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Rosemary Jacqueline Dempsey |
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Rosemary Dempsey, a noted American activist, has served many roles in second wave feminism, civil rights movements, and anti-war protests. Her most notable positions were Vice President for Action of the National Organization for Women starting in 1990 and Director for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. [1] [2]
Dempsey earned her B.A in sociology from the College of New Rochelle in 1967, [3] which was a private, all women's Catholic college. It is known as the first Catholic women's college in New York State when it was founded in 1904. In the Fall of 2016, the College of New Rochelle admitted men for the first time. [4] Later she earned her Juris Doctor from Rutgers University Law School. [5] As a young student, she began her activist career speaking out during the civil rights movement in the 1960s and participating in anti-war protests. [6]
Dempsey studied law and worked in the criminal justice system. She practiced law for 12 years in New Jersey, where she founded the feminist law firm McGahen, Dempsey and Case. [1] [5] She became interested in the women's movement in the 1960s because it affected her and every other woman. She came across NOW in 1970 and has played an active role in the organization since. She played a vital role in the chartering of the New Jersey Chapter of NOW in 1973 where she served as their first president. [7] She says, "[NOW] came along at a time in my life when I had little children, and I needed to connect with some meaningful movement." [1]
NOW was founded in June 1966. It started as 28 women who attended the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in DC. Today, NOW is the largest women's rights organization in the U.S. NOW has worked toward women's equality and dignity. To do so, they have gone up against issues such as discrimination in education, credit, and employment. NOW also works to help the reputation of women who choose to stay at home, and have helped to elevate their voices. NOW has also fought for the rights of women in marriage and divorce. [6]
Dempsey was vice president of the organization during a tumultuous time for women's rights, and was at the forefront of many key feminists movements.
During her time with NOW, she travelled around the country on a speaking tour to talk about feminist issues. Some colleges on this tour included Penn State, Franklin and Marshall College, the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, and Carnegie Mellon University. A main topic during this tour was the wage gap for women. [1] [8] At this time women were making 58% of what men made, so it was at the forefront of NOW's work.
Dempsey was also Vice President of NOW when Justice Clarence Thomas was nominated as a Supreme Court Justice. She was quoted saying that Thomas' hearing was a "collective click" for women all over the nation. [9]
Dempsey helped plan the "We Won't Go Back!" March for Women's Lives in Washington DC that took place on April 5, 1992. This march was sponsored by NOW, and advocated for abortion rights in America. [10] This walk had over half a million attendees, and was organized to impress lawmakers and the public during a time when the Supreme Court was hearing a case that had the ability to severely limit women's rights. [11] The New York Times wrote an article that day outlining the dangers of the Supreme Court Case.
On April 22, the High Court will hear arguments on a Pennsylvania law that seeks to limit access to abortion through a variety of regulations, including a 24-hour waiting period and a requirement that women seeking abortions notify their husbands. Many people on both sides see that case as a potential vehicle for overturning Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, some states have adopted even stricter limits. [11]
The Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Robert P. Casey was a landmark case that reaffirmed Roe v. Wade to secure abortion rights to women. This case sparked the March on Washington, and attracted many women, including celebrities and students from around the nation. A similar march took place in Los Angeles a week later. [12]
In 1991, there were roughly 1 million incidents reported of domestic violence towards women, and another 3 million incidents were predicted as unreported. Domestic violence had become so common in society at the time that it had been named the top health risk against women. [13] She was a founding member of "New Jersey Women Take Back the Night," an organization that helped to generate public awareness for violence against women. This group also lobbied legislators to gain support for the movement to stop violence against women, and create laws to protect women. This was the start to the idea of the Violence Against Women Act. [13] She has also supported women who have faced domestic violence through her work to create a battered women's shelter in New Jersey called Womanspace. [5]
Being an openly gay women, she also advocated for gay rights. During this time, gay couples were not able to have the same rights and privileges as heterosexual married couples. This meant they were barred from the hospital rooms where their partners were being treated, or they were thrown out of their houses after their partners' death. They did not have the same protections as their heterosexual counterparts. Dempsey was a lawyer in many cases revolving around these issues, and fought for equal rights for gay people. [14] She also chaired a coalition to pass lesbian and gay rights legislation in New Jersey. [5]
Dempsey traveled to Tokyo in 1996 to raise awareness about a sexual harassment issue between Mitsubishi and hundreds of women that were employed by them. Dempsey was doing a lot of talking during her trip with many officials from Tokyo including Mitsubishi Motors representatives. With her help and others, the EEOC, sued Mitsubishi which eventually agreed to pay $34 million in a settlement. [15]
Dempsey was born in Connecticut in 1946, and earned her bachelor's degree in New York before moving to New Jersey for law school. She did most of her activist work out of New Jersey, and raised her two children there as well who were born in 1969 and 1970.
She gained national media attention after gaining full custody of her two children even though she was openly gay in 1979. [16] This made it easier for future homosexual couples looking to gain legal custody of their children. She and her long-time partner, Kim Costanza, owned a gay restaurant, bar and guest house in Pass-A-Grille, Florida that has since been closed. [17] [5]
Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America and commonly known as simply NARAL, is a non-profit 501(c)(4) organization in the United States that engages in lobbying, political action, and advocacy efforts to oppose restrictions on abortion, to expand access to legal abortion and birth control, and to support paid parental leave and protection against pregnancy discrimination.
Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, but began in the late 1960s and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, sexism within the gay liberation movement, and homophobia within popular women's movements at the time. Many of the supporters of Lesbianism were actually women involved in gay liberation who were tired of the sexism and centering of gay men within the community and lesbian women in the mainstream women's movement who were tired of the homophobia involved in it.
Feminists for Life of America (FFL) is a non-profit, anti-abortion feminist, non-governmental organization (NGO). Established in 1972, and now based in Alexandria, Virginia, the organization publishes a biannual magazine, The American Feminist, and aims to reach young women, college students in particular.
Bill Baird is a reproductive rights pioneer, called by some media the "father" of the birth control and abortion-rights movement. He was jailed eight times in five states in the 1960s for lecturing on abortion and birth control. Baird is believed to be the first and only non-lawyer in American history with three Supreme Court victories.
Eleanor Marie Smeal is an American women's rights activist. She is the president and a cofounder of the Feminist Majority Foundation and has served as president of the National Organization for Women for three terms, in addition to her work as an activist, grassroots organizer, lobbyist, and political analyst.
Phyllis Chesler is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). She is a renowned second-wave feminist psychologist and the author of 18 books, including the best-sellers Women and Madness (1972), With Child: A Diary of Motherhood (1979), and An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir (2013). Chesler has written extensively about topics such as gender, mental illness, divorce and child custody, surrogacy, second-wave feminism, pornography, prostitution, incest, and violence against women.
Florynce Rae Kennedy was an American lawyer, radical feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer, and activist.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It is the largest feminist organization in the United States with around 500,000 members. NOW is regarded as one of the main liberal feminist organizations in the US, and primarily lobbies for gender equality within the existing political system. NOW campaigns for constitutional equality, economic justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and racial justice, and against violence against women.
During the 1960s, the United States underwent a sexual revolution. The revolution was a social and cultural movement that resulted in liberalized attitudes toward sex and morality. Social norms were changing as sex became more widely discussed in society. Erotic media, such as films, magazines, and books, became more popular and gained widespread attention nationally. Sex was entering the public domain.
Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 years. They are found in a dozen solo works: nine books of non-fiction, two novels, and a collection of short stories. Another three volumes were co-written or co-edited with US constitutional law professor and feminist activist Catharine A. MacKinnon.
Terry O'Neill is an American feminist, civil rights attorney, and professor. She was the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 2009 to 2017, as well as president of the NOW Foundation and chair of the NOW Political Action Committees.
The feminist movement in Norway has made significant progress in reforming laws and social customs in the nation, advancing the rights of the women of Norway.
Rosalie Abrams was an American feminist playwright, actress and activist. She founded the Orange County Feminist Repertory Theater and the first chapter of the National Organization for Women in Orange County, California.
Feminist views on sexuality widely vary. Many feminists, particularly radical feminists, are highly critical of what they see as sexual objectification and sexual exploitation in the media and society. Radical feminists are often opposed to the sex industry, including opposition to prostitution and pornography. Other feminists define themselves as sex-positive feminists and believe that a wide variety of expressions of female sexuality can be empowering to women when they are freely chosen. Some feminists support efforts to reform the sex industry to become less sexist, such as the feminist pornography movement.
Feminism in Mexico is the philosophy and activity aimed at creating, defining, and protecting political, economic, cultural, and social equality in women's rights and opportunities for Mexican women. Rooted in liberal thought, the term feminism came into use in late nineteenth-century Mexico and in common parlance among elites in the early twentieth century. The history of feminism in Mexico can be divided chronologically into a number of periods with issues. For the conquest and colonial eras, some figures have been re-evaluated in the modern era and can be considered part of the history of feminism in Mexico. At the time of independence in the early nineteenth century, there were demands that women be defined as citizens. The late nineteenth century saw the explicit development of feminism as an ideology. Liberalism advocated secular education for both girls and boys as part of a modernizing project, and women entered the workforce as teachers. Those women were at the forefront of feminism, forming groups that critiqued existing treatment of women in the realms of legal status, access to education, and economic and political power. More scholarly attention is focused on the Revolutionary period (1915–1925), although women's citizenship and legal equality were not explicitly issues for which the revolution was fought. The Second Wave and the post-1990 period have also received considerable scholarly attention. Feminism has advocated for the equality of men and women, but middle-class women took the lead in the formation of feminist groups, the founding of journals to disseminate feminist thought, and other forms of activism. Working-class women in the modern era could advocate within their unions or political parties. The participants in the Mexico 68 clashes who went on to form that generation's feminist movement were predominantly students and educators. The advisers who established themselves within the unions after the 1985 earthquakes were educated women who understood the legal and political aspects of organized labor. What they realized was that to form a sustained movement and attract working-class women to what was a largely middle-class movement, they needed to utilize workers' expertise and knowledge of their jobs to meld a practical, working system. In the 1990s, women's rights in indigenous communities became an issue, particularly in the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Reproductive rights remain an ongoing issue, particularly since 1991, when the Catholic Church in Mexico was no longer constitutionally restricted from being involved in politics.
Feminism in South Korea is the origin and history of feminism or women's rights in South Korea.
Latin American feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and achieving equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for Latin American women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. People who practice feminism by advocating or supporting the rights and equality of women are feminists.
Lois Galgay Reckitt was an American feminist and activist. Called "one of the most prominent advocates in Maine for abused women", she served as executive director of Family Crisis Services in Portland, Maine, for more than three decades.
Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa is an American anti-abortion activist. She is the founder of the anti-abortion organization New Wave Feminists. She is also a frequent op-ed contributor for The Dallas Morning News.
Carrie N. Baker is an American lawyer, Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies, and Chair of the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She teaches courses on gender, law, public policy, and feminist activism and is affiliated with the American Studies program, the archives concentration, and the public policy minor. She co-founded and is a former co-director of the certificate in Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Program offered by the Five College Consortium.
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