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□ California Elected Women's Association for Education and Research (CEWAER) forms model network for state women in political office.
□ National Organization for Women sponsors "Alice Doesn't! Strike Day"; but most women continue to work.
□ NOW lobbyist and board member Ann Scott dies of cancer.
□ Ms. and New York Philharmonic present a "Celebration of Women Composers" conducted by Sarah Caldwell.
□ National Socialist-Feminist Conference at Yellow Springs, Ohio.
□ Congress passes a bill requiring the service academies to admit women.
□ National Advertising Review Board issues position paper on "Advertising and Women," which points out that it is "a counterproductive business practice to try to sell a product to someone who feels insulted by the product's advertising."
□ Ten California Chicanas file a suit claiming they were involuntarily sterilized at a county medical center.
□ Signs, a feminist scholarly journal, starts publication.
□ The NOW Subcommittee on Toys denounces the Mattel toy company for "Growing Up Skipper," a doll that grows breasts when you twist her arm. (Mattel also produces Barbie dolls and war toys.)
□ Hannah Arendt, German-born U.S. political philosopher and author of The Human Condition, dies.
□ First national women's health conference, sponsored by Our Bodies, Ourselves Collective and 20 other women's health groups, held at Harvard Medical School.
□ Working Women United Institute formed to fight sexual harassment on the job.

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1976
□ International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women held in Brussels. Women's International Information and Communications Service (ISIS) begins publishing.
□ ERAmerica forms as coalition to mobilize support for ratification of the ERA.
□ National Women's Health network brings together health centers, self-help groups, consumers, and health professionals in the only consumer organization devoted to women and health.
□ Supreme Court requires federal agencies to end discrimination in the industries they regulate.
□ FDA requires uniform standards for the safety and effectiveness of intrauterine devices. 
□ General Convention of the Episcopal Church votes to ordain women, and recognize those already "illegally" ordained.
□ Amendments to the Education Act aimed at eliminating sex-stereotyping in vocational programs.
□ 1976-1985 declared UN Decade for Women, Equality, Development, and Peace.
□ Air Force agrees to train women pilots but not for combat.
□ Supreme Court rules that pregnant women cannot be denied unemployment benefits automatically in the weeks before and after childbirth.
□ Thirty-seven women's magazines concurrently run articles on the ERA.
□ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announces it will accept women for astronaut training; it had rejected qualified women in the past. The first women astronauts are selected n 1978.


used positively in, this decade. Homophobic was invented to describe irrational fear of any sexual expression between people of the same gender; a fear that had been so often accepted in the past that it rarely needed a name. Because some women's ability to be sexually independent of men was even more threatening to patriarchal values than male homosexuality, there was special emphasis on stating lesbianism, lesbian separatism, and lesbian mother right as positive choices.

When we entered the '70s, any sex outside marriage was often called the Sexual Revolution, a nonfeminist phrase of the '60s that simply meant women's increased availability on men's terms. By the end of the '70s, feminism had brought more understanding that real liberation meant choice; that sexuality was to be neither forbidden nor enforced. With that in mind, words like virgin, celibacy, autonomy, faithfulness, and commitment took on affirmative meaning. And such blameful words as frigid and nymphomaniac were being replaced in medical literature by nonjudgmental ones like preorgasmic and sexually active; thanks mostly to women's honesty and challenge to male authorities.

It still took some legal procedure and explaining, but many more women kept their birth names in the '70s (not maiden names, with all the sexual double standard that implies). Ms. entered common public usage and removed the necessity of identifying all females by the presence or absence of a man. A few women exchanged their patriarchal names for invented, matriarchal ones ("Mary Ruthchild"), or followed the Black Movement tradition of replacing former owners' names with place-names or letters (for instance, "Mary Indiana" or "Mary X"). Many tried to solve the dilemma of husbands' names with the reformist step of taking both ("Mary Smith Jones"), thus ending up with two last names while men still needed only one. Hardly anyone succeeded in interrupting the patriarchal flow of naming children, whether they were still given fathers' names only, or their mothers' names as the dispensable ones in the middle. It remains for the '80s to legalize the egalitarian choice of giving children both parents' names (thus eliminating not only inaccuracy but explanations like, "This is my daughter by my first marriage, and my son by my second"); and then allowing them to choose their adult names, when they are old enough to work or to vote.

In any case, these 10 years made us realize and experiment with the power of naming, and with the invention of words that allow more choice.

Parent or parenting began to take some of the solitary burden from mother and mothering for instance, as well as to make men feel welcome and to underline the revolutionary discovery that children have (or could have) two equally responsible parents. A few workers and unions began to press for parental leave as an expansion of maternity leave, in recognition of fathers' importance during childbirth and