UNNATURAL EQUALITY

of long-term use of the Pill, which acts to prevent ovulation, are now a matter of public record. The changed hormonal balance caused by the Pill is blamed for headaches and weight gain in some women. British and other medical studies have found a connection between the Pill and the formation of blood clots that can cause strokes as well as an increased susceptibility to various forms of uterine cancer. Successive generations of female contraceptives — oral, sub-dermal and all the rest — have become even more potent and questionable in their long-term effect. It should not be surprising to find that as of the 1970s female suicide was on the rise in the United States. Though it has always been the case that more men than women kill themselves, trends had begun to change in certain large cities. In Los Angeles, for example, whereas in 1960 of those who committed suicide 35 percent were women, by 1970 the percentage of women among suicides had jumped to 45 percent.8 Another indication that women had begun to experience more conflict came from a University of Wisconsin study during the same period, which found that women psychiatric patients complained of more anxiety, depression, alienation and inability to cope with stress than did their counterparts of ten years earlier.9 THE “WOMEN’S LIB” MOVEMENT “Women’s liberation” began formally with the founding in 1966 of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest and most influential movement group. In 1985 NOW had a nationwide membership in the United States of some 185,000 women and men. NOW was conceived as a civil rights lobby for women, active in organizing support for enactment and enforcement of law prohibiting discrimination against women in employment, education and so forth. NOW has also led numerous campaigns in the Congress and in the courts on issues ranging from childcare to abortion reform. The National Women’s Political Caucus is another mass-based organization, with a membership of 77,000 in 1985, and a commitment to get women involved full time in politics. “Women! Make policy, not coffee!” is the organization’s motto.1O The Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, formed in 1977 and opened to male congressmen and senators in 1981, supports federal policy initiatives to improve the status of women and families. There are in addition a myriad old and new women’s groups and organizations concerned with specific issues such as education, abortion or pension rights. This current of the “new feminism,” led predominantly by professional women and women in the labor movement, was joined by another current of younger women who were active in the civil rights and student protest movements, including the anti-Vietnam War and youth “counter-culture” movements, of the 1960s and 1970s. The latter group’s focus was less on legal or policy changes affecting women than on a frontal challenge to cultural definitions of maleness and femaleness.11 As a result of its varied composition, the women’s liberation movement’s goals range from