1.12: Gender Timeline

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Suzanne Valentine-French and Martha Lally
College of Lake County

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Important Societal, Legislative and Judicial Gender-related Events in the U.S.

1920 — 19th Amendment (women’s Suffrage Ratified)

1941-1945 — World War II forces millions of women to enter the workforce

1948 — Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1963 — Congress passes Equal Pay Act

1964 — Congress passes Civil Rights Act, which outlaws sex discrimination

1969 — Stonewall riots in NYC, forcing gay rights into the American spotlight

1972 –Congress passes Equal Rights Amendment; Title IX prohibits sex discrimination is schools and sports

1973 — American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from the DSM

1981 — First woman appointed to the US Supreme Court

1987 — Average woman earned $0.68 for every $1.00 earned by a man

1992 — World Health Organization no longer considers homosexuality an illness

1993 — Supreme Court rules that sexual harassment in the workplace is illegal

2011 — Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is repealed, allowing people who identify as gay serve openly in the US military

2012 — President Barak Obama becomes the first American president to openly support LGBT rights and marriage equality

2015 — Supreme Court in the Obergefell v. Hodges case struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalizing it in all fifty states, and requiring states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses

2022 — Supreme Court in the Dobbs v. Jackson case struck down Row v. Wade allowing individual States to determine abortion access

Adapted from (Kang et al. 2017).