Women's Movement

Bright yellow sticker with text in bold red lower case letters "this exploits women".

Another cause that Sheila fought for was women's rights.  She was an early participant in the women’s movement. In 1968, when the yet-unformed women's movement launched its first picket against the Miss America Pageant, she was in Istanbul. Returning to New York, she joined the first New York feminist group (later known as the New York Radical Feminists). She was a founding member of The Manhattan and NY State Women’s Political Caucuses.  She led organizing efforts and gave conferences on rape, abortion rights, alcoholism, and other causes important to women.  

  • Light yellow cover for Manhattan Women's Political Caucus brochure. Text in bold caps reads, "WHAT MORE DO WOMEN WANT?" Below that text quote from Rep. Bella Abzug reads, "We want what we still haven't got: full equality for women with men in social, legal, economic and political institutions. - Rep. Bella Abzug". Below that in bold caps text reads "HOW CAN WE GET IT?"<br /> Below that text quote from Rep. Shirley Chisholm reads, "The time for token and symbolic gesture is past. Women need to plunge into the world of politics and battle it out toe to toe..." The text below reads "Join the manhattan women's political caucus". There is a graphic with the symbol for women with an apple enclosed in the circle of the symbol.
  • Image: A large group of women are locked in arms and chanting in the streets of a large city<br /> WE’VE NEVER BURNT A BRA<br /> by SHEILA MICHAELS<br /> Sisterhood is the basis of the American Women’s Movement. It is women helping women, listening, finding trust and support from each other, talking openly about their own lives. Women are still, everywhere, the single poorest group in any society. Society rests on the unpaid and underpaid labour of women. When people see themselves whole, not as “the others”—not certainly as half of humanity—they resist their exploitation. We must succeed in no longer defining ourselves by the criteria men have set for us, because in fact men define themselves positively—in contrast to these very standards. We have stopped consenting to our own oppression. We have built and are building a changing vital, simple movement which cannot be stopped. We have done it all ourselves as we have learned to share our strength.<br /> I was surprised to find what Indians have heard about America and the Women’s Movement. I’m told that “Americans are suffering a total breakdown of their personalities and society, chaos, sexual license, bursting mental hospitals, violence and divorce.” Surely it must be raining fire back home. I am told the Women’s Movement wants to destroy all beauty and is destroying the authority of family (Who is the family? Are men the family?), causing social dislocation in the West and neglecting the care of <br /> 16 Youth Times March 7, 1975
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Activism
Women's Movement