Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los AngelesMain MenuResearch of the DecadesResearch1960s Illustration DevelopmentIllustration DevelopmentPlaylists of the DecadesPlaylistssparcinla.org185fc5b2219f38c7b63f42d87efaf997127ba4fcGreat Wall Institute - Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC)
1967 President Johnson amended Executive Order 11246, which dealt with affirmative action, to include sex discrimination on the list of prohibited employment discrimination.
1media/berkeley-students-protest-repeal-of-affirmative-action-534277344-58d5c99a3df78c5162e95ba4_thumb.jpeg2022-07-29T21:00:57+00:00Gina Leonf0ac362b4453e23ee8a94b1a49fbeeafde2a0a4912The Origin of Affirmative Action Programs Former U.S. President John F. Kennedy used the phrase “affirmative action” in 1961. In an executive order, President Kennedy required federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed…without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued an order that used the same language to call for nondiscrimination in government employment. FEATURED VIDEO Hate Your Job? 5 Problems That Are in Every Workplace It was not until 1967 that President Johnson addressed sex discrimination. He issued another executive order on October 13, 1967. It expanded his previous order and required the government’s equal opportunity programs to “expressly embrace discrimination on account of sex” as they worked toward equality. The Need for Affirmative Action The legislation of the 1960s was part of a larger climate of seeking equality and justice for all members of society. Segregation had been legal for decades after the end of enslavement. President Johnson argued for affirmative action: if two men were running a race, he said, but one had his legs bound together in shackles, they could not achieve a fair result by simply removing the shackles. Instead, the man who had been in chains should be allowed to make up the missing yards from the time he was bound. If striking down segregation laws could not instantly solve the problem, then positive steps of affirmative action could be used to achieve what President Johnson called “equality of result.” Some opponents of affirmative action saw it as a “quota” system that unfairly demanded a certain number of minority candidates be hired no matter how qualified the competing White male candidate was. Affirmative action brought up different issues concerning women in the workplace. There was little protest of women in traditional “women’s jobs”—secretaries, nurses, elementary school teachers, etc. As more women began to work in jobs that had not been traditional women’s jobs, there was an outcry that giving a job to a woman over a qualified male candidate would be “taking” the job from the man. The men needed the job, was the argument, but the women did not need to work. In her 1979 essay “The Importance of Work,” Gloria Steinem rejected the notion that women should not work if they do not “have to." She pointed out the double standard that employers never ask men with children at home if they need the job for which they are applying. She also argued that many women do, in fact, “need” their jobs. Work is a human right, not a male right, she wrote, and she criticized the false argument that independence for women is a luxury.plain2023-08-24T01:18:00+00:00October 13, 1967Gina Leonf0ac362b4453e23ee8a94b1a49fbeeafde2a0a49
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12023-03-06T21:49:37+00:00Gina Leonf0ac362b4453e23ee8a94b1a49fbeeafde2a0a49Women's LiberationGina Leon2Photographic Research and Illustrationsgallery2023-03-24T00:30:48+00:00Gina Leonf0ac362b4453e23ee8a94b1a49fbeeafde2a0a49