Feminism

The First Wave of Feminism

There have been two waves of feminism. The first wave began with the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Founded by the social reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), this first organized women's rights movement grew from the nineteenth-century movement to abolish slavery in the United States. These feminists were often called suffragists, because they fought for women's right to vote. Not until 1919 did they win this right, after a powerful coalition of women's groups promoted the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment; women cast their first votes in the election of 1920. Feminism did not fade away after this victory although the formal organized movement went into doldrums. Many individual women pursued feminist goals in politics and professional organizations. Using more individualized strategies, women gained some rights with regard to property, earnings, and education.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, feminists also struggled for women's right to use birthcontrol devices. The nurse-reformer Margaret Sanger (1883–1966) and the anarchist Emma Goldman (1869–1940) fought for this right and campaigned for health clinics for women. The momentum of the women's movement then slowed until the 1960s.

The Second Wave of Feminism

The second wave of feminism was inspired by the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. Because women still did not enjoy full equality, the reborn feminist movement sought economic and political equality for women as well as sexual and cultural freedoms. Raising consciousness about women's subordinate status was a first step in this second wave. Influenced by The Second Sex (1949), written by the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), small groups of women began meeting in the 1960s to share stories about their lives; they came to realize that their secondrate status was not an individual problem but a collective one. This consciousness raising began to create a “sisterhood”—a sense of group solidarity and a desire to mobilize for collective action. This sisterhood gave women a sense of community—a community based not only on a sense of grievance and shared oppression but also on the intention to resist the continuing denial of equal rights. For example, women did not enjoy pay equity with men; they lagged behind in education, and employment was still largely stratified because of sex discrimination.

The President's Commission on the Status of Women was established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy to redress continued gender inequality. The feminist movement was further energized by The Feminine Mystique (1963), written by the activist Betty Friedan (b. 1921). Friedan declared that it was time for women to reclaim themselves and assert control over their lives, by fighting for pay equity, greater representation in public office, and more access to occupations that were male dominated. In addition, women's rights were expanded by passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, and gender. Betty Friedan and other women's rights activists founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. NOW called for the creation of new social institutions that would let women enjoy “the true equality of opportunity and responsibility.” While the social movements of the 1960s influenced the second wave of the women's movement, they also radicalized it by deepening women's awareness of their secondary roles.

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