National Organization for Women Statement of Purpose

On October 29, 1966, at its first national conference, in Washington, DC, the National Organization for Women (NOW) adopted a Statement of Purpose. The document was written by Betty Friedan, author of the foundational feminist book The Feminine Mystique (1963), and Pauli Murray, a civil rights activist and the first African American woman Episcopal priest. Just four months earlier, on June 30, 1966, NOW had been founded by delegates to the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women. This commission was the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, which President John F. Kennedy had created by executive order on December 14, 1961, and which was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1963 the commission had reported its findings that women were the victims of gender inequality.