IBDP History SL & HL Paper 1 Feminism in the USA (1960–1979) -Study Notes- New Syllabus

📝 Introduction

• Feminism in the United States between 1960 and 1979 was a broad movement seeking political, legal, economic, social and personal equality for women.
• It is often described as “second-wave feminism” because it extended beyond the earlier campaign for voting rights to employment, education, sexuality, reproduction, family life, representation and power.
• The movement emerged from a contradiction between an ideal of female domesticity and the reality that increasing numbers of women participated in paid employment and higher education.
• Changing access to contraception gave many women greater ability to plan pregnancy, education and employment, while also making reproductive control a central political issue.
• Feminist literature gave language to dissatisfaction that many women had experienced privately and presented gender inequality as structural rather than simply personal.
• The civil rights movement, student activism, anti-war protest and New Left politics supplied organizational experience and methods, although sexism within these movements also encouraged women to organize independently.
• Feminists used lobbying, litigation, electoral activity, strikes, demonstrations, consciousness-raising groups, publications and direct action.
• The movement included liberal organizations such as NOW, political organizations such as the National Women’s Political Caucus and decentralized groups associated with the Women’s Liberation Movement.
• Major achievements included stronger employment protections, Title IX, expanded reproductive rights and increased public discussion of gender discrimination.
• Progress remained incomplete because laws were difficult to enforce, the Equal Rights Amendment remained unratified, opposition strengthened and African American, working-class and other marginalized women did not always experience the movement’s gains equally.

🗓️ Essential Chronology

What Led to the Emergence of Protest Movements?

🏠 Reactions to Domesticity

The post-war domestic ideal

• Popular culture often presented marriage, motherhood, suburban home ownership and domestic consumption as the natural sources of female fulfilment.
• Women were expected to support a male breadwinner and take primary responsibility for childcare and housework.
• Schools, advertising, television, magazines and advice literature reinforced gendered expectations.
• Women who wanted careers, political influence or lives outside conventional marriage could be portrayed as unfeminine or abnormal.
• The domestic ideal was most closely associated with white middle-class life and did not accurately describe all American women.

Dissatisfaction with domestic roles

• Some women experienced isolation, frustration and loss of identity when education and ability were confined to domestic responsibilities.
• Housework remained unpaid and was commonly treated as private duty rather than economically and socially valuable labour.
• Women carried most childcare responsibilities, limiting their ability to pursue education, paid employment and public leadership.
• Divorce, widowhood or male unemployment exposed the economic vulnerability created by dependence on a husband’s income.
• Feminists argued that apparently private dissatisfaction reflected social institutions and expectations rather than individual failure.

Limits of the domesticity explanation

• African American and working-class women had long participated in paid labour and often could not choose full-time domesticity.
• Many women valued marriage, motherhood and family life while still demanding equality and opportunity.
• Domesticity alone cannot explain the movement; employment discrimination, reproductive control, political exclusion and wider protest culture were also important.

💼 Participation of Women in the Workforce

Expansion of paid employment

• Women’s labour-force participation increased as the economy expanded and service, clerical, teaching, nursing and retail employment grew.
• More married women and mothers entered paid work, weakening the assumption that employment was temporary until marriage.
• Higher education increased women’s expectations of professional and public careers.
• Paid work gave women income, social networks and direct experience of institutional discrimination.

Workplace inequality

• Occupational segregation concentrated women in lower-paid jobs regarded as “women’s work.”
• Women could face separate job advertisements, discriminatory hiring, lower wages, restricted promotion and dismissal upon marriage or pregnancy.
• Professional women encountered barriers to advancement commonly described as a “glass ceiling.”
• Working women often performed a “double burden” of paid employment and unpaid domestic work.
• Trade unions did not always give women’s pay, promotion and childcare concerns equal priority.

Employment as a source of activism

• Workplace experience made inequality measurable through wages, hiring patterns and promotion records.
• Title VII supplied a legal tool, but weak early enforcement encouraged women to organize and pressure the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
• Employees challenged discriminatory practices through complaints, lawsuits, unions and professional organizations.
• Economic independence became central to feminist arguments about equality within both workplace and family.

💊 Changing Access to Contraception

• The introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1960 gave women a more reliable method of preventing pregnancy.
• Greater control over timing and number of pregnancies made it easier to complete education, pursue employment and plan family life.
• Contraception helped separate sexuality from compulsory motherhood and contributed to changing attitudes towards marriage and personal autonomy.
• Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) protected contraceptive access for married couples through a constitutional right to privacy.
• Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended constitutional protection for contraceptive access to unmarried individuals.
• Access remained unequal because cost, medical gatekeeping, age, marital status, geography and local attitudes could still create barriers.
• Women of colour and poor women also raised concerns about coercive sterilization and reproductive policies that limited choice rather than expanding it.
• Contraception therefore promoted autonomy while exposing broader questions about who controlled women’s reproductive lives.

📚 Influence of Early Feminist Literature

Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique

• Published in 1963, Friedan’s book challenged the belief that educated middle-class women should find complete fulfilment in domestic life.
• It described widespread dissatisfaction without an accepted public name and connected individual frustration to social expectations.
• The book became a bestseller, helped place women’s status on the national agenda and contributed to Friedan’s role in establishing NOW.
• Its main focus on white, suburban, middle-class housewives limited its representation of women who had always worked or experienced racial and economic oppression.

Earlier and wider intellectual influences

• Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex argued that femininity was socially constructed rather than naturally fixed.
• Civil rights writing and anti-colonial thought encouraged women to examine structures of hierarchy, discrimination and liberation.
• Essays produced by women in civil rights and New Left organizations criticized the subordinate roles assigned to female activists.
• These ideas helped women connect personal experience with institutional power.

Movement literature

• Pamphlets, newsletters and essays circulated arguments rapidly through local groups and campuses.
• Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics (1970) analysed power and patriarchy in literature and sexual relations.
• Sisterhood Is Powerful (1970), edited by Robin Morgan, collected writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement.
• Our Bodies, Ourselves, first developed by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, expanded women’s knowledge about health, sexuality and reproduction.
• Ms. magazine brought feminist analysis to a national mass audience during the 1970s.

✊ Influence of Wider Protest Movements

• The African American civil rights movement demonstrated the effectiveness of boycotts, marches, sit-ins, litigation, voter registration and federal lobbying.
• Women gained organizing experience as local leaders, lawyers, students and community workers within civil rights campaigns.
• Some experienced gender discrimination or exclusion from leadership within civil rights, anti-war and New Left organizations.
• Student activism encouraged participatory democracy and direct action.
• The anti-war movement challenged traditional authority and helped create a wider culture in which established gender roles could also be questioned.
• Feminism adopted techniques from these movements but developed distinctive ideas about private life, sexuality and personal relationships.

📊 Relative Importance of the Causes

⚖️ Assessment

The movement emerged because social change produced a growing gap between women’s expectations and the opportunities available to them. Domestic ideology remained influential, but women’s employment and education made discrimination more visible. Contraception increased practical autonomy, while feminist literature transformed isolated experiences into a shared political analysis. Civil rights and New Left activism supplied organizational models. No single factor was sufficient: feminism expanded when material changes in women’s lives combined with ideas and networks capable of turning dissatisfaction into collective protest.

How Did the Protest Movement Challenge Authority?

📣 Protest and Activism

Public demonstrations and direct action

• Feminists organized marches, pickets, sit-ins, rallies, strikes, occupations and public speak-outs.
• The 1968 Miss America protest challenged beauty standards, commercial objectification and narrow definitions of femininity.
• Activists placed items associated with restrictive femininity into a “Freedom Trash Can”; the later “bra-burning” description was largely a media myth.
• The Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970 brought large demonstrations to several cities and publicized demands concerning employment, reproductive freedom and childcare.
• Abortion speak-outs replaced male expert authority with women’s testimony about unsafe procedures and reproductive experience.
• Actions against discriminatory businesses, universities, newspapers and government agencies made inequality visible and created pressure for institutional change.

Consciousness-raising

• Small groups discussed marriage, work, sexuality, housework, violence, health and discrimination.
• Participants identified patterns shared across experiences previously treated as private problems.
• The principle that “the personal is political” challenged the separation between public authority and private family life.
• Consciousness-raising helped recruit activists and influenced campaigns concerning domestic labour, sexual violence and reproductive autonomy.
• The method was accessible and decentralized but did not always produce coordinated national policy.

Lobbying, litigation and institutional pressure

• Activists lobbied Congress, state legislatures, political parties, universities and administrative agencies.
• Legal organizations brought cases challenging discriminatory employment rules, educational exclusion and unequal laws.
• Complaints to the EEOC pressured the agency to enforce Title VII against sex discrimination.
• Feminists campaigned for the ERA to establish constitutional equality.
• Electoral pressure encouraged parties to adopt women’s-rights positions and appoint more women to public office.

Building alternative institutions

• Activists created women’s health centres, rape-crisis centres, shelters, legal clinics, newspapers and publishing collectives.
• Women’s studies programmes challenged male-centred university curricula.
• Alternative institutions provided immediate assistance while demonstrating how existing services neglected women’s needs.
• They broadened feminism beyond formal legal equality to health, culture, safety and knowledge.

⚖️ National Organization for Women

• NOW was founded in 1966 after frustration with the weak enforcement of legal protections against employment discrimination.
• Betty Friedan became its first president, while Pauli Murray helped shape its original statement of purpose.
• NOW pursued equality through legislation, litigation, lobbying, administrative complaints and organized public pressure.
• It challenged sex-segregated job advertisements, unequal employment practices and exclusion from professional opportunities.
• NOW supported the ERA, reproductive rights, childcare, educational equality and stronger enforcement of Title VII.
• Its national structure and legal strategy gave it access to policymakers and institutions.
• Critics argued that its early leadership and priorities often reflected professional, white and middle-class women more strongly than poorer women or women of colour.

🗳️ National Women’s Political Caucus

• The National Women’s Political Caucus was founded in 1971 by a diverse group of activists, including Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, Fannie Lou Hamer and Bella Abzug.
• It aimed to increase women’s influence in political parties, elections and government appointments.
• The organization recruited, trained and supported women candidates.
• It challenged male control of party structures and the underrepresentation of women in elected office.
• Its multi-partisan approach sought to make women’s political participation a national rather than exclusively party-based issue.
• Electoral work produced gradual change but depended on campaign resources, party support and voter attitudes.

♀️ Organizations Associated with the Women’s Liberation Movement

Structure and ideas

• The Women’s Liberation Movement was decentralized and included many local organizations rather than one controlling national body.
• Groups often preferred participatory decision-making and challenged hierarchy within both society and reform movements.
• Radical feminists argued that inequality existed not only in law and employment but also in sexuality, family relations, culture and everyday behaviour.
• Organizations differed over capitalism, race, sexuality, separatism and cooperation with men.

Examples of activism

• New York Radical Women helped organize the Miss America protest.
• Redstockings used speak-outs and political analysis to expose male authority over reproduction and sexuality.
• WITCH used theatrical protests and satire to attract attention to institutions regarded as oppressive.
• The Chicago Women’s Liberation Union combined education, direct action and service projects.
• Local collectives established health services, publications and campaigns against sexual and domestic violence.

Strengths and limitations

• Decentralization encouraged experimentation and allowed local activists to address immediate concerns.
• Direct action expanded feminist goals beyond equal access to existing institutions.
• Internal disagreement could fragment organizations and make sustained national coordination difficult.
• Some groups reproduced racial, class or heterosexual assumptions despite their commitment to liberation.

📰 Role of Mass Media

Spreading feminist ideas

• Television, newspapers and magazines transformed local protests into national events.
• Coverage of demonstrations introduced feminist demands to people who had no contact with activist organizations.
• Interviews with figures such as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug gave the movement recognizable public voices.
• Ms. magazine provided sustained feminist reporting and connected national issues with readers’ personal experiences.
• Books, documentaries, radio and alternative newspapers helped circulate feminist analysis.

Media distortion and stereotypes

• News coverage often emphasized appearance, conflict and provocative slogans instead of detailed policy demands.
• The “bra-burning” label associated with the Miss America protest became a persistent stereotype even though bras were not burned at the demonstration.
• Feminists were sometimes portrayed as anti-family, anti-men, sexually threatening or socially deviant.
• Media attention frequently centred white middle-class spokeswomen and gave less visibility to African American, Latina, Indigenous, lesbian and working-class activists.
• Television simplified disagreements within feminism into a single movement or a conflict between feminists and traditional women.

Feminist use of media

• Activists deliberately staged visual protests suited to television and newspaper coverage.
• Press releases, public testimony and celebrity support helped pressure institutions.
• Movement-controlled media allowed feminists to challenge commercial representation and present issues ignored by mainstream outlets.
• Mass media therefore functioned both as a means of mobilization and as an authority whose representations feminists challenged.

🛡️ Opposition and Backlash

• Conservative activists argued that feminism threatened family roles, religion, social stability and protections traditionally given to women.
• Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP ERA campaign mobilized opposition to constitutional equality by linking the amendment to military service, unisex facilities and loss of homemaker protections.
• Religious and anti-abortion organizations became increasingly active after Roe v. Wade.
• Employers, universities and political institutions could resist change through delay, narrow interpretation or weak enforcement.
• Backlash forced feminists to defend earlier gains as well as campaign for new reforms.

📊 Organizations, Methods and Impact

⚖️ Assessment

Feminism challenged authority through a flexible combination of institutional and disruptive methods. NOW was effective in translating grievances into legal and policy demands. The National Women’s Political Caucus targeted women’s exclusion from political power. Women’s Liberation groups exposed authority in private life and culture through consciousness-raising and direct action. Mass media gave these campaigns national reach but also distorted them. The movement was strongest when legal reform, grassroots mobilization and control of public communication reinforced one another.

What Changes Did the Protest Movement Achieve, and with What Limitations?

🏛️ Political and Legal Changes

Title VII and employment law

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination based on sex.
• The law enabled women to challenge discriminatory recruitment, hiring, promotion and employment conditions.
• Pressure from organizations such as NOW helped push the EEOC towards more active enforcement.
• Legal challenges weakened sex-segregated job advertisements and employment rules based on stereotypes.
• The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 clarified that discrimination based on pregnancy was a form of unlawful sex discrimination.
• Enforcement remained slow, and employers could disguise discrimination through supposedly neutral requirements or informal practices.

Title IX (1972)

• Title IX prohibited sex discrimination in education programmes and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
• It expanded women’s access to admissions, academic programmes, scholarships and educational opportunities.
• Its application to athletics greatly increased pressure for equal sporting opportunities, funding and facilities.
• Title IX challenged the idea that educational institutions could separate opportunities according to traditional gender roles.
• Implementation required regulations, complaints and continued activism; equality was not immediate.
• Institutions resisted by disputing coverage, delaying compliance or allocating unequal resources.

Reproductive rights and Roe v. Wade (1973)

• Earlier contraception cases established constitutional protection for reproductive privacy.
• In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court held that the constitutional right to privacy protected a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy, subject to increasing state regulation as pregnancy progressed.
• The decision invalidated highly restrictive abortion laws and expanded access to legal abortion.
• Feminists viewed reproductive choice as essential to bodily autonomy, education and economic independence.
• Access varied because services, cost, geography, age restrictions and local opposition limited practical availability.
• The Hyde Amendment restricted federal funding for most abortions, affecting low-income women most severely.
• Roe also mobilized a powerful anti-abortion movement, making reproductive rights an enduring political conflict.

Equal Rights Amendment

• Congress approved the ERA in 1972 and sent it to the states for ratification.
• The amendment would have established a constitutional principle that rights could not be denied on account of sex.
• Initial ratification was rapid, demonstrating the movement’s political influence.
• Opposition led by Phyllis Schlafly slowed momentum by presenting the amendment as a threat to family roles and sex-specific protections.
• By 1979, the ERA remained short of the required number of states despite an extension of the ratification deadline.
• Its failure to secure ratification within the movement’s main period revealed the strength of backlash and federalism as limitations on national reform.

Political participation

• More women sought elected office, party leadership and government appointments.
• The National Women’s Political Caucus supplied recruitment, training and campaign support.
• Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 presidential campaign challenged both racial and gender barriers.
• Women’s issues gained greater visibility in party platforms and legislative debate.
• Women remained substantially underrepresented in Congress, state government and senior executive positions.

💵 Economic Changes

Equal pay

• The Equal Pay Act of 1963 prohibited sex-based wage differences for substantially equal work within the same establishment.
• The law established an important federal principle and allowed women to pursue claims against employers.
• Its effect was limited by occupational segregation, narrow definitions of equal work and difficulty obtaining evidence.
• Women remained concentrated in lower-paid sectors, so equal pay for identical jobs could not eliminate the wider earnings gap.

Employment rights

• Title VII expanded opportunities to challenge discriminatory hiring, promotion and dismissal.
• Executive action against discrimination by federal contractors extended pressure for workplace equality.
• Legal decisions and EEOC rulings weakened protective rules that excluded women from jobs on the claim that they were physically unsuitable.
• Sex-segregated job advertisements declined as enforcement strengthened.
• The Pregnancy Discrimination Act protected women from being treated unfavourably because of pregnancy.

Credit and economic independence

• The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 prohibited discrimination in credit transactions based on sex or marital status.
• Women gained stronger formal access to credit in their own names rather than through husbands.
• This supported independent housing, business activity and financial decision-making.
• Formal rights did not eliminate unequal income, accumulated wealth or discriminatory attitudes.

Continuing economic limitations

• The wage gap persisted despite equal-pay and employment laws.
• Women continued to perform a disproportionate share of unpaid childcare and domestic work.
• Affordable childcare remained limited, restricting employment choices for mothers.
• Professional opportunities expanded more rapidly for educated women than for women in low-paid service, agricultural or domestic work.
• Seniority systems, informal networks and workplace culture continued to disadvantage women.

✊ African American Women

Distinctive experiences

• African American women experienced discrimination based on both race and sex.
• Many had long worked outside the home, often in poorly paid domestic, agricultural, industrial, clerical or service employment.
• The white middle-class critique of domestic confinement did not fully represent women whose problem was exploitation within paid labour rather than exclusion from it.
• Black women also faced racism within predominantly white feminist organizations and sexism within some civil rights and Black Power organizations.

Leadership and organization

• African American women brought extensive experience from civil rights, labour, welfare-rights and community campaigns.
• Figures such as Pauli Murray, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer and Florynce Kennedy linked racial justice and women’s rights in different ways.
• Black feminist organizations argued that race, class and gender could not be treated as separate hierarchies.
• The National Black Feminist Organization and the Combahee River Collective developed explicitly Black feminist analysis during the 1970s.
• Their work broadened feminism’s understanding of work, state violence, healthcare, sexuality and economic inequality.

Unequal benefits

• Anti-discrimination law offered tools against both racial and sex discrimination, but proving combined discrimination remained difficult.
• Professional openings benefited some women, while poverty and labour-market segregation limited gains for many others.
• Reproductive freedom required not only legal abortion but also access to healthcare and protection from coerced sterilization.
• Media accounts often marginalized Black women’s leadership or treated white women as the movement’s universal representatives.

👷 Working-Class Women

• Working-class women often prioritized wages, employment security, childcare, healthcare, union rights and safe working conditions.
• They were more likely to work in low-paid jobs with limited promotion and weak legal or union protection.
• Equal access to professional careers had less immediate relevance than pay, scheduling and protection from dismissal.
• Childcare shortages and unpaid domestic work made sustained full-time employment difficult.
• The cost of legal action, contraception, abortion and higher education limited access to rights achieved in principle.
• Some unions and feminist organizations cooperated over equal pay and employment rights, while tensions remained over priorities and strategy.
• The Hyde Amendment demonstrated how a formally recognized right could remain inaccessible to women without financial resources.

🌎 Other Marginalized Women

• Latina, Indigenous and Asian American women developed organizations addressing gender inequality together with racism, migration, labour rights and community survival.
• Lesbian feminists challenged heterosexual assumptions and discrimination within both society and the women’s movement.
• Poor women and welfare-rights activists emphasized income, housing, childcare and state treatment of mothers.
• Women with disabilities faced barriers often neglected by mainstream feminist campaigns.
• These perspectives demonstrated that equal treatment could not guarantee equal outcomes when women began from different social and economic positions.

🎭 Social and Cultural Change

• Feminism challenged assumptions that biology determined women’s social roles.
• Women gained greater freedom to pursue higher education, careers, politics and lives outside traditional marriage.
• Sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape and reproductive health became public political issues rather than purely private matters.
• Women’s studies courses and feminist scholarship changed education and research.
• Media representation began to include more independent and professionally ambitious women.
• Language changed as terms such as sexism, sexual harassment and consciousness-raising identified previously normalized behaviour.
• Traditional gender expectations remained powerful, and cultural change varied by region, religion, race, class and generation.

📊 Achievements and Limitations

⚖️ Assessment

Feminism achieved substantial political, legal and cultural change by 1979. Title IX, employment protections, equal-pay legislation, reproductive-rights decisions and access to credit altered women’s formal position. The movement also transformed public understanding of work, family, sexuality and violence. Its limitations were equally significant: enforcement lagged behind legislation, economic inequality persisted and marginalized women did not benefit equally. The unratified ERA and expanding conservative backlash demonstrated that the movement had changed American society without completing its programme of equality.

🔎 Paper 1 Source Skills

Using origin, purpose and content

• Identify the source’s author, organization, date, audience and immediate political context.
• Separate what a source says from why it says it and how its purpose affects its value.
• When analysing media, examine headlines, image selection, labels, stereotypes and which voices are included or excluded.
• When evaluating legislation, distinguish formal legal change from enforcement and practical access.
• When comparing feminist sources, consider differences between liberal, radical, Black, working-class and electoral perspectives.
• Use testimony as evidence of experience without treating one individual as representative of every woman.
• For statistics, identify the population measured and determine whether apparent progress was shared across racial and class groups.

⚖️ Overall Historical Judgment

Feminism emerged from the interaction of changing social conditions and changing ideas. Women’s increasing participation in employment and education exposed the contradiction between domestic expectations and women’s actual lives. Contraception expanded personal choice, while literature gave collective meaning to private dissatisfaction. Wider protest movements supplied tactics and organizational experience.

The movement challenged authority through both reform and liberation. NOW and the National Women’s Political Caucus pursued legal, administrative and electoral change. Organizations associated with the Women’s Liberation Movement challenged power in sexuality, culture, family life and everyday relationships. Mass media expanded the movement’s reach but frequently simplified or distorted its aims.

By 1979, feminism had achieved important legal and political change, including Title IX, reproductive-rights decisions and stronger employment protections. It also changed language and expectations. However, incomplete enforcement, economic inequality, racial and class differences, the unratified ERA and organized backlash limited the transformation. The most balanced judgment is that feminism changed the framework within which equality was debated and pursued, but did not produce equal experiences or outcomes for all women.

⚡ Quick Recap
✔ Feminism emerged from reactions to domesticity, increasing workforce participation, contraception, feminist literature and wider protest movements.
✔ The Feminine Mystique helped turn private dissatisfaction into a national political issue but mainly reflected white middle-class experience.
✔ Changing access to contraception strengthened women’s ability to plan education, employment and family life.
✔ Feminists used demonstrations, strikes, speak-outs, consciousness-raising, lobbying, litigation, electoral action and alternative institutions.
✔ NOW concentrated on legal equality, enforcement, employment rights, reproductive rights and the ERA.
✔ The National Women’s Political Caucus worked to increase women’s participation in elections, parties and public office.
✔ Women’s Liberation groups challenged authority in culture, sexuality, family life and personal relationships.
✔ Mass media gave feminism national visibility but also produced stereotypes such as the misleading “bra-burning” label.
✔ Title IX prohibited sex discrimination in federally funded education and expanded opportunities for women and girls.
✔ Roe v. Wade expanded legal protection for abortion decisions, but cost and the Hyde Amendment limited access for poorer women.
✔ Equal-pay and employment laws strengthened formal rights, although wage inequality and occupational segregation continued.
✔ African American and working-class women experienced overlapping racial, gender and economic inequalities and did not always benefit equally.
✔ The ERA remained unratified, revealing the strength of conservative opposition.
✔ By 1979, feminism had transformed law and public debate, but full political, economic and social equality had not been achieved.