The Power of the Pill

In 1960, shortly before Friedan’s book appeared, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the world’s first effective oral contraceptive, the birth-control pill, which was soon dubbed more simply “The Pill.” It was destined not only to bring radical change to the nation’s sexual mores—contributing to the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s—but also to liberate women from the inevitability of life tied to the nursery. Now, a women could choose to delay having children (or not to have them at all) and use the time to establish a career.

NOW and Ms.

Three years after publishing The Feminine Mystique, Friedan helped found the National Organization for Women and served as NOW’s first president. An organized feminist movement—popularly called women’s liberation or (sometimes derisively) women’s lib—crystallized around NOW. The organization advocated equality for women in a general social sense and in the workplace, liberalized abortion laws, and passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed constitutional amendment declaring that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States nor by any State on account of sex.” ERA was drafted by feminist Alice Paul (1885-1977) of the National Woman’s Party and introduced in Congress in 1923, where it was essentially ignored until NOW took up its cause in 1970.

By the end of the 1960s, the women’s liberation movement was in full swing. In 1972, journalist and feminist Gloria Steinem started Ms. magazine, which became a popular, entertaining, and immensely profitable vehicle for the feminist message.

NOW met with opposition not only from conservative men but also from many women, some of whom claimed that the feminist movement ran contrary to the natural (or God-given) order; other women feared the movement would defeminize women and lead to the disintegration of the family. By the 1970s, NOW was also under attack from more radical feminists, such as Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millet, and Ti-Grace Atkinson, for being too conservative. Nevertheless, NOW and the entire range of feminist activism have had an impact on American life. More women occupy corporate executive positions today than ever before; in state legislatures, the number of women serving doubled between 1975 and 1988; and by the late 1980s, 40 of 50 states had laws mandating equality of pay for men and women in comparable jobs.

ERA Sunset

Thanks to NOW, the Equal Rights Amendment was approved by the House of Representatives in 1971 and by the Senate in 1972. The amendment was then sent to the states for ratification, and when the necessary three-fourths majority of states failed to ratify it by the original March 1979 deadline, a new deadline of June 30, 1982, was fixed. Yet, by this date, ratification was still three states short of the 38 needed. Reintroduced in Congress on July 14, 1982, ERA failed to gain approval and was dead as of November 15, 1983.

The failure of ERA points to the limits of what the feminist movement has achieved. Despite gains, far fewer women than men hold high elective office or sit on the boards of major corporations, and despite legislation, women continue to earn, on average, significantly less than men.

A Meeting of the Sheiks

Citizens of the United States, men and women, have always cherished their liberty, and after 1908, when Henry Ford introduced his Model T, they have increasingly identified a part of that liberty with the automobile. With six percent of the world’s population, the United States consumes a third of the world’s energy—much of it in the form of petroleum. Through the 1960s, this posed little problem. Gasoline was abundant and cheap. Indeed, at the start of the decade, U.S. and European oil producers slashed their prices, a move that prompted key oil nations of the Middle East—Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, plus Venezuela in South America—to band together as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on September 14, 1960, to stabilize prices. (More nations joined later.) Beginning in 1970, OPEC began to press for oil price hikes, and on October 1.7, 1973, OPEC temporarily embargoed oil exports to punish nations that had supported Israel in its recent war with Egypt. Chief among the embargo’s targets was the United States.

The effects of the OPEC embargo were stunning. Not only did prices shoot up from 38.5 cents per gallon in 19 73 to 55.1 cents by June 1974, gasoline shortages were severe in some areas. Americans found themselves stuck in gas lines stretching from the pumps and snaking around the block.

Cruising full speed ahead since the end of World War II, Americans were forced to come to grips with an energy crisis, cutting back on travel and on electricity use. The public endured an unpopular, but energy-(and life-) saving 55-mile-an-hour national speed limit, in addition to well-meaning, if somewhat condescending lectures from President Jimmy Carter, who characteristically sported a cardigan sweater on TV appearances because he had turned down the White House thermostat as an energy-conserving gesture. In a modest way, Americans learned to do without, and oil consumption was reduced by more than 7 percent—enough to prompt some OPEC oil price rollbacks by the early 1980s. By this time, too, OPEC’s grip on key oil producers had slipped as various member producers refused to limit production.

Made In Japan

The energy crisis came on top of an economic crisis, characterized by a combination of inflation and recession christened stagflation (stagnant growth coupled with inflation). The crisis had begun during the Nixon-Ford years and continued into the Carter presidency. By the mid 1970s, the heady consumerism of the 1960s was on the wane, and the dollar bought less and less. To use a phrase popular during the period, the economy was in the toilet.

And so, it seemed, was the American spirit. Accustomed to being preeminent manufacturer to the world, American industry was losing ground to other nations, especially Japan. All but crushed by World War II, Japan had staged an incredible recovery, becoming a world-class economic dynamo. By the 1970s, Japanese automobiles especially were making deep inroads into the U.S. automotive market. Not only were the Japanese vehicles less expensive than American makes, they were more fuel efficient (which meant fewer dollars spent on increasing gasoline costs), and they were more dependable.

The Chrysler Corporation, smallest of the Big Three automakers (behind General Motors and Ford), found itself on the verge of bankruptcy and, in 1980, sought federal aid. The government-backed loan was ultimately paid back and the Chrysler recovery became a celebrated comeback story (the company’s CEO, Lee Iacocca, was elevated nearly to the status of American folk hero). However, the $1.5 billion bailout of America’s 17th largest corporation was as controversial as it was depressing. Patriotic Americans felt vaguely humiliated-even as more and more of them climbed behind the wheel of a Toyota or Mitsubishi.