March is Women’s History Month and women throughout the Commonwealth are celebrating, including the West Kentucky Chapter of the National Organization for Women.
In 2026, NOW is commemorating 60 years of working for women. West Kentucky NOW President and Murray State Associate Professor of History Dr. Christine Lindner joined WKMS Station Manager Asia Burnett to share a little more of the organization’s history and what they see for the future.
Why did NOW start?
The National Organization for Women was founded two years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act – which in part prohibited discrimination based on sex with regard to employment. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was formed in 1965 to implement this portion of the law.
Lindner said in 1966, a group of equal opportunity advocates were invited to attend a national conference on the status of women. Many delegates at this conference criticized the EEOC for allowing sex segregation in job advertisements to continue – and wanted to pass a resolution demanding the commission carry out the job it was created to do: end sex discrimination in employment. While the women were invited to attend, they were told that they could not participate with any level of authority or pass a resolution outlawing sex discrimination in employment.
In response, 28 women got together to create NOW to address the legal discrimination against women in the United States.
Over the years, NOW has identified 6 core issues it focuses on:
- Reproductive justice
- Economic justice
- Ending violence against women
- Racial justice
- LGBTQ rights
- Constitutional Equality
Lindner said most people may know NOW from its work on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would have added protections against sexual discrimination for women to the Constitution. However, the amendment fell three state ratifications shy of meeting the Constitutional requirement by Congress' 1982 deadline.
What about for the people who say women already have equal rights?
Sixty years in, a lot has changed in the country for women. But in an atmosphere of polarization, Lindner said there is still work to do on multiple fronts,
“One of the conversations… is the debate of whether we should advocate for legal rights or societal rights and societal norms," she said. "We believe that you need to fight for both."
The Campus Action Network & Feminist Forward
There’s a new generation of feminists also taking the reins this year. Presley Billingsley, president of the Campus Action Network (CAN) chapter of NOW established last fall at Murray State University, shared a social media campaign that CAN is putting out this March: Feminist Forward: the figures you should have been taught.
Presley has been soliciting the campus community for examples of feminist figures they wish they could have learned about when they were younger. Examples so far have included suffragist Mary Burnett Talbert and regent leader in Ancient Egypt, Hatshepsut.
Presley said she hopes the project shows that there are many ways to be a feminist.
“I think figures like that highlight that feminism isn’t always like wearing that on your clothes or outwardly speaking that, it’s just identifying with yourself authentically and fighting for others, even it’s just you as your own figure, standing up for yourself.”
Lindner agreed, and talked about one of the most important aspects of feminism in her mind: joy.
“One of things I really love about this project….We spend so much of our time fighting for rights and having these hard conversations about ‘what does it mean?' But we also make sure that we celebrate joy. We celebrate women in the past, we celebrate women in the present, and hopefully, in the future. And being able to keep that joy, keeping those role models, keeping who we want to see in our future and kind of encourage our young women and our young kids to become. That’s also a really important part of activism. That’s a really central part of feminism to make sure that we keep feminism and joy together, with the activism and fighting for our rights.”
"That’s a really central part of feminism to make sure that we keep feminism and joy together, with the activism and fighting for our rights.”
International Women’s Day
NOW is working for legal rights within the United States, but Lindner said a lot of the women who founded it did, in fact, have international backgrounds.
“I think it’s really important to look at our sisters around global feminist movements and see how they’ve navigated – not just the discrimination societally, but legally and internationally. We need to show solidarity, even when that means that we need to take a tough stance. But making sure we’re doing this simultaneously while also advocating for our rights here – in Murray, in the Commonwealth, and nationally.”
West Kentucky NOW is hosting several events this month that are all free for the community. Donations of hygiene products and period products are being accepted at all of the events.
There's more information about West Kentucky NOW here.
