By the late 1960s, many American women were angry. They had been told their place was in the home, but millions now worked, went to college, and wanted equal treatment. That anger turned into action.
This is the story of a movement historians call Women's Liberation Women's Liberation — and of how it pushed back against the authority of government, employers, and even beauty pageants.
Marches, sit-ins, and public spectacle: Feminists borrowed tactics from the civil rights movement: marches, pickets, and sit-ins. The goal was simple — make the public and the press notice a problem most people ignored.
The most famous protest happened on 7 September 1968, outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. About 400 women picketed the boardwalk.
They crowned a live sheep 'Miss America' as a joke, and threw symbolic items — girdles, bras, high heels, curlers — into a 'Freedom Trash Can'. They were protesting how the pageant judged women only on looks.
The 'bra-burning' myth: No fire permit was granted, and nothing was actually burned that day. But newspapers reported 'bra-burning' anyway, and the nickname stuck for decades — a case where media coverage shaped public memory more than the real event did.
Smaller but just as important were consciousness-raising groups — women meeting in each other's homes to talk about their lives. A woman might describe an unfair boss or an unequal marriage, and realise other women faced the exact same thing.
- Consciousness-raising — turned 'private' problems (housework, harassment, pay) into a shared political issue, giving the movement its slogan 'the personal is political'
- Sit-ins and takeovers — in 1970, feminist activists occupied the offices of Ladies' Home Journal magazine for a day, demanding better coverage of women's real lives
- Public marches — the Women's Strike for Equality (26 August 1970, the 50th anniversary of women's suffrage) brought tens of thousands onto the streets of New York and other cities
How to read a protest source: If a source is a photograph of the Miss America picket, its content shows the size of the crowd and their signs. But you also need context: was it taken by a sympathetic feminist photographer, or a news agency looking for a dramatic shot? That shapes what it can tell you.
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Not every feminist wanted to protest in the street. Many worked through formal organisations, using the law and politics to change the rules from the inside.
The most important was the National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in 1966 by Betty Friedan and 27 other women. NOW was frustrated that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEOC was not enforcing the ban on sex discrimination in jobs.
NOW (1966)
Fought sex discrimination through lawsuits, lobbying Congress, and pressuring employers and the EEOC to enforce existing law.
National Women's Political Caucus (1971)
Founded by Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug to get more women elected to office and into political parties.
Women's Liberation groups (e.g. Redstockings, WITCH)
Smaller, more radical groups that favoured direct action, street theatre, and consciousness-raising over lobbying.
NOW lobbied, the Caucus ran for office, Liberation groups protested — three routes, one goal.
These groups did not always agree. NOW's leaders wanted respectable, legal change and worried that radical protests like the Miss America picket made the whole movement look silly to the public.
NOW — working the system
- Filed lawsuits over unequal pay and hiring
- Lobbied Congress and the White House directly
- Wanted to be seen as serious and moderate
Women's Liberation groups — direct action
- Organised street protests and sit-ins
- Used shock tactics to grab media attention
- Willing to be seen as radical to force change
Content vs context for organisations: A NOW pamphlet's content might list its legal demands. Its context — written BY the organisation, FOR recruiting members — tells you it will present NOW's tactics in the most positive light. Always ask who made a source and why.
Despite their differences, both wings pushed in the same direction: they refused to accept that only men should hold power in workplaces, courts, and government.
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None of this activism would have reached the whole country without the mass media. Television, newspapers, and magazines carried the movement's message far beyond Atlantic City or New York.
A double-edged sword: Media coverage cut both ways. It gave the movement national visibility — but journalists often chose the most dramatic, mockable moments to report, distorting how the public understood feminists.
The 'bra-burning' myth is the clearest example. A small, peaceful act of throwing items in a bin became, through press retelling, a wild image of women setting underwear on fire — a story that stuck far better than the movement's actual demands for equal pay.
- National TV coverage — networks covered marches like the 1970 Women's Strike for Equality, introducing feminism to households that had never discussed it
- Magazines — some, like Ms. magazine (founded 1972 by Gloria Steinem), were run BY feminists and gave the movement a direct voice
- Mainstream newspapers — often used mocking language ('libbers', 'bra-burners'), shaping public opinion against activists even while reporting on them
This split matters for a historian: a source produced by the movement itself (like Ms. magazine) has a different perspective perspective from one produced by an outside, sometimes hostile, press.
Worked example — comparing perspectives: Source A: a 1968 NOW newsletter describing the Miss America protest as a serious critique of beauty standards. Source B: a 1968 newspaper report calling the same protest a 'bra-burning bash'. Both describe the same event — but their perspectives clash on its meaning. A strong Q3 answer explains WHY they differ (origin, purpose, audience), not just THAT they differ.
Because of this media attention — both fair and unfair — by 1970 feminism was no longer a private conversation. It was a national debate, forcing politicians and employers to respond.