Women Politicking Politely: Advancing Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

Kimberly Wilmot Voss describes the contributions of lesser-known women to the women's rights movement and the second-wave feminist movement during its first decades. She focuses on six women who used their jobs in government and journalism to promote the status of women in the public sphere. Ideologically moderate, and to avoid jeopardizing their positions in the civil service and news organizations that employed them, they acted subtly behind the scenes. Unlike radical icons—such as Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Gloria Steinem—who gained fame through their place in the movement and politics, the women Voss studies were rarely recognized. Catherine East, the executive secretary of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women and the Citizens' Advisory Council on the Status of Women, held positions in every presidential commission on women in the 1960s and 1970s. A founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and a leader at the United Nations International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City in 1975, she also helped push the equal rights amendment through Congress.