NOW Informative Essay

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in June 1966 by twenty-eight women at the Thrid National Conference of the Commision on the status of Women. NOW is the largest feminist organization in the United States. NOW promotes equality among women and men by engaging in grassroots organizing, demonstrations and protests, litigation, lobbying, and nonviolent civil disobedience.

The key founder of NOW was Betty Friedan. She was the author of The Feminine Mystique (1963). The Feminine Mystique was the key to the NOW, as it got the nation to hear the voices of NOW. NOW's main goal was to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA, See Other Essay). NOW became involved in a wide range of issues of special concern to women.

NOW's first and foremost priority was to increase employment opportunities for women and to enforce Title VII of the Civil RIghts Act of 1964, which prohibited employment discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, and national origin. NOW was succesful in lobbing against protective labor legislation and sex-segregated advertising. In 1969, NOW helped win a US Fifth Circuit Court ruling that women could not be barred from jobs that involved heavy lifting, such as construction work. The ruling was the first to prohibit sex discrimination in emplyment based on the Civil Rights Act.

NOW has achived a lot of boundary in women's history. They were succesful in many campaigns that changed the entire employment process. NOW changed the nation.

NOW Quotes:

There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.

Hell was right now. Daddy always said that folks misread the Bible. Couldn't be no punishment worse than having to live here on earth, he said.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.

"National Organization for Women (NOW)," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2004
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"National Organization for Women." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2004. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 2 Apr. 2004 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=56375>.

"National Organization for Women." American Pageant, The