20 Pictures That Show Just How Powerful The Women's Liberation Movement Was

Women’s liberation rally in New York City on Aug. 26, 1971.

At the Southern Conference Educational Fund office in New York City, members of the New York Radical Women group attend a meeting to plan a protest at the Miss America beauty pageant, 1968.

A woman speaks at a reproductive rights demonstration in Pittsburgh, 1974.

Young men and women at a reproductive rights demonstration in Pittsburgh, 1974.

Patricia Burnett, Detroit’s chapter president of the National Organization for Women, shows off large signs bearing the group’s message in 1970.

Left: Activist alumnae meet female graduates of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, on Sept. 9, 1972. Right: Women demonstrate at the Statue of Liberty in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment on Aug. 10, 1970.

A group of women march under a “Women’s Liberation” banner in New Haven, Connecticut, 1969.

Left: A reproductive rights march in Pittsburgh, 1974. Right: A woman dressed in a space suit marches in a women’s liberation demonstration in New York City, Aug. 26, 1971.

A woman marches with a sign that reads “I Enjoy Being a Dyke” during an LGBT parade through New York City, 1971.

Left: A demonstration for reproductive rights in Pittsburgh, 1974. Right: A feminist demonstration in New York on Aug. 26, 1970.

Opposing views on abortion during a demonstration in Pittsburgh, 1974.

Activists hold a protest banner during a Legalize Abortion demonstration in New York City, 1968.

Police attempt to cut away the chains of protesters at an unidentified location, 1975.

Feminist Gloria Steinem advocates for women’s rights at the Democratic National Convention on Jan. 1, 1972.

Forty-six female employees Newsweek magazine conduct a press conference to announce they are suing the magazine on March 16, 1970. Charging discrimination in jobs and hiring, they said they are “forced to assume a subsidiary role simply because of their sex.” Seated, from left: employees Patricia Lynden, Mary Pleshette, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and ACLU legal director Lucy Howard.

Coretta Scott King talks in Houston of the resolution on minority women’s rights that won the support of the National Women’s Conference in 1977. The resolution declared that minority women suffered discrimination based on both race and sex.

Mrs. Estelle Griswold, left, medical adviser and executive director of the Planned Parenthood Clinic in New Haven, Connecticut, and Mrs. Ernest Jahncke, president of Parenthood League of Connecticut, flash a victory sign as a result of the court’s decision that the birth control law is unconstitutional.

Women participate in a reproductive rights protest in Pittsburgh, 1974.