Second-wave feminism is a period of feminist
activity and thought that began in the United
States in the early 1960s and lasted roughly
two decades.
It quickly spread across the Western world,
with an aim to increase equality for women
by gaining more than just enfranchisement.
Issues addressed by the movement included
rights regarding domestic issues such as dress
codes and employment.
In the 1960s (and in fact throughout much
of the early 20th century), 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.
Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly
on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles
to gender equality (e.g., voting rights and
property rights), second-wave feminism broadened
the debate to include a wider range of issues:
sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive
rights, de facto inequalities, and official
legal inequalities.
Second-wave feminism also drew attention to
the issues of domestic violence and marital
rape, engendered rape-crisis centers and women's
shelters, and brought about changes in custody
laws and divorce law.
Feminist-owned bookstores, credit unions,
and restaurants were among the key meeting
spaces and economic engines of the movement.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 over issues such as sexuality and
pornography, which ushered in the era of third-wave
feminism in the early 1990s.
== Overview in the United States ==
The second wave of feminism in America came
as a delayed reaction against the renewed
domesticity of women after World War II: the
late 1940s post-war boom, which was an era
characterized by an unprecedented economic
growth, a baby boom, a move to family-oriented
suburbs and the ideal of companionate marriages.
This life was clearly illustrated by the media
of the time; for example television shows
such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to
Beaver idealized domesticity.Some important
events laid the groundwork for the second
wave.
French writer Simone de Beauvoir had in the
1940s examined the notion of women being perceived
as "other" in the patriarchal society.
She went on to conclude in her 1949 treatise
The Second Sex 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 approved the combined oral
contraceptive pill, which was made available
in 1961.
This made it easier for women to have careers
without having to leave due to unexpectedly
becoming pregnant.
The administration of President Kennedy made
women's rights a key issue of the New Frontier,
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, chaired by Eleanor
Roosevelt and comprising cabinet officials
(including Peterson and Attorney General Robert
F. Kennedy), senators, representatives, businesspeople,
psychologists, sociologists, professors, activists,
and public servants.
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, protested above
ground testing of nuclear bombs and tainted
milk.
In 1963 Betty Friedan, influenced by 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 limited their possibilities and wasted
potential.
She had helped conduct a very important survey
using her old classmates from Smith College.
This survey revealed that the women who played
a role at home and the work force were more
satisfied with their life compared to 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 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.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 "Mother of the Movement" Betty
Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, and
President John F. Kennedy's Presidential Commission
on the Status of Women released its report
on gender inequality.
The report revealed, that there was gender
inequality, but also recommended changing
it by giving paid maternity leave, greater
access to education, and help with child care,
along with Friedan's book, which spoke to
the discontent of many women (especially housewives),
led to the formation of many local, state,
and federal government women's groups as well
as 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, Title VII
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Griswold
v. Connecticut Supreme Court ruling of 1965.
In 1966 Friedan joined other women and men
to found the National Organization for Women
(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 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
gained widespread popularity among feminists
after a diary she authored while working undercover
as a Playboy Bunny waitress at the Playboy
Club 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 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 and the Women's
Educational Equity Act (1972 and 1974, respectively,
educational equality), Title X (1970, health
and family planning), the Equal Credit Opportunity
Act (1974), the Pregnancy Discrimination Act
of 1978, the outlawing of marital rape (although
not outlawed in all states until 1993), and
the legalization of no-fault divorce (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 of 1971 and Roe v. Wade
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 announced that the longtime ban on
women serving in US military combat roles
had been lifted.
The US Department of Defense plans to integrate
women into all combat positions by 2016.Second-wave
feminism also affected other movements, such
as the civil rights movement and the student's
rights movement, as women sought equality
within them.
In 1965 Casey Hayden and Mary King published
"Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo" detailing
women's inequality within the civil rights
organization SNCC.In June 1967 Jo Freeman
attended a "free school" course on women at
the University of Chicago led by Heather Booth
and Naomi Weisstein.
She invited them to organize a woman's workshop
at the then-forthcoming National Conference
of New Politics (NCNP), to be held over Labor
Day weekend 1967 in Chicago.
At that conference a woman's caucus was formed,
and it (led by Freeman and Shulamith Firestone)
tried to present its 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
Director Willam F. Pepper refused to recognize
any of the women waiting to speak and instead
called on someone to speak about the American
Indian, five women, including Firestone, rushed
the podium to demand to know why.
But Willam F. Pepper 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
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.
In 1968, an SDS organizer at the University
of Washington told a meeting about white college
men working with poor white men, and "[h]e
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's first women's liberation group.The
second wave of the feminist movement also
marks the emergence of women's studies as
a legitimate field of study.
In 1970 San Diego State University was the
first university in the United States to offer
a selection of women's studies courses.The
1977 National Women's Conference in Houston,
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.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,
the United States armed forces, NASA, single-sex
colleges, men's clubs, and the Supreme Court,
and illegalizing gender discrimination.
However, in 1982 adding the Equal Rights Amendment
to the United States Constitution 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'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.
As of 2011, more women earn bachelor's degrees
than men, half of the Ivy League 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.
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 and was succeeded by third-wave
feminism in the early 1990s.
== Overview outside the United States ==
In 1967, at the International Alliance of
Women Congress held in London, delegates were
made aware of an initiative by the UN Commission
on the Status of Women 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
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.
In Turkey and Israel, second-wave feminism
began in the 1980s.
== Businesses ==
Feminist activists have established a range
of feminist businesses, 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.
== 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's song "I Am
Woman" played a large role in popular culture
and became a feminist anthem; 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.
"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.
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
attracted 10,000 women from across America.
These festivals encouraged already-famous
female singers, such as Laura Nyro 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.
=== Film ===
Both the creation and subjects of motion pictures
began to reflect second-wave feminist ideals,
leading to the development of feminist film
theory.
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 (Between the Lines), Claudia Weill
(Girlfriends), Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman,
23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles), Stephanie
Rothman, and Susan Seidelman (Smithereens,
Desperately Seeking Susan).
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
was the first documentary film to cover feminism's
second wave.
== 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 Sandra "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
and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
and created a platform to speak on the violent
and sexist issues women faced while working
with the larger Civil Rights Movement.
=== 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 among middle-class
women throughout America.
Many of these women organized to form the
National Organization for Women 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 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.
== Social changes ==
=== Use of birth control ===
Finding a need to talk about the advantage
of the Food and Drug Administration passing
their approval for the use of birth control
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 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.
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 successfully lobbied the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission to pass
an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, 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.
Women were often abused as a result of daily
frustration in their husband's lives, 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
during this time period revolved around the
question of coeducation.
Most men's colleges in the United States adopted
coeducation, often by merging with women's
colleges.
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, merged with
Harvard University.
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 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 at Harvard
University.
The second, Vassar College, declined an offer
to merge with Yale University and instead
became coeducational in 1969.
The remaining Seven Sisters decided against
coeducation.
Mount Holyoke College engaged in a lengthy
debate under the presidency of David Truman
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 also made a similar decision
in 1971.In 1969, Bryn Mawr College and Haverford
College (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 began admitting
women after a decade of failed negotiations
with Barnard College 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 also decided against coeducation
during this time.
==== Mississippi University for Women ====
In 1982, in a 5–4 decision, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled in Mississippi University for
Women v. Hogan that the Mississippi University
for Women would be in violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment's Equal Protection Clause 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".In the dissenting opinions, Justices
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Lewis
F. Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist 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, the last all-male
public university in the United States, Virginia
Military Institute, 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 and professional education to
women and men.
==== Mills College ====
On May 3, 1990, the Trustees of Mills College
announced that they had voted to admit male
students.
This decision led to a two-week student and
staff strike, accompanied by numerous displays
of nonviolent 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 declined an offer to
merge with Princeton University, becoming
coeducational in 1969.
Connecticut College also adopted coeducation
during the late 1960s.
Wells College, previously with a student body
of women only, became co-educational in 2005.
Douglass College, part of Rutgers University,
was the last publicly funded women's only
college until 2007 when it became coed.
== Criticism ==
Beginning in the late 20th century, numerous
feminist scholars have critiqued the second
wave in the United States as reducing feminist
activity into a homogenized and whitewashed
chronology of feminist history that ignores
the voices and contributions of many women
of color, working-class women, and LGBT women.The
historiography of the United States' second-wave
feminism has been criticized for failing to
acknowledge and analyze the multiple sites
of feminist insurgencies of women of color,
silencing and ignoring the diverse pre-political
and political developments that occurred during
this time.
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 groups,
disregarding 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
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, such
as Black feminism, Africana womanism, 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's
sexism.Many feminist scholars see the generational
division of the second wave as problematic.
Second wavers are typically essentialized
as the Baby Boomer 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 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 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)
Harnois, Catherine (2008).
"Re-presenting feminisms: Past, present, and
future".
NWSA Journal.
Johns Hopkins University Press.
20 (1): 120–145.
JSTOR 40071255.
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)
Thébaud, Françoise (Spring 2007).
"Writing women's and gender history in France:
A national narrative?".
Journal of Women's History.
19 (1): 167–172.
doi:10.1353/jowh.2007.0026.
Zophy, Angela Howard, ed.
Handbook of American Women's History (2nd
ed. 2000)
== External links ==
Media related to Second-wave feminism at Wikimedia
Commons
