second-wave feminism
- See also: First-wave feminism and Third-wave feminism
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Second-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the late 1980s.
Overview
Second Wave Feminism is generally identified with a period beginning in the early nineteen sixties. Second Wave Feminism has existed continuously since then, and continues to coexist with what some people call Third Wave Feminism. Whereas first-wave feminism focused largely on de jure (officially mandated) inequalities, second wave feminism saw de jure and de facto (unofficial) inequalities as inextricably linked issues that had to be addressed in tandem.
The movement encouraged women to understand aspects of their own personal lives as deeply politicized, and reflective of a sexist structure of power. If first-wave feminism focused upon absolute rights such as suffrage, second-wave feminism was largely concerned with other issues of equality, such as the end to discrimination and oppression.
Major moments
Among the major events that marked the time known as second wave feminism were
- The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women was created in the USA by the Kennedy administration, with Eleanor Roosevelt as its chair. The report issued by that commission in 1963 documented discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life.
- That same year,
Betty Friedan 's The Feminine Mystique appeared on bookshelves. The book was composed of interview materials with women that buttressed the facts reported by the Commission report. It became an immediate bestseller.
- Due to a combined effort from many different sorts of activist, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 of the USA was passed. Title VII illegalized employment discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race, religion, and national origin. Historians note that the category "sex" was actually included in an eleventh hour attempt to kill the bill.
- Frustrated by what they saw as a blatant disregard for spirit of the law, The National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed in the USA in 1966. Its mission was to function as a legal "watchdog" for women of all races, along the lines of the NAACP for Black Americans. This was soon followed by other organizations addressing the needs of specific groups of women, including Blacks, Latinas, Asian-Americans, lesbians, welfare recipients, business owners, aspiring politicians, and professional women of every sort.
- The rise of radical feminism during the 1970s.
- Eight years after Title VII, Title IX in the Education Amendments of 1972 (United States) was passed, which forbade discrimination in the field of education. Many people see Title IX as extremely important to young women today, contributing to equal provisions for women's sports in school and feminist campus activism, among other things. However, it became clear early that many existing anti-discrimination laws were not enforced. For instance, within the commission's first five years, it received 50,000 sex discrimination complaints, but did little to investigate them.
- Inspired in part by the legal victories of the 1960s and 1970s, but still worried about de facto discrimination, many feminists supported and worked to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment into the United States Constitution. The Amendment, proposed in 1972, said:
- Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Opponents, such as Phyllis Schlafly, charged that passage of the ERA of the USA would lead to men abandoning their families, unisex toilets, gay marriages, and women being drafted. Despite polls consistently showing a large majority of the population supporting an Equal Rights Amendment, when the deadline for ratification came in 1982, the ERA was still three states short of the 38 needed to write it into the U.S. constitution.
- On January 22, 1973, Roe vs. Wade was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision legalized abortion in all 50 states, by stating that the right to decisions regarding one's reproductive system was consistent with a right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
- The National Women's Conference, the first meeting of its type in the United States since the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, was held in Houston, Texas.
- The Feminist Sex Wars of the late 1970s and 1980s between anti-pornography feminism and sex-positive feminism. The "Sex Wars" led to deep divisions within the feminist movement and also laid the groundwork for many issues that were important in third-wave feminism.
- The Second Wave also saw the beginning of streams of feminist thought which were critical or hostile to transgender and transsexual women. Feminists such as Mary Daly, Janice Raymond, and Gloria Steinem penned writings which asserted that transsexualism was inherently conservative and that sex reassignment was a way to preserve rigid, oppressive gender roles. It was not until 1991 (the beginning of the Third Wave) that Sandy Stone, a transsexual woman, published a rebuttal to these anti-trans writings in her landmark essay "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto."
Education
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,
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 06 November 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." [1] Smith College also made a similar decision in 1971.[2] 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. [3] 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.
Mills college
On May 3, 1990, the Trustees of Mills College announced
that they had voted to admit male students. [4] This
decision led to a two-week student and staff
Other Colleges
Pembroke College merged with Brown University. Sarah Lawrence College declined an offer to merge with Princeton University, becoming coeducational in 1969.[citation needed] Connecticut College also adopted coeducation during the late 1960s. In addition, due to its status as a public or government institution, the Mississippi University for Women become coeducational after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan (1982). The ruling found that as a publicly funded institution, the university would be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause if it denied admission on the basis of gender (in this case, men).
Journalism
Ms. magazine, founded in 1972 by Gloria Steinem, contains articles centered around issues related to the second wave.
Off Our Backs: The Feminist Newsjournal, founded in 1970, covers feminist news and current feminist ideas and opinion.
In the UK, Spare Rib expressed many of the ideas of second wave feminism. It closed in the 1990s, as second wave feminism changed to third wave feminism.
Legislation
Important works of legislation which developed in the United States as a result of the second wave include Title IX (1972), which enforced the involvement of girls in sports and athletics in school. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which sought to guarantee equal rights under the law for Americans regardless of sex, also developed during this time. The amendment was not ratified, due in part to the extreme difficulty of passing constitutional amendments of any kind. The amendment was of a general nature and did not focus on specific rights. Instead it sought to provide a strong legal precedent for other changes and function and a general symbol of feminist empowerment.
Organizations
Individuals involved in the development of these and related issues were often a part of NOW or the National Organization for Women'(USA).
The rise of intentional communities
One interesting and underdocumented aspect of the second-wave was the rise of lesbians' cooperative living communities. An example of one such intentional community was the Chatanika River Women's Colony.
See also
- first-wave feminism
- third-wave feminism
- Going Dutch
- Girl Power
- List of feminists
- Kate Millett
Betty Friedan - Radical Women
References
- ^ "Mount Holyoke:A Detailed History", mtholyoke.edu.
- ^ "Smith Tradition", smith.edu.
- ^ "A Brief history of Bryn Mawr College", brynmawr.edu.
- ^ "Venerable School for Women Is Going Co-ed", nytimes.com.com, 1990-05-04.
- ^ "Mills Students Protesting Admission of Men", nytimes.com.com, 1990-05-05.
- ^ "Disbelieving and Defiant, Students Vow: No Men", nytimes.com.com, 1990-05-06.
- ^ "Protest Continues at College Over Decision to Admit Men", nytimes.com.com, 1990-05-08.
- ^ "College to Reconsider Decision to Admit Men", nytimes.com.com, 1990-05-12.
- ^ "Women's College Rescinds Its Decision to Admit Men", nytimes.com.com, 1990-05-19.
- Heide, Margaret J. Television Culture and Women's Lives: "Thirtysomething" and the Contradictions of Gender
- Inness, Sherrie A. (ed.) 'Tough Girls : Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
- Osgerby, Bill, Anna Gough-Yates, and Marianne Wells. Action TV : Tough-Guys, Smooth Operators and Foxy Chicks. London: Routledge, 2001.
- Press, Andrea L. Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American Television Experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
- ——— and Tery Strathman. "Work, Family, and Social Class in Television Images of Women: Prime-Time Television and the Construction of Postfeminism." Women and Language, 1993 Fall, 16:2, 7-15.
- Roth, Benita. Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
- Tasker, Yvonne. Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Culture. London: Routledge 1998
- ———.Spectacular Bodies : Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
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