ABSTRACT
Women have made gains in education and employment, and a woman of color has been elected as vice president, it’s much easier to view the sexism of the Philadelphia Journal with an amused shrug. At the time, however, when women were just beginning to make what looked like precarious gains, easily wiped out by the rising tide of the 1980s anti-feminist backlash, such blatant sexism was no laughing matter. In the early 1980s, an increasingly virulent backlash against abortion rights was occurring on federal, state, and local levels. With its federated structure, National Organization for Women (NOW) was well equipped for the battle and could oppose anti-abortion initiatives at all levels of government. In Pennsylvania the backlash against abortion rights was particularly strong. In the 1979 primary election, Philadelphia NOW strongly supported Sharon Wallis, the founder of the Philadelphia Women’s Political Caucus, for one of the five at-large seats on Philadelphia City Council.
