What was the Second Wave Feminist Movement?

Women's Liberation March in Washington, D.C., 1970 by Warren K. Leffler

Today, feminism is an ideology/theory that most people fail to fully understand. Feminism has been described as having three separate waves. The first wave of feminism started in the mid-19th Century and culminated with the women's suffrage movement. Historians and feminist/gender scholars describe today’s feminist theory, ideology and social/political movement as the third wave of feminism. Second wave feminism started in the late 1950s moved into the 1980s. This ‘’second wave’’ of feminism started after the women were forced out of the workplace after end of World War Two and essentially ended with the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

Lead up to the Second Wave

Women’s history before the 1920s is famous for the suffrage movement and a push for a larger social safety net for the poor and less fortunate. What is not usually talked about in basic history text is that women did not just stop fighting for their rights after they got the right to vote. Since the 1920s there have been multiple instances of women organizing around their rights in multiple spaces and places. For example in the 1930s, women of color in the Southwest of the United States joined labor unions like ILGWU and UCCAPAW and put their bodies on the line in protest of the extremely poor wages and work environment they had to endure while also helping with their large extended families.

In the 1940s, women gained employment in lieu of men fighting overseas in WWII. The labor unions that had grown in the 1930s became stronger because women became more involved as they found work. It was in the 1940s that women successfully achieved maternity leave, day care, and women counselors in the factories instead of men. The National Council of Negro Women also fought for the rights of African American women’s jobs that were to be swiftly taken away and replaced with domestic jobs as the war ended, as well as fought to gain racial and gender equality concerning larger umbrella women’s organizations. As the war ended, many women who enjoyed working in the public sphere were forced to back into the home and private sphere.

As the 1950s rolled around and the Cold War was in full swing, anti-communist sentiments would end most women’s organizing efforts due to red-baiting (assuming someone or something is communist in nature) and challenging anything liberal in nature. The four decades in between the 1960s and the 1920s proved to be a harsh climate for women to achieve any real change across race and class lines. It was the social atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s that would ignite women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds to become involved in the effort to gain equal rights among men.

Ideology that Shaped the Movement

Before beginning to talk about the actual outcomes of the movement, which provided real and tangible rights for women, it is important to understand the basic ideology behind the second wave of feminism. The ideology and theory of the second wave was groundbreaking and continues to be a part of contemporary feminism today.In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir published ‘’The Second Sex’’. In her work, Beauvoir writes, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” This quote is essential in feminism theory, which seeks to explain that gender is a social construct and learned from the social environment.

The famous Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963 where so questioned white, middle class femininity and the seclusion of the private sphere. In her book, Friedan includes interviews with women who were just unhappy at home when society told them that is was the only place they belonged. This book would begin to break down the private and public sphere barriers that most women subscribed to. In 1969, Katy Millett wrote Sexual Politics and wrote about the patriarchal structure, which informed sex and gender oppression. Millets argued that before any other type of oppression existed, elite men first oppressed people based on sex and gender and then it extended to race and class. Carol Hanisch published an essay in 1970 titled “The Personal is Political.” Hanisch argued that everything was political. Whether a women decided to have an abortion and get a job as a woman in a male dominated industry, each of these decisions was ultimately a political. She determined that women needed to bring their ‘’private sphere problems’’ to the ‘’public sphere podium’’ in order to be heard.

One Movement or Two?

Second wave feminism essentially broke into two separate ideological movements: Equal rights feminism and radical feminism. These movements approached feminism from very different perspectives. Under equal-rights feminism women sought equality among men in political and social spheres through legislation and efforts to ‘’the glass ceiling’’ in the working world. The second approach, radical feminism advocated the destruction of the patriarchal structure of society that oppressed women. Until this structure was destroyed, women’s oppression would continue. As long women were oppressed, it was would difficult to eliminate any inequality because the oppression was the root of all other oppressions.

Both ideologies eventually merged into ‘’Third Wave’’ of feminism. What separates the two different movements is the distinction between discrimination and oppression. Radical feminists would choose to focus on demolishing the patriarchal oppressive structures that they saw as over-arching all other oppressions. The equal-rights feminists were largely white, older in age, and most came from affluent backgrounds. Radical feminists were made up younger white affluent women, and minority women of all ages who were active in the Civil Rights movement as well.

Minorities

Women of color, especially during the Civil Rights movement, were finding themselves underrepresented in both racial and gender movements that were simultaneously fighting for their equality. Black, Latina/Chicana, Asian, and Native American women were all active in feminist agendas but wary of the whiteness that seemed to dominate the organizations that were dedicated to the destruction of patriarchal structures. All over the United States, minority women began the fight of racial and gender oppression by creating their own organizations. Some had already existed thanks to the serge of participation in the workforce during the 1940s, like the National Council of Negro Women. Other organizations developed during the 1960s and 1970s included the Third World Women’s Alliance. The Third Women's World Alliance primary goal was to expose the relation between race, sex, sexuality, gender, and class oppressions. This approach is now referred to as intersectionality. The views organizations of minority women eventually became the drivers of the major themes of the ‘’third wave’’ of feminism that exists today. Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, Gloria Anzaldua, and Cherrie Morriega successfully imposed their view of feminism onto third wave feminism.

Conclusion

The ‘’second wave’’ was an extremely important time for women who no longer wanted to subscribe to the traditional public and private spheres of society. They no longer accepted the housewife role as mandatory, they fought for the right to do what they wanted with their bodies, they fought to end sexual and gender oppression, and some began to fight against racism within the feminist movement itself. The contribution to feminist theory and ideology is enormous, and the concept of intersectionality is now one of the most important key terms when learning about feminism today. Ultimately, the ‘’ second wave’’ gave women the opportunity to start conversations about how to fight against inequality and begin to think about gender, identity, sexuality, race, and class as all equally important factors. The ‘’third wave’’ is now informed by and constantly rethinking and dismantling some of the ‘’second wave rhetoric, but is undeniably grateful to the fight the ‘’second wave’’ continued.

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