If you were to ask almost any woman in the United States who the best looking president was chances are she would say John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy has long been revered by women as easy on the eyes, but during his presidency he was not so revered by the ladies on women’s issues. In response to this criticism, J.F.K. organized in 1961 the Commission on the Status of Women. The idea for this commission came from the suggestion of Esther Peterson, the director of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor. In 1963 the commission issued a report detailing employment discrimination, unequal pay, legal inequality, and insufficient support services for working women. This report led directly to the passage of the Equal Pay Act that same year. The Equal Pay Act made it illegal to pay different wages to men and women who performed
In the 1970’s the women’s movement had continued to zero in on the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA measure won congressional approval in 1972 as the 27th Amendment, but it had to be ratified by at least 38 states to become a law. Under the leadership of female politicians like U.S. representative Bella Abzug, of New York, and groups such as NOW the supporters of the ERA campaigned to gain passage of the amendment at the state level. Congress recognized the general support for the ERA and, in an unprecedented step, extended the seven-year deadline for ratification to ten years. Opponents of the ERA argued that a legal doctrine of equality threatened to erase the traditional differences between men and women and confuse the distinct roles that the sexes played in society. Phyllis Schlafly, the founder of STOP ERA, mai
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