National Organization for Women

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The National Organization for Women ( NOW ; German National Organization for Women ) is the largest US feminist organization.

Members

According to NOW, it now has 550,000 paying members in all US states. From the beginning, membership was also open to men.

history

NOW was founded on June 30, 1966 in Washington, DC . One of the 28 founders was Betty Friedan , author of the seminal feminist classic The Feminine Mystique (1963), who also became the organization's first president. Another founding member was Reverent Pauli Murray , the first African-American priestess of the Episcopal Church . The second president in 1970 was historian and civil rights activist Aileen Hernandez , who founded Black Women Organized for Action in San Francisco in 1973 . From 1987 to 1991, Molly was the yardthe president of NOW. Since 2009 it has been law professor Terry O'Neill.

issue

The original purpose, written on a napkin by Friedan, was “to take action to lead women now to full participation in mainstream US society, so that they can have all of the privileges and responsibilities of the same in one really enjoy or have an equal partnership with men. ”In 1966 they presented the basic demands and ideals of the movement in the“ Statement of Purpose ”. In 1970 years, NOW sat for so-called Equal Rights Amendment ( Same-rights additive ERA) to the US Constitution one, the full legal equality should guarantee of man and woman.

At their meeting on July 23, 1989 in Cincinnati ( Ohio ) that was two-party system of the United States discussed and questioned. The establishment of a third party was discussed. The result was a declaration on the political independence of women ("Declaration of Women's Political Independence").

A commission of inquiry into amendments to the US constitution was established. These additions should include freedom from sexual discrimination and the right to a moderate standard of living , the right to clean air and water and environmental protection, the right to freedom from violence. The commission was chaired by former NOW President Eleanor Smeal. A month earlier, NOW had set up a Commission for Responsive Democracy .

To this day, the organization is working on legislative measures for women's rights and media presentations of women's issues.

Current priorities are the elimination of discrimination and harassment in the workplace, in school, in the legal system and all other areas of society, safe abortion , birth control and rights to self-determination in reproduction , all forms of violence against women, the eradication of sexism , racism , Homophobia and the promotion of equality and justice in society.

criticism

Warren Farrell was the only man elected to the organization's New York board three times in the 1970s. Later, in his books “Why Men Are The Way They Are” and “The Myth of Male Power ” , Farrell explained how feminism interpreted gender relations very one-sidedly in favor of women, in that female experiences of powerlessness were used to infer alleged power of men, with male experiences of powerlessness remained hidden.

sources

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography of Aileen Hernandez at the National Women's History Project. (No longer available online.) 2006, archived from the original on May 8, 2014 ; accessed on May 25, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nwhp.org
  2. ↑ Warren Farrell, Why Men Are The Way They Are . Ernst Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-8225-0097-6 (English: Why men are the way they are . Translated by Hans-Joachim Maass, paperback edition ISBN 3-442-11700-3 ).
  3. ↑ Warren Farrell: The Myth of Male Power . With a foreword by Marianne Grabrucker. 1st edition. Zweiausendeins , Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-86150-108-2 (English: The myth of male power . Translated by Elisabeth Brock).