Women's+Rights

The most important difference between the movement for racial equality and the women's rights movement was that African Americans were arguing against a legal tradition that explicitly aimed to keep them in a subservient status, while women had to argue against a tradition that claimed to be protecting them. Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was the origin of the movement to give more rights to women: its leaders began to demand the right to vote for women. However, it wasn't until 1920 that the 19th Amendment made it clear that no state may deny the right to vote on the basis of gender. The great change in the status of women took place during WWII, when the demand for workers in US defense plants led to the employment of millions of women in jobs they had rarely held before. After the war, the feminist movement came into the public eye with the publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan's //The Feminine Mystique//. In response, Congress passed laws requiring equal pay for equal work, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender in employment and among students in any school or university receiving federal funds, and banning discrimination against pregnant women on the job.

14th Amendment: prohibits any state from denying to any person the equal protection of the laws.

To satisfy the Constitution, a law treating men and women differently "must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest on some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of legislation so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike". //Reasonableness Standard:// when the government treats some classes of people differently from others (for example, applying statutory rape laws to men but not to women) the different treatment must be reasonable and not arbitrary. //Strict Scrutiny Standard:// some instances of drawing distinctions between different groups of people (for example, treating whites and blacks differently) a re inherently suspect; thus the Court will subject them to strict scrutiny to ensure that they are clearly necessary to attain a legitimate state goal.

Members of the Supreme Court have expressed the desire to make classifications based on gender inherently suspect and subject to the strict scrutiny test, but no majority has yet embraced this position.

Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sex discrimination in the hiring, firing, and compensation of employees. Civil Rights Act of 1972 bans sex discrimination in local education programs receiving federal aid. These laws apply to private, not just government, action.

Sexual Harassment