By the early 1970s, feminist protest had built up years of pressure. Now it started producing real results — new laws and court rulings that changed women's lives.
Two changes stand out for Paper 1: Title IX (1972) and Roe v. Wade (1973). Both show how continuity and change looked in practice for American women.
- Title IX (1972) — a federal law banning sex discrimination in any school or college that receives federal funding. It opened up sports teams, science classes, and academic programmes that had quietly excluded girls and women.
- Roe v. Wade (1973) — a Supreme Court ruling that a woman's right to privacy included the right to choose an abortion in early pregnancy. It struck down state laws that had banned abortion outright.
- Why they mattered together — one changed education and opportunity, the other changed control over one's own body and future. Feminists linked both to the wider idea of full citizenship for women.
Neither law appeared out of nowhere. Both came after a decade of lobbying by groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW), court cases brought by ordinary women, and growing public debate sparked by the women's movement.
A legal change, not a settled one: Title IX and Roe v. Wade were legal victories, but neither ended the argument. Title IX faced years of weak enforcement in schools. Roe v. Wade was challenged by opponents almost immediately and remained politically contested for decades. Change and continuity coexisted — the law shifted, but resistance to it did not disappear.
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Feminists also pushed for economic equality — the right to earn the same pay and have the same job opportunities as men.
Some progress came through existing law. The Equal Pay Act (1963) had already banned paying women less than men for the same job, and the Civil Rights Act (1964), in its Title VII section, banned employment discrimination based on sex as well as race. Through the 1960s and 1970s, feminist lawyers and activists used these laws — and pushed for their enforcement — to open jobs, promotions, and pay scales that had been closed to women.
But the biggest economic goal was never achieved: the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
What the ERA proposed
A change to the US Constitution stating that equal rights could not be denied on account of sex. Congress passed it in 1972 and sent it to the states.
Why it stalled
A constitutional amendment needs ratification by 38 states. Opposition grew fast — led by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, who argued the ERA would strip women of protections like alimony and draft exemptions.
The result
By the 1982 deadline, only 35 states had ratified it — three short. The ERA failed, and the Constitution was never amended.
Equal Pay Act and Title VII = real laws that passed. The ERA = the big symbolic goal that never became law.
Why the ERA matters for 'limitations': The ERA's failure is the clearest example of a limitation for this inquiry question. It shows that protest could change specific laws (Title IX, Roe v. Wade) without achieving the movement's broadest, most symbolic goal — permanent constitutional equality.
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The changes of the 1970s did not reach all women equally. This is central to the inquiry question's second half — 'with what limitations?'
The mainstream women's movement, led by groups like NOW, was largely organized by and for white, middle-class, college-educated women. Its priorities — office jobs, professional careers, reproductive choice — often did not match the daily struggles of other women.
Mainstream movement priorities
- Access to professional and managerial careers
- Equal pay within existing white-collar jobs
- Reproductive choice and access to contraception
- Ending legal sex discrimination in education
Marginalized women's priorities
- African American women: racism inside the movement itself, plus sexism outside it
- Working-class women: low-wage, unsafe jobs already held out of necessity, not choice
- Childcare, welfare rights, and protection from forced sterilization
- Being heard at all — many felt spoken over by white middle-class leaders
African American women had long balanced work and family out of economic need — unlike the white suburban housewives NOW often spoke to. Activists such as Shirley Chisholm (the first Black woman elected to Congress, 1968) argued that race and sex discrimination had to be fought together, a view sometimes called intersectionality.
Working-class women, meanwhile, often could not afford to prioritize the ERA or corporate promotion — their fight was for safer conditions, a living wage, and childcare that let them keep working at all.
A concrete limitation: Title IX expanded sports and academic access mostly in schools that already had resources to comply. Roe v. Wade guaranteed a legal right, but poorer women — disproportionately Black and working-class — often could not afford the medical costs it took to use that right in practice.