National Organization for Women Statement of Purpose

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Early on, the Statement of Purpose announces the organization's purpose: “The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now.” Later, the document states that NOW's goal is to promote action “to break through the silken curtain of prejudice and discrimination against women in government, industry, the professions, the churches, the political parties, the judiciary, the labor unions, in education, science, medicine, law, religion and every other field of importance in American society.”

The Statement of Purpose points out that lengthened life spans meant that women no longer have to devote most of their lives to procreation and that technology has reduced “productive chores” that require mere muscle. Nevertheless, women “are becoming increasingly—not less—concentrated on the bottom of the job ladder.” The result is that “full-time women workers today earn on the average only 60% of what men earn”—a figure used to justify the earlier Equal Pay Act. A similar situation, it is said, prevails in education and professions such as the law. The status of women is described as similar to that of African Americans—and indeed African American women at the time faced discrimination from two directions.

The Statement of Purpose calls on “American government and industry to mobilize the same resources of ingenuity and command with which they have solved problems of far greater difficulty than those now impeding the progress of women.” NOW did not accept the view that women should be required to leave the labor force to care for children and then reenter the labor force at a lower level. NOW's Statement of Purpose calls for “every girl to be educated to her full potential of human ability” and rejects the belief that men are to be solely responsible for the economic welfare of the family. Emphasis is placed on achieving political rights and on overcoming the damaging images of women perpetrated in the mass media. The document concludes with an appeal to men as well as women: “We believe that women will do most to create a new image of women by acting now, and by speaking out in behalf of their own equality, freedom, and human dignity—not in pleas for special privilege, nor in enmity toward men, who are also victims of the current, half-equality between the sexes—but in an active, self-respecting partnership with men.”