How NOW has changed...

A short piece by Cathy Young on how the National Organization of Women has changed...

The feminists of 1966 were interested in justice for all, not simply more benefits for women. Among other things, they were highly critical of the notion that breadwinning should be the man's sole or primary burden and that a married woman should be automatically entitled to financial support from her husband during marriage or after divorce. In more recent times, however, NOW and its state chapters have tended in almost knee-jerk fashion to side with women in the debates over divorce, often advocating higher and more long-term spousal support.

While paying lip service to the idea of equal parenting, NOW has steadfastly opposed efforts to broaden the rights of divorced fathers. With the exception of a few chapters, it has staunchly opposed such proposals as joint custody and mediation instead of litigation. Ten years ago, NOW issued an "Action Alert against fathers' rights," which accused divorced men who seek a role in their children's lives of abusing power "in the same fashion as do batterers." The top resolution adopted at its 1999 national conference was another call to arms against the fathers' rights movement, asserting that "women lose custody of their children, despite being good mothers, despite a lack of involvement of the father with the children, and regardless of a history of being the primary caregiver." (This has undoubtedly happened in some cases, but to this day it is still far more frequently fathers who experience such injustice.)

NOW depicts the fathers' rights movement as driven by "patriarchal ideology." Yet some fathers' rights activists are themselves dedicated feminists—including Karen DeCrow, an attorney who was the president of NOW from 1974 to 1977.

NOW's failed commitment to true equality is evident in a number of other areas. Its 1966 statement of purpose rightly lamented the lack of equal educational opportunities for girls and young women, noting the declining proportion of young women in higher and professional education and the lack of attention given female high school dropouts. Today, it's mostly boys and young men who are on the short end of educational inequality—as high school and college dropouts and the "missing persons" on college campuses. Yet NOW has nothing to say on this issue.