When NOW purged the lesbians
Pauli Murray seated in her study. (Image source: Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute) Betty Friedan wanted to distance feminism from lesbians, but it didn’t work VICTORIA A.
BROWNWORTH Courtesy of the LGBT History Project As the website for The National Women’s History Museum notes, Betty Friedan cofounded the National Organization for Women and was “one of the early leaders of the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Friedan’s best-selling 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, “gave voice to millions of American women’s frustrations with their limited gender roles and helped spark widespread public activism for gender equality,” the website notes.
A year later, the 1964 Civil Rights Act banned sex discrimination in employment. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission wouldn’t acknowledge the sex-discrimination clause, effectively nullifying the Civil Rights Act’s addition of gender.
