In Their Own Voices: Women Redefine and Frame Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Abstract

This article investigates how women-run newspapers and newsletters covered the sex amendment of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The study utilizes framing analysis to examine the editorial content of feminist publications from 1968, when the EEOC adopted regulations designed to implement the sex amendment of Title VII, until 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down First Amendment rights for commercial speech, which forced the restructuring of help-wanted classified advertising in daily newspapers. This time period also covers the beginnings of feminist journalism of the second wave of the women's movement. The study looks at two types of periodicals: NOW newsletters and news service and publications of the radical wing of the women's movement. This analysis reveals that NOW newsletters and news service framed the sex amendment of Title VII as a matter of justice and equality and, in the process, linked the matter to the broader civil rights movement through the rhetorical devices used. This article outlines the deep divisions within the women's movement of the time. The publications of the radical feminists covered the story but ignored NOW, its members and its activities, thus symbolically annihilating the organization and its involvement in the fight for implementing the sex amendment. Other radical publications concentrated on editorially disavowing NOW and its limited focus. Only the readers themselves—through letters to the editor—brought up the news of the sex amendment of Title VII.