Full Citation

Title: Rights by Fortune or Fight? Re-examining the Addition of Sex to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2017

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: It is widely believed that the addition of sex to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was a joke, and the ultimate extension of protection against employment discrimination to women a fluke. According to conventional lore, southern Democrats, desperate to maintain the region’s racial hierarchy, pushed the sex clause to demonstrate the absurdity (as they saw it) of nondiscrimination efforts and sap political support for the Civil Rights Act. This paper challenges this received wisdom. My analysis shows that attention to women’s rights issues had been rising in the years leading up to 1964. And while the coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats in support of the sex amendment might seem odd from a contemporary perspective, it was not unusual by contemporaneous standards—it was consistent with broader patterns of support for extensions of women’s rights in the early to mid twentieth century. This elite pattern reflected similar trends in the electorate. Taken together, these findings suggest there was political will to pass the sex amendment to Title VII, undermining the conventional wisdom on this subject.

Url: http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/news/pdf/CongressHistory-TitleVII_Krimmel.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Krimmel, Katherine

Publisher: Columbia University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Gender

Countries: