Women's liberation movement

The women's liberation movement was a loose agreement of women and feminist thinking that emerged in the United States, United Kingdom, and other developed countries during the late 1960s and persisted throughout the 1970s.

Although isolated feminist acts preceded it, the feminist movement in America did not begin in full force until the 1960s. The training ground for feminism was the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s the Presidents Commission on the Status of Women was formed under President Kennedy who emphasized the importance of the committees work at its first meeting on February 12, 1962. After its inception each state had members who would report back to the President. In theory it was a positive step in the right direction as far as procuring equal rights for women was concerned, but it was besieged with setbacks. The problem during this era was that it was hard to follow through on ideas and proposals because as is often the case in politics, it was hard to get everyone to agree on everything. In 1966 a frustrated Betty Friedan and some of her friends decided to form a new organization and they called it the National Organization for Women (NOW). After installing Friedan as their first President, NOW stated that one of their goals was to bring women into the mainstream of society and to keep moving forward in an atmosphere of change.

The women that originally formed NOW felt that it was very important not to get too extreme at first but then in the late 1960s younger groups started to emerge. Although having the backing of a sizeable group of young people is considered to be a good thing for any movement, the fact that Friedan and her fellow co-founders of NOW were all from the WWII generation, and the newer groups that were joining the women's liberation movement had much different priorities eventually caused a clash within the movement. One example of a clash took place during the 1968 Mrs. America pageant when the New York Radical Women (N.Y.R.W) decided to protest the event. One of the members got metal trash cans and threw items that they considered to be objects of female torture such as bras, pots, pans and copies of Ladies Home Journal, and threw them into the cans. Friedan was furious about these actions. She felt that actions such as these would prevent people from taking their movement seriously.

...
Wikipedia