NOW Pickets New York Times to Protest Sex-Segregated Job Ads
Members of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which had been formed the year before on June 30, 1966, on this day picketed The New York Times to protest its use of sex-segregated ads. Until the late 1960s, job-wanted ads were sex-segregated, with separate categories for “Men Wanted” and “Women Wanted.”
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed sex discrimination in employment. See the debate in the House of Representatives about whether or not to include “sex” in the pending civil rights bill. A controversy immediately developed when the new Equal Opportunity Commission initially decided that sex-segregated employment ads were not illegal. After strong feminist protests, the EEOC reversed its position.
The Supreme Court upheld a ban on sex-segregated ads, in Pittsburgh Press v. Pittsburgh Human Relations Commission, on June 21, 1973.
View historic sex-segregated job ads at North Carolina Digital History:
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-postwar/6056Read: Cynthia Harrison, On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women’s Issues, 1945-1988 (1988)
Learn more about the history of NOW: http://now.org/about/history/founding-2/
Watch a video on the 40th Anniversary of NOW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GXcNYaY5Yk