaces and playing fields of America.

Women and girls today are living the legacy of women’s rights that seven generations of women before us have given their best to achieve. Alice Paul, that intrepid organizer who first wrote out the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, said, “I always feel the movement is sort of a mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end.” Women, acting together, adding their small stones to the grand mosaic, have increased their rights against all odds, nonviolently, from an initial position of powerlessness. We have a lot to be proud of in this heroic legacy, and a great deal to celebrate on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Rights Movement.

© By Bonnie Eisenberg and Mary Ruthsdotter, the National Women’s History Alliance. 1998

Announcing the 2024 WAM Research Grant Recipients

Cleveland clinic unveils women's comprehensive health and research center championed by wam founder maria shriver.

Innovative program will address unique health needs of women during midlife and beyond

The time for gender equity in research is now.

Women are worth it

Every 65 seconds, a new brain develops Alzheimer’s. 2/3 of them belong to women.

HELP US FIND OUT WHY

WAM at Cleveland Clinic is dedicated to closing the gap in knowledge about women's brain health by funding gender-based Alzheimer's research.

The women’s alzheimer’s movement is proud to have partnered to build the first the women’s alzheimer’s movement prevention and research center at cleveland clinic, las vegas., wam provides the latest alzheimer’s prevention tips and tools to empower people to take control of their own brain health., sign up for wam monthly.

Educate Your Brain. Empower Your Life.  News You Can Use About Women, Alzheimer’s, and Brain Health.

Welcome to WAM at Cleveland Clinic

We are a community of determined people committed to changing the story of women and alzheimer’s once and for all. we do this by  funding women-based alzheimer’s research , supporting those impacted by the disease, and educating people about their brain health. wam at cleveland clinic is also the home of the nation’s first and only alzheimer’s prevention center designed just for women., wam at a glance, who we help, we help women impacted by alzheimer’s, the families who love them, and the researchers working for a cure., why we do it, there is a knowledge gap about women and alzheimer's -- and wam is dedicated to filling it., we focus on 4 areas: research, education, prevention, and advocacy..

– Maria Shriver, Founder, Women's Alzheimer's Movement Prevention and Research Center at Cleveland Clinic Chief Visionary and Strategic Advisor, Cleveland Clinic Comprehensive Women's Health and Research Center

The Unfolding Story

6 . 7 million.

There are over 6.7 million Americans living with Alzheimer's disease, a disease that can begin to develop 20-30 years before symptoms occur.

There are 11.2 million Americans providing unpaid care to someone with Alzheimer's or dementia. Two-thirds of them are women.

African Americans are twice as likely as whites to develop Alzheimer's; Latinos 1.5 times.

One-third of Alzheimer's cases may be preventable by addressing lifestyle factors. It's never too early to start.

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Advancing Women’s Health Research and Innovation: A Conversation with Janine Clayton, Director of the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH)

In March 2024, President Joe Biden signed an  Executive Order directing the most comprehensive set of executive actions ever to expand and improve women’s health. Its actions prioritize the integration of women’s health throughout the federal research portfolio and budget, galvanizing new research initiatives on various topics, including menopause and women’s midlife health.

The order will create a Fund for Women’s Health Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to drive a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research agenda and establish a nationwide network of research centers of excellence and innovation.

The Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) has a history of supporting research initiatives addressing issues such as health disparities, opportunities for women in scientific fields, improvements in research inclusivity, and policy matters affecting women. We look forward to building on our collaborations with the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) to accelerate research to prevent, diagnose, and treat conditions that uniquely or disproportionately impact women.

I recently had the opportunity to connect with the Director of ORWH, Janine Clayton, M.D., FARVO about the importance of behavioral and social sciences research to women’s health and how the Executive Order can help address how we will work together to close gaps and accelerate the advancement of women's health research.

What are some of the major challenges in women’s health research that the Executive Order aims to address? 

The Executive Order focuses on five key areas to support women’s health. These include prioritizing and enhancing investments; fostering innovation and discovery; expanding and leveraging data collection and analysis; strengthening coordination, infrastructure, and training; and improving women’s health across the lifespan.

By increasing funding and focusing on women’s health across the lifespan, there is an opportunity to better understand the diseases and conditions associated with women’s midlife and later years.

What role does behavioral and social science research play in improving health outcomes for women? 

Much of the research at the NIH focuses on the biological perspectives that influence women’s health at the genetic, molecular, and physiological levels. However, it is imperative to understand how these internal factors interact with the external ones, such as social constructions of gender and sexuality and social determinants of health. These interactions have broad implications for women’s health outcomes.

Research has shown that lifestyle behaviors, such as healthy eating and regular physical activity can prevent conditions like heart attack and stroke. Simply recommending that women eat whole foods and exercise regularly does not consider how the social world influences individual behaviors. For example, some women may not have access to healthy foods because they live in an area without a grocery store. They may have physical disabilities that limit their ability to exercise or live in a neighborhood where it is not safe to be outside due to violence or air pollution.

Continued and expanded support for behavioral and social science research can enhance our understanding of the factors that influence women’s health. This support can help develop effective interventions that address health disparities and advance equity for women.

How is women’s health research linked to health equity?

To conduct equity-focused health research for women, we need to take an intersectional approach. This means looking at the differences among groups and understanding how various social factors influence women’s health outcomes.

Recognizing that women's experiences vary, it's important to tailor strategies for improving women’s health to account for these differences. For example, cultural factors significantly influence women's perceptions of menopause and affect their acceptance of biomedical approaches during this transition. Additionally, racial and ethnic minoritized groups may face obstacles in accessing proper care and can have challenges in finding menopause-related information and support.

To support equity-focused research, ORWH recently coordinated the release of a  Notice of Special Interest on women’s health that highlights the NIH’s interest in receiving research applications focused on diseases and health conditions that predominantly affect women.

The Executive Order aims to improve the recruitment, enrollment, and retention of women in clinical trials. How do behavioral or social science play a role in achieving this goal?

As the focal point for women's health research, ORWH strives to ensure that women from underrepresented, underreported, and underreported (U3) populations are included in biomedical research to reduce health disparities. Behavioral and social science can shed light on the various obstacles that affect women’s willingness and ability to participate in clinical trials, such as caregiving responsibilities, work obligations, or concerns about discomfort.

For instance, historically there has been insufficient representation of African American women in clinical research. The Executive Order aims to reduce these gaps in representation by prioritizing the inclusion of women from all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds in clinical research.

OBSSR and ORWH promote implementation science to enhance the impact of research findings. Are there specific areas within women's health where implementation science is particularly important?

Implementation science is critical for ensuring the retention of women in clinical trials. The Executive Order recommends using technological and data science advances to reduce women’s barriers to access. Implementation science can investigate the multiple contextual factors that could impact women’s uptake of these advances.

Integrating user-centered design and community-based participatory research approaches in the development of innovative technological and data science strategies can increase the successful implementation of these tools and potentially increase women’s participation in clinical trials.

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Gender gaps remain for many women scientists, study finds

by Sherri Buri McDonald, University of Oregon

As more women have entered the biomedical field, they're getting a bigger share of research grants, and the gender gap in research funding appears to be narrowing, but the gains have been uneven.

That's because, at U.S. universities, most of those research dollars are going to senior women scientists, and their younger counterparts are missing out on the large grants that can advance science and careers, according to a new study by a University of Oregon researcher and collaborators.

Their findings were published May 17 in Nature Biotechnology .

"As the resources are increasingly flowing toward women, the disparity between senior men scientists and senior women scientists is closing," said co-author Chris Liu, an associate professor of management with the UO's Lundquist College of Business. "But the gap is persisting between junior men and women."

Liu collaborated with Andy S. Back, assistant professor in management and strategy at the University of Hong Kong Business School, and two researchers at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business: Waverly Ding, associate professor of management and organization, and Beril Yalcinkaya, a doctoral candidate in strategic management and entrepreneurship.

They examined the distribution of 2.3 million U.S. National Institutes of Health grants to biomedical scientists from 1985 to 2017.

Also, the researchers were struck by the contrast between two different sets of data. The first shows a steady climb in the percentage of life sciences doctoral degree recipients who are women, from roughly 30% in 1985 to 55% in 2020.

The second shows a persistent gender gap in the probability of holding a full-time tenured academic position in biomedicine. For the past three decades, the probability has been about 20% for women and nearly 40% for men.

"This is an important trend that has been overlooked," Liu said. "To fully realize the benefits of diversity, it is important that disadvantaged groups achieve the academic freedom afforded by grant funding and tenure. Our study reveals a systemic issue that needs to be addressed for young women scientists to advance through the ranks and have the greatest possible impact on science and society."

Possible solutions could include earmarking research funding for young women scientists and offering grant-writing assistance and other supports, Liu said.

Journal information: Nature Biotechnology

Provided by University of Oregon

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• About Adverse Childhood Experiences
• Risk and Protective Factors
• Program: Essentials for Childhood: Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences through Data to Action
• Adverse childhood experiences can have long-term impacts on health, opportunity and well-being.
• Adverse childhood experiences are common and some groups experience them more than others.

What are adverse childhood experiences?

Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (0-17 years). Examples include: 1

• Experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect.
• Witnessing violence in the home or community.
• Having a family member attempt or die by suicide.

Also included are aspects of the child’s environment that can undermine their sense of safety, stability, and bonding. Examples can include growing up in a household with: 1

• Substance use problems.
• Mental health problems.
• Instability due to parental separation.
• Instability due to household members being in jail or prison.

The examples above are not a complete list of adverse experiences. Many other traumatic experiences could impact health and well-being. This can include not having enough food to eat, experiencing homelessness or unstable housing, or experiencing discrimination. 2 3 4 5 6

Quick facts and stats

ACEs are common. About 64% of adults in the United States reported they had experienced at least one type of ACE before age 18. Nearly one in six (17.3%) adults reported they had experienced four or more types of ACEs. 7

Preventing ACEs could potentially reduce many health conditions. Estimates show up to 1.9 million heart disease cases and 21 million depression cases potentially could have been avoided by preventing ACEs. 1

Some people are at greater risk of experiencing one or more ACEs than others. While all children are at risk of ACEs, numerous studies show inequities in such experiences. These inequalities are linked to the historical, social, and economic environments in which some families live. 5 6 ACEs were highest among females, non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native adults, and adults who are unemployed or unable to work. 7

ACEs are costly. ACEs-related health consequences cost an estimated economic burden of $748 billion annually in Bermuda, Canada, and the United States. 8

ACEs can have lasting effects on health and well-being in childhood and life opportunities well into adulthood. 9 Life opportunities include things like education and job potential. These experiences can increase the risks of injury, sexually transmitted infections, and involvement in sex trafficking. They can also increase risks for maternal and child health problems including teen pregnancy, pregnancy complications, and fetal death. Also included are a range of chronic diseases and leading causes of death, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide. 1 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

ACEs and associated social determinants of health, such as living in under-resourced or racially segregated neighborhoods, can cause toxic stress. Toxic stress, or extended or prolonged stress, from ACEs can negatively affect children’s brain development, immune systems, and stress-response systems. These changes can affect children’s attention, decision-making, and learning. 18

Children growing up with toxic stress may have difficulty forming healthy and stable relationships. They may also have unstable work histories as adults and struggle with finances, jobs, and depression throughout life. 18 These effects can also be passed on to their own children. 19 20 21 Some children may face further exposure to toxic stress from historical and ongoing traumas. These historical and ongoing traumas refer to experiences of racial discrimination or the impacts of poverty resulting from limited educational and economic opportunities. 1 6

Adverse childhood experiences can be prevented. Certain factors may increase or decrease the risk of experiencing adverse childhood experiences.

Preventing adverse childhood experiences requires understanding and addressing the factors that put people at risk for or protect them from violence.

Creating safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for all children can prevent ACEs and help all children reach their full potential. We all have a role to play.

• Merrick MT, Ford DC, Ports KA, et al. Vital Signs: Estimated Proportion of Adult Health Problems Attributable to Adverse Childhood Experiences and Implications for Prevention — 25 States, 2015–2017. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2019;68:999-1005. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6844e1 .
• Cain KS, Meyer SC, Cummer E, Patel KK, Casacchia NJ, Montez K, Palakshappa D, Brown CL. Association of Food Insecurity with Mental Health Outcomes in Parents and Children. Science Direct. 2022; 22:7; 1105-1114. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2022.04.010 .
• Smith-Grant J, Kilmer G, Brener N, Robin L, Underwood M. Risk Behaviors and Experiences Among Youth Experiencing Homelessness—Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 23 U.S. States and 11 Local School Districts. Journal of Community Health. 2022; 47: 324-333.
• Experiencing discrimination: Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Impacts of Racism on the Foundations of Health | Annual Review of Public Health https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-090419-101940 .
• Sedlak A, Mettenburg J, Basena M, et al. Fourth national incidence study of child abuse and neglect (NIS-4): Report to Congress. Executive Summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health an Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.; 2010.
• Font S, Maguire-Jack K. Pathways from childhood abuse and other adversities to adult health risks: The role of adult socioeconomic conditions. Child Abuse Negl. 2016;51:390-399.
• Swedo EA, Aslam MV, Dahlberg LL, et al. Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences Among U.S. Adults — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2011–2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2023;72:707–715. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7226a2 .
• Bellis, MA, et al. Life Course Health Consequences and Associated Annual Costs of Adverse Childhood Experiences Across Europe and North America: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Lancet Public Health 2019.
• Adverse Childhood Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Associations with Poor Mental Health and Suicidal Behaviors Among High School Students — Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, United States, January–June 2021 | MMWR
• Hillis SD, Anda RF, Dube SR, Felitti VJ, Marchbanks PA, Marks JS. The association between adverse childhood experiences and adolescent pregnancy, long-term psychosocial consequences, and fetal death. Pediatrics. 2004 Feb;113(2):320-7.
• Miller ES, Fleming O, Ekpe EE, Grobman WA, Heard-Garris N. Association Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes. Obstetrics & Gynecology . 2021;138(5):770-776. https://doi.org/10.1097/AOG.0000000000004570 .
• Sulaiman S, Premji SS, Tavangar F, et al. Total Adverse Childhood Experiences and Preterm Birth: A Systematic Review. Matern Child Health J . 2021;25(10):1581-1594. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-021-03176-6 .
• Ciciolla L, Shreffler KM, Tiemeyer S. Maternal Childhood Adversity as a Risk for Perinatal Complications and NICU Hospitalization. Journal of Pediatric Psychology . 2021;46(7):801-813. https://doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/jsab027 .
• Mersky JP, Lee CP. Adverse childhood experiences and poor birth outcomes in a diverse, low-income sample. BMC pregnancy and childbirth. 2019;19(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-019-2560-8 .
• Reid JA, Baglivio MT, Piquero AR, Greenwald MA, Epps N. No youth left behind to human trafficking: Exploring profiles of risk. American journal of orthopsychiatry. 2019;89(6):704.
• Diamond-Welch B, Kosloski AE. Adverse childhood experiences and propensity to participate in the commercialized sex market. Child Abuse & Neglect. 2020 Jun 1;104:104468.
• Shonkoff, J. P., Garner, A. S., Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care, & Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232–e246. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-2663
• Narayan AJ, Kalstabakken AW, Labella MH, Nerenberg LS, Monn AR, Masten AS. Intergenerational continuity of adverse childhood experiences in homeless families: unpacking exposure to maltreatment versus family dysfunction. Am J Orthopsych. 2017;87(1):3. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000133 .
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Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

ACEs can have a tremendous impact on lifelong health and opportunity. CDC works to understand ACEs and prevent them.