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The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia 1998
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Epic Interactive Encyclopedia, The - 1998 Edition (1998)(Epic Marketing).iso
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Women's_movement
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1992-09-02
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The campaign for the rights of women,
including social, political, and economic
equality with men. Early European campaigners
of the 17th-19th centuries fought for women's
right to own property, to have access to
higher education, and to vote (see
suffragette). Once women's suffrage was
achieved in the 20th century, the emphasis of
the movement shifted to the goals of equal
social and economic opportunities for women,
including employment. A continuing area of
concern in industrialized countries is the
contradiction between the now generally
accepted principle of equality and the
demonstrable inequalities that remain between
the sexes in state policies and in everyday
life. Pioneer 19th-century feminists,
considered radical for their belief in the
equality of the sexes, include Mary
Wollstonecraft and Emmeline Pankhurst in the
UK, and Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton in the USA. The women's movement
gained worldwide impetus after World War II
with such theorists as Simone de Beauvoir,
Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Gloria Steinem,
and Germaine Greer, and the founding of the
National Organization of Women (NOW) in New
York 1966. From the late 1960s the radical
and militant wing of the movement argued that
women were oppressed by the male-dominated
social structure as a whole, which they saw
as pervaded by sexism, despite legal
concessions towards equality of the sexes. In
the USA the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, a government agency, was formed
in 1964 to end discrimination (including sex
discrimination) in hiring, but the Equal
Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed
constitutional amendment prohibiting sex
discrimination was passed by Congress in 1972
but failed to be ratified by the necessary
majority of 38 states. In the UK since 1975
discrimination against women in employment,
education, housing, and provision of goods,
facilities, and services to the public has
been illegal under the Sex Discrimination and
Equal Pay Acts. The economic value of women's
unpaid work has been estimated at 2 trillion
annually.