The final report of the President's Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) was published in October 1963. It proposed a number of legislative initiatives, but did not even mention the Equal Rights Amendment.
This report, called the Peterson Report, documented workplace discrimination, and recommended affordable child care, equal employment opportunity for women, and paid maternity leave.
The public notice given to the report led to considerably more national attention to issues of women's equality, especially in the workplace. Esther Peterson, who headed the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau, spoke about the findings in public forums including The Today Show. Many newspapers ran a series of four articles from the Associated Press about the commission's findings of discrimination and its recommendations.
As a result, many states and localities also established Commissions on the Status of Women to propose legislative changes, and many universities and other organizations also created such commissions.
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 grew out of the recommendations of the President's Commission on the Status of Women.
The Commission dissolved after creating its report, but the Citizens Advisory Council on the Status of Women was created to succeed the Commission. This brought together many with a continuing interest in various aspects of women's rights.
Women from both sides of the protective legislation issue looked for ways in which both sides' concerns could be addressed legislatively. More women within the labor movement began to look at how protective legislation might work to discriminate against women, and more feminists outside the movement began to take more seriously the concerns of organized labor in protecting women's and men's family participation.
Frustration with progress towards the goals and recommendations of the President's Commission on the Status of Women helped fuel the development of the women's movement in the 1960s. When the National Organization for Women was founded, key founders had been involved with the President's Commission on the Status of Women or its successor, the Citizens Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
