60 years ago, this report jump-started the gender equality agenda

By: Jill Ashton, Kelly Jenkins-Pultz • October 11, 2023



Esther Peterson, President John F. Kennedy and dozens of others others stand in the White House.

Sixty years ago today, the Kennedy administration released "American Women", the report of the President's Commission on the Status of Women. The report was inspired by Esther Peterson, then director of the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau. She had observed that while many women's organizations had publicly called for greater equality, there was no consensus about what that meant.

One of Peterson's priorities was to make visible the lives of women she had worked alongside in the labor movement, particularly those affected by poverty and with families they struggled to support. She proposed a President's Commission on the Status of Women to document the obstacles facing women in the workplace and create a broad policy agenda to respond. President Kennedy agreed, and the Commission was born. What resulted was a groundbreaking report on the status of women in the home, workforce and society at large.

The report's findings offered a policy roadmap for women's equality, and since its publication, many of the proposals have been adopted in some form via federal legislation, like Title IX in 1972, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993 and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009. Further, the report inspired the creation of women's commissions across the country at the state, county and municipal level. Four years after the report was published, all 50 states had active women's commissions.

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Jill Ashton is the Northeast Regional Administrator for the Women's Bureau. Kelly Jenkins-Pultz is the Northwest Regional Administrator for the Women's Bureau.