Despite the significant advancements made after the ratification in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, society generally supported and maintained the patriarchal status quo. Gender equality was still far from achieved in areas such as employment, wages, education, and reproductive rights. Although there were challenges to broad societal views of the role of women, such as those made by Edith M. Stern (1901–1975), gaining sufficient political power to remove the institutionalized roadblocks to equality was a long, slow process. With a renewed focus on the capabilities of the individual to work for change, however, progress was made. By 1960, for example, women comprised over one-third of college enrollments, and nearly 40 percent worked outside the home. The social movements of the 1960s, following in the footsteps of the civil rights movement, empowered women in various ways and inspired many to create their own movement for liberation. These women agitated for change from the bottom, creating a grassroots effort to influence change at the heights of political power. Yet they also faced many obstacles to progress, leaving many to feel that for every two steps forward, they took one step back.