Friday, January 28, 2000

WILMINGTON, NC-- Bra-burning, NOW, and Betty Friedan. All are synonymous with the Women's Liberation Movement. But do the American people really know how important the movement was to the everyday opportunities and freedoms that women have today? In a significant new book, Dr. Kathleen C. Berkeley, a UNC Wilmington history professor, traces the events and pioneers of this movement in her book The Women's Liberation Movement in America. The book was published by Greenwood Press as part of the Historic Events of the Twentieth Century Series.

Dr. Berkeley is among a handful of scholars to supplement the complicated story of the Women's Liberation Movement with a chronology of the movement's important events, people, and documents. "Kathleen Berkeley took on one of the most difficult assignments modern American historians have tackled, to provide a concise, coherent, and convincing account of the modern women's rights movement(s)," says Randall Miller, series editor and history professor at St. Joseph's University.

This book is not just for feminists or liberated women; it is for everyone because it serves as a record of events that occurred and are continuing to occur in America. "It seems so far away this 'thing' that happened in the 60's and 70's," said Berkeley, "and yet so much of who women are and why women are where they are comes out of the Women's Movement." Before the movement, women were denied equal access to colleges, universities, and professional schools such as law and medicine. They were unable to compete equally in sports at the high school and collegiate level, and they had no legal standing to sue for discrimination (including sexual harassment) in the work place, Berkeley noted. Before the movement, rape was a difficult crime to prosecute. Instead of viewing rape as a crime of sexual violence, women were blamed for instigating the rape by engaging in such "risky behavior" as dressing provocatively. Thus, Berkeley hopes her book will open the eyes of college students so they will see the importance of the Women's Liberation Movement.

The book opens with a Chronology of Events beginning with the Seneca Falls, N.Y., Women's Rights Convention in 1848, to the formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, to the acquittal of President Clinton on charges brought out by his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. Also included in the Chronology of Events are various Supreme Court cases involving Women's Rights and several congressional acts that were proposed during the liberation movement. Following this calendar of events are six chapters explaining different aspects of the movement, the backlash against the movement, and where the movement stands today. Dr. Berkeley would like the reader to understand that "there has been a backlash against feminists and feminism. Just because we have something (freedoms and opportunities) that doesn't mean it couldn't go back to the way it was before the movement."

Two of the more interesting sections in the book contain biographies of women who shaped the movement and primary documents of the movement. The biographies of influential women include Shirley Chisholm (born as Anita St. Hill), Mary Daly, Betty Friedan, Phyllis Schlafly, and Gloria Steinem. The documents in this section contain NOW's statement of purpose, the Equal Rights Amendment, the Roe v. Wade decision, and a portion of The Feminine Mystique.

In 1981, Dr. Berkeley came to UNCW to be a history professor after spending 10 years at UCLA completing her bachelor's degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. UNC Wilmington provided Dr. Berkeley with financial support for her book in the form of a Summer Initiatives grant for June 1996 and a research reassignment for the Fall 1996 semester. Dr. Berkeley was also awarded the History Department's Thomas V. Moseley Award, which was used for the production of the photographic essay.

Dr. Berkeley has written numerous articles including the 1986 History of Education Society's prize-winning selection "The Ladies Want to Bring About Reform in the Public Schools: Public Education and Women's Rights in the Post-Civil War South." She is currently working on a biography of Charlotte Hawkins Brown, an African-American educator and race leader from North Carolina.

For more information contact Dr. Kathleen Berkeley at 910-962-3308. Review copies of her book, The Women's Liberation Movement in America, are available from Greenwood Press by calling 203-226-3571 ext. 382 or by e-mail at reviews@greenwood.com.