The History of the National Organization for Women (NOW)

Unsung History

At the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women, a group of women, led by writer Betty Friedan and organizer and attorney Pauli Murray, decided that to make progress they needed to form an independent national civil rights organization for women. Within months, the National Organization for Women had 300 founding members, a slate of officers, and a statement of purpose. By 1974, NOW boasted 40,000 members in over 700 chapters, and today NOW claims hundreds of thousands of members in all 50 states and DC, working toward equal rights for women and girls.

Joining me to discuss the history of NOW is Dr. Katherine Turk, Associate Professor of History and Adjunct Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of The Women of Now: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio are “Light Thought Var. 2” and “Vision of Persistence," by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com);Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.The episode image is: “ERA March from Governor's mansion to the capitol - Tallahassee, Florida,” photographed by Donn Dughi; this work is from the Florida Memory Project hosted at the State Archive of Florida, and is released to the public domain in the United States under the terms of Section 257.35(6), Florida Statutes.

Additional Sources:

• “United States President's Commission On The Status Of Women Records,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
• “American Women: Report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, 1963,” Department of Labor.
• “The Powerful, Complicated Legacy of Betty Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique,’” by Jacob Muñoz, Smithsonian Magazine, February 4, 2021.
• “National Organization for Women, ‘Statement of Purpose’ (1966),” The American Yawp Reader.
• “National Organization for Women (NOW) founding documents, 1966–1968,” National Organization for Women Records, Schlesinger Library
• “National Organization for Women Founder on Group's 50th Anniversary and Finding Success in Anger,” by Olivia B. Waxman, Time Magazine, June 30, 2016.
• “Feminist Factions United and Filled the Streets for This Historic March,” by Maggie Doherty, The New York Times, Originally published August 26, 2020, and updated September 3, 2020.
• “The Equal Rights Amendment: The Most Popular Never-Ratified Amendment,” by Christine Blackerby, National Archives Education Updates, December 5, 2013.
• “How Phyllis Schlafly Derailed the Equal Rights Amendment,” by Lesley Kennedy, History.com, Originally published March 19, 2020, and updated September 29, 2023.
• “The 1978 Equal Rights Amendment March,” by Henry Kokkeler, Boundary Stones, WETA, April 12, 2022.
• National Organization for Women

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