Karen DeCrow, president of the National Organization for Women during the transformative 1970s, when she championed the national movement for the Equal Rights Amendment and for greater opportunities for women and girls in sports, died June 6 at her home in Jamesville, N.Y., near Syracuse. She was 76.
Her death was announced by Rowena Malamud, president of the Greater Syracuse chapter of NOW. The cause was melanoma.
When DeCrow became president of NOW in 1974, she was named one of the country’s 200 most important leaders of the future by Time magazine. She was the third leader of the national women’s rights group and became the first to visit the White House, when Gerald R. Ford was president.
DeCrow, who began her career in journalism and publishing, became interested in feminist causes in the 1960s, when she learned that men at her company were paid more than women. The principle of equal pay for equal work — which remains an unresolved issue more than 40 years later — led DeCrow to join the newly formed National Organization for Women in 1967.
She later became a civil rights lawyer, focusing on pay equity and other issues, and published several influential books, including “The Young Woman’s Guide to Liberation” (1971), “Corporate Wives, Corporate Casualties” (1973) and “Sexist Justice” (1974).
During her three-year tenure as NOW president, from 1974 to 1977, the women’s movement was near its height. There was growing recognition in the courts and the workplace for the rights of women, and the Equal Rights Amendment seemed well on its way toward passage.
DeCrow, who held the presidency without drawing a salary, led an effort to enforce Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which guaranteed equal opportunities in sports and education to girls and women.
“When I was in school there was no such thing as girls’ athletics,” DeCrow told the Syracuse Post-Standard in 2006. Today, Title IX has led to a proliferation of women’s participation in sports at every level.
She put pressure on the major television networks and NASA to hire and promote more women. She helped lead the “Take Back the Night” movement, which protested violence against women.
“Everyone laughed at us and made fun of us and ignored us,” DeCrow told the Christian Science Monitor in 2006, describing the women’s movement’s struggles at the time. “When it seemed we were making progress, they attacked us. It wasn’t like the doors were open: ‘Oh girls, come in. We’re so glad you’re calling attention to the fact that there are no women astronauts in the NASA program.’ We had barriers everywhere. But it was exciting.”
In 1972, both houses of Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment.
DeCrow traveled across the country to rally support for what would have been the 27th Amendment, which stated that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
