Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement

In 1963, as Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique appeared and civil rights activists marched on Washington, a separate but related social movement emerged among American Catholics, says Mary Henold. Thousands of Catholic feminists — both lay women and women religious — marched, strategized, theologized, and prayed together, building sisterhood and confronting sexism in the Roman Catholic Church. In the first history of American Catholic feminism, Henold explores the movement from the 1960s thr...