Rhetoric Of Equality Research Articles

Punk and feminism in Indonesia

ABSTRACT A strong feminist strand has run through punk since its earliest incarnations, but, because punk scenes are inevitably affected by their wider social contexts, the influences of sexism and patriarchy must be continually (re)negotiated – feminist punk interventions are therefore a key aspect of contemporary ‘global punk’. This deliberate and conscious feminist interventionism is a key aspect of punk in Indonesia too, recursively taking its cues from ‘punk history itself’. Feminist punk interventions in Indonesia include feminist zines, women-centric bands, explicitly feminist gigs and festivals, communication and support networks of punk women, and anarcha-feminist ‘info-house’ initiatives. These interventions are necessary because, as elsewhere in the world, sexism is part of the lived experience for punk women in Indonesia. Patriarchal repression is acute in wider Indonesian society, and, despite the rhetoric of equality and opposition to oppression, these sexist norms are reproduced in the punk scene in the form of homosocial gender division, marginalization of women, derision of feminist initiatives, sexual objectification, and sexual assault. The influence of morally conservative fundamentalist Islam in Indonesia also shapes expressions of sexism in the punk scene. Drawing on three periods of ethnographic research (2012, 2015, 2018), as well as key secondary sources such as the Ini Scene Kami Juga! (This Is Our Scene Too!) documentary film (2016), and ongoing dialogue with women in Indonesia's punk scenes, this article considers the influence of feminist interventions in punk. Whilst feminist objectives are limited to transforming their immediate punk scene, and though they face continued sexism within the scene and concerted repression from the state and from religious groups, these initiatives represent a significant political/cultural platform for feminism in wider Indonesian society.

Thoughts on the rhetoric that women and men are equal in Alevi belief and practice (Alevilik) – to Songül

ABSTRACTA modernization project was started by the founding cadres of the Republic in Turkey during the nation-state building process. In the early years, policies towards creating a laic state and secular society became manifest in relation to women’s bodies which gained a symbolic meaning, and as an aspect of the modernization process, a significant component of the national identity. The Republic argued that equality between women and men was an indispensable part of social and political life. But Alevis, in fact, claimed that equality between woman and man had long been among the main principles of Alevism for centuries. However, the attitude towards equality formed a common ground between the fundamentals of the Republic and Alevi belief and emerged as an important element in strengthening Alevi loyalty to the Republic. This rhetoric of equality is examined in terms of the religious beliefs and practices of Alevis based on research into a local Alevi group, the Anşabacılıs. The claim of equality is found to be more to do with marking the boundaries of Alevi identity than putting equality into practice.

The Rhetoric of Reciprocity in Late Bronze Age Mediterranean Exchange

This contribution broadens the scope of the discussion to consider reciprocity in relation to acts of Mycenaean exchange that extend beyond the Aegean. This broader engagement with diverse states of the Mediterranean brought new opportunities for Mycenaean communities, and new categories of data for scholarly analysis, including written and visual representations of international exchange. The rhetoric of equality enabling gift exchange among leaders of eastern kingdoms can be usefully contrasted with the discourse of power and domination aimed at an internal audience. Recognizing the tropes of both ideological projections provides a valuable model for the potential strategies of Aegean actors managing and manipulating external sources of material goods and social power within their own regions. The distribution of imported cylinder seals in Boeotia offers an opportunity to consider the economic and political claims made by Aegean actors, both palatial and independent, who may have framed their acquisitions through the language of reciprocity.

Difference, Becoming, and Interrelatedness: A Material Resistance Becoming

Difference, Becoming, and Interrelatedness: A Material Resistance Becoming Robyn Henderson‐Espinoza Language has by far been used to colonize bodies. In fact, the coloniality of language is one such strategy in controlling bodies. The technology of control in movements that use strategies of resistance is something to which we should pay attention. I am thinking particularly to movements of liberation that are seeking something that is identifiable as “equality.” We see the myth of quality in the homonormative movement that is called marriage equality. That, if we, as a movement (that is mostly based in white liberal gay men and lesbian women of a certain economic class), can establish, and then mobilize, the language of “equality,” it can result in the state‐sanctioned and socially recognizable relationships that are found in coupledom. Yet, what we don't realize is that this language of equality is rooted in white, neoliberal capitalism that privileges the individuality of relationships, not the deep contours of community that have shaped our movements for decades. Stonewall, built on the backs of Transgender folks, remains a touchstone for me, a Latin@ queer Trans*gressive genderqueer. It was the material resistance of radical queers to normalization and the palpability of change that encourages me to this day. And, so, the movement of equality is an affront to real liberation, rooted in the collective consciousness of all, because equality simply roots us all in an economy of coloniality that refuses to take up the politics of resistance and instead uses strategies of 19th liberalism (in particular, individualism) to nourish this movement. If marriage equality is a movement of resistance, then we would see marriage manifested in new and different ways that challenge the status quo, and a movement that seeks to disrupt the economic structures that keep marriage in a very stable state‐recognizable expression. Instead, the state only recognizes a two‐person coupled unit. How does this state‐sponsored recognition encourage equality? Furthermore, how does the rhetoric of equality re‐inscribe the privileges that have been a part of state‐sanctioned marriages for centuries and in turn normalize the marriages of LGBT persons as part of the norm that was created? Here, I am focusing on the speech acts that emerge as part of marriage—a particular politics that focuses on unity and in theory, “equality.” When, in fact, what the discourse of marriage does is create an internal hierarchy whereby the state becomes the governing body of the couple, and the most dominant person in the couple becomes the spokesperson. Does the marriage equality movement realize this is what they are promoting? How is marriage equality a movement of resistance? I argue that it is not! I argue that marriage equality, couched in the language of white, neoliberal freedom whose outcome is marriage, is really a very particular iteration of white, upper‐middle class “liberation” tactics that are only meant for a certain economic class and racial structure. I can go further and suggest that it re‐inscribes the logic of white supremacy. It is assimilationist politics that I think are particularly antithetical to the history of the LGBTQ+ movements that have grown out of a sense of radical separatist moments that privilege, in philosophical terms, difference and becoming. I do not think that marriage equality is for all, or has the ability to liberate us all. It privileges the few, as seen in the cases that were presented to the U.S. Supreme Court and other U.S. state supreme courts. And, so, if marriage equality is actually harmful to the LGBTQ+ community, in that it promotes a universalizing reality of socially recognizable and state‐sanctioned relationships that is palatable to the dominant group, then can the LGBTQ+ movement reclaim its politics of resistance and struggle for freedom in the creation of a movement of radical difference, or a return to radical difference? If there is a word or gesture for which I would advocate, it would be that of a return to the politics of radical difference. What difference establishes (in non‐foundational ways) is a multiplicity through diffraction. Diffraction is that particular method of combining disparate strands of thinking and being (and becoming) and...

The Attack on Western Religions by Western Law: Re-Framing Pluralism, Liberalism and Diversity

This paper discusses how law is increasingly being used to attack religious associations under the guise of “equality” advancement and “non-discrimination” restrictions. Related to this are two other important insights: first that the concept of “transformation” which can be a very good thing, if understood correctly, is being used to shelter approaches to law that fail to respect properly associational diversity. When misused, “transformation” and related arguments based on the “rhetoric of equality” seek to get inside religious associations to change their moral viewpoints or religious beliefs by force of law. In this situation, what should be acceptable differences of opinion on certain legally contestable matters, are stigmatized and attacked in inappropriate ways if law is ordered to a free and democratic society that respects “diversity,” “multi-culturalism” and “pluralism.” Second, the paper discusses the expansion of law beyond its proper role so that it becomes a threat to associations that should be supported by law not interfered with inappropriately by it. Law and religions have different characteristics and the “goods of religion” and the “limits of law” need to be more widely recognized and understood both by religious communities and by those involved in law, politics and the media. When the two insights are put together it can be seen that certain “equality activists” employ a rhetoric of “equality” to produce inequality, “diversity” to produce homogeneity and “non-discrimination” to discriminate against religious communities and religious beliefs. Several solutions for identifying these errors and resisting them are outlined in brief.

For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 (review)

Reviewed by: For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 Robert H. Woodrum For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865. By Robert H. Zieger. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Pp. ix, 276.) In the course of his long and productive career, Robert H. Zieger has contributed much to the study of labor history. His classic works, The CIO: 1935-1955 and American Workers, American Unions (currently in its third edition), have introduced waves of aspiring scholars to the major themes in the field. Zieger's edited volumes, Organized Labor in the Twentieth-Century South and Southern Labor in Transition, served as vehicles for new and innovative scholarship and helped fuel an explosion of interest in Southern labor history. In his latest ambitious work, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865, Zieger turns his attention to the troubled relationship between African Americans and organized labor since the end of the Civil War. Zieger focuses much of his analysis on two themes: the struggle of blacks to obtain full citizenship in the workplace and wider society, and the role that organized labor has played in either helping or hindering these aspirations. Zieger rejects the narrow focus of recent surveys by "free market" historians, such as Paul Moreno, who view unions mainly as cartels that restrict the number of workers in the labor force, driving up wages and benefits in part by discriminating against African Americans. Zieger believes that unions are essential elements in a free and democratic society, and they have historically played a broader, more complex, and more beneficial role in American history than scholars like Moreno acknowledge. Zieger, however, does not downplay organized labor's racism, and he focuses much of his analysis on the contradiction between the movement's rhetoric of equality and the discriminatory practices of many unions. For Jobs and Freedom begins with an examination of the decades after Emancipation, when national labor organizations first grappled with the race issue in a substantive manner. Tentative efforts to create interracial movements emerged in the coal mines around Birmingham, Alabama, and on the waterfront in New Orleans. However, more durable and exclusionary practices emerged in the lily-white railroad brotherhoods and in many unions that affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), particularly in the building trades and in unions such as the International Association of Machinists (IAM). Many of these tendencies, Zieger finds, continued into the new century, through the era of World War I. More positive trends emerged as well, in the migration of millions of African Americans out of the South and into the urban areas of the North, and in [End Page 129] the rise of A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who began his long campaign against racism within the American labor movement in the decade after World War I. A burst of activism followed the Great Depression, with the passing of New Deal legislation favorable to unions and the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a rival to the AFL. The CIO, behind the success of John L. Lewis and his United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), organized black workers, though leadership positions usually remained in the hands of whites. Unions with substantial black membership grew in the automobile, meat-packing, and other industries under the direction of the CIO. The number of African Americans in labor unions grew dramatically, according to Zieger, from sixty thousand to more than one million by the end of World War II. Many of these workers belonged to AFL unions, which were forced to modify their policies and reach out to black workers in part to keep up with the CIO. Legislatively, this era was mixed, according to Zieger, with Franklin Roosevelt's symbolic actions having little practical effect and some New Deal legislation actually excluding or harming black workers. Meanwhile, civil rights attorneys won important victories for black workers against discriminatory unions in the courts, beginning a difficult and long process of reform. Thus, at the end of the war, Zieger concludes that "African American workers had more reason to be optimistic than at...

Rethinking Resistance: The Queer Play of the Women’s National Basketball Association, Visibility Politics and Late Capitalism

This article employs the methodology of contextual cultural studies to explore the protest strategies of ‘Lesbians for Liberty’, a group of fans who staged a ‘kiss‐in’ during every time‐out of a nationally televised game between the Women’s National Basketball Association’s (WNBA) New York Liberty and Miami Sol. Designed as a way to challenge homophobia and lesbian invisibility sanctioned by the New York Liberty management, this article suggests the fans’ kissing activism promotes visibility and single‐issue identity politics as strategies for change. While the fans’ actions make lesbian bodies intelligible in a sporting and leisure space that too frequently imagines heteronormativity, a closer analysis reveals the rhetoric of Lesbians for Liberty and the WNBA’s marketing strategies are both complicit with ideologies and shifting processes characteristic of late capitalist profit‐enhancing practices. This article concludes by offering a discussion of queer and feminist writings that attempt to again theorise resistance in light of late capitalist marketing strategies, which have co‐opted the rhetoric of equality in the service of capital. The ultimate goal of this analysis is to join broader dialogues about the efficacy of identity‐based models of resistance by using the Lesbians for Liberty’s desire and actions as productive sites from which to rethink bodies, pleasures and resistance differently.

Ethnic minority women: a lost voice in HRM

Strategic themes within HRM imply an organisational commitment towards the full deployment of all employees in order to meet business goals and objectives. The rhetoric of equality within HRM has been challenged but these discussions have typically focused on gender issues, ignoring ethnicity, culture and religion. Individuals' social group cultures and other cultural and religious aspects have been largely absent in HR literature. By examining ethnic minority women's struggles to fit into white Western organisations, this article seeks to provide a discussion on an area where limited research has been conducted. Our emphasis is placed on organisational expectations in relation to ethnic minority women's demonstrated behaviours and appearance, the latter being expressed through dressing, hairstyles and mannerisms. The empirical data show that ethnic minority women are often required to fit into the existing culture if they want to penetrate influential networks or be given opportunities for career development and advancement. Extending the critique of others who argue that organisations must move away from the existing male‐dominant culture rather than expecting women to move towards it, we contend that management must also acknowledge and better understand religious and cultural differences instead of requiring ethnic minority women to fit into a narrow mono‐culture. The article concludes with a discussion of human resource implications for organisations engaged in diversity management.

Are midwives required to echo the rhetoric of equality and choice?

The closure of a dedicated home birth team in favour of integration with a wider service claiming to offer more choice to women has not achieved its aim according to Tessa Thomas.

W(h)ither psychology of women? Current trends and future directions for the section on women and psychology.

Abstract This paper focuses on two areas critical to the reassessment of the Section on Women and Psychology (SWAP). In the first half, the following question is addressed: Is SWAP still needed? Relying on Canadian data where possible, a mixed pattern of gains and impasses is discussed in relation to the following areas: women's curtailed advancement; curricular neglect of psychology of women; the (il)legitimate status of psychology of women and feminism; the rhetoric of equality, progress and individualism; and the (re)scientizing of psychology. The second half of the paper centres on specific pragmatic strategies for increasing SWAP's membership and raising its national and international profile. Strategies discussed include expanding publication outlets, establishing awards to increase public recognition of women's contributions to the discipline, and expanding intradisciplinary efforts through jointly sponsored swAP symposia and institutes. In 1981, Pyke and Stark-Adamec concluded their historical overview of the evolution of Canadian psychology of women as a disciplinary focus and the Canadian Psychological Association's (CPA) recognition and (delimited) integration of a feminist perspective with this provocative interrogative: Has the point been made? Can we now proceed toward the development of a psychology that has relevance for both sexes, that refrains from arbitrarily limiting human potential through the rigid endorsement of sex-role standards, that is free from both androcentric and gynocentric biases, and that deals with its disciples, male and female, in an equitable, non-discriminatory fashion? (p. 50) This paper revisits these questions and asks whether sufficient progress has been made to warrant jettisoning a separate CPA section devoted to promoting research, teaching and practice in psychology of women. I argue that although many inroads have been made since the inception of the Section on Women and Psychology (swAP) in 1976, there are several recent trends that suggest a less than progressive narrative of psychology of women. Five such trends are briefly discussed: women's curtailed advancement; curricular neglect of psychology of women; the (il)legitimate status of psychology of women and feminism; the rhetoric of equality, progress, and individualism; and the (re)scientizing of psychology. Three pragmatic strategies are also proposed for increasing swAP's membership and raising its national and international profile. HISTORICAL MARKERS Comprehensive accounts of the inception of swAP and the development of Canadian feminist psychology have been provided elsewhere (see Pyke, this issue; Pyke & Greenglass, 1997; Pyke & Stark-Adamec, 1981). Briefly, five key events precipitated and surrounded the founding of SWAP. First, in response to a consistent rejection of convention submissions pertaining to psychology of women, six York University feminist psychologists (graduate students and faculty) organized an underground independent symposium in conjunction with the 1972 CPA annual convention. Despite CPA's active opposition, the symposium was extremely well attended and received considerable attention from the media. Second, CPA formed a Task Force on the Status of Women in Canadian Psychology to commemorate the designation of 1975 as International Women's Year by the United Nations. By April 1976, the Task Force submitted almost 100 recommendations to the CPA Board of Directors. Third, the CPA Interest Group on Women and Psychology (IGWAP) was established, prompted by one of the recommendations of the Task Force. Fourth, IGWAP initiated the Institute on Women and Psychology in 1978. This one-- day preconvention conference continues to generate revenue that is re-invested in SWAP's budget. And finally, in 1977, the Coordinating Committee on the Status of Women, later renamed the Status of Women Committee (SWC), became a standing committee of the CPA Board of Directors. …

When the Earth is Female and the Nation is Mother: Gender, the Armed Forces and Nationalism in Indonesia

This article examines how, through militarism, masculine imaginings of Indonesian nationalism construct a ‘national feminine’. Whether through popular song, national war heroines, or the institutionalization of feminine roles in the military, the positioning of the ‘national feminine’ is always contradictory. On the one hand, it is gendered and domesticized, while, on the other, it is employed as confirmation that Indonesia has already achieved gender equality. In most instances, once the national crisis is over, and before a new crisis emerges, both the rhetoric of equality and the representation of the nation used to mobilize women's participation in the popular armed struggle are once again adjusted to fit the heterosexual familial model. However, in the Indonesian military, discursive constructions of the ‘national feminine’ are not enough; the military must further define the ‘national feminine’ through institutionalized practices.

The rules of the game: teenagers communicating about sex

The present study examined the rules used by 16-year-olds ( n=191) to guide their behaviours during a sexual encounter. Boys and girls were asked about social rules for giving messages indicating that they did or did not wish to have sex, and strategies for encouraging or avoiding sex, together with the acceptability and usefulness of these strategies. They were also asked if they had used any of the strategies. A variety of rules were endorsed and young people found it easier to encourage than to discourage sex. There were few differences between boys and girls in their understanding of the rules but the relationships between acceptability, usefulness and actual use of a strategy varied according to gender. For the avoidance strategies the relationships were moderate but stronger for girls, whereas patterns of relationships were strong across all encouragement strategies and equally so for boys and girls. The findings are discussed in the context of divergence between these young people's rhetoric of equality and their lived reality.

The Black Presence at the World's Parliament of Religions, 1893

Countering traditional views of the World's Parliament of Religions as primarily an event of religious pluralism, this paper examines how the African Methodist Episcopal Church transformed the Parliament into a world court of opinion regarding racial equality. Using Higginbotham's idea of the Black church as a ‘discursive, critical arena’, I show how Black religionists constructed a rhetoric of equality, challenging the themes of unity that pervaded the Parliament. I argue that in locating their challenge at the world's fair, a major event of cultural self-examination, Blacks acted out some of the most original purposes of a church, working with symbols to generate reform.

Effective and ineffective equal opportunities policies in higher education

This article examines equal opportunities polices (EOPs) in higher education - the supply side of senior staff in management and the professions. In the United Kingdom (UK) EOPs have been intro duced as a result of the law. The article shows that their effect on, access and employment in institutions of higher education (HEIs) has been marginal. The analysis suggests that the belief in the rhetoric of equality in the chariers of institutions, the notion of academic merit as an objective construct and the values underlying the exclusive prestige hierarchy all conoibute to complacent and reluctant managements. Evidence of the effectiveness of policies in Northern Ireland and initial teacher education (ITE) in the past support the need for a firmer legisladve framework. As evidence from data collection becomes available, the contradiction between rhetoric and, reality will cause increasing controversy in higher education.

Classrooms, Pedagogies, and the Rhetoric of Equality

Whether society still finds itself in the sort of peril that Weaver postulated over forty years ago is not a question I wish to debate in this essay; my purpose is, instead, to take a closer look at the word equality as it is used in current scholarship in composition studies. Not only is equality a term that occurs frequently, particularly in reference to the new collaborative classroom, but, far from standing alone, it is often accompanied by a host of related termsequity, egalitarian, peer, and even democracy-that depend on it in part for definition and that are often used interchangeably with it. In The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing, Joseph Harris examines the uses and abuses of that ubiquitous term, community, concluding that while it packs a powerful rhetorical punch, its practical application is so vague as to be ultimately meaningless. Do equality and its satellites fall into the same category? I will argue here that indeed they do.

Classrooms, Pedagogies, and the Rhetoric of Equality

Classrooms, Pedagogies, and the Rhetoric of Equality

The rhetoric of equality and the expatriation of African‐Americans, 1776‐1826

This essay is a case study of the social movement of the ideograph “equality” in American public discourse from 1776 to 1826. It argues that contrary to the conventional wisdom, which holds that the commitment to equality set the nation on the virtually inevitable road to emancipation, the discursive structure of the commitment to equality that developed between 1776 and 1817 actually set the stage for the African colonization movement. The essay thus serves as an example of the senses in which rhetoric operates simultaneously as the figure and ground of social movement in time.

Response to Disability

These books touch upon many important issues within education. They also explore ground beyond education and address audiences of several kinds. I have chosen to consider their implications for my own work with experienced and student teachers, acknowledging that this necessarily limited perspective cannot do full justice to the richness and variety of the writing. The two books edited by Len Barton consist of revised papers from the International Conference on Disability, Handicap and Policy held at Bristol Polytechnic in July 1988. Barton's considerable influence in this area is also seen in his work with Sally Tomlinson and in his editorship of the journal Disability, Handicap and Society. As in any such collection of conference papers there is enormous variety in the style, complexity and approach. The authors, are in the main, academics from various disciplines (notably education, sociology and social policy) and some are themselves disabled. The papers in Disability and Dependency range widely over the concepts, attitudes and practices in relation to individuals and groups who acquire the disability label. The evidence is drawn from international sources. The overwhelming message from the papers is that the usual response to disability in any society is to aggravate the condition through a complex array of negative values, controls, dependency, poverty and helplessness. In their different ways the papers make out a case for empowerment, choice and decision making opportunities. They challenge strongly the welfare systems, the caring professions and the bureaucratic administration that are built around and owe their existence to the maintenance of the disabled identity. They highlight the perceived differences between the rhetoric of equality and the practices

Sexual Autonomy and the Status of Women: Models of Female Sexuality in U. S. Sex Manuals from 1950 to 1980

Sex and marriage manuals contain sexual scripts about female sexuality and the role of women in heterosexual relationships. As attitudes change, new scripts become marketable; and as manuals articulate new scripts, they legitimate a redefinition of women's sexuality and roles. This paper looks at 49 manuals published in the United States from 1950 to 1980. These manuals generally reflect one of three distinct models of female sexuality: different-and-unequal, humanistic sexuality, or sexual autonomy. Each model rests on a different set of assumptions and values, and each has social and political implications. The popularity of the sexual autonomy model since 1975 is particularly noteworthy and provides a basis for potentially radical revisions in notions of women's sexuality. Human sexual experience, like other aspects of life, is organized and understood in terms of a socially constructed reality. That is, the nature and meaning of human sexuality are not selfevident but are historically developed and socially transmitted (Gagnon and Simon, 1973). With regard to female sexuality, such social constructions are sociologically important not only for their role in organizing people's sexual actions but also for their ideological functions. Sexual scripts, and changes in those scripts, both reflect and reinforce the status and role of women in heterosexual relationships as well as in society more generally. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, female sexuality has been defined in ways that connote a sinister or tarnished character. Early leaders in the Church blamed female sexuality (Eve's seduction of Adam) for the fall of man in the Garden of Eden and, ultimately, for the crucifixion of Christ (Queen and Habenstein, 1974:198). Later, during Europe's notorious witch hunts of the 15th-17th centuries, female sexuality was alleged to provide a special link between a witch and Satan - for example, through diabolical copulation (Institoris, 1970). In fact, the only way women could attain marked respect in the eyes of the Catholic Church was by denying their sexuality and becoming a celibate nun. In the 20th century, religious doctrine has become less influential in defining female sexuality in the United States, although its influence is still felt in public debates over abortion, birth control, and public welfare programs (e.g., payments for illegitimate children). Authority has increasingly shifted to secular and scientific sources which provide models of female sexuality to the public through influential and popular sex and marriage manuals. This paper analyzes how female sexuality is portrayed in such manuals published between 1950 and 1980. Concomitant with the resurgence of feminism and a rhetoric of equality between the sexes, we found changes in the sexual scripts used to discuss female sexuality. We identify those script changes and consider their implications for further social change. In so doing, we build on the work of Michael Gordon and his associates, who have analyzed sex and marriage manuals published between 1830

Women as competent community builders. The other side of the coin.

The women's movement was revived in America in the late 1960s after a 40-year hiatus (Freeman, 1979; Sochen, 1971) and sprang from two immediate sources. First was the fact that in 1961 President Kennedy created a President's Commission on the Status of Women which led to the establishment of 50 similar state commissions. The men and women who were involved in these commissions formed a network which later became the foundation of NOW, established by Betty Friedan and others in 1966 (Friedan, 1976). In the mid-1960s, the second source emerged. It was a grass roots movement characterized by women coming together in small groups to share their personal experiences, particularly their frustration, anger and unhappiness. Some of these women had participated in the Civil Rights movement and later the anti-war movement and were stunned to find that, despite the rhetoric of equality, they were confined to second-class status in those movements.