Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Feminist Timeline: United States: 1980s

1980s: The Backlash Decade

This was the decade of the "power woman" with her shoulder pads and high ambitions. Television shows such as Murphy Brown, Who's The Boss, and Designing Women, and films such as 9 to 5 demonstrated women's entry into the mainstream workforce, her economic independence, and ambition, but also her intolerance for sexism.

Worldwide elections also showed women's increased rise to power. In the U.S., Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court and Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman vice-presidential nominee. Internationally, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was elected first female president of Iceland; Corazon Aquino was inaugurated as the first woman president of the Philippines; and in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto became the first woman leader of an Islamic country.

A flow of feminist books flooded the bookstores throughout the 1980s, demonstrating women's interest in gender and race inequality, including Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale; bell hooks's Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism; This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa; and Alice Walker's The Color Purple, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.

The Economic Equity Act was passed, granting women more independence and freedom. Women began going to college in ever-increasing numbers, expanding their enrollment lead over men, according to a report by the Bureau of the Census. Yet, despite all this progress, women were far from equal. In 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated, and statistics published by NOW reflected American women earning $.59 for every $1 earned by American men.