Feminism is a principle that promotes the idea that women and men are
equal and so deserve the same rights and opportunities economically, socially, and politically. Its roots are in the struggle for women’s suffrage
(the right to vote), which began with the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights
Convention in 1848 and ended with the passage of the Nineteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. That era of activism is
generally accepted as the first wave of the feminist movement.
The second wave
The second wave of the feminist movement was begun by educated,
middle-class women whose lives no longer neatly fit the socially accepted
norm for their gender. As access to higher education and their participation in the workforce increased, women were no longer willing to be
forced into the role of full-time housewife and mother. They wanted more, but as new opportunities were opening up to them, they faced discrimination. By law, companies were permitted to pay women less than
men for performing the same jobs. Job listings in newspapers were divided into men’s and women’s categories.
The 1960s was a decade of great social and political unrest in
America. The country was involved in the unpopular Vietnam War
(1954–75), and the country was divided about whether America should
participate in the war. The civil rights movement (1954–65) was generating violent and hateful conflict. Cultural and social norms were
being challenged on virtually every level, and when women became vocal
with their displeasure, many resented them.
U.S. president John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) was
progressive. In 1961, he appointed a Commission on the Status of
Women. The commission’s purpose was to reexamine women’s places in
the family, legal system, and economy, and the first chair of the group
was former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), who held the position until her death in 1962.
The commission was staffed by a network of powerful women of
every race and included lawyers, academics, union organizers, and government officials. Their 1963 report documented what life for women
was like, with unequal pay, employment discrimination, legal injustices,
and a lack of social services, including accessible child care. The report
led to almost every state conducting its own investigation, and 1963
proved to be a year filled with feminist milestones. The Equal Pay Act
made it illegal to pay women less than men for the same work. Feminist
writer and activist Betty Friedan (1921–2006) wrote her groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique, in which she explored the causes of
frustrations of modern women in traditional roles.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 included gender along with race,
creed (religion), and national origin as prohibited grounds for employment discrimination, and women found themselves with a legal tool they
never had before. Progress was slow, however. When women filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC),
the agency set up to enforce this facet of the Civil Rights Act, bureaucrats took their time in assisting them. It became clear that women
needed their own civil rights organization. Women’s rights organizations
During the 1966 Third National Conference of
the Commission on the Status of Women, the
National Organization for Women (NOW)
was established. Its mission was to bring women
into full participation within mainstream
American society and give them true equality.
NOW used lobbying as well as legal and direct
action strategies to enhance the laws and encourage enforcement of them.
In 1968, NOW members endorsed the
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Suffragist
Alice Paul (1885–1977) first drafted the ERA in
1923. It guarantees equal rights under the law
for all Americans, regardless of gender. It has
been reintroduced in Congress every year since
1982, and as of the first decade of the twentyfirst century, it still has not been ratified by the
necessary number of states to become law.
NOW remained the largest organization of
the second wave of the feminist movement, but smaller, more focused
groups gave the movement a unifying power it otherwise probably could
not have sustained. Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL), formed by
former NOW members, focused solely on the issue of abortion rights.
Women’s lib
The activists of NOW did the organizing and laid the legal groundwork
for the second wave of the movement, and while they were busy doing
that, the younger generation established a more extreme feminist movement called “women’s liberation.” This movement originated in 1967 as
small clusters of women active in other social movements, such as civil
rights and antiwar, began meeting in larger cities. These activists believed
in consciousness raising, which means that when they met, they discussed their experiences as women, whether those experiences were
rooted in work, sex, education, or domestic life. Consciousness-raising
allowed women who previously believed their experiences were unique
to understand that others shared them. The result was empowering
for them. Women’s “libbers” received media attention and public scrutiny for
their outrageous tactics. They staged a demonstration outside the building that hosted the 1968 Miss America Pageant. They dramatically threw
away girdles, bras, and curlers. For this, they were labeled “bra burners,”
even though they did not actually burn bras at the event. The media covered their antics, but did so in a mocking way. Nonetheless, the women’s
liberation movement progressed at an amazing rate from 1968 to 1969.
Whereas NOW held organized meetings with agendas, the consciousness-raising groups had no structure whatsoever. They developed wherever women were: at school, in offices, and even in carpools. By 1969,
numerous newsletters and journals representing the voice of women’s liberation had been established.
These consciousness-raising groups eventually morphed into other
groups, more focused on one particular issue such as pornography, day
care, women’s health, or domestic violence. The women established coffeehouses, bookstores, and shelters. While mainstream America may not have taken them seriously, these women took themselves seriously and
made huge social strides for women and children.
Grassroots power
Feminism was a highly political movement that relied as much on creativity as it did on funding and the sheer determination of women. The
movement grew quickly because the issues it covered and the demands
of its purpose touched women on a deeply personal level at a time when
they had no voice to represent them. NOW encouraged women to establish task forces at the local and national levels to tackle nearly every issue
they were facing. Those task forces produced reports along with recommendations for action.
NOW put out a call for a nationwide strike for equality on August
26, 1970, the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth
Amendment. In New York City alone, twenty to fifty thousand women
staged the largest women’s rights demonstration since the suffrage movement. They blocked Fifth Avenue during rush hour. And while they were
doing that, their feminist sisters were staging similar demonstrations and
rallies in forty cities across the nation.
Across the country, college and university campuses were seeing a
new field of study, women’s studies, proliferate. It began as a class offered
here and there, usually in an informal setting. As more and more students attended these classes, teachers began developing guidelines for
topics and areas of study. By the mid-1970s, hundreds of campuses had
added women’s studies classes to their course offerings.
For women, oppression is often directly related to one’s physical
body. Consciousness raising included a focus on women’s intimate experiences with men, motherhood, marriage, abortion, rape, and incest.
Some groups held “speak-outs,” at which women would share their very
private, personal stories involving these experiences. These speak-outs
raised awareness of the degree of loneliness to which many women lived
on a daily basis because of the secrets they had long kept.
The idea of abortion rights developed into an abortion law reform
movement. Until 1973, abortion was illegal. Women began forming
groups to help other women find competent doctors willing to break the
law and perform abortions. One Chicago-based group named Jane
began performing the abortions themselves. Between 1971 and 1973,
they performed eleven thousand abortions, with a safety record that matched that of doctor-performed legal abortions. In 1973, the
Supreme Court ruled in the case Roe v. Wade that most laws restricting
a woman’s right to an abortion were unconstitutional.
In an extension of the effort to give women power over their own
bodies, the feminist movement addressed sexual violence and vulnerability. The first rape crisis hotline was established in 1972. By the mid-
1970s, NOW had formed more than three hundred local and state rape
task forces across the nation. Crisis centers gave counsel and advice to
rape victims, helped them deal with police and the medical establishment, offered self-defense courses, and developed support groups.
Soon shelters for battered women experienced a similar growth. The
first shelter was established as a consciousness-raising group in St. Paul,
Minnesota, in 1971. It was opened by a group called Women’s
Advocates, and they wrote a handbook on divorce. When they implemented a telephone service to provide legal information to victims of domestic violence, they were inundated with requests for emergency
housing. They raised funds to rent a small apartment for this purpose in
1973, but it was not enough. Soon members were taking victims into
their own homes. Women’s Advocates officially opened in 1974, but its
staff already had eighteen months of working with women. Soon other
shelters were established.
Even with all the consciousness-raising, one segment of America’s female population continued to feel marginalized and unaccepted. Lesbian
feminists created tension within the larger movement because they felt
that they still lacked a public identity. Although a gay liberation movement had begun in 1969, lesbians were still highly underrepresented in
the feminist movement. Some formed separatist groups while others
brought the principles of women’s liberation and consciousness-raising
into the gay liberation movement. By 1977, the feminist movement acknowledged the importance of lesbian leadership and began fighting homophobic discrimination as part of its larger struggle.
Although middle-class women drove the movement, working-class
and minority women soon participated by establishing their own organizations. Their particular interests included labor unions and sexism in
the workplace. Women of color also formed their own organizations.
Although they had their own principle, which they called black feminism, the racial differences of women did not keep them from working together. The women’s movement found another strong voice at that time in
long-time activist Gloria Steinem (1934–). In 1972, with others, Steinem
founded Ms., the first mass-market feminist magazine. Its first printing of
three hundred thousand copies sold out within eight days. The magazine
took up many feminist issues, including abortion rights, sexuality, economic justice, marriage, the family, and the culture. In the early 1970s,
Steinem and Friedan joined U.S. representatives Shirley Chisholm
(1924–2005) and Bella Abzug (1920–1998), both of New York, in the
formation of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), which
worked to get women elected and appointed to political offices.
Feminist policy
Feminists represented more than half of the voting public, and the period between 1968 and 1975 saw the passage of much feminist legislation. In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that an employer would have to
prove that substantially all women could not perform a required task to
justify hiring a man if women applied for the position. It would be up to
the woman to determine if she could perform a particularly hard job, just
as it was up to the man. Although twenty-two of the required thirtyeight states had ratified the ERA by 1972, the bill still did not have
enough support to pass into law.
Title IX of the Higher Education Act, passed in the early 1970s,
stated that no woman shall be excluded from participating in an educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance solely because of her sex. This was the catalyst for the provision of several million
dollars to fund projects designed to improve the quality of education for
girls. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 guaranteed women independent access to credit in their own names. Prior to that, a woman’s
access to credit was determined by her relationship to a man.
Feminism not for everyone
Not all women were feminists, and as the movement gained momentum,
opponents organized to fight it. Activist Phyllis Schlafly (1924–) formed
Stop ERA in 1972 on the claim that most women did not want to be liberated. Around that same time, a movement known in the twenty-first
century as the pro-life movement took shape. The Republican Party as
a whole was against the women’s movement, claiming it was hostile and
antagonistic. After enjoying much optimism and progress, the feminist
movement was forced into the position of defending its values by the end
of the 1970s. With the defeat of the ERA in 1982, the second wave of
feminism was considered over.