ON THIS DAY ·
Ford Dagenham women’s strike
Jun 1968 — After Ford grades their work as “unskilled”, 187 women sewing machinists at its Dagenham plant strike for three weeks. Car production stops. Barbara Castle brokers a deal, and her Equal Pay Act follows on 29 May 1970.
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The moment in context
Title VII’s prohibition of sex discrimination began with a contested political maneuver. On 8 February 1964 Howard Smith, a Virginia congressman opposed to the civil-rights bill, proposed adding “sex” to its forbidden grounds of employment discrimination. Smith had long supported the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed constitutional guarantee of equal rights regardless of sex, and historians still debate his motives. Martha Griffiths and other congresswomen seized the opportunity, and the amendment passed.
From Title VII and the founding of NOW, chapter 2 of Protest and Change: Second-Wave Feminism and Tunisia, 1945–2015 (1970).
The place: Ford Dagenham women’s strike — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — A civil-rights law with a sex clause. Once Title VII prohibited sex discrimination, a job advertisement marked “male” or a lower pay scale could be presented as evidence that the law was…
- The turn — The founding of NOW, 30 June 1966. Books and commissions had supplied ideas and contacts. NOW, founded on 30 June 1966, added a permanent national organization with a program,…
- What it changed — The EEOC is forced to act. NOW’s pressure and thousands of complaints helped push the EEOC to rule in 1968 that sex-segregated job advertisements were illegal. From 1969…
Then ask the room: Which did more to create change for American women in the 1960s: the law, or the movement that formed to enforce it? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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