Women's Strike for Equality (1970): Marching on Fifth Avenue

The Women’s Strike for Equality was a nationwide protest held in the United States on 26 August 1970, the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. Called by the feminist leader Betty Friedan, it brought tens of thousands of women onto New York’s Fifth Avenue and into the streets of many other cities. It was the largest demonstration for women’s rights in the United States since the suffrage campaign and showed that the new feminist movement had become a mass force.

Background

The Nineteenth Amendment, which barred states from denying women the vote on the grounds of sex, was certified on 26 August 1920. Fifty years later, many women argued that political equality had not brought equality at work, in education or at home. Women earned on average about 60 per cent of what men earned, and many professions and universities remained closed or hostile to them.

Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, had co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 and served as its first president. At NOW’s national conference in Chicago in March 1970, as she stepped down, she called for a “strike” on the anniversary, asking women to stop cooking, cleaning and working for a day to show their importance to society.

Demands

The organisers agreed on three central demands:

• free abortion on demand;
• equal opportunity in employment and education;
• free 24-hour childcare centres.

Many marchers also supported the Equal Rights Amendment, which the House of Representatives had passed on 10 August 1970 after a discharge petition led by Representative Martha Griffiths, although it stalled in the Senate that year.

The day of the strike

Few women actually stopped work for the whole day; many joined events at lunchtime or after work. In New York, the city had granted the marchers only one lane of Fifth Avenue, but as the crowd grew in the early evening, women linked arms and spread across the whole avenue, halting the rush-hour traffic. Estimates of the crowd range from about 20,000 to 50,000.

The march ended with a rally in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library. Speakers included Friedan, Bella Abzug, who was then running for Congress, the journalist Gloria Steinem and the writer Kate Millett, whose book Sexual Politics had just been published. Similar marches, rallies and sit-ins took place in dozens of other cities, including Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Some actions were deliberately theatrical. Earlier that month, on 10 August, activists had hung a banner reading “Women of the World Unite!” from the Statue of Liberty, and on the day itself some women occupied offices or staged events to highlight discrimination.

Key people

• Betty Friedan (1921–2006) conceived the strike and led the New York march. She saw it as a way to show the size of the movement and to unite its moderate and radical wings.
• Bella Abzug (1920–1998), a lawyer and peace activist known for her wide-brimmed hats, spoke at the rally and won a seat in Congress later that year.
• Gloria Steinem (born 1934), then a journalist at New York magazine, became one of the best-known faces of the movement and co-founded Ms. magazine in 1971.
• Kate Millett (1934–2017), whose Sexual Politics was a bestseller that summer, was featured on the cover of Time magazine days later.
• Martha Griffiths (1912–2003), a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, did not organise the strike but had just pushed the Equal Rights Amendment through the House.

Reaction and consequences

The strike received extensive coverage in newspapers and on television, though some reports were mocking. Polls at the time showed that many Americans, including many women, still had doubts about the movement, but the day convinced politicians that women’s issues commanded real support.

Membership of NOW and other feminist groups grew sharply in the following years. Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 and sent it to the states, and in 1973 the Supreme Court legalised abortion nationwide in Roe v. Wade. Through the efforts of Bella Abzug, who was elected to Congress in November 1970, 26 August was designated Women’s Equality Day.

Timeline

• 1920, 26 August: The Nineteenth Amendment is certified.
• 1966, June: The National Organization for Women is founded.
• 1970, March: Betty Friedan calls for a women’s strike at NOW’s conference in Chicago.
• 1970, 10 August: The House passes the Equal Rights Amendment; activists hang a banner on the Statue of Liberty.
• 1970, 26 August: The Women’s Strike for Equality takes place across the country.
• 1970, November: Bella Abzug is elected to the House of Representatives.
• 1972, March: Congress sends the Equal Rights Amendment to the states.

Why it matters

The Women’s Strike for Equality turned second-wave feminism from a collection of small groups into a visible national movement. By linking its demands to the anniversary of women’s suffrage, it framed equal pay, education, childcare and reproductive rights as the unfinished business of American democracy.