The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an interest group founded in 1966 that advocates for women's rights, including reproductive rights, workplace equality, and the Equal Rights Amendment. In AP Gov, NOW is a classic example of a linkage institution that connects citizens to policymakers through lobbying and grassroots activism.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is a feminist advocacy group founded in 1966 to push for full equality between men and women. Its agenda has included ending workplace discrimination, protecting reproductive rights, and ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). NOW uses the standard interest-group toolkit. It lobbies legislators, mobilizes grassroots members, files lawsuits, and runs public campaigns to pressure government at every level.
For AP Gov, the important move is to see NOW as a type of political actor, not just a piece of history. NOW is an interest group, which makes it a linkage institution. It takes the preferences of a group of citizens (people who want gender equality) and channels them into the policy process. Unlike a political party, NOW doesn't run candidates for office under its own banner. It tries to influence whoever wins.
NOW shows up in two places in the AP Gov course. In Unit 3 (Civil Liberties and Civil Rights), it's part of the women's rights movement story, alongside the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX, and the fight over the ERA. The CED expects you to explain how social movements and their organizations pushed government to expand civil rights protections, and NOW is the women's movement's organizational engine. In Unit 5 (Political Participation), NOW works as a concrete example when you're asked how interest groups influence policymaking, how linkage institutions connect people to government, and why some groups succeed while others don't. If an FRQ asks you to describe how an interest group can affect policy, NOW gives you ready-made examples like lobbying Congress on the ERA or litigating discrimination cases.
Keep studying AP Gov Unit 5
Linkage Institutions (Unit 5)
NOW is a textbook linkage institution. It gathers the political demands of citizens who care about gender equality and delivers them to officials through lobbying, litigation, and mobilization. When a question asks for an example of how interest groups link people to government, NOW is a safe, specific answer.
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) (Unit 3)
The ERA was NOW's signature legislative goal. The amendment passed Congress in 1972 but fell short of ratification by the states, which makes the pairing a great example of both interest-group influence and the high bar of the Article V amendment process.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Unit 3)
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act banned employment discrimination based on sex, and NOW was founded in 1966 partly out of frustration that the government wasn't enforcing it. The connection shows that passing a law and actually enforcing it are two different battles, and interest groups often fight the second one.
Title IX (Unit 3)
Title IX (1972) barred sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. It's the kind of concrete policy win the women's movement, with NOW as a leading organization, pressured government to deliver. Use NOW and Title IX together to show how movement advocacy translates into statute.
No released FRQ has asked about NOW by name, and you won't be quizzed on its founding date in isolation. Instead, NOW is ammunition. Multiple-choice questions on interest groups, linkage institutions, or the women's rights movement may use NOW in a stem or as an answer choice, so you need to recognize it as an interest group, not a party or a government agency. On FRQs, NOW is most useful as your specific example. If you're asked to describe how interest groups influence policy, how social movements expanded civil rights, or why constitutional amendments are hard to ratify, citing NOW and its ERA campaign turns a vague answer into a scored one. In an Argument Essay on civil rights or participation, NOW gives you real-world evidence to back a claim.
NOW is an interest group, not a political party, and the AP exam loves testing that line. A party's main goal is winning elections by running candidates under its label, and parties take positions on a wide range of issues. NOW doesn't nominate candidates. It focuses on a specific policy agenda (gender equality) and influences officials from the outside through lobbying, litigation, and grassroots pressure. NOW may endorse candidates or align more with the Democratic Party, but endorsing is not the same as nominating.
NOW, founded in 1966, is a feminist interest group that pushes for gender equality through lobbying, litigation, and grassroots activism.
In AP Gov terms, NOW is a linkage institution because it connects citizens' demands for women's rights to actual policymakers.
NOW was a leading force behind the Equal Rights Amendment, which passed Congress in 1972 but failed to win ratification by enough states.
NOW is not a political party. It does not run its own candidates; it influences policy from the outside, which is the defining trait of an interest group.
NOW formed partly because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned sex discrimination in employment but was weakly enforced, showing that interest groups often fight over enforcement, not just passage.
Use NOW as a specific example on FRQs about interest-group influence, social movements, or civil rights expansion.
NOW is a feminist interest group founded in 1966 that advocates for women's rights, including workplace equality, reproductive rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment. In AP Gov, it's a standard example of an interest group acting as a linkage institution.
No. NOW is an interest group, which means it influences policy through lobbying, lawsuits, and grassroots pressure rather than running its own candidates for office. Confusing interest groups with parties is one of the most common AP Gov mistakes.
NOW is an organization; the ERA is a proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights regardless of sex. NOW campaigned hard for the ERA, which passed Congress in 1972 but never got ratified by the required three-fourths of states.
Partly. NOW's pressure helped the ERA pass Congress in 1972, but the amendment fell short of ratification by enough state legislatures. The episode is a useful example of both interest-group influence and the difficulty of the Article V amendment process.
Linkage institutions connect citizens to government, and NOW does exactly that by taking the preferences of people who support gender equality and channeling them to policymakers through lobbying, litigation, and mobilization. Interest groups, parties, elections, and media are the four linkage institutions in the AP Gov course.
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