
The Women of NOW
How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America
Katherine Turk(Author)
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc (Publisher)
Published on 18. September 2023
Book
Hardback
448 pages
978-0-374-60153-9 (ISBN)
Description
In the summer of 1966, crammed into a DC hotel suite and passing paper cups of liquor, twenty-eight women hatched a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the well-known author of The Feminine Mystique, and Pauli Murray, a lawyer at the front lines of the civil rights movement, had quietly pulled away attendees from the State Womens' Commissions annual conference. Frustrated with government inertia, they laid out a vision for an organisation to unite and advocate for all women. Inspired, challenged, skeptical, they debated the idea late into the night and the next day. By the end of the conference, the National Organisation for Women was born.
In The Women of NOW, the historian Katherine Turk chronicles the growth and influence of this foundational group through three relatively unknown core members: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican-American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a working-class union organiser and Chicago Catholic; and Patricia Hill Burnett, a Michigan Republican and former beauty queen. From its inception in 1966 through the tumultuous training ground of the 1970s, NOW's feminism flooded the nation, shifted American culture and politics, and clashed with conservative forces, presaging our fractured national landscape. These women built an organisation that was radical in its time, and built it to last. This is the first time anyone has told their story.
In The Women of NOW, the historian Katherine Turk chronicles the growth and influence of this foundational group through three relatively unknown core members: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican-American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a working-class union organiser and Chicago Catholic; and Patricia Hill Burnett, a Michigan Republican and former beauty queen. From its inception in 1966 through the tumultuous training ground of the 1970s, NOW's feminism flooded the nation, shifted American culture and politics, and clashed with conservative forces, presaging our fractured national landscape. These women built an organisation that was radical in its time, and built it to last. This is the first time anyone has told their story.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Illustrations
16 Pages of Black-and-White Images / 2 Appendixes, Notes, Index
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 154 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-374-60153-9 (9780374601539)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
08/2023
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
€14.99
Available for download
Person
Katherine Turk is the author of Equality on Trial: Gender and Rights in the Modern American Workplace, which was awarded the Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women's and/or Gender History from the Organization of American Historians. She is an associate professor of history and an adjunct associate professor of gender studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.