Women (NOW). The goals of NOW included
the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment to
the Constitution, guarantees of equal employ-
ment opportunity, the right to paid maternity
leave, publicly provided child-care facilities,
equality in education, job training and housing
for women living in poverty, and the legal right
to abortion. NOW grew rapidly, from 300COMPARE
&
CONTRAST 1970s:Female poets such as Alice Walker,
Marilyn Hacker, Marge Piercy, Linda
Hogan, and Sharon Olds begin to make their
mark on American poetry. Feminist writers
argue their case in influential books such as
Sexual Politics(1970), by Kate Millett, and
The Female Eunuch (1971), by Germaine
Greer. Publishing houses such as Feminist
Press and Virago Press are established solely
to publish work by women.Ms.magazine is
founded in 1972 by Gloria Steinem and her
associates to espouse the goals of the women’s
movement and challenge the images of women
presented in traditional women’s magazines.
Today:Women’s publishing houses continue
to flourish, although they face challenges due
to the rising costs of publishing and the
advent of alternative sources of information
for readers, such as the Internet. However,
the market for feminist writings now extends
to mainstream publishing houses, which are
eager to publish books with feminist themes.
The popularity of books by and about
women may partly be due to the continuing
growth of women’s studies at universities,
which indicates that feminist thought is no
longer a minority interest but is part of the
cultural mainstream.
1970s:As second-wave feminism develops,
it produces different kinds of approaches to
ending discrimination against women.
Organizations such as NOW take a liberal
approach, emphasizing the need to expand
opportunities for women at the individual
level. More radical feminists take a collec-
tive approach in which they oppose the
entire patriarchal system in all its aspects—
social, political, economic, and cultural.Many such feminists see their struggle in
terms of class warfare. Other feminist
groups include socialist feminists and les-
bian feminists.
Today:The newest generation of feminists
are part of what is known as third-wave
feminism, which began in the 1990s among
women who came of age in the 1980s and
who had grown up with an awareness of
feminist issues. One prominent third-wave
feminist is Rebecca Walker. In her introduc-
tion to a collection of essays titledTo Be
Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the
Face of Feminism(1995), Walker criticizes
earlier feminism because it sought to apply a
new orthodoxy about how women were sup-
posed to be.
1970s:According to statistics supplied by
the U.S. Department of Labor, in 1970,
more women are employed in the labor
force than ever before in U.S. history. Moth-
ers are more likely to work outside the home
than ever before. However, the earnings gap
between men and women is considerable;
families headed by a woman who works
are more likely to live in poverty than those
headed by a man; and women tend to work
in low-income occupations that do not
reflect their educational achievements.
Today:According to NOW, women who
work full time still earn only 77 percent of
what men are paid. Although women have
more opportunities to succeed in profes-
sions such as medicine, law, and business,
the ‘‘glass ceiling,’’ which prevents them
from reaching their field’s most senior posi-
tions, remains firmly in place.Diving into the Wreck