National Organization For Women Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded on June 30, 1966, by 28 women and men in attendance at the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women. This conference is the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, and although the group made findings of widespread discrimination based on sex, the administration prohibited the delegates from passing resolutions or making any formal recommendations during the 1966 conference. Frustrated by this lack of power, a group of delegates decided to form an independent feminist organization.

The original purpose of the organization, as written by founders Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray, was “to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” The purpose remains largely unchanged, with the current Statement of Purpose reading: “Our purpose is to take action to bring women into full participation in society—sharing equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities with men, while living free from discrimination.”

Current membership includes 500,000 individuals and 550 chapters around the United States. The entire general membership meets annually in conference and is the supreme governing body of the organization. Four elected officers lead the national level of the organization along with a national board of directors and a national issues committee. Betty Friedan, founder and author of The Feminine Mystique, served as the organization’s first president. The National Board of Directors governs the organization according to the direction set at the conference. Members are elected to the board by nine regional divisions. Local chapters are located in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and carry out local activism and programming. State organizations work to develop chapters and coordinate activities across the state.

Identification of NOW as a radical feminist organization has its roots in a split in the organization’s leadership. The adoption of lesbian, abortion, and contraceptive rights split the leadership of NOW, causing its more conservative leaders to form alternative organizations and shifting the balance of power at NOW. Their platform and legislative and social actions are consistently viewed in light of the political alliances of its leaders.

NOW And Interpersonal Violence

Calling itself “one of the few multi-issue progressive organizations in the United States,” NOW works to connect the various forms of oppression, recognizing that racism, homophobia, and classism are intimately connected to sexism. Rather than fighting against other oppressed and marginalized groups, NOW seeks to unite with other people and organizations.

The top six current priorities for NOW are reproductive freedom, diversity and ending racism, ending violence against women, rights for lesbian women, constitutional equality for women, and economic justice.

Interpersonal violence is addressed by NOW as one of several interrelated issues of violence against women. NOW believes that intimate partner violence, like sexual assault, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and gender bias hate crimes, is the result of long-standing patriarchal views on women as subservient to men.

NOW furthers its priorities through education, protest, lobbying, registering voters, and endorsing feminist candidates for office, bringing lawsuits, demanding fair judiciaries, and working in coalition with other progressive organizations. One such priority has been the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) passed in 1994 and reauthorized in 2000 and 2005. NOW is currently lobbying for adequate federal funding for VAWA programs.

NOW also works to change laws affecting intimate partner violence at the state level. NOW operatives seek to enact more stringent laws recognizing and punishing intimate partner violence. Proposed legislation would include efforts to improve mandatory arrest and report policies and to increase funding for shelters and hotlines. NOW has proposed laws recognizing and punishing crimes like marital rape and stalking. NOW also advocates classification of intimate partner violence as a felony rather than as a misdemeanor offense, a classification that would mandate greater judicial consideration of intimate partner violence in custody and divorce proceedings.

NOW also works to ensure that victims of violent crimes are treated with respect and dignity. NOW pressed legislatures to provide victims of rape with adequate health care, including providing rape victims the morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy. NOW further works with service providers and the media to prevent revictimization of women, endeavoring to ensure that victims are neither treated unfairly nor portrayed as perpetrators.

NOW’s legislative initiatives reflect the organization’s belief that change must be achieved through both legal and social action. NOW is currently pursuing a public education campaign to better inform society about violence against women and to make it socially unacceptable. Myths surrounding victims of violence are pervasive in society. Victims of rape are often met with preconceived notions about false accusations or moral culpability. Victims of intimate partner violence are similarly faced with assumptions that the violence is just a marital spat in which both parties are responsible. Public education is considered a means of dispelling myths about the perpetrators and victims of violence. NOW is a frequent sponsor of national and local Take Back the Night marches.

NOW is also dedicated to ending violence against women at an international level. NOW has campaigned extensively to protect the women of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where hundreds of women disappear under mysterious circumstances, many of whom are discovered to be victims of brutal rape and murder. NOW pressured both American and Mexican officials to investigate and prosecute those responsible, and with the efforts of NOW and its sister organizations, significant progress was made in protecting the women of Juarez.

Bibliography:

Friedan, B. (1963). The feminine mystique. New York: Norton.
Friedan, B. (n.d.). National Organization for Women’s 1966 statement of purpose. Retrieved from http://now.org/about/history/statement-of-purpose/
National Organization for Women. (n.d.). About NOW: We want it all. Retrieved from http://www.now.org/about.html
National Organization of Women: http://now.org/

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