President's Commission on the Status of Women

December 14, 1961 - October, 1963

Also Known As: Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, PCSW

While similar institutions with the name "President's Commission on the Status of Women" have been formed by various universities and other institutions, the key organization by that name was established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to explore issues relating to women and to make proposals in such areas as employment policy, education, and federal Social Security and tax laws relaing to women.

Interest in women's rights and how to most effectively protect such rights was a matter of growing national interest. There were more than 400 pieces of legislation in Congress which addressed women's status and issues of discrimination and expanding rights. Court decisions at the time addressed reproductive liberty (the use of contraceptives, for instance) and citizenship (whether women served on juries, for example).

Those who supported protective legislation for women workers believed that it made it more feasible for women to work. Women, even if they worked a full-time job, were the primary childrearing and housekeeping parent after a day at work. The supporters of protective legislation also believed that it was in society's interest to protect women's health including women's reproductive health by restricting hours and some conditions of work, requiring additional bathroom facilities, etc.

Those who supported the Equal Rights Amendment (first introduced in Congress soon after women won the right to vote in 1920) believed with the restrictions and special privileges of women workers under protective legislation, employers were motivated to higher fewer women or even avoid hiring women altogether.

Kennedy established the Commission on the Status of Women in order to navigate between these two positions, trying to find compromises that advanced the equality of women's workplace opportunity without losing the support of organized labor and those feminists who supported protecting women workers from exploitation and protecting women's ability to serve in traditional roles in the home and family.

Kennedy also saw a need to open the workplace to more women, in order to have the United States become more competitive with Russia, in the space race, in the arms race -- in general, to serve the interests of the "Free World" in the Cold War.