The bringing to light not just the economic exploitation of women, but a specific form of economic exploitation." Delphy got a job as a researcher in 1978 and began applying for Director of Research (full professor) positions around 1990, but it took her nine years to win this promotion, encountering overt discrimination against her as a lesbian. In "Je ne suis pas féministe, mais..." she describes an incident where a faculty member responsible for reviewing her work for promotion offered his department an account that left out one of Delphy's major books, dismissed her research, and then added, "Plus, she's homosexual." Delphy arrived in the U.S. in 1962 during the Civil Rights Movement, and says that it was in the United States that she came to see the reality of racism. "Racism existed at home in France, but I didn't see it." In 1965 Delphy left Berkeley to work for the Washington Urban League and, through these experiences in the Civil Rights Movement, developed a belief in the value of oppressed groups (like women) developing autonomous activist movements, as African-Americans had done. She returned to France and after the evens of May 1968, took part in a feminist group FMA (Féminin Masculin Avenir), which with other groups would eventually form the Women's Liberation Movement (Mouvement de Libération des Femmes, or MLF). In August 1970, Delphy and other members of the MLF brought flowers to the "unknown wife of the unknown soldier," the first of the MLF's actions to receive attention in the media. Delphy is openly lesbian and a member of the Gouines rouges ("Red Dykes"). In 1971, she added her name to the Manifesto of the 343, publicly declaring she'd had an abortion when it was illegal in France. In more recent years, the implementation of the 2004 French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools—a law which includes banning French Muslim school-girls from wearing their headscarfs on school grounds—brought the issues and discrimination facing French Muslim women to Delphy's attention. In response to this, Delphy confronted and addressed the reaction of many French feminists who support the law, criticizing this stance as hypocritical and racist. Materialist Feminism  Delphy was a pioneer of materialist feminism, applying a materialist approach to gender relations. Delphy analyzes inequalities between men and women as rooted in a material economic basis, specifically the domestic relations of production.