A half-century ago, feminists turned once-radical demands into everyday rights.
The lesson of the 1970s is that transformative social change can happen faster than we imagine. Across the decade, feminists challenged longstanding assumptions about women’s roles in society, won major legal and political victories, and reshaped the national conversation about equality, freedom and democracy.
This essay is part of Feminist Lessons, a series from Ms.’ FEMINIST 250 project exploring what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change. Drawing on more than 50 years of reporting, organizing and activism, the series examines how feminists transformed American life—and what those victories and setbacks can teach us today.
Life Before Ms.
By the time Ms. hit newsstands in 1972, it had become glaringly self-evident that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness weren’t guaranteed to women.
By the end of 1972, abortion was illegal in 31 states, with exceptions to save a woman’s life. In 15 others, it was only available under extremely limited circumstances.
No domestic violence shelters—and only a handful of rape crisis centers—existed. There were no federal laws declaring rape, sexual harassment, or sexual assault a crime—but husbands were exempted by law, in most states, from spousal rape charges.
Although workplace sex discrimination and gender wage discrimination had already been outlawed federally, women were making just 58 cents on every man’s dollar. They couldn’t open credit cards in their own name nor get mortgages or take out loans without a man’s signature. In some states, they were effectively banned from entering certain fields.
Only 15 women were in Congress. None were serving as governors, cabinet members or Supreme Court justices.
For these reasons and more, Ms. made it their mission to recover women’s half of the American story—chronicling our collective past just as fastidiously as we recorded the history feminists were making in real-time. In this way, Ms. continued a rich legacy of feminist activism challenging the U.S. to fulfill the promises of its democracy.
“Feminist history charges us to know the past in order to consider what we want to conserve and what we want not to repeat or continue,” Adrienne Rich wrote in the March 1987 issue of Ms. “We need to be looking above all for the greatness and sanity of ordinary women, and how these women have collectively waged resistance. In searching that territory, we find something better than individual heroines: the astonishing continuity of women’s imagination of survival.”
For 54 years, Ms. has uncovered and amplified those stories in pursuit of a more perfect union.
Creating a New Discourse: The 1970s
Ms. took the nation by storm in the 1970s, giving voice to the feminist movement as it defined the decade. The Spring 1972 preview issue sold out in eight days, and 26,000 subscribers received the first full-length issue that July. Ms. was a mirror of the mainstream fight for women’s liberation—and the fight within the movement for increased intersectionality—that defined the decade, publishing pieces even in its earliest issues by queer and trans women, women of color and women across class lines.
The preview issue included the historic “We Have Had Abortions” petition petition, which featured 53 prominent names and, through Ms., collected hundreds more demanding “a repeal of all laws that restrict our reproductive freedom.” Just one year later, the Supreme Court declared that laws banning abortion were unconstitutional in Roe v. Wade.
A few pages later, welfare rights activist Johnnie Tillmon called out the hypocrisy of a country that denied women, especially women of color, equal educational and workplace opportunities—and then blamed and denigrated them when they ended up in poverty.
“Our country’s economic policies,” she explained, “deny the dignity and satisfaction of self-sufficiency to … the millions who suffer every day in underpaid dirty jobs and still don’t have enough to survive.”
The next year, a Supreme Court decision forced newspapers and employers to stop segregating job listings by gender, finally giving women access to higher-paying jobs. With the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 came new financial freedom for women, and with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, new protections for women workers.
In the July 1972 issue of Ms., cofounder Gloria Steinem predicted that women were “just beginning to flex our muscles and figure out what kind of political force we might be.”
That September, Ms. featured some of the unprecedented number of women candidates seeking offices up and down the ballot, many of whom incorporated feminist values into their campaigns—from abortion rights and government-funded childcare to peace, education, and eradicating poverty and racism.
“These are clearly ‘women’s issues,’” Barbara Marcus wrote, “as well as matters of concern to all those who seek humanity in politics, equality, and opportunity for all participants in a society.”
In 1974, the first domestic violence shelter in the U.S. opened its doors. In 1976, Ms.
put the issue on the cover (and in 1977, sexual harassment got the same treatment.) By 1978, there were more than 300 shelters, hotlines and organizations dedicated to domestic abuse—and four states had outlawed spousal rape by 1979.
These conversations converged in the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, which was sent to the states for ratification the year Ms. debuted.
In the July 1972 issue, National Organization for Women leader Ann Scott explored how constitutional equality would reshape women’s economic, educational, and family lives—and urged that “we must have real and tangible proof in the ‘highest law of the land’ that women deserve equal treatment.”
The lesson of the 1970s is not simply that feminists won a series of important victories. It is that they transformed what Americans believed was possible. Rights that once seemed out of reach became mainstream demands. Issues long dismissed as private matters became matters of public concern. And a generation of activists reshaped American life in ways that continue to reverberate today.
Feminist Lessons: Keep Reading the Series
At a moment when hard-won rights are being challenged, and fundamental questions about democracy, equality and freedom are once again at the center of American politics, there is much to learn from the recent past and modern women’s movement. Explore the rest of Feminist Lessons to see how feminists transformed American life in the 1970s, confronted organized backlash in the 1980s, emerged as a powerful political force in the 1990s, built a feminist majority in the 2000s, turned mass resistance into political power in the 2010s, and continue fighting for democracy in the 2020s. Together, these essays draw on more than 50 years of reporting, organizing and activism to recover the hard-won lessons of the modern women’s movement—and to illuminate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
