ABSTRACT
Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 included prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex, the statute was primarily designed to address race, and it was not until the 1970s that Supreme Court rulings and legislation made gender equality an important focus. However, in the scheme of American national history, the rise of the contemporary women's movement and the development of important legislation and judicial opinions addressing key issues, these protections are really quite recent. Thus, in a number of respects, gender issues pervade the full range of civil rights problems and developments over time. The body of Supreme Court decisions that actually have sought to recognize and engage our history of sex discrimination is very recent. In the area of gender discrimination, there is, as there has been in other aspects of civil rights, a history of opinions that are hard to read because it is difficult to accept that the nation’s highest court could say such things.
