Jo Freeman Reviews: The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America

Reviewed by Jo Freeman

This book is a biography of three women and an organization. It’s an unusual way to write about either but Turk makes it work.

The three women are Patricia Hill Burnett,  Aileen Hernandez and Mary Jean Collins,  born in 1920, 1926, and 1939, respectively.  The organization is the National Organization for Women, founded in 1966  “to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.”

Turk chose these women not just because of their long involvement with NOW but to illustrate its diversity. Burnett was a Republican as well as a beauty queen, a portrait artist and the wife of a rich businessman; not the kind of person one expects to be a feminist activist. Hernandez was a Black child of Jamaican immigrants who became NOW’s second president. Her primary interest was  labor issues; she worked in unions, the government and as a corporate consultant to open up more jobs for women. Collins was an Irish Catholic child of the working class. All went to college, which Turk says was a transformative experience but in different ways.

Burnett and Hernandez were both born in Brooklyn and died a few years ago (2014, 2017). They spent most of their adult lives in Detroit and San Francisco, respectively. Born in a small town in Wisconsin, Collins is alive and kicking. She did most of her kicking in Chicago, but a lot of her living in Washington, D.C.

I was a member of NOW during the period of the book, first in Chicago where I worked with Collins, and later in NYC. I corresponded with Hernandez, sometimes visiting her when I was in the Bay Area. While I didn’t personally know Burnett, I’m sure I met her, probably at the 1980 Republican Convention in Detroit, where NOW staged a march.

Turk uses biography to write about different aspects of NOW’s work through the 1980s and a bit beyond. Burnett used her money to travel the world, bringing the feminist message with her and convening over two dozen “overseas outposts” for NOW.  Hernandez tried to bring more minority women into NOW, believing that they had similar concerns but not always the same priorities.  Collins ran the Sears campaign, as its headquarters was in Chicago. Sears systematically underpaid and underutilized women. Hernandez was a paid consultant to Sears in how to improve its workplace. Collins also ran the ERA campaign in Illinois, a crucial unratified state that was home to Phyllis Schlafly, founder of STOP ERA.