Second-wave feminism was a period of
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and state (polity), states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania. , and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains.
Whereas
first-wave feminism
First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused on legal issues, primarily on securing women's right to vote. The term is often used s ...
focused mainly on
suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...
and overturning legal obstacles to
gender equality
Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing d ...
(''e.g.'',
voting rights
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
and
property rights
The right to property, or the right to own property (cf. ownership) is often classified as a human right for natural persons regarding their possessions. A general recognition of a right to private property is found more rarely and is typically ...
), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, domesticity, the workplace,
reproductive rights
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:
Reproductive rights rest on t ...
, ''de facto'' inequalities, and official legal inequalities. It was a movement that was focused on critiquing the patriarchal, or male-dominated, institutions and cultural practices throughout society. Second-wave feminism also drew attention to the issues of
domestic violence
Domestic violence (also known as domestic abuse or family violence) is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. ''Domestic violence'' is often used as a synonym for ''intimate partner ...
and
marital rape
Marital rape or spousal rape is the act of sexual intercourse with one's spouse without the spouse's consent. The lack of consent is the essential element and need not involve physical violence. Marital rape is considered a form of domestic vi ...
, created
rape-crisis centers and
women's shelter
A women's shelter, also known as a women's refuge and battered women's shelter, is a place of temporary protection and support for women escaping domestic violence and intimate partner violence of all forms. The term is also frequently used to ...
s, and brought about changes in custody laws and divorce law. Feminist-owned
bookstores
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of librari ...
, credit unions, and restaurants were among the key meeting spaces and economic engines of the movement.
The term "second-wave feminism" itself was brought into common parlance by journalist Martha Lear in a ''
New York Times Magazine
''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
'' article in March 1968 titled "The Second Feminist Wave: What do These Women Want?".
She wrote, "Proponents call it the Second Feminist Wave, the first having ebbed after the glorious victory of
suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...
and disappeared, finally, into the great sandbar of Togetherness."
Many historians view the second-wave feminist era in America as ending in the early 1980s with the intra-feminism disputes of the
feminist sex wars
The feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars, or simply the sex wars or porn wars, are terms used to refer to collective debates amongst feminists regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. Diff ...
over issues such as
sexuality
Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied ...
and
pornography
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, , which ushered in the era of
third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X and early Gen Y generations third-wav ...
in the early 1990s.
[As noted in:
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*
*
*
*]
Overview in the United States
The second wave of feminism in the United States came as a delayed reaction against the renewed domesticity of women after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
: the late 1940s
post-war boom
In Western usage, the phrase post-war era (or postwar era) usually refers to the time since the end of World War II. More broadly, a post-war period (or postwar period) is the interval immediately following the end of a war. A post-war period c ...
, which was an era characterized by an unprecedented economic growth, a
baby boom
A baby boom is a period marked by a significant increase of birth rate. This demographic phenomenon is usually ascribed within certain geographical bounds of defined national and cultural populations. People born during these periods are often ca ...
, a move to family-oriented suburbs and the ideal of companionate marriages. During this time, women did not tend to seek employment due to their engagement with domestic and household duties, which was seen as their primary duty but often left them isolated within the home and estranged from politics, economics, and law making. This life was clearly illustrated by the media of the time; for example television shows such as ''
Father Knows Best
''Father Knows Best'' is an American sitcom starring Robert Young, Jane Wyatt, Elinor Donahue, Billy Gray and Lauren Chapin. The series, which began on radio in 1949, aired as a television show for six seasons and 203 episodes. Created by E ...
'' and ''
Leave It to Beaver'' idealized domesticity.
Some important events laid the groundwork for the second wave, specifically the work of French writer
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even th ...
in the 1940s where she examined the notion of women being perceived as "other" in the patriarchal society. Simone de Beauvoir is an existentialist, meaning she believed in the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. She went on to conclude in her 1949 treatise ''
The Second Sex
''The Second Sex'' (french: Le Deuxième Sexe, link=no) is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women in the present society as well as throughout all of history ...
'' that male-centered ideology was being accepted as a norm and enforced by the ongoing development of myths, and that the fact that women are capable of getting pregnant, lactating, and menstruating is in no way a valid cause or explanation to place them as the "second sex". This book was translated from French to English (with some of its text excised) and published in America in 1953.
In 1960, the
Food and Drug Administration
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...
approved the
combined oral contraceptive pill
The combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP), often referred to as the birth control pill or colloquially as "the pill", is a type of birth control that is designed to be taken orally by women. The pill contains two important hormones: progest ...
, which was made available in 1961. This made it easier for women to have careers without having to leave due to unexpectedly becoming pregnant. It also meant young couples would not be routinely forced into unwanted marriages due to accidental pregnancies.
Though it is widely accepted that the movement lasted from the 1960s into the early 1980s, the exact years of the movement are more difficult to pinpoint and are often disputed. The movement is usually believed to have begun in 1963, when
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan ( February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book ''The Feminine Mystique'' is often credited with sparking the se ...
published ''
The Feminine Mystique
''The Feminine Mystique'' is a book by Betty Friedan, widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. First published by W. W. Norton on February 19, 1963, ''The Feminine Mystique'' became a bestseller, initially selling ...
'', and President
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
's
Presidential Commission on the Status of Women
The President's Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) was established to advise the President of the United States on issues concerning the status of women. It was created by John F. Kennedy's signed December 14, 1961. In 1975 it became the ...
released its report on gender inequality.
The administration of President Kennedy made women's rights a key issue of the
New Frontier
The term ''New Frontier'' was used by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the D ...
, and named women (such as
Esther Peterson) to many high-ranking posts in his administration. Kennedy also established a
Presidential Commission on the Status of Women
The President's Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) was established to advise the President of the United States on issues concerning the status of women. It was created by John F. Kennedy's signed December 14, 1961. In 1975 it became the ...
, chaired by
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
and comprising cabinet officials (including Peterson and
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, ...
), senators, representatives, businesspeople, psychologists, sociologists, professors, activists, and public servants. The report recommended changing this inequality by providing paid maternity leave, greater access to education, and help with child care to women.
There were other actions by women in wider society, presaging their wider engagement in politics which would come with the second wave. In 1961, 50,000 women in 60 cities, mobilized by
Women Strike for Peace
Women Strike for Peace (WSP, also known as Women for Peace) was a women's peace activist group in the United States. In 1961, nearing the height of the Cold War, around 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate aga ...
, protested above ground testing of nuclear bombs and tainted milk.
![American Association of University Women members with President John F](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/American_Association_of_University_Women_members_with_President_John_F._Kennedy_as_he_signs_the_Equal_Pay_Act_into_law.jpg)
In 1963, Betty Friedan, influenced by Simone de Beauvoir's ground-breaking, feminist ''The Second Sex'', wrote the bestselling book ''The Feminine Mystique''. Discussing primarily white women, she explicitly objected to how women were depicted in the mainstream media, and how placing them at home (as 'housewives') limited their possibilities and wasted potential. She had helped conduct a very important survey using her old classmates from
Smith College
Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...
. This survey revealed that the women who played a role at home and the workforce were more satisfied with their life compared with the women who stayed home. The women who stayed home showed feelings of agitation and sadness. She concluded that many of these unhappy women had immersed themselves in the idea that they should not have any ambitions outside their home.
Friedan described this as "The Problem That Has No Name". The perfect
nuclear family
A nuclear family, elementary family, cereal-packet family or conjugal family is a family group consisting of parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, the larger ...
image depicted and strongly marketed at the time, she wrote, did not reflect happiness and was rather degrading for women. This book is widely credited with having begun second-wave feminism in the United States.
The report from the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, along with Friedan's book, spoke to the discontent of many women (especially
housewives
A housewife (also known as a homemaker or a stay-at-home mother/mom/mum) is a woman whose role is running or managing her family's home—housekeeping, which includes caring for her children; cleaning and maintaining the home; making, buying a ...
) and led to the formation of local, state, and federal government women's groups along with many independent feminist organizations. Friedan was referencing a "movement" as early as 1964.
The movement grew with legal victories such as the
Equal Pay Act of 1963
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States labor law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Fr ...
,
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
, and the ''
Griswold v. Connecticut
''Griswold v. Connecticut'', 381 U.S. 479 (1965), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives withou ...
''
Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
ruling of 1965. In 1966 Friedan joined other women and men to found the
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...
(NOW); Friedan would be named as the organization's first president.
Despite the early successes NOW achieved under Friedan's leadership, her decision to pressure the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination ...
(EEOC) to use Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to enforce more job opportunities among American women met with fierce opposition within the organization.
Siding with arguments among several of the group's African-American members,
many of NOW's leaders were convinced that the vast number of male African-Americans who lived below the poverty line were in need of more job opportunities than women within the middle and upper class. Friedan stepped down as president in 1969.
In 1963, freelance journalist
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem (; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in ...
gained widespread popularity among feminists after a diary she authored while working undercover as a
Playboy Bunny
A Playboy Bunny is a waitress who works at a Playboy Club and selected through standardized training. Their costumes were made up of lingerie, inspired by the tuxedo-wearing Playboy rabbit mascot. This costume consisted of a strapless corset te ...
waitress at the
Playboy Club
The Playboy Club was initially a chain of nightclubs and resorts owned and operated by Playboy Enterprises. The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1960. Each club generally featured a Living Room, a Playmate Bar, a Dining Room, and a Club R ...
was published as a two-part feature in the May and June issues of ''
Show''. In her diary, Steinem alleged the club was mistreating its waitresses in order to gain male customers and exploited the Playboy Bunnies as symbols of male chauvinism, noting that the club's manual instructed the Bunnies that "there are many pleasing ways they can employ to stimulate the club's liquor volume". By 1968, Steinem had become arguably the most influential figure in the movement and support for legalized
abortion
Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregn ...
and federally funded day-cares had become the two leading objectives for feminists.
Among the most significant legal victories of the movement after the formation of NOW were a 1967 Executive Order extending full
affirmative action rights to women, a 1968 EEOC decision ruling illegal sex-segregated help wanted ads,
Title IX
Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
and the
Women's Educational Equity Act
The Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA) of 1974 is one of the several landmark laws passed by the United States Congress outlining federal protections against the gender discrimination of women in education (educational equity). WEEA was enacte ...
(1972 and 1974, respectively, educational equality),
Title X
The Title X Family Planning Program is the only federal grant program dedicated to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services. It was enacted under President Richard Nixon in 1970 as part of th ...
(1970, health and family planning), the
Equal Credit Opportunity Act
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) is a United States law (codified at et seq.), enacted 28 October 1974, that makes it unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction, on ...
(1974), the
Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978 () is a United States federal statute. It amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to "prohibit sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy."
The Act covers discrimination "on the basis of ...
, the outlawing of
marital rape
Marital rape or spousal rape is the act of sexual intercourse with one's spouse without the spouse's consent. The lack of consent is the essential element and need not involve physical violence. Marital rape is considered a form of domestic vi ...
(although not outlawed in all states until 1993), and the legalization of
no-fault divorce
In a no-fault divorce the dissolution of a marriage does not require a showing of wrongdoing by either party. Laws providing for no-fault divorce allow a family court to grant a divorce in response to a petition by either party of the marriage w ...
(although not legalized in all states until 2010), a 1975 law requiring the U.S. Military Academies to admit women, and many Supreme Court cases such as ''
Reed v. Reed
''Reed v. Reed'', 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. In ''Reed v. Reed'' the Supreme Court rule ...
'' of 1971 and ''
Roe v. Wade
''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many federal and s ...
'' of 1973. However, the changing of social attitudes towards women is usually considered the greatest success of the women's movement. In January 2013, US Secretary of Defense
Leon Panetta
Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is an American Democratic Party politician who has served in several different public office positions, including Secretary of Defense, CIA Director, White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of ...
announced that the longtime ban on women serving in US military combat roles had been lifted.
In 2013, the
US Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secu ...
(DoD) announced their plan to integrate women into all combat positions by 2016.
[A History of Women in the U.S. Military](_blank)
''Infoplease.com''. Accessed December 28, 2013.
Second-wave feminism also affected other movements, such as the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
and the
student's rights movement, as women sought equality within them. In 1965 in "Sex and Caste," a reworking of a memo they had written as staffers in civil-rights organizations
SNCC
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segrega ...
,
Casey Hayden
Sandra Cason "Casey" Hayden (born October 31, 1937), was an American radical student activist and civil rights worker in the 1960s. Recognized for her defense of direct action in the struggle against racial segregation, in 1960 she was an early ...
and
Mary King proposed that "assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every much as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro," and that in the movement, as in society, women can find themselves "caught up in a common-law caste system."
In June 1967,
Jo Freeman
Jo Freeman aka Joreen (born August 26, 1945), is an American feminist, political scientist, writer and attorney. As a student at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s, she became active in organizations working for civil liberties ...
attended a "free school" course on women at the University of Chicago led by
Heather Booth
Heather Booth (born December 15, 1945) is an American civil rights activist, feminist, and political strategist who has been involved in activism for progressive causes. During her student years, she was active in both the civil rights movement ...
and
Naomi Weisstein
Naomi Weisstein (October 16, 1939 – March 26, 2015) was an American cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, author and professor of psychology. Weisstein's main area of work was based in social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. She consider ...
. She invited them to organize a woman's workshop at the then-forthcoming
National Conference of New Politics
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, c ...
(NCNP), to be held over
Labor Day
Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United St ...
weekend 1967 in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
. At that conference, a woman's caucus was formed (led by Freeman and
Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein; January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-w ...
), who tried to present their own demands to the plenary session.
However, the women were told their resolution was not important enough for a floor discussion, and when through threatening to tie up the convention with procedural motions they succeeded in having their statement tacked to the end of the agenda, it was never discussed.
When the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP) Director William F. Pepper refused to recognize any of the women waiting to speak and instead called on someone to speak about
American Indians, five women, including Firestone, rushed the podium demanding to know why.
But Willam F. Pepper allegedly patted Firestone on the head and said, "Move on little girl; we have more important issues to talk about here than women's liberation", or possibly, "Cool down, little girl. We have more important things to talk about than women's problems."
Freeman and Firestone called a meeting of the women who had been at the "free school" course and the women's workshop at the conference; this became the first Chicago
women's liberation
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...
group. It was known as the Westside group because it met weekly in Freeman's apartment on Chicago's west side. After a few months, Freeman started a newsletter which she called ''Voice of the women's liberation movement.'' It circulated all over the country (and in a few foreign countries), giving the new movement of women's liberation its name. Many of the women in the Westside group went on to start other feminist organizations, including the
Chicago Women's Liberation Union
The Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU) was an American feminist organization founded in 1969 at a conference in Palatine, Illinois.
The main goal of the organization was to end gender inequality and sexism, which the CWLU defined as "the sy ...
.
In 1968, an
SDS organizer at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
told a meeting about white college men working with poor white men, and "
noted that sometimes after analyzing societal ills, the men shared leisure time by 'balling a chick together.' He pointed out that such activities did much to enhance the political consciousness of poor white youth. A woman in the audience asked, 'And what did it do for the consciousness of the chick? (Hole, Judith, and Ellen Levine, ''Rebirth of Feminism'', 1971, pg. 120).
After the meeting, a handful of women formed
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
's first women's liberation group.
Some black feminists who were active in the early second-wave feminism include civil rights lawyer and author
Florynce Kennedy
Florynce Rae Kennedy (February 11, 1916 – December 21, 2000) was an American lawyer, radical feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer and activist.
Early life
Kennedy was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to an African-American family. Her ...
, who co-authored one of the first books on abortion, 1971's ''Abortion Rap''; Cellestine Ware, of New York's
Stanton-Anthony Brigade; and Patricia Robinson. These women "tried to show the connections between racism and male dominance" in society.
The Indochinese Women's Conferences (IWC) in Vancouver and Toronto in 1971, demonstrated the interest of a multitude of women's groups in the Vietnam Antiwar movement. Lesbian groups, women of color, and Vietnamese groups saw their interests mirrored in the anti-imperialist spirit of the conference. Although the IWC used a Canadian venue, membership was primarily composed of American groups.
The second wave of the feminist movement also marks the emergence of
women's studies
Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...
as a legitimate field of study. In 1970,
San Diego State University
San Diego State University (SDSU) is a public research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CSU) system ...
was the first university in the United States to offer a selection of women's studies courses.
The
1977 National Women's Conference
The National Women's Conference of 1977 was a four-day event during November 18–21, 1977, as organized by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. The conference drew around, 2,000 delegates along with 15,000-20,0 ...
in
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
, Texas, presented an opportunity for women's liberation groups to address a multitude of women's issues. At the conference, delegates from around the country gathered to create a
National Plan of Action, which offered 26 planks on matters such as women's health, women's employment, and child care.
![Alice paul](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Alice_paul.jpg)
By the early 1980s, it was largely perceived that women had met their goals and succeeded in changing social attitudes towards gender roles, repealing oppressive laws that were based on sex, integrating the "boys' clubs" such as
military academies
A military academy or service academy is an educational institution which prepares candidates for service in the officer corps. It normally provides education in a military environment, the exact definition depending on the country concerned. ...
, the
United States Armed Forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
,
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
, single-sex colleges, men's clubs, and the
Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
, and making gender discrimination illegal. However, in 1982, adding the
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and ...
to the
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...
failed, having been ratified by only 35 states, leaving it three states short of ratification.
Second-wave feminism was largely successful, with the failure of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and
Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
's veto of the
Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1972 (which would have provided a multibillion-dollar national day care system) the only major legislative defeats. Efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment have continued. Ten states have adopted constitutions or constitutional amendments providing that equal rights under the law shall not be denied because of sex, and most of these provisions mirror the broad language of the Equal Rights Amendment. Furthermore, many women's groups are still active and are major political forces. , more women earn
bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
s than men, half of the
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...
presidents are women, the numbers of women in government and traditionally male-dominated fields have dramatically increased, and in 2009 the percentage of women in the American workforce temporarily surpassed that of men. The salary of the average American woman has also increased over time, although as of 2008 it is only 77% of the average man's salary, a phenomenon often referred to as the
gender pay gap
The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference between the remuneration for men and women who are working. Women are generally found to be paid less than men. There are two distinct numbers regarding the pay gap: non-adjusted ...
. Whether this is due to discrimination is very hotly disputed, however economists and sociologists have provided evidence to that effect.
Second-wave feminism ended in the early 1980s with the
feminist sex wars
The feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars, or simply the sex wars or porn wars, are terms used to refer to collective debates amongst feminists regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. Diff ...
and was succeeded by
third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X and early Gen Y generations third-wav ...
in the early 1990s.
"The Feminine Mystique"
![Betty Naomi Goldstein Friedan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Betty_Naomi_Goldstein_Friedan.jpg)
Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique
" in the United States in 1963 and set a new standard and gender roles for women. Friedan argued that the feminine mystique hurt women both personally and professionally. The feminine mystique described the persuasive dissatisfaction among women in mainstream American society. Friedan coined the term feminine mystique to describe the societal assumption that women could find fulfillment through housework, marriage, child-rearing, and sexual passivity alone. Friedan noted that many housewives were unsatisfied with their lives but had difficulty articulating their feelings, and she used statistics and interviews to illustrate women's desire to achieve the feminine mystique. The feminine mystique was one of many catalysts for the
second-wave-feminism.
Friedan's thesis was that women suffered a variety of more or less subtle forms of discrimination and victims of a pervasive system of false values under which they were urged to find fulfillment and identity through the husbands and housework. Friedan believes that education and only education saved American women from the dangers of the feminine mystique.
Overview outside the United States
In 1967, at the
International Alliance of Women
The International Alliance of Women (IAW; french: Alliance Internationale des Femmes, AIF) is an international non-governmental organization that works to promote women's rights and gender equality. It was historically the main international org ...
Congress held in London, delegates were made aware of an initiative by the
UN Commission on the Status of Women
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW or UNCSW) is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), one of the main United Nations System, UN organs within the United Nations. CSW has been described as the U ...
to study and evaluate the situation of women in their countries. Many organizations and NGOs like the Association of Business and Professional Women,
Soroptimists Clubs, as well as teaching and nursing associations developed committees in response to the initiative to prepare evaluations on the conditions of women and urge their governments to establish National Commissions on the Status of Women.
In
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
and
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, second-wave feminism began in the 1980s.
Germany
''Also see below in this article under Film''
During the 1960s several German feminist groups were founded, which were characterized as the second wave.
Spain
The 1960s in Spain saw a generational shift in Spanish feminist in response to other changes in Spanish society. This included increased emigration and tourism (resulting in the spread of ideas from the rest of the world), greater opportunities in education and employment for women and major economic reforms.
[Nielfa Cristóbal, Gloria. ''Movimientos femeninos'', en ''Enciclopedia Madrid S.XX''] Feminism in the late Franco period and early transition period was not unified. It had many different political dimensions, however, they all shared a belief in the need for greater equality for women in Spain and a desire to defend the rights of women. Feminism moved from being about the individual to being about the collective.
It was during this period that second-wave feminism arrived in Spain.
Second-wave Spanish feminism was about the struggle for the rights of women in the context of the dictatorship. PCE would start in 1965 to promote this movement with MDM, creating a feminist political orientation around building solidarity for women and assisting imprisoned political figures. MDM launched its movement in Madrid by establishing associations among the housewives of the
Tetuán and
Getafe
Getafe () is a municipality and a city in Spain belonging to the Community of Madrid. , it has a population of 180,747, the region's sixth most populated municipality.
Getafe is located 13 km south of Madrid's city centre, within a flat ar ...
in 1969. In 1972, Asociación Castellana de Amas de Casa y Consumidora was created to widen the group's ability to attract members.
Second-wave feminism entered the Spanish comic community by the early 1970s. It was manifested in Spanish comics in two ways. The first was that it increased the number of women involved in comics production as writers and artists. The second was it transformed how female characters were portrayed, making women less passive and less likely to be purely sexual beings.
Sweden
:''See also
Feminism in Sweden
Feminism in Sweden is a significant social and political influence within Swedish society. ''
In Sweden, second-wave feminism is mostly associated with
Group 8 Group 8 may refer to:
* Group 8 element, a series of elements in the Periodic Table
* Group 8 Rugby League, a rugby league competition
* Group 8 (Sweden), a feminist movement in Sweden
* Group VIII, former nomenclature for the noble gas
The n ...
, a feminist organization which was founded by eight women in Stockholm in 1968.
The organization took up various feminist issues such as demands for expansions of kindergartens, 6-hour working day, equal pay for equal work and opposition to pornography. Initially based in Stockholm, local groups were founded throughout the country. The influence of Group 8 on feminism in Sweden is still prevalent.
The Netherlands
In 1967, "The Discontent of Women", by
Joke Kool-Smits, was published; the publication of this essay is often regarded as the start of second-wave feminism in the Netherlands. In this essay, Smit describes the frustration of married women, saying they are fed up being solely mothers and housewives.
Beginning and consciousness raising
The beginnings of second-wave feminism can be studied by looking at the two branches that the movement formed in: the
liberal feminists and the
radical feminists. The liberal feminists, led by figures such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem advocated for federal legislation to be passed that would promote and enhance the personal and professional lives of women. On the other hand, radical feminists, such as Casey Hayden and Mary King, adopted the skills and lessons that they had learned from their work with civil rights organizations such as the
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...
and
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segrega ...
and created a platform to speak on the violent and sexist issues women faced while working with the larger
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
.
The liberal feminist movement
After being removed from the workforce, by either personal or social pressures, many women in the post-war America returned to the home or were placed into female only jobs in the service sector. After the publication of Friedan's ''The Feminine Mystique'' in 1963, many women connected to the feeling of isolation and dissatisfaction that the book detailed. The book itself, however, was not a call to action, but rather a plea for self-realization and
consciousness raising
Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...
among middle-class women throughout America. Many of these women organized to form the
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...
in 1966, whose "Statement of Purpose" declared that the right women had to equality was one small part of the nationwide civil rights revolution that was happening during the 1960s.
The radical feminist movement
Women who favoured radical feminism collectively spoke of being forced to remain silent and obedient to male leaders in
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
organizations. They spoke out about how they were not only told to do clerical work such as stuffing envelopes and typing speeches, but there was also an expectation for them to sleep with the male activists that they worked with.
While these acts of sexual harassment took place, the young women were neglected their right to have their own needs and desires recognized by their male cohorts.
Many radical feminists had learned from these organizations how to think radically about their self-worth and importance, and applied these lessons in the relationships they had with each other.
Businesses
Feminist activists have established a range of
feminist businesses
Feminist businesses are companies established by activists involved in the feminist movement. Examples include feminist bookstores, feminist credit unions, feminist presses, feminist mail-order catalogs, and feminist restaurants. These businesses f ...
, including
women's bookstores, feminist credit unions, feminist presses, feminist mail-order catalogs, feminist restaurants, and feminist record labels. These businesses flourished as part of the second and third waves of feminism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
In West Berlin sixteen projects emerged within three years (1974–76) all without state funding (except the women's shelter). Many of those new concepts the social economy picked up later, some are still run autonomously today.
Music and popular culture
Second-wave feminists viewed popular culture as sexist, and created pop culture of their own to counteract this. "One project of second wave feminism was to create 'positive' images of women, to act as a counterweight to the dominant images circulating in popular culture and to raise women's consciousness of their oppressions."
"I Am Woman"
Australian artist
Helen Reddy
Helen Maxine Reddy (25 October 194129 September 2020) was an Australian-American singer, actress, television host, and activist. Born in Melbourne to a showbusiness family, Reddy started her career as an entertainer at age four. She sang on rad ...
's song "
I Am Woman
"I Am Woman" is a song written by Australian musicians Helen Reddy and Ray Burton. Performed by Reddy, the first recording of "I Am Woman" appeared on her debut album ''I Don't Know How to Love Him'', released in May 1971, and was heard during ...
" played a large role in popular culture and became a
feminist anthem
This is a list of songs described as feminist anthems, celebrating women's empowerment, or used as protest songs against gender inequality. These songs range from airy pop affirmations such as "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper, to s ...
; Reddy came to be known as a "feminist
poster girl" or a "feminist icon".
Reddy told interviewers that the song was a "song of pride about being a woman".
The song was released in 1972. A few weeks after "I Am Woman" entered the charts, radio stations refused to play it. Some music critics and radio stations believed the song represented "all that is silly in the Women's Lib Movement". Helen Reddy then began performing the song on numerous television variety shows. As the song gained popularity, women began calling radio stations and requesting to hear "I Am Woman" played. The song re-entered the charts and reached number one in December 1972.
[
][
"The Anthem and the Angst", Sunday Magazine, Melbourne Sunday Herald Sun/Sydney Sunday Telegraph, June 15, 2003, Page 16.
][
Betty Friedan, "It Changed My Life" (1976), pp. 257
][
"Reddy to sing for the rent", Sunday Telegraph (Sydney), November 13, 1981
][
"Helen still believes, it's just that she has to pay the rent too", by John Burns of the Daily Express, reprinted in ''Melbourne Herald'', December 16, 1981
] "I Am Woman" also became a protest song that women sang at feminist rallies and protests.
Olivia Records
In 1973, a group of five feminists created the first women's owned-and-operated record label, called
Olivia Records
Olivia Records is a women's music record label founded in 1973 by lesbian members of the Washington D.C. area. It was founded by Ginny Berson, Cris Williamson, Meg Christian, Judy Dlugacz, and six other women. Olivia Records sold more than one m ...
.
They created the record label because they were frustrated that major labels were slow to add female artists to their rosters. One of Olivia's founders, Judy Dlugacz, said that, "It was a chance to create opportunities for women artists within an industry which at that time had few."
Initially, they had a budget of $4,000, and relied on donations to keep Olivia Records alive. With these donations, Olivia Records created their first LP, an album of feminist songs entitled ''I Know You Know.''
The record label originally relied on volunteers and feminist bookstores to distribute their records, but after a few years their records began to be sold in mainstream record stores.
Olivia Records was so successful that the company relocated from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles in 1975.
Olivia Records released several records and albums, and their popularity grew.
As their popularity grew, an alternative, specialized music industry grew around it. This type of music was initially referred to as "lesbian music" but came to be known as "women's music".
However, although Olivia Records was initially meant for women, in the 1980s it tried to move away from that stereotype and encouraged men to listen to their music as well.
Women's music
Women's music consisted of female musicians combined music with politics to express feminist ideals. Cities throughout the United States began to hold Women's Music Festivals, all consisting of female artists singing their own songs about personal experiences.
The first Women's Music Festival was held in 1974 at the University of Illinois.
In 1979, the
Michigan Womyn's Music Festival
The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, often referred to as MWMF or Michfest, was a feminist women's music festival held annually from 1976 to 2015 in Oceana County, Michigan, on privately owned woodland near Hart Township referred to as "The L ...
attracted 10,000 women from across America.
These festivals encouraged already-famous female singers, such as
Laura Nyro
Laura Nyro ( ; born Laura Nigro; October 18, 1947 – April 8, 1997) was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist. She achieved critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums ''Eli and the Thirteenth Confession'' (1968 ...
and
Ellen McIllwaine, to begin writing and producing their own songs instead of going through a major record label.
Many women began performing hard rock music, a traditionally male-dominated genre. One of the most successful examples included the sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, who formed the famous hard rock band
Heart
The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide t ...
.
Film
German-speaking Europe
The
Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin
The Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB, German Film and Television Academy Berlin) is a film school in Berlin, Germany.
In the German film school ranking of FOCUS (Issue 22/2006), the dffb - together with the Academy of Media Arts Co ...
gave women a chance in film in Germany: from 1968 on one third of the students were female. Some of them - pioneers of the women's movement - produced feminist feature films:
Helke Sander
Helke Sander (born January 31, 1937, in Berlin) is a German feminist film director, author, actress, activist, and educator. She is known primarily for her documentary work and contributions to the women's movement in the seventies and eighties ...
in 1971 produced "Eine Prämie für Irene"
Reward for Irene and
Cristina Perincioli
Cristina Perincioli (born November 11, 1946, in Bern, Switzerland) is a Swiss film director, writer, multimedia producer and webauthor. She moved to Berlin in 1968. Since 2003 she has lived Stücken in Brandenburg.
Life and career
Cristina Peri ...
(although she was Swiss not German) in 1971 produced "Für Frauen – 1.Kap"
or Women – 1st Chapter
In West Germany
Helma Sanders-Brahms
Helma Sanders-Brahms (20 November 1940 – 27 May 2014) was a German film director, screenwriter and producer.
Biography
Helma Sanders was born on 20 November 1940 in Emden, Germany. She attended a school for acting in Hannover from 1960 to 1 ...
and
Claudia von Alemann
Claudia von Alemann (born 23 March 1943 in Seebach, Wartburgkreis, Seebach) is a German filmmaker.
Personal life
Claudia von Alemann is the daughter of German military officer Hans von Alemann Heine and his wife Ludmilla. She majored in sociolo ...
produced feminist documentaries from 1970 on.
In 1973 Claudia von Alemann and Helke Sander organized the 1. Internationale Frauen-Filmseminar in Berlin.
In 1974 Helke Sander founded the journal
Frauen und Film
''Frauen und Film'' (''Women and Film'') is a German feminist film journal.
History
''Frauen und Film'' was founded in Berlin in 1974 by filmmaker Helke Sander
Helke Sander (born January 31, 1937, in Berlin) is a German feminist film directo ...
– a first feminist filmjournal, which she edited until 1981.
In the 1970s in West Germany, women directors produced a whole series of
Frauenfilm - films focusing on women's personal emancipation. In the 1980s the
Goethe Institute
The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and ...
brought a collection of German women's films in every corner of the world.
"...here the term 'feminist filmmaking' does function to point to a filmmaking practice defining itself outside the masculine mirror. German feminism is one of the most active women's movements in Europe. It has gained access to television; engendered a spectrum of journals, a publishing house and a summer women's university in Berlin; inspired a whole group of filmmakers; ..." writes Marc Silberman in ''
Jump Cut
A jump cut is a cut (transition), cut in film editing in which a single continuous sequential shot of a subject is broken into two parts, with a piece of footage being removed in order to render the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera posit ...
''. But most of the women filmmakers did not see themselves as feminists, except
Helke Sander
Helke Sander (born January 31, 1937, in Berlin) is a German feminist film director, author, actress, activist, and educator. She is known primarily for her documentary work and contributions to the women's movement in the seventies and eighties ...
and
Cristina Perincioli
Cristina Perincioli (born November 11, 1946, in Bern, Switzerland) is a Swiss film director, writer, multimedia producer and webauthor. She moved to Berlin in 1968. Since 2003 she has lived Stücken in Brandenburg.
Life and career
Cristina Peri ...
. Perincioli stated in an interview: "Fight first ... before making beautiful art". There, she explains how she develops and shoots the film together with the women concerned: saleswomen, battered wives - and why she prefers to work with an all female team. Camera women were still so rare in the 1970 that she had to find them in Denmark and France. Working with an all women film crew Perincioli encouraged women to learn these then male dominated professions.
= Association of women filmworkers of Germany
=
In 1979, German women filmworkers formed the Association of women filmworkers which was active for a few years. In 2014, a new attempt with Proquote Film (then as
Proquote Regie) turned out to be successful and effective.
A study by the University of Rostock shows that 42% of the graduates of film schools are female, but only 22% of the German feature films are staged by a woman director and are usually financially worse equipped. Similarly, women are disadvantaged in the other male-dominated film trades, where men even without education are preferred to the female graduates.
The initiative points out that the introduction of a quota system in Sweden has brought the proportion of women in key positions in film production around the same as the population share. As a result, the Swedish initiative calls also for a parity of film funding bodies and the implementation of a gradual women's quota for the allocation of film and television directing jobs in order to achieve a gender-equitable distribution. This should reflect the plurality of a modern society, because diversity can not be guaranteed if more than 80% of all films are produced by men.
ProQuote Film is the third initiative with which women with a high share in their industry are fighting for more female executives and financial resources (see
Pro Quote Medien (2012) and Quote Medizin).
United States
In the US, both the creation and subjects of motion pictures began to reflect second-wave feminist ideals, leading to the development of
feminist film theory
Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by Second Wave Feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years ...
. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, female filmmakers that were involved in part of the new wave of feminist film included
Joan Micklin Silver
Joan Micklin Silver (May 24, 1935 – December 31, 2020) was an American director of films and plays. Born in Omaha, Silver moved to New York City in 1967 where she began writing and directing films. She is best known for ''Hester Street'' (197 ...
(''
Between the Lines''),
Claudia Weill
Claudia Weill is an American film director best known for her film '' Girlfriends'' (1978), starring Melanie Mayron, Christopher Guest, Bob Balaban and Eli Wallach, made independently and sold to Warner Brothers after multiple awards at Cannes ...
(''
Girlfriends''),
Stephanie Rothman
Stephanie Rothman (born November 9, 1936, in Paterson, New Jersey) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s, especially ''The Student Nurses'' (1 ...
, and
Susan Seidelman (''
Smithereens'', ''
Desperately Seeking Susan
''Desperately Seeking Susan'' is a 1985 American comedy-drama film directed by Susan Seidelman and starring Rosanna Arquette, Aidan Quinn and Madonna. Set in New York City, the plot involves the interaction between two women – a bored housew ...
''). Other notable films that explored feminist subject matters that were made at this time include the film adaptation of
Lois Gould's novel ''
Such Good Friends'' and ''
Rosemary's Baby''.
The documentary ''
She's Beautiful When She's Angry
''She's Beautiful When She's Angry'' is a 2014 American documentary film about some of the women involved in the second wave feminism movement in the United States. It was directed by Mary Dore and co-produced by Nancy Kennedy. It was the firs ...
'' was the first
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
to cover feminism's second wave.
Social changes
Use of birth control
Finding a need to talk about the advantage of the
Food and Drug Administration
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...
passing their approval for the use of
birth control
Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...
in 1960, liberal feminists took action in creating panels and workshops with the goal to promote conscious raising among sexually active women. These workshops also brought attention to issues such as
venereal diseases
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), also referred to as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the older term venereal diseases, are infections that are spread by sexual activity, especially vaginal intercourse, anal sex, and oral s ...
and safe abortion. Radical feminists also joined this push to raise awareness among sexually active women. While supporting the "Free Love Movement" of the late 1960s and early 1970s, young women on college campuses distributed pamphlets on birth control, sexual diseases, abortion, and cohabitation.
While white women were concerned with obtaining birth control for all, women of color were at risk of sterilization because of these same medical and social advances: "Native American, African American, and Latina groups documented and publicized sterilization abuses in their communities in the 1960s and 70s, showing that women had been sterilized without their knowledge or consent... In the 1970s, a group of women... founded the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA) to stop this racist population control policy begun by the federal government in the 1940s – a policy that had resulted in the sterilization of over one-third of all women of child-bearing age in Puerto Rico." The use of forced sterilization disproportionately affected women of color and women from lower socioeconomic statuses. Sterilization was often done under the ideology of
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
. Thirty states within the United States authorized legal sterilizations under eugenic sciences.
Domestic violence and sexual harassment
The second-wave feminist movement also took a strong stance against physical violence and sexual assault in both the home and the workplace. In 1968,
NOW
Now most commonly refers
to the present time.
Now, NOW, or The Now may also refer to:
Organizations
* Natal Organisation of Women, a South African women's organization
* National Organization for Women, an American feminist organization
* Now ...
successfully lobbied the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination ...
to pass an amendment to Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
, which prevented discrimination based on sex in the workplace. This attention to women's rights in the workplace also prompted the EEOC to add sexual harassment to its "Guidelines on Discrimination", therefore giving women the right to report their bosses and coworkers for acts of sexual assault.
Domestic violence, such as battery and rape, were rampant in post-war America. Married women were often abused by their husbands, and as late as 1975 domestic battery and rape were both socially acceptable and legal as women were seen to be the possessions of their husbands. Because of activists in the second-wave feminist movement, and the local law enforcement agencies that they worked with, by 1982 three hundred shelters and forty-eight state coalitions had been established to provide protection and services for women who had been abused by male figures in their lives.
Education
Title IX
Coeducation
One debate which developed in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
during this time period revolved around the question of
coeducation
Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...
. Most
men's colleges in the United States adopted coeducation, often by merging with
women's colleges
Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male stu ...
. In addition, some women's colleges adopted coeducation, while others maintained a single-sex student body.
Seven Sisters Colleges
Two of the
Seven Sister colleges made transitions during and after the 1960s. The first,
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...
, merged with
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. Beginning in 1963, students at Radcliffe received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard and joint commencement exercises began in 1970. The same year, several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students experimentally and in 1972 full co-residence was instituted. The departments of
athletics
Athletics may refer to:
Sports
* Sport of athletics, a collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking
** Track and field, a sub-category of the above sport
* Athletics (physical culture), competi ...
of both schools merged shortly thereafter. In 1977, Harvard and Radcliffe signed an agreement which put undergraduate women entirely in Harvard College. In 1999, Radcliffe College was dissolved and Harvard University assumed full responsibility over the affairs of female undergraduates. Radcliffe is now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in
Women's Studies
Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...
at Harvard University.
The second,
Vassar College
Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely follo ...
, declined an offer to merge with
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
and instead became coeducational in 1969.
The remaining Seven Sisters decided against coeducation.
Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States.
...
engaged in a lengthy debate under the presidency of
David Truman
David Bicknell Truman (June 1, 1913 – August 28, 2003) was an American academic who served as the 15th president of Mount Holyoke College from 1969–1978. He is also known for his role as a Columbia University administrator during the Columbia ...
over the issue of coeducation. On November 6, 1971, "after reviewing an exhaustive study on coeducation, the board of trustees decided unanimously that Mount Holyoke should remain a women's college, and a group of faculty was charged with recommending curricular changes that would support the decision."
Smith College
Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...
also made a similar decision in 1971.
In 1969,
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...
and
Haverford College
Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...
(then all male) developed a system of sharing residential colleges. When Haverford became coeducational in 1980, Bryn Mawr discussed the possibly of coeducation as well, but decided against it. In 1983,
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
began admitting women after a decade of failed negotiations with
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
for a merger along the lines of Harvard and Radcliffe (Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia since 1900, but it continues to be independently governed).
Wellesley College
Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...
also decided against coeducation during this time.
Mississippi University for Women
In 1982, in a 5–4 decision, the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
ruled in ''
Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan
''Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan'', 458 U.S. 718 (1982), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, decided 5–4, which ruled that the single-sex admissions policy of the Mississippi University for Women viol ...
'' that the
Mississippi University for Women
Mississippi University for Women (MUW or "The W") is a coeducational public university in Columbus, Mississippi. It was formerly named the Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls and later the Mississippi State College ...
would be in violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment's
Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
if it denied admission to its nursing program on the basis of gender. Mississippi University for Women, the first
public or government institution for women in the United States, changed its admissions policies and became coeducational after the ruling.
In what was her first opinion written for the Supreme Court,
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stated, "In limited circumstances, a gender-based classification favoring one sex can be justified if it intentionally and directly assists members of the sex that is disproportionately burdened." She went on to point out that there are a disproportionate number of women who are nurses, and that denying admission to men "lends credibility to the old view that women, not men, should become nurses, and makes the assumption that nursing is a field for women a
self-fulfilling prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's or group of persons' belief or expectation that said prediction would come true. This suggests that people's beliefs influence their actions. ...
".
In the dissenting opinions, Justices
Harry A. Blackmun
Harry Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. Appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon, Black ...
,
Warren E. Burger
Warren Earl Burger (September 17, 1907 – June 25, 1995) was an American attorney and jurist who served as the 15th chief justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Burger graduated from the William Mitchell ...
,
Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and
William H. Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from 1 ...
suggested that the result of this ruling would be the elimination of publicly supported single-sex educational opportunities. This suggestion has proven to be accurate as there are no public women's colleges in the United States today and, as a result of ''
United States v. Virginia
''United States v. Virginia'', 518 U.S. 515 (1996), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the long-standing male-only admission policy of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in a 7–1 decision. Justice ...
'', the last all-male public university in the United States,
Virginia Military Institute
la, Consilio et Animis (on seal)
, mottoeng = "In peace a glorious asset, In war a tower of strength""By courage and wisdom" (on seal)
, established =
, type = Public senior military college
, accreditation = SACS
, endowment = $696.8 mill ...
, was required to admit women. The ruling did not require the university to change its name to reflect its
coeducational status and it continues a tradition of academic and leadership development for women by providing
liberal arts
Liberal arts education (from Latin "free" and "art or principled practice") is the traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term ''art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the ...
and professional education to women and men.
Mills College
On May 3, 1990, the Trustees of
Mills College
Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...
announced that they had voted to admit male students. This decision led to a two-week student and staff
strike
Strike may refer to:
People
* Strike (surname)
Physical confrontation or removal
*Strike (attack), attack with an inanimate object or a part of the human body intended to cause harm
*Airstrike, military strike by air forces on either a suspected ...
, accompanied by numerous displays of
nonviolent
Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...
protests by the students. At one point, nearly 300 students blockaded the administrative offices and boycotted classes. On May 18, the Trustees met again to reconsider the decision, leading finally to a reversal of the vote.
Other colleges
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a Private university, private liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. The college models its approach to education after the Supervision system, Oxford/Cambridge system of one-on-one student-faculty tutorials. Sara ...
declined an offer to merge with
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, becoming coeducational in 1969.
Connecticut College
Connecticut College (Conn College or Conn) is a private liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. It is a residential, four-year undergraduate institution with nearly all of its approximately 1,815 students living on campus. The college w ...
also adopted coeducation during the late 1960s.
Wells College
Wells College is a private liberal arts college in Aurora, New York. The college has cross-enrollment with Cornell University and Ithaca College. For much of its history it was a women's college.
Wells College is located in the Finger Lakes reg ...
, previously with a student body of women only, became co-educational in 2005. Douglass College, part of
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
, was the last publicly funded women's only college until 2007 when it became coed.
Criticism
Some black and/or working class and poor women felt alienated by the main planks of the second-wave feminist movement, which largely advocated women's right to work outside the home and expansion of reproductive rights. Women of color and poor white women in the U.S. had been working outside of the home in blue-collar and service jobs for generations. Additionally,
Angela Davis
Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...
wrote that while Afro-American women and white women were subjected to multiple unwilled pregnancies and had to clandestinely
abort, Afro-American women were also suffering from
compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, is a government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done throug ...
programs that were not widely included in dialogue about reproductive justice.
Beginning in the late 20th century, numerous feminist scholars such as
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde (; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who ...
and
Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke (born August 18, 1959) is an American economist, environmentalist, writer and industrial hemp grower, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development.
In 1996 and 2000, she ran for Vice ...
critiqued the second wave in the United States as reducing feminist activity into a homogenized and whitewashed chronology of
feminist history
Feminist history refers to the re-reading of history from a woman’s perspective. It is not the same as the history of feminism, which outlines the origins and evolution of the feminist movement. It also differs from women's history, which ...
that ignores the voices and contributions of many
women of color
The term "person of color" (plural, : people of color or persons of color; abbreviated POC) is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "White people, white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily a ...
, working-class women, and LGBT women.
The second-wave feminist movement in the United States has been criticized for failing to acknowledge the struggles of women of color, and their voices were often silenced or ignored by white feminists.
It has been suggested that the
dominant historical narratives of the feminist movement focuses on white, East Coast, and predominantly middle-class women and women's
consciousness-raising
Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...
groups, excluding the experiences and contributions of lesbians, women of color, and working-class and lower-class women.
Chela Sandoval called the dominant narratives of the women's liberation movement "
hegemonic
Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th BC – AD 6th ), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the ''hegemon'' city-state over other city-states. ...
feminism" because it
essentializes the feminist historiography to an exclusive population of women, which assumes that all women experience the same oppressions as the white, East Coast, and predominantly middle-class women. This restricting view purportedly ignored the oppressions women face determined by their race, class, and sexuality, and gave rise to women-of-color feminisms that separated from the
women's liberation movement
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...
, such as
Black feminism
Black feminism is a philosophy that centers on the idea that "Black women are inherently valuable, that lack women'sliberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's but because our need as human persons for autonomy."
Race, gen ...
,
Africana womanism
"Africana womanism" is a term coined in the late 1980s by Clenora Hudson-Weems, intended as an ideology applicable to all women of African descent. It is grounded in African culture and Afrocentrism and focuses on the experiences, struggles, need ...
, and the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc that emerged at California State University, Long Beach, which was founded by
Anna Nieto-Gómez, due to the
Chicano Movement
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of Mexican descent, especially of Pachucos in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Black ...
's
sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primari ...
.
Kimberlé Crenshaw
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (born May 5, 1959) is an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory. She is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender iss ...
coined the term "
intersectionality
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of adva ...
" in 1989 in response to the white, middle-class views that dominated second-wave feminism. Intersectionality describes the way systems of oppression (i.e. sexism, racism) have multiplicative, not additive, effects, on those who are multiply marginalized. It has become a core tenet of
third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X and early Gen Y generations third-wav ...
.
Many feminist scholars see the generational division of the second wave as problematic. Second wavers are typically essentialized as the
Baby Boomer
Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the Western demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the mid-20th century baby boom. T ...
generation, when in actuality many feminist leaders of the second wave were born before World War II ended. This generational essentialism homogenizes the group that belongs to the wave and asserts that every person part of a certain demographic generation shared the same ideologies, because ideological differences were considered to be generational differences.
Feminist scholars, particularly those from the late 20th and early 21st centuries to the present day, have revisited diverse writings,
oral histories, artwork, and artifacts of women of color, working-class women, and lesbians during the early 1960s to the early 1980s to decenter what they view as the dominant historical narratives of the second wave of the women's liberation movement, allowing the scope of the historical understanding of feminist consciousness to expand and transform. By recovering histories that they believe have been erased and overlooked, these scholars purport to establish what Maylei Blackwell termed "
retrofitted
Retrofitting is the addition of new technology or features to older systems. Retrofits can happen for a number of reasons, for example with big capital expenditures like naval vessels, military equipment or manufacturing plants, businesses or go ...
memory". Blackwell describes this as a form of "countermemory" that creates a transformative and fluid "alternative archive" and space for women's feminist consciousness within "hegemonic narratives". For Blackwell, looking within the gaps and crevices of the second wave allows fragments of historical knowledge and memory to be discovered, and new historical feminist subjects as well as new perspectives about the past to emerge, forcing existing dominant histories that claim to represent a
universal
Universal is the adjective for universe.
Universal may also refer to:
Companies
* NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company
** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal
** Universal TV, a ...
experience to be decentered and refocused.
See also
References
*
Further reading
* Boxer, Marilyn J. and Jean H. Quataert, eds. ''Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to the Present'' (2000)
*
Cott, Nancy. ''No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States'' (2004)
*
Freedman, Estelle B. ''No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women'' (2003)
*
* MacLean, Nancy. ''The American Women's Movement, 1945–2000: A Brief History with Documents'' (2008)
* Offen, Karen; Pierson, Ruth Roach; and Rendall, Jane, eds. ''Writing Women's History: International Perspectives'' (1991)
* Prentice, Alison and
Trofimenkoff, Susan Mann, eds. ''The Neglected Majority: Essays in Canadian Women's History'' (2 vol 1985)
*
Ramusack, Barbara N., and Sharon Sievers, eds. ''Women in Asia: Restoring Women to History'' (1999)
*
Rosen, Ruth. ''
The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America'' (2nd ed. 2006)
* Roth, Benita. ''Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave.'' Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press (2004)
*
Stansell, Christine. ''The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present'' (2010)
*
* Zophy, Angela Howard, ed. ''Handbook of American Women's History'' (2nd ed. 2000)
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Second Wave Feminism
Counterculture of the 1960s
de:Feminismus#Zweite Welle