Clara Bingham Delivers WMC Beverly Wettenstein Women's History Lecture: “The Women’s Liberation Movement: A Blueprint for Today”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The lecture can be seen on www.womensmediacenter.com on Tuesday, March 31, 2026

And thereafter.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Clara Bingham, award-winning journalist and author discusses the history of the early years of second wave feminism and how the ten years between 1963 and 1973 provide feminists today with a blueprint for social change. Her talk, “The Women’s Liberation Movement: A Blueprint for Today,” is part of an annual Women’s Media Center lecture series marking Women’s History Month.

Bingham’s speech premieres online on March 31. It is inspired by her book: The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America 1963 - 1973 (Simon & Schuster) a comprehensive oral history of the decade that defined the feminist movement, full of interviews with those who were at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade. In her remarks, Bingham draws comparisons between the issues of that time and those faced by feminists today.

Julie Burton, President and CEO of the Women's Media Center, stated, "We know history repeats itself and we are living in perilous times with right-wing forces methodically rolling back women's hard-won rights. Clara Bingham’s powerful book, “The Movement” shows us that the fundamentals of women’s rights and organizing have not changed and there are lessons of the earlier battles for women's liberation and equality chronicled in her book that can be applied to today's struggles. The stakes have never been higher for women to have an equal voice in our media and democracy."

Clara Bingham's book, The Movement, is an oral history narrative. She uses the diverse voices of the women of the second-wave movement to tell their own stories in the fight for liberation. She notes that WMC Co-Founder, Robin Morgan, wrote in 1970, "There is something contagious about demanding freedom, especially where women, who comprise the oldest oppressed group on the face of the planet, are concerned."

In her book, Clara Bingham states, "In 1963, a twenty-year old American woman could not expect to run a marathon or play varsity sports in college. She could only dream of becoming a doctor, scientist, news reporter, lawyer, labor leader, factory foreman, college professor, or elected official. She couldn't get a prescription for birth control, have a legal abortion, come out as a lesbian, or prosecute her rapist. She almost certainly knew nothing about clitoral orgasm or women's history...In a single decade...thousands of years of human custom and behavior were upended...It was a bedroom and a boardroom and an assembly-line revolution—a restructuring of how women and men in American saw each other, a reinvention of roles, and a fundamental identity shift."

The WMC Beverly Wettenstein Women’s History Lecture 2026 is the fourth in a series named for Beverly Wettenstein, who bequeathed the funding to WMC. Wettenstein, who passed away in 2019, was a renowned journalist, speaker, media critic and historian. She chronicled the representation of women in national media outlets and was the founder of the “Women in History and Making History Today – 365-Days-A-Year - Database.” She also served as a public affairs executive with several global banks, as well as Semester at Sea. She wrote the “HerStory” column in the Dallas Morning News. Dr. Cristina Azocar, author and journalism professor at San Francisco State University, was the inaugural speaker. Dr. Janet Dewart Bell, WMC Board Chair and the Founder and President of LEAD InterGenerational Solutions, delivered the Women’s Media Center’s second Beverly Wettenstein History Lecture, and last year, Anushay Hossain, feminist author and women’s health advocate delivered the lecture. This year, Dr. Janet Dewart Bell will introduce Clara Bingham.

Following her lecture, Bingham has an extended conversation with Soraya Chemaly, Women’s Media Center board member, co-founder of WMC Speech Project, author, advocate and writer. Chemaly’s latest book All We Want Is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy challenges dearly held beliefs about gender and equality today, drawing clear lines between the dynamics of intimate inequality and global antifeminist, antidemocratic backlash and macho-fascism.

The Movement is Bingham’s third book. Her second book, Class Action: The Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law, which she co-wrote with Laura Leedy Gansler (Doubleday 2002), was adapted into the 2005 feature film North Country (Warner Bros.) staring Charlize Theron and Francis McDormand. Bingham is also the author of Women on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress (Times Books 1997), which chronicles the lives of four female members of the 103 ^rd Congress following the 1992 “Year of the Woman” elections. As a Washington, D.C. correspondent for Newsweek from 1989 to 1993, Bingham covered the George H. W. Bush White House leading up to and during the 1992 presidential election. Her freelance writing has appeared in publications including Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Ms., Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Talk, Glamour, The Washington Monthly, and United Press International.

The Women’s Media Center is an inclusive and feminist organization that works to raise the visibility, viability, and decision-making power of women in media by ensuring that their stories get told and their voices are heard. We do this by researching and monitoring media; creating and modeling original online and on-air content; training women to be effective in media; and promoting women experts in all fields.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Watch the full lecture here.

For additional information, contact: mediarelations@womensmediacenter.com.