The erasure of women’s history makes it seem as if the rights we have today appeared by magic. Or, perhaps more accurately, as if a benevolent state bestowed them. This is decidedly not the case.
We would hardly know that a generation of women stood up, collectively and en masse, to win the rights we take to be self-evident today. In school, we are not taught their history alongside that of America’s War of Independence or even the Civil Rights Movement. Nor are there a bevy of popular books dedicated to the subject. But their founding concept - that women are full and equal citizens - was and is no less revolutionary.
This gross omission from the historical record does more than discount the persistence and fortitude of a generation of women. It redacts the reality that so many of the rights we enjoy today were recently won and, for this reason, are in danger of being swept away.
It is not just the right to an abortion - which has been stripped from 25 million American women. It is the right to equal pay (1963), birth control (1972), an independent bank account (1974), equal education (1974), not be discriminated against on the basis of pregnancy (1978), and on and on.
The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973, by Clara Bingham, is (shockingly) the first comprehensive chronicle of the era that catalyzed a historically unprecedented evolution in Women’s Rights. From the right to choose to the right to run in a marathon, the book covers the revolutionary women who unwaveringly demanded equality in every facet of political and civic life.
And - extraordinarily - it does so in their own words.
Rather than a traditional history, Bingham conducted dozens of interviews with the women who lived through this era, participating firsthand in the protests, events, meetings, and movements that managed to turn the wheel of progress faster than ever before in human history. She also dove deep into existing oral histories and memoirs to find stories that have been buried for far too long.
The result is a rich tapestry of voices telling the story of this transformative period from a diversity of viewpoints and tones, experiences and rhythms that together form a chorus of social change.
We hear from Pauli Murray, pioneering Civil Rights and feminist lawyer whose legal arguments created a foundation for gender equality laws; whose idea it was to found the National Organization of Women, an extragovernmental non-profit dedicated to forwarding the rights of women, and whose under whose tutelage soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg studied.
So to do so, we hear from journalist Vivian Gornick, whose vivid recollection of her illegal abortion - and that of her mother are a chilling reminder of what women once faced to receive reproductive care and now confront again. Public relations autor Muriel Fox recalls the founding of NOW while reproductive rights activist Faye Wattleton details the fight to gain access to birth control. Bobbi Gibb and Billy Jean King remind us of what it was like before women were allowed to play, you know, sports. And Shirley Chisholm illuminates the double-edged sword of sexism and racism that she faced the moment she dared to run for Congress - let alone the White House.
Composed of these history-making voices and many more, The Movement is a breathtaking work and a monument to the ongoing struggle for women’s rights. It is also a beautiful read, as well as a gorgeous listen read by more than a dozen of some of today’s most celebrated narrators.
I hope you enjoy today’s conversation with author Clara Bingham about her incredible book and its relevance to today’s Female Body Politic.
