The status of women as less than men is memorialized in the United States’ Declaration of Independence, which asserted, “All men are created equal.” The use of the word “men” was deliberate and referred specifically to white, land-owning males. The Declaration purposely excluded women, people of color, religious minorities, and the poor. Despite this, women, including women of color and sexual minorities, have lobbied, fought, and died for their full humanity to be recognized by the government and their fellow citizens. Beginning in 1948, women began to organize more formally on behalf of women’s rights. What is now considered the first convention for women’s rights organized by women was held in the small town of Seneca Falls, New York. At this gathering, 68 women and 32 men signed the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, which professed, “All men and women are created equal.” Taken for granted in the 21st century, this new Declaration was greeted with hostility and was quite controversial. Over 70 years later, women were finally granted the right to vote with the passing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. Despite these gains, women were still denied full legal status or civil rights for decades to come.
As late as the 1960s, women were still denied many basic rights and faced many obstacles to full equality. Women could not keep their job while pregnant, file a claim for workplace sexual harassment, refuse to have sex with their husband, serve on a jury, get a credit card on their own, or even run in the Boston Marathon. Not until more than 50 years after the 19th Amendment would there be another surge of activism on behalf of women’s rights. Journalist Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique (1963), which described the disaffected life of many suburban women, calling it the “problem that has no name,” is widely credited for igniting what came to be known as the Women’s Liberation Movement. Women demanded legal status equal to that of men. Now known as the second wave of feminism, the movement was one of the most successful in fundamentally changing society in ways never imagined. By the 1970s, more and more women were moving into the workforce, and gender roles were being challenged.
Through all of this historical change, popular culture (which includes television, music, literature, film, news reports, and, more recently, the Internet) played a significant roll in changing the public’s opinions of women and gender roles in general. Popular culture serves as a mirror of what is happening in a culture at any particular time while simultaneously disseminating ideas and perspectives that influence public attitudes about social issues. This anthology seeks to introduce readers to the women and events in popular culture that made the most significant contributions to the advancement of women’s rights.