| CATEGORII DOCUMENTE |
| Animale | Arta cultura | Divertisment | Film | Jurnalism | Muzica |
| Pescuit | Pictura | Versuri |
Feminism throughout the years in the
Foreword
Technically speaking, I do not
believe there has ever been a single united feminism. There have been multiple
feminisms representing the efforts of women to live into their full humanity in
a world shaped by and for the generally larger and more violent male half of
the human species.
To the extent that there is a capital-F Feminism that has dominated the history
of feminist thought, it tends to correspond with the goals of the upper-class
heterosexual white women who have traditionally been given, and still tend to
have, disproportionate power to spread their message--but the movement is so
much more than that.
Throughout the centuries women have been nothing more than simple child-bearers, housekeepers and sometimes companions for men, whose sole purpose in life was the satisfaction of having raised morally-valid children. However, this could not last for long, for it was only a matter of time until they would discover the lies and deceits carefully planted into their subconscious since they were born. They realized that their strength did not stand in weak bodies, but in strong souls, for unlike their male halves, they had the power to withstand pressure and ridicule since they had been doing the exact same thing until then. By realizing this they were only a step away from challenging the unjust system which created such profound barriers between the two sexes.
It is true that because of countless generations of oppressed women the mentality continues to prevail, its foundation has been clearly shaken by powerful waves of feminist movements and, although they were not continuous, they have progressed in a natural way, bringing women closer to their goal.
It is my opinion that if these sentiments and ideas are not left to rest and if women continue to fight for their recognition, the wall of misconceptions and subordination can be demolished. It just takes time.
Chapter 1: The beginning
The birth of the United States of America
On April 2, , Spanish conquistador
Juan Ponce de Len landed on what he called
'La Florida'-the first documented European
arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Of the colonies
By 1674, English forces had won the former Dutch
colonies in the Anglo-Dutch Wars; the
Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 through 1781. On June 14, , the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that 'all men are created equal' and endowed with 'certain unalienable Rights,' the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, . The Declaration, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, pronounced the colonies sovereign 'states.' In 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted, uniting the states under a weak federal government that operated until 1788. Some 70,000-80,000 loyalists to the British Crown fled the rebellious states, many to Nova Scotia and the new British holdings in Canada. Native Americans, with divided allegiances, fought on both sides of the war's western front.
After the defeat of the
British army by American forces who were assisted by the French,
Americans' eagerness to expand westward began a
cycle of Indian Wars
that stretched to the end of the nineteenth century, as Native Americans were
stripped of their land. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory
under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 virtually doubled the nation's size.
The War of 1812,
declared against
The intimately oppressed
However, it is possible, by reading
standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers
were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the
military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women,
is a sign of their submerged status.
In this invisibility they were
something like black slaves (and thus slave women faced a double oppression).
The biological uniqueness of women, like skin color and facial characteristics
for Negroes, became a basis for treating them as inferiors. True, with women,
there was something more practically important in their biology than skin
color-their position as child bearers-but this was not enough to account for
the general push backward for all of them in society, even those who did not
bear children, or those too young or too old for that. It seems that their
physical characteristics became a convenience for men, who could use, exploit,
and cherish someone who was at the same time servant, sex mate, companion, and
bearer-teacher-ward en of his children.
Societies based on private property
and competition, in which monogamous families became practical units for work
and socialization, found it especially useful to establish this special status
of women, something akin to a house slave in the matter of intimacy and
oppression, and yet requiring, because of that intimacy, and long-term connection
with children, a special patronization, which on occasion, especially in the
face of a show of strength, could slip over into treatment as an equal. An
oppression so private would turn out hard to uproot.
The first women of the new land
The conditions under which white
settlers came to
Many women came in those early years as indentured servants- often teenage girls-and lived lives not much different from slaves, except that the term of service had an end. They were to be obedient to masters and mistresses. The authors of Americans Working Women (Baxandall, Gordon, and Reverby) describe the situation:
They were poorly paid and often treated rudely and harshly, deprived of good food and privacy. Of course these terrible conditions provoked resistance. Living in separate families without much contact with others in their position, indentured servants had one primary path of resistance open to them: passive resistance, trying to do as little work as possible and to create difficulties for their masters and mistresses. Of course the masters and mistresses did not interpret it that way, but saw the difficult behavior of their servants as sullenness, laziness, malevolence and stupidity.
For instance, the General Court of
Connecticut in 1645 ordered that a certain 'Susan C., for her rebellious
carriage toward her mistress, to be sent to the house of correction and be kept
to hard labor and coarse diet, to be brought forth the next lecture day to be
publicly corrected, and so to be corrected weekly, until order be given to the
contrary.'
In 1756, Elizabeth Sprigs wrote to her father about her servitude:
"What we unfortunate English People suffer here is beyond the probability of you in England to Conceive, let it suffice that I one of the unhappy Number, am toiling almost Day and Night, and very often in the Horses druggery, with only this comfort that you Bitch you do not halfe enough, and then tied up and whipp'd to that Degree that you'd not serve an Animal, scarce any thing but Indian Corn and Salt to eat and that even begrudged nay many Negroes are better used, almost naked no shoes nor stockings to wear what rest we can get is to rap ourselves up in a Blanket and ly upon the Ground. "
Even free white women, not brought
as servants or slaves but as wives of the early settlers, faced special
hardships. Eighteen married women came over on the Mayflower. Three were
pregnant, and one of them gave birth to a dead child before they landed.
Childbirth and sickness plagued the women; by the spring, only four of those
eighteen women were still alive.
Those who lived, sharing the work of
building a life in the wilderness with their men, were often given a special
respect because they were so badly needed. And when men died, women often took
tip the men's work as well. All through the first century and more, women on
the American frontier seemed close to equality with their men.
The teachings of the Empire
But all women were burdened with
ideas carried over from
"In this consolidation which we call
wedlock is a locking together. It is true, that man and wife arc one person,
but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little river
incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the
Julia Spruill describes the woman's
legal situation in the colonial period: ''The husband's control over the wife's
person extended to the right of giving her chastisement. . .. But he was not
entitled to inflict permanent injury or death on his wife. . . .'
As for property: 'Besides
absolute possession of his wife's personal property and a life estate in her
lands, the husband took any other income that might be hers. He collected wages
earned by her labor. . . . Naturally it followed that the proceeds of the joint
labor of husband and wife belonged to the husband.'
For a woman to have a child out of
wedlock was a crime, and colonial court records are full of cases of women
being arraigned for 'bastardy'-the father of the child untouched by
the law and on the loose. A colonial periodical of 1747 reproduced a speech
'of Miss Polly Baker before a Court of Judicature, at
"May it please the honourable bench
to indulge me in a few words: I am a poor, unhappy woman, who have no money to
fee lawyers to plead for me.. .. This is the fifth time, gentlemen, that I have
been dragg'd before your court on the same account; twice I have paid heavy
fines, and twice have been brought to publick punishment, for want of money to
pay those fines. This may have been agreeable to the laws, and I don't dispute
it; but since laws arc sometimes unreasonable in themselves, and therefore
repealed; and others bear too hard on the subject in particular circumstances
I take the liberty to say, that I think this law, by which I am punished,
both unreasonable in itself, and particularly severe with regard to me .
Abstracted from the law, I cannot conceive what the nature of my offense
is. I have brought five fine children into the world, at the risqu of my life;
I have maintained them well by my own industry, without burdening the township,
and would have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy charges and
fines I have paid.. . . nor has anyone the least cause of complaint against me,
unless, perhaps, the ministers of justice, because I have had children without
being married, by which they missed a wedding fee. But can this be a fault of
mine? .. .
What must poor young women do, whom customs and nature forbid to solicit the men, and who cannot force themselves upon husbands, when the laws take no care to provide them any, and yet severely punish them if they do their duty without them; the duty of the first and great command of nature and nature's Cod, increase and multiply; a duty from the steady performance of which nothing has been able to deter me, but for its sake I have hazarded the loss of the publick esteem, and have frequently endured pub-lick disgrace and punishment; and therefore ought, in my humble opinion, instead of a whipping, to have a statue erected to my memory. "
No wonder that Puritan New England
carried over this subjection of women. At a trial of a woman for daring to
complain about the work a carpenter had done for her, one of the powerful
church fathers of Boston, the Reverend John Cotton, said: '. . . that the
husband should obey his wife, and not the wife the husband, that is a false
principle. For God hath put another law upon women: wives, be subject to your
husbands in all things.'
A best-selling 'pocket
book,' published in
You must first lay it down for a Foundation in general, That there is Inequality in Sexes, and that for the better Economy of the World; the Men, who were to be the Law-givers, had the larger share of Reason bestow'd upon them; by which means your Sex is the better prepar'd for the Compliance that is necessary for the performance of those Dudes which seem'd to be most properly assign'd to it. Your Sex wanteth our Reason for your Conduct, and our Strength for your Protection: Ours wanteth your Gendeness to soften, and to entertain us.
Trial and error
Against this powerful education, it
is remarkable that women nevertheless rebelled. Women rebels have always faced
special disabilities: they live under the daily eye of their master; and they
are isolated one from the other in households, thus missing the daily
camaraderie which has given heart to rebels of other oppressed groups.
Anne Hutchinson was a religious
woman, mother of thirteen children, and knowledgeable about healing with herbs.
She defied the church fathers in the early years of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony by insisting that she, and other ordinary people, could interpret the
Bible for themselves. A good speaker, she held meetings to which more and more
women came (and even a few men), and soon groups of sixty or more were
gathering at her home in Boston to listen to her criticisms of local ministers.
John Winthrop, the governor, described her as 'a woman of a haughty and
fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue,
more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgment, inferior to many
women.'
Anne Hutchinson was put on trial
twice: by the church for heresy, and by the government for challenging their
authority. At her civil trial she was pregnant and ill, but they did not allow
her to sit down until she was close to collapse. At her religious trial she was
interrogated for weeks, and again she was sick, but challenged her questioners
with expert knowledge of the Bible and remarkable eloquence. When finally she
repented in writing, they were not satisfied. They said: 'Her repentance
is not in her countenance.'
She was banished from the colony,
and when she left for
It remained rare for women to participate
openly in public affairs, although on the southern and western frontiers
conditions made this occasionally possible. Julia Spruill found in
Women and the Revolution
During the Revolution, however, Spruill reports, the necessities of war brought women out into public affairs. Women formed patriotic groups, carried out anti-British actions, wrote articles for independence. They were active in the campaign against the British tea tax, which made tea prices intolerably high. They organized Daughters of Liberty groups, boycotting British goods, urging women to make their own clothes and buy only American-made things. In 1777 there was a women's counterpart to the Boston Tea Party-a 'coffee party,' described by Abigail Adams in a letter to her husband John:
"One eminent, wealthy, stingy merchant (who is a bachelor) had a hogshead of coffee in his store, which he refused to sell the committee under six shillings per pound. A number of females, some say a hundred, some say more, assembled with a cart and trunks, marched down to the warehouse, and demanded the keys, which he refused to deliver. Upon which one of them seized him by his neck and tossed him into the cart. Upon his finding no quarter, he delivered the keys when they tipped up the cart and discharged him; then opened the warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put it into the trunks and drove off. A large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction. "
It has been pointed out by women
historians recently that the contributions of working-class women in the
American Revolution have been mostly ignored, unlike the genteel wives of the
leaders (Dolly Madison, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams). Margaret Corbin,
called 'Dirty Kate,' Deborah Sampson Garnet, and 'Molly
Pitcher' were rough, lower-class women, prettified into ladies by
historians. While poor women, in the last years of the fighting, went to army
encampments, helped, and fought, they were represented later as prostitutes,
whereas Martha Washington was given a special place in history books for
visiting her husband at
Nevertheless,
A new society, old mentality
Between the American
Revolution and the Civil War, so many elements of American society were
changing-the growth of population, the movement westward, the development of
the factory system, expansion of political rights for white men, educational
growth to match the new economic needs-that changes were bound to take place in
the situation of women. In preindustrial America, the practical need for women
in a frontier society had produced some measure of equality; women worked at
important jobs-publishing newspapers, managing tanneries, keeping taverns,
engaging in skilled work. In certain professions, like midwifery, they had a
monopoly. Nancy Cott tells of a grandmother, Martha Moore Ballard, on a farm in
Maine in 1795, who 'baked and brewed, pickled and preserved, spun and
sewed, made soap and dipped candles' and who, in twenty-five years as a
midwife, delivered more than a thousand babies. Since education took place
inside the family, women had a special role there.
As the economy developed, men dominated as mechanics and tradesmen, and
aggressiveness became more and more defined as a male trait. Women, perhaps
precisely because more of them were moving into the dangerous world outside,
were told to be passive. Clothing styles developed- for the rich and middle
class of course, but, as always, there was the intimidation of style even for
the poor-in which the weight of women's clothes, corsets and petticoats,
emphasized female separation from the world of activity.
It became important to develop a set
of ideas, taught in church, in school, and in the family, to keep women in
their place even as that place became more and more unsettled. Barbara Welter (Dimity
Convictions) has shown how powerful was the 'cult of true
womanhood' in the years after 1820. The woman was expected to be pious. A
man writing in The Ladies' Repository: 'Religion is exactly what a
woman needs, for it gives her that dignity that bests suits her
dependence.' Mrs. John Sandford, in her book Woman, in Her Social and
Domestic Character, said: 'Religion is just what woman needs. Without
it she is ever restless or unhappy.'
Sexual purity was to be the special virtue of a woman. It was assumed that men, as a matter of biological nature, would sin, but woman must not surrender. As one male author said: 'If you do, you will be left in silent sadness to bewail your credulity, imbecility, duplicity, and premature prostitution.' A woman wrote that females would get into trouble if they were 'high spirited not prudent.' The role began early, with adolescence. Obedience prepared the girl for submission to the first proper mate. Barbara Welter describes this:
The assumption is twofold: the American female was supposed to be so infinitely lovable and provocative that a healthy male could barely control himself when in the same room with her, and the same girl, as she 'conies out' of the cocoon of her family's protectiveness, is so palpitating with undirected affection, so filled to the brim with tender feelings, that she fixes her love on the first person she sees. She awakes from the midsummer night's dream of adolescence, and it is the responsibility of her family and society to see that her eyes fall on a suitable match and not some clown with the head of an ass. They do their part by such restrictive measures as segregated (by sex and/or class) schools, dancing classes, travel, and other external controls. She is required to exert the inner control of obedience. The combination forms a kind of societal chastity belt which is not unlocked until the marriage partner has arrived and adolescence is formally over.
The cult of domesticity
In The Young Lady's Book of 1830:
',.. in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to
her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and
humility of mind, are required from her.' And one woman wrote, in 1850, in
the book
The woman's job was to keep the home
cheerful, maintain religion, he nurse, cook, cleaner, seamstress, flower
arranger. A woman shouldn't read too much, and certain books should be avoided.
When Harriet Martineau, a reformer of the 1830s, wrote Society in America,
one reviewer suggested it he kept away from women: 'Such reading will
unsettle them for their true station and pursuits, and they will throw the
world back again into confusion.'
The cult of domesticity for the woman was a
way of pacifying her with a doctrine of 'separate but equal'-giving
her work equally as important as the man's, hut separate and different. Inside
that 'equality' there was the fact that the woman did not choose her
mate, and once her marriage took place, her life was determined. One girl wrote
in 1791: 'The die is about to be cast which will probably determine the
future happiness or misery of my life. I have always anticipated the event with
a degree of solemnity almost equal to that which will terminate my present
existence.'
Marriage enchained, and children
doubled the chains. One woman, writing in 1813: 'The idea of soon giving
birth to my third child and the consequent duties I shall he called to
discharge distresses me so I feel as if I should sink.' This despondency
was lightened by the thought that something important was given the woman to
do: to impart to her children the moral values of self- restraint and advancement
through individual excellence rather than common action.
The new ideology worked; it helped
to produce the stability needed by a growing economy. But its very existence
showed that other currents were at work, not easily contained. And giving the
woman her sphere created the possibility that she might use that space, that
time, to prepare for another kind of life.
Chapter 2: Taking action
2.1. The need to have a role in society
The 'cult of true
womanhood' could not completely erase what was visible as evidence of
woman's subordinate status: she could not vote, could not own property; when
she did work, her wages were one-fourth to one-half what men earned in the same
job. Women were excluded from the professions of law and medicine, from
colleges, from the ministry.
Putting all women into the same
category-giving them all the same domestic sphere to cultivate- created a
classification (by sex) which blurred the lines of class, as Nancy Cott points
out. However, forces were at work to keep raising the issue of class. Samuel
Slater had introduced industrial spinning machinery in
Some of the earliest industrial strikes took
place in these textile mills in the 1830s. Eleanor Flexner (A Century of
Struggle) gives figures that suggest why: women's daily average earnings in
1836 were less than 371/2 cents, and thousands earned 25 cents a day, working
twelve to sixteen hours a day. In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1824, came the
first known strike of women factory workers; 202 women joined men in protesting
a wage cut and longer hours, but they met separately. Four years later, women
in
A journal kept by an unsympathetic
resident of
There were strikes in various cities
in the 1840s, more militant than those early
2.2. An unfair system
Catharine Beecher, a woman reformer of the time, wrote about the factory system:
Let me now present the facts I learned by observation or inquiry on the spot. I was there in mid- winter, and every morning I was awakened at five, by the bells calling to labor. The time allowed for dressing and breakfast was so short, as many told me that both were performed hurriedly, and then the work at the mill was begun by lamplight, and prosecuted without remission till twelve, arid chiefly in a standing position. Then half an hour only allowed for dinner, from which the time for going and returning was deducted. Then back to the mills, to work till seven o'clock. it must be remembered that all the hours of labor are spent in rooms where oil lamps, together with 40 to 80 persons, are exhausting the healthful principle of the air and where the air is loaded with particles of cotton thrown from thousands of cards, spindles, and looms.
And the life of upper-class women?
Frances Trollope, an Englishwoman, in her book Domestic Manners of the
Americans, wrote: "Let me be
permitted to describe the day of a
Yet not all women were bound by the
restraints created by their place in society. Middle-class women, barred from
higher education, began to monopolize the profession of primary-school
teaching. As teachers, they read more, communicated more, and education itself
became subversive of old ways of thinking. They began to write for magazines
and newspapers, and started some ladies' publications. Literacy among women
doubled between 1780 and 1840. Women became health reformers. They formed
movements against double standards in sexual behavior and the victimization of
prostitutes. They joined in religious organizations. Some of the most powerful
of them joined the antislavery movement. So, by the time a clear feminist
movement emerged in the 1840s, women had become practiced organizers,
agitators, speakers.
2.3. Education for women
When Emma Willard addressed the New
York legislature in 1819 on the subject of education for women, she was
contradicting the statement made just the year before by Thomas Jefferson (in a
letter) in which he suggested women should not read novels 'as a mass of
trash' with few exceptions. 'For a like reason, too, much poetry
should not be indulged.' Female education should concentrate, he said, on
'ornaments too, and the amusements of life. . . . These, for a female, are
dancing, drawing, and music.'
Emma Willard told the legislature
that the education of women 'has been too exclusively directed to fit them
for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty.' The problem,
she said, was that 'the taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has
been made into a standard for the formation of the female character.'
Reason and religion teach us, she said, that 'we too are primary
existences not the satellites of men.'
In 1821, Willard founded the Troy Female Seminary, the first recognized institution for the education of girls. She wrote later of how she upset people by teaching her students about the human body:
Mothers visiting a class at the Seminary in the early thirties were so shocked at the sight of a pupil drawing a heart, arteries and veins on a blackboard to explain the circulation of the blood, that they left the room in shame and dismay. To preserve the modesty of the girls, and spare them too frequent agitation, heavy paper was pasted over the pages in their textbooks which depicted the human body.
Women struggled to enter the
all-male professional schools. Dr. Harriot Hunt, a woman physician who began to
practice in 1835, was twice refused admission to Harvard Medical cSchool. But
she carried on her practice, mostly among women and children. She believed
strongly in diet, exercise, hygiene, and mental health. She organized a Ladies
Physiological Society in 1843 where she gave monthly talks. She remained
single, defying convention here too.
Elizabeth Blackwell got her medical
degree in 1849, having overcome many rebuffs before being admitted to
2.4. Issues needed to be resolved
Women began to be involved in other movements of reform- antislavery, temperance, dress styles, prison conditions and this turned eventually gave them the courage to speak of their own situation. Angelina Grimke, a southern white woman who became a fierce speaker and organizer against slavery, saw that movement leading further: "Let us all first wake up the nation to lift millions of slaves of both sexes from the dust, and turn them into men and then it will he an easy matter to take millions of females from their knees and set them on their feet, or in other words transform them from babies into women."
Angelina was the first woman (in 1838) to
address a committee of the
Speaking out on other issues
prepared the way for speaking on the situation of women: Dorothea Dix, in 1843,
addressed the legislature of
Women put in enormous work in antislavery societies all over the country, gathering thousands of petitions to Congress. Eleanor Flexner writes in A Century of Struggle:
Today, countless file boxes in the
National Archives in
In the course of this work, events were set in
motion that carried the movement of women for their own equality racing
alongside the movement against slavery. In 1840, a World Anti-Slavery Society
Convention met in
2.5. History being written, grievances being told
It was at that time that Elizabeth
Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott and others, and began to lay the plans that led
to the first Women's Rights Convention in history. It was held at
I now fully understood the practical difficulties most women had to contend with in the isolated household, and the impossibility of woman's best development if, in contact, the chief part of her life, with servants and children, .. . The general discontent I felt with woman's portion as wife, mother, housekeeper, physician, and spiritual guide, the chaotic condition into which everything fell without her constant supervision, and the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women, impressed me with the strong feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general and of women in particular. My experiences at the World Anti-Slavery Convention, all I had read of the legal status of women, and the oppression I saw everywhere, together swept across my soul. I could not see what to do or where to begin-my only thought was a public meeting for protest and discussion.
An announcement was put in the Seneca County Courier calling for a meeting to discuss the 'rights of woman' the 19th and 20th of July. Three hundred women and some men came. A Declaration of Principles was signed at the end of the meeting by sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. It made use of the language and rhythm of the Declaration of Independence:
"When in the course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the
people of the earth a position different from that they have hitherto occupied
We hold these truths to be
self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; dial among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.. ..
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.. . .
Then came the list of grievances: no
right to vote, no right to her wages or to property, no rights in divorce
cases, no equal opportunity in employment, no entrance to colleges, ending
with: 'He had endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her
confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her
willing to lead a dependent and abject life.'
And then a series of resolutions,
including: 'That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a
station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a
position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature,
and therefore of no force or authority.'
A series of women's conventions in
various parts of the country followed the one at
That man over there says that woman needs to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches. .. . Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles or gives me any best place. And a'nt I a woman?
Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and
planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a'nt I a woman?
I would work as much and eat as much as a man, when I could get it, and bear
the lash as well. And a'nt I a woman?
I have borne thirteen children and seen em most all sold off to slavery,
and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a'nt
I a woman?
Thus
were women beginning to resist, in the 1830s and 1840s and 1850s, the attempt
to keep them in their 'woman's sphere.' They were taking part in all
sorts of movements, for prisoners, for the insane, for black slaves, and also
for all women.
In the midst of these movements, there exploded, with the force of government and the authority of money, a quest for more land, an urge for national expansion.
Chapter 3: Universal suffrage
3.1. Confusion
The proceedings in Seneca Falls, followed a few
days later by a meeting in
But
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, although somewhat discomforted by the widespread
misrepresentation, understood the value of attention in the press. 'Just
what I wanted,'
Helen Keller had said in 1911: 'We vote? What
does that mean?' And Emma Goldman around the same time: 'Our modern
fetish is universal suffrage.' After 1920, women were voting, as men did,
and their subordinate condition had hardly changed.
Right after women got the vote, the measure of their social progress can be seen in an advice column written by Dorothy Dix that appeared in newspapers all over the country. The woman should not merely be a domestic drudge, she said:
a man's wife is the show window where he exhibits the measure of his achievement . The biggest deals are put across over luncheon tables; we meet at dinner the people who can push our fortunes . The woman who cultivates a circle of worthwhile people, who belongs to clubs, who makes herself interesting and agreeable is a help to her husband.
Robert and Helen Lynd, studying
A writer in early 1930, boosting the
beauty business, started off a magazine article with the sentence: 'The
average American woman has sixteen square feet of skin.' He went on to say
that there were forty thousand beauty shops in the country, and that $2 billion
was spent each year on cosmetics for women-but this was insufficient:
'American women are not yet spending even one- fifth of the amount
necessary to improve their appearance.' He then gave an itemized list of
the 'annual beauty needs of every woman': twelve hot-oil treatments,
fifty-two facials, twenty-six eyebrow plucks, etc.
It seems that women have best been able to make their first escape from the prison of wifeliness, motherhood, femininity, housework, beautification, isolation, when their services have been desperately needed-whether in industry, or in war, or in social movements. Each time practicality pulled the woman out of her prison-in a kind of work-parole program-the attempt was made to push her back once the need was over, and this led to women's struggle for change.
World War II had brought more women than ever before out of the home into work. By 1960, 36 percent of all women sixteen and older- 23 million women-worked for paid wages. But although 43 percent of women with school-age children worked, there were nursery schools for only 2 percent- the rest had to work things out themselves. Women were 50 percent of the voters-but (even by 1967) they held 4 percent of the state legislative seats, and 2 percent of the judgeships. The median income of the working woman was about one-third that of the man. And attitudes toward women did not seem to have changed much since the twenties. 'There is no overt anti-feminism in our society in 1964,' wrote feminist and sociologist Alice Rossi, 'not because sex equality has been achieved, but because there is practically no feminist spark left among American women.'
In the civil rights
movement of the sixties, the signs of a collective stirring began to appear.
Women took the place they customarily took in social movements, in the front
lines-as privates, not generals. In the office of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee in
3.2. The sense of failure
During the 1960s women took the
place they customarily took in social movements, in the front lines-as
privates, not generals. In the office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee in
Nevertheless, women played a crucial
role in those early dangerous years of organizing in the South, and were looked
on with admiration. Many of these were older women like Ella Baker, and Amelia
Boynton in
Around the same time, white, middle-class, professional women were beginning to speak up. A pioneering, early book, strong and influential, was Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.
Just what was the problem that has no name? What were the words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a woman would say 'I feel empty somehow . . . incomplete.' Or she would say, 'I feel as if I don't exist.' Sometimes. 'A tired feeling I get so angry with the children it scares me. I feel like crying without any reason.'
Friedan wrote out of her experience
as a middle-class housewife, but what she spoke about touched something inside
all women: "The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of
American women. It was a strange stirring, -A sense of dissatisfaction, a
yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the
But on an April morning in 1959, I
heard a mother of four, having coffee with four other mothers in a suburban
development fifteen miles from
The 'mystique' that
Friedan spoke of was the image of the woman as mother, as wife, living through
her husband, through her children, giving up her own dreams for that. She
concluded: 'The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to
know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.'
In the summer of 1964, in
By 1969, women were 40 percent of
the entire labor force of the
What of the women who didn't have jobs? They worked very hard, at home, but this wasn't looked on as work, because in a capitalist society (or perhaps in any modern society where things and people are bought and sold for money), if work is not paid for, not given a money value, it is considered valueless. Women began to think more about this fact in the 1960s, and Margaret Benston wrote about it ('The Political Economy of Women's Liberation'), Women doing housework were people outside the modern economic system, therefore they were like serfs or peasants, she said.
3.3.
Time for a new change
The women who worked in the typical 'woman's job'-secretary, receptionist, typist, salesperson, cleaning woman, nurse-were treated to the full range of humiliations that men in subordinate positions faced at work, plus another set of humiliations stemming from being a woman: gibes at their mental processes, sexual jokes and aggression, invisibility except as sexual objects, cold demands for more efficiency. A commercial 'Guide to Clerical Times Standards' printed a question-and-answer column:
Q. I'm a businessman, and my secretary seems to move entirely
too slowly. How many times a minute should she be able to open and close a file
drawer?
A. Exactly 25 times. Times for other 'open and close
operations' are .04 minutes for opening or closing a folder, and .026
minutes for opening a standard center desk drawer. If you're worried about her
'chair activity,' clock her against these standards: 'Got up from
chair,' .033 minutes; 'turn in swivel chair,' .009 minutes.
A woman factory worker in
"A few years ago I was suspended for three days from work because my children were still young and I had to take time off when they were sick. . . . They want people who keep quiet, squeal on one another, and are very good little robots. The fact that many have to take nerve pills before starting their day, and a week doesn't go by that there aren't two or three people who break down and cry, doesn't mean a thing to them".
She added: 'But times are
changing, and from now on, more people will speak out and demand from their
so-called bosses that they be treated the way the bosses themselves would like
to he treated.'
Times indeed were changing. Around
1967, women in the various movements-civil rights, Students for a Democratic
Society, antiwar groups-began meeting as women, and in early 1968, at a women's
antiwar meeting in Washington, hundreds of women carrying torches paraded to
the
In
the fall of 1968, a group called Radical Women attracted national attention
when they protested the selection of Miss
Some of the New York Radical Women shortly afterward formed WITCH (Women's
International terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), and its members, dressed as
witches, appeared suddenly on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. A
leaflet put out by WITCH in
WITCH lives and laughs in every woman. She is the free part of each of us, beneath the shy smiles, the acquiescence to absurd male domination, the make-up or flesh-suffocating clothes our sick society demands. There is no 'joining' WITCH. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH. You make your own rules.
WITCH in
3.4. The voice of those unheard
Poor women, black women, expressed the
universal problem of women in their own way. In 1964 Robert Coles (Children
of Crisis) interviewed a black woman from the South recently moved to
"I organized this neighborhood organization, two men and six ladies started it. That was a hard pull. A lot of people joined in later. For about five months we had meetings pretty near every night. We learned how to work with other people. A lot of people were afraid to really do anything. You were afraid to go to the city hall or ask for anything. You didn't even ask the landlord for anything, you were afraid of him. Then we had meetings and then we weren't afraid so much anymore. . . . The way we got this playground: we blocked off the street, wouldn't let anything come through. We wouldn't let the trolley bus come through. The whole neighborhood was in it. Took record players and danced; it went on for a week. We didn't get arrested, they was too many of us. So then the city put up this playground for the kids. "
A woman named Patricia Robinson wrote a pamphlet called Poor Black Woman, in which she connected the problems of women with the need for basic social change:
"Rebellion by poor black women, the bottom of a class hierarchy heretofore not discussed, places the question of what kind of society will the poor black woman demand and struggle for. Already she demands the right to have birth control, like middle class black and white women. She is aware that it takes two to oppress and that she and other poor people no longer are submitting to oppression, in this case genocide. She allies herself with the have-nots in the wider world and their revolutionary struggles. She had been forced by historical conditions to withdraw the children from male dominance and to educate and support them herself. In this very process, male authority and exploitation are seriously weakened. Further, she realizes that the children will be used as all poor children have been used through history-as poorly paid mercenaries fighting to keep or put an elite group in power. Through these steps she has begun to question aggressive male domination and the class society which enforces it, capitalism."
In 1970, Dorothy Bolden, a laundry
worker in
Women's magazines and newspapers
began appearing, locally and nationally, and books on women's history and the
movement came out in such numbers that some bookstores had special sections for
them. The very jokes on television, some sympathetic, some caustic, showed how
national was the effect of the movement. Certain television commercials, which
women felt humiliated them, were eliminated after protest.
In 1967, after lobbying by women's
groups, President Johnson signed an executive order banning sex discrimination
in federally connected employment, and in the years that followed, women's
groups demanded that this he enforced. Over a thousand suits were initiated by
NOW (National Organization for Women, formed in 1966) against
3.5. More delicate issues
The right to abortion became a major issue. Before 1970, about a million
abortions were done every year, of which only about ten thousand were legal.
Perhaps a third of the women having illegal abortions- mostly poor people-had
to be hospitalized for complications. How many thousands died as a result of
these illegal abortions no one really knows. But the illegalization of abortion
clearly worked against the poor, for the rich could manage either to have their
baby or to have their abortion under safe conditions.
Court actions to do away with the
laws against abortions were begun in over twenty states between 1968 and 1970,
and public opinion grew stronger for the right of women to decide for
themselves without government interference. In the book Sisterhood Is
Powerful, an important collection of women's writing around 1970, an
article by Lucinda Cisler, 'Unfinished Business: Birth Control,' said
that 'abortion is a woman's right no one can veto her decision and
compel her to bear a child against her will .'In the spring of 1969 a
Harris poll showed that 64 percent of those polled thought the decision on
abortion was a private matter.
Finally, in early 1973, the Supreme Court decided (Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton) that the state could prohibit abortions only in the last three months of pregnancy, that it could regulate abortion for health purposes during the second three months of pregnancy, and during the first three months, a woman and her doctor had the right to decide.
There was a push for child care centers, and although women did not succeed in getting much help from government, thousands of cooperative child care centers were set up.
Women also began to speak openly, for the first time, about the problem of rape.
Each year, fifty thousand rapes were reported and many more were unreported.
Women began taking self-defense courses. There were protests against the way
police treated women, interrogated them, insulted them, when women filed rape
charges. A book by Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will, was widely
read-it is a powerful, indignant history and analysis of rape, suggesting
self-defense, individual or collective: "Fighting back. On a multiplicity of
levels, that is the activity we must engage in, together, if we- women-are to
redress the imbalance and rid ourselves and men of the ideology of rape. Rape
can be eradicated, not merely controlled or avoided on an individual basis, but
the approach must be long- range and cooperative, and must have the understanding
and good will of many men as well as women ."
Many women were active in trying to get a Constitutional amendment, ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), passed by enough states. But it seemed clear that even if it became law, it would not be enough, that what women had accomplished had come through organization, action, protest. Even where the law was helpful it was helpful only if backed by action. Shirley Chisholm, a black Congresswoman, said: "The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes. We must replace the old, negative thoughts about our femininity with positive thoughts and positive action."
Perhaps the most profound effect of
the women's movement of the sixties-beyond the actual victories on abortion, in
job equality-was called 'consciousness raising,' often done in
'women's groups,' which met in homes all across the country. This
meant the rethinking of roles, the rejection of inferiority, the confidence in
self, a bond of sisterhood, a new solidarity of mother and daughter. The
This is the picture that keeps
forming in my mind:
my young mother, barely seventeen,
cooking their Kosher dinner on the coal stove,
that first winter in
and my father, mute in his feelings
except when he shouted,
eating to show his love.
Fifty years later her blue eyes would grow cold
with the shock of that grey house
and the babies one after another
and the doctor who said
'If you don't want any more children
move out of the house.'
For the first time, the sheer
biological uniqueness of women was openly discussed. Some theorists (Shulamith
Firestone, in The Dialectics of Sex, for instance) thought this was more
fundamental to their oppression than any particular economic system. It was
liberating to talk frankly about what had for so long been secret, hidden,
cause for shame and embarrassment: menstruation, masturbation, menopause,
abortion, lesbianism.
One of the most influential books to appear in the early seventies was a book assembled by eleven women in the Boston Women's Health Book Collective called Our Bodies, Ourselves. It contained an enormous amount of practical information, on women's anatomy, on sexuality and sexual relationships, on lesbianism, on nutrition and health, on rape, self-defense, venereal disease, birth control, abortion, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause. More important even than the information, the charts, the photos, the candid exploration of the previously unmentioned, was the mood of exuberance throughout the book, the enjoyment of the body, the happiness with the new- found understanding, the new sisterhood with young women, middle-aged women, older women. They quoted the English suffragette Christabel Pankhurst:
Remember the dignity
of your womanhood.
Do not appeal,
do not beg,
do not grovel.
Take courage
join hands,
stand beside us.
Fight with us.
The fight began, many women were saying, with the body, which seemed to be the beginning of the exploitation of women-as sex plaything (weak and incompetent), as pregnant woman (helpless), as middle-aged woman (no longer considered beautiful), as older woman (to be ignored, set aside). A biological prison had been created by men and society. As Adrienne Rich said (Of Woman Born): 'Women are controlled by lashing us to our bodies.' She wrote:
"I have a very clear, keen memory of myself the day after I was married: I was sweeping a floor. Probably the floor did not really need to be swept; probably I simply did not know what else to do with myself. But as I swept that floor I thought: 'Now I am a woman. This is an age-old action, this is what women have always done.' I felt I was bending to some ancient form, too ancient to question. This is what women have always done. As soon as I was visibly and clearly pregnant, I felt, for the first time in my adolescent and adult life, not-guilty. The atmosphere of approval in which I was bathed-even by strangers on the street, it seemed-was like an aura I carried with me, in which doubts, fears, misgivings met with absolute denial. This is what women have always done."
Rich said women could use the body
'as a resource, rather than a destiny.' Patriarchal systems, she
said, whether under capitalism or 'socialism,' limited women's bodies
to their own needs. She discussed the training of passivity in women.
Generations of schoolgirls were raised on Little Women, where Jo is told
by her mother: 'I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo; but I have
learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may
take me another forty years to do so.'
Male doctors used instruments to
bring out children, replacing the sensitive hands of midwives, in the era of
'anesthetized, technologized childbirth.' Rich disagreed with her
fellow feminist Firestone, who wanted to change the biological inevitability of
childbirth, because it is painful and a source of subordination; she wanted,
under different social conditions, to make childbirth a source of physical and
emotional joy.
One could not talk of Freud's
ignorance of women, Rich said, as his one 'blind spot,' which implied
that in other matters his vision was clear; such ignorance distorts all. There
is a dilemma of the body: "I know no woman-virgin, mother, lesbian, married,
celibate-whether she earns her keep as a housewife, a cocktail waitress, or a
scanner of brain waves-for whom her body is not a fundamental problem: its
clouded meaning, its fertility, its desire, its so-called frigidity, its bloody
speech, its silences, its changes and mutilations, its rapes and ripenings."
Her reply to this: "the 'repossession of our bodies a world in which
every woman is the presiding genius of her own body' as a basis for
bringing forth not just children but new visions, new meanings, a new world. "
3.6. The prisons were being destroyed, the time for change had come
For most women who were not
intellectuals, the question was even more immediate: how to eliminate hunger,
suffering, subordination, humiliation, in the here and now. A woman named
Johnnie Tillmon wrote in 1972: "I'm a woman. I'm a black woman. I'm a poor
woman. I'm a fat woman. I'm a middle-aged woman. And I'm on welfare. I have
raised six children. I grew up in
Welfare, she said, was like 'a super
sexist marriage. You trade in a man for the man. The man runs everything . .
. controls your money. . . .' She and other welfare mothers organized a
National Welfare Rights Organization. They urged that women be paid for their
work-housekeeping, child bearing. "No woman can he liberated, until all women
get off their knees.'
In the problem of women was the germ
of a solution, not only for their oppression, but for everybody's. The control
of women in society was ingeniously effective. It was not done directly by the
state. Instead, the family was used-men to control women, women to control
children, all to be preoccupied with one another, to turn to one another for
help, to blame one another for trouble, to do violence to one another when
tidings weren't going right. Why could this not be turned around? Could women
liberating themselves, children freeing themselves, men and women beginning to
understand one another, find the source of their common oppression outside
rather than in one another? Perhaps then they could create nuggets of strength
in their own relationships, millions of pockets of insurrection. They could
revolutionize thought and behavior in exactly that seclusion of family privacy
which the system had counted on to do its work of control and indoctrination.
And together, instead of at odds-male, female, parents, children-they could
undertake the changing of society itself.
But
in the sixties and seventies there was not just a women's movement, a
prisoner's movement, an Indian movement. There was general revolt against
oppressive, artificial, previously unquestioned ways of living. It touched
every aspect of personal life: childbirth, childhood, love, sex, marriage,
dress, music, art, sports, language, food, housing, religion, literature,
death, schools.
The
new temper, the new behavior, shocked many Americans. It created tensions.
Sometimes it was seen as a 'generation gap'-the younger generation
moving far away from the older one in its way of life. But it seemed after a
while to be not so much a matter of age-some young people remained
'straight' while some middle-aged people were changing their ways and
old people were beginning to behave in ways that astounded others.
Sexual
behavior went through startling changes. Premarital sex was no longer a matter
for silence. Men and women lived together outside of marriage, and struggled
for words to describe the other person when introduced: 'I want you to
meet my . . . friend.' Married couples candidly spoke of their affairs,
and books appeared discussing 'open marriage.' Masturbation could be
talked about openly, even approvingly. Homosexuality was no longer concealed.
'Gay' men and 'gay' women- lesbians-organized to combat discrimination
against them, to give themselves a sense of community, to overcome shame and
isolation.
All
this was reflected in the literature and in the mass media. Court decisions
overruled the local banning of books that were erotic or even pornographic. A
new literature appeared (The Joy of Sex and others) to teach men and
women how sexual fulfillment could be attained. The movies now did not hesitate
to show nudity, although the motion picture industry, wanting to preserve
principle as well as profit, set up a classification system (R for Restricted,
X for prohibited to children). The language of sex became more common both in
literature and in ordinary conversation.
All this was connected with new living
arrangements. Especially among young people, communal living arrangements
flourished. A few were truly communes-that is, based on the sharing of money
and decisions, creating a community of intimacy, affection, trust. Most were
practical arrangements for sharing the rent, with varying degrees of friendship
and intimate association among the participants. It was no longer unusual for
men and women to be 'roommates'-in groups of two or three or larger,
and without sexual relations-as practical, unselfconscious arrangements.
The
most important thing about dress in the cultural change of the sixties was the
greater informality. For women it was a continuation of the historic feminist
movement's insistence on discarding of 'feminine,' hampering clothes.
Many women stopped wearing bras. The restrictive 'girdle'-almost a
uniform of the forties and fifties-became rare. Young men and women dressed
more nearly alike, in jeans, in discarded army uniforms. Men stopped wearing
neckties, women of all ages wore pants more often-unspoken homage to Amelia
Bloomer.
There
was a new popular music of protest. Pete Seeger had been singing protest songs
since the forties, but now he came into his own, his audiences much larger. Bob
Dylan and Joan Baez, singing not only protest songs, but songs reflecting the
new abandon, the new culture, became popular idols. A middle-aged woman on the
West Coast, Malvina Reynolds, wrote and sang songs that fit her socialist
thinking and her libertarian spirit, as well as her critique of the modern
commercial culture. Everybody now, she sang, lived in 'little boxes'
and they "all came out just the same.'
The Catholic upsurge against the war was part of a general revolt inside the
Catholic Church, which had for so long been a bulwark of conservatism, tied to
racism, jingoism, war. Priests and nuns resigned from the church, opened their
lives to sex, got married and had children-sometimes without bothering to leave
the church officially. True, there was still enormous popularity for the
old-time religious revivalists, and Billy Graham commanded the obedience of
millions, but now there were small swift currents against the mainstream.
There
was a new suspicion of big business, of profiteering as the motive for ruining
the environment. There was a reexamination of the 'death industry,'
of moneymaking funerals and profitable tombstones, as in Jessica Mitford's The
American Way of Death.
With the loss of faith in big powers-business,
government, religion-there arose a stronger belief in self, whether individual
or collective. The experts in all fields were now looked at skeptically: the
belief grew that people could figure out for themselves what to eat, how to
live their lives, how to be healthy. There was suspicion of the medical
industry and campaigns against chemical preservatives, valueless foods,
advertising. By now the scientific evidence of the evils of smoking- cancer,
heart disease-was so powerful that the government barred advertising of
cigarettes on television and in newspapers.
Traditional
education began to be reexamined. The schools had taught whole generations the
values of patriotism, of obeying authority, and had perpetuated ignorance, even
contempt for people of other nations, races, Native Americans, women. Not just
the content of education was challenged, but the style-the formality, the
bureaucracy, the insistence on subordination to authority. This made only a
small dent in the formidable national system of orthodox education, but it was
reflected in a new generation of teachers all over the country, and a new
literature to sustain them: Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age;
George Denison, The Lives of Children; Ivan Illich, De-schooling
Society.
Never in American history had more
movements for change been concentrated in so short a span of years.
Overview: Feminism today
Although there is no longer an organized feminist movement in the United States that influences the lives and actions of millions of women and engages their political support, there are many organizations, ranging from the National Organization for Women to women's caucuses in labor unions and professional groups, which fight for women's rights, and there are many more organizations, many of them including men as well as women, whose priorities include women's issues. But the mass women's movement of the late sixties, seventies, and early eighties no longer exists. Few, among the many women who regard themselves as feminists, have anything to do with feminist organizations other than reading about them in the newspapers. Young women who are drawn to political activism do not, for the most part, join women's groups. They are much more likely to join anti-corporate, anti-globalization, or social justice groups. These young women are likely to regard themselves as feminists, and in the groups that they join a feminist perspective is likely to affect the way in which issues are defined and addressed. But this is not the same thing as a mass movement of women for gender equality. A similar dynamic has taken place in other circles as well. There are now very large numbers of women who identify with feminism, or, if they are reluctant to adopt that label, nevertheless expect to be treated as the equals of men. And there are large numbers of men who support this view.
The extent of feminist or pro-feminist
consciousness, by which I mean an awareness of the inequality of women and a
determination to resist it, that now exists in the
In part this different history may have to do with the disparities between the first and second waves of feminism. The first wave of feminism began in the 1840's as a demand for women's equality generally. The women's movement emerged out of the abolitionist movement, and at first, feminism was part of an egalitarian worldview, closely connected to antislavery and antiracism. But in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and to an even greater degree over the first two decades of the twentieth, mainstream feminism narrowed to the demand for women's suffrage. Leading feminists, mostly middle- and upper-middle-class, native-born white women even made racist and anti-immigrant arguments for woman suffrage. Though the women's movement also included working-class women, many of them socialists, for whom feminism remained a part of a broader commitment to social equality, by the second decade of the twentieth century, radicalism was a minor current within the women's movement. Emma Goldman, who combined determination to resist the oppression of women with anti-capitalist politics, was not typical of feminists of the first two decades of the century. For most feminists, and for the public, feminism had come to mean the vote for women and little more. Once suffrage was won, feminism lost its raison d'être, and so had little future either as a movement or as consciousness.
The second wave of the women's movement turned out differently. It did not narrow ideologically, nor did it run into any dead end, as its predecessor had. If anything, over time, the radical currents within the movement gained influence: women who had entered the movement thinking that women's equality would not require major social changes tended to become convinced that gender inequality was linked to other dimensions of inequality, especially class and race. The women's movement declined in the eighties and nineties mostly because the constituency on which it had been largely based, young, mostly white, middle-class women, gradually put political activity behind them. These women were beneficiaries of what John Kenneth Galbraith called the 'culture of contentment of the eighties and nineties.'
They benefited, along with the rest of the class, from the prosperity of the time; they also benefited from affirmative action. Even as they left political activity, few feminists thought that the aims of the women's movement had been accomplished. Many thought that they could continue to work towards these aims in the arenas, mostly professional, that they were entering. Feminist consciousness was sustained in part, no doubt, because it was widely understood that its aims had not been achieved, and because many women who left the movement remained committed to its goals.
This in itself would not have led to the widespread
acceptance of feminism that has taken place over the last twenty years. In the
wake of the September 11 attacks, some commentators have argued that the
inequality of women in the Arab world is a sign of the deep cultural gap
involved: to reject feminism is to reject modernity and the West. For instance,
Laura Bush, speaking on the weekly presidential radio address, on November 17,
2001, supported the Bush administration's attack on
The emergence of the second wave of feminism in the
The postwar
The women's movement thus emerged in the contradiction between an economy that not only invited but required the participation of women, and a culture that continued to define femininity in terms of passivity and subservience to men. This contradiction still exists. Feminism quickly became a mass movement because young women needed a new set of values, and each other's support, in making the transition between the domestic world that most of their mothers had inhabited and the world of work that they were entering. The demand for women's labor, and the strength of the radical movements of the time, also gave young women the leverage to challenge the culture and structures of gender inequality, and to confront the men who expected women to abide by these rules. Other than the antiwar movement, the women's movement was, by the early seventies, the largest of the radical movements of the time. It was certainly the most lasting of the movements of the sixties, expanding and becoming stronger through the seventies . The size and strength of the women's movement had to do with the fact that it was challenging a dying institution, the patriarchal nuclear family, revolving around women's domesticity.
Despite the media's portrayal of the family, in the fifties, as utterly stable, in fact divorce rates were already rising. With or without the women's movement, women would have moved into the labor force in huge numbers over the following decades, further destabilizing the form of family life anchored by women's domesticity. But neither the destabilization of the traditional nuclear family nor the massive entry of women into the labor force guaranteed any overall improvement in women's status. Rising divorce rates meant, among other things, a loss of security for women. The ability to work, to hold a job, does not guarantee equality or even, necessarily, hold out the promise of it. The women's movement took the opportunity presented by women's entry into the labor force to demand better terms for women in the workplace, the public arena, and the family.
For women, working for wages outside the home has
become the norm. This, in combination with feminist pressure for greater gender
equality on all levels of society, has transformed the lives of
So, over the last two decades feminist
consciousness has spread even as the organized women's movement has contracted.
This is partly because of the increasing numbers of women in the labor force,
and in other areas of public life, who, in talking to each other and giving
each other support, spread and redefined feminism, even if they do not call
themselves feminists or use the word. It was possible for the first wave of
feminism to disappear because the women's movement that it was associated with
had come to an end without the majority of American women having gained access
to arenas outside the home. The fact that women are now in the labor force and
the public arena to stay makes it hard to imagine that feminism and what it
stands for could disappear again. This is a measure of progress. Probably
feminism will continue to be a major political current in the
One danger posed by the attenuating connection between feminist consciousness and the movement from which it emerged is that feminist consciousness is losing its radical edge. This has happened to some degree: in the professions, feminism has tended to absorb the obsession with individual success that prevails in that arena. A large, actively engaged movement does not necessarily prevent such developments; first wave feminism, in its suffragist phase, absorbed the perspective of the upper-middle class of that time. But a movement can make it possible for movement activists to look critically at their own class, and develop an independent perspective. This is what happened in the sixties and early seventies, making radical feminism, and radicalisms of other varieties, possible.
It does not seem likely that another mass women's movement will emerge any time soon. But feminism is being given new vitality by its association with the range of activist groups that make up the antiglobalization and anticorporate movements. Young women in these movements are very likely to describe themselves as feminists; feminism is accepted as one of the ideological currents that shape these movements, along with anarchism, environmentalism, and the struggle against white supremacy. Inside these groups, women tend to take for granted the equality that women of the movements of the sixties and seventies fought for. If the labor movement makes headway in its effort to organize the unorganized, feminism will inevitably become part of the culture that develops within it, because so many of the unorganized are women. Such movement-based versions of feminism could introduce radicalism into wider feminist discussions.
Over the last two decades other movements have followed the same trajectory as the women's movement. The environmental movement is a clear case: once consisting of large numbers of people engaged in political activity, it now consists on the one hand of a series of staff-driven organizations, and on the other, of a large sector of people who consider themselves environmentalist, or who have an environmental consciousness, but who take action on environmental issues largely in individual ways, such as in their shopping habits and in recycling. A similar argument could be made about the African-American movement, whose organizations have shriveled while militant forms of racial and ethnic consciousness have expanded, at least culturally, among young people. To some degree this expansion of various forms of consciousness going way beyond the borders of the movements in which they first emerged shows the lasting influence of those movements. But it also has to do with what appears to be the decline of political and protest movements, and the difficulty of finding compelling forms of political engagement. The tendency of the political to collapse into the cultural, even as it connotes a measure of triumph, weakens the left.
Glossary of terms
A
Abolish - To do away with wholly; to annul; to make void; -- said of laws, customs, institutions, governments, etc.; as, to abolish slavery, to abolish folly
Agitator - a person who stirs up others in order to upset the status quo and further a political, social, or other cause
Allegiance - loyalty or the obligation of loyalty, as to a nation, sovereign, or cause
B
(to) Banish - to expel from or relegate to a country or place by authoritative decree; condemn to exile
Brook - a small, natural stream of fresh water
C
Chastisement - to restrain; chasten
Coarse - lacking delicacy, taste, or refinement; unpolished
Conquistador
- one of the Spanish conquerors of
D
Disfranchise - to deprive (a person) of a right of citizenship, as of the right to vote
Dividend - a share of anything divided
E
Eloquence - the practice or art of using language with fluency and aptness
Encampment - temporary living quarters specially built by the army for soldiers
Exploit - to utilize, esp. for profit; turn to practical account
F
Francophone - a person who speaks French, esp. a native speaker
Fierce - violent in force, intensity
G
Genocide - the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group
H
Haughty - disdainfully proud; snobbish; scornfully arrogant; supercilious
I
Indentured - a contract by which a person, as an apprentice, is bound to service
L
Loyalist - person who remained loyal to the British during the American Revolution; Tory
M
Mainland
- the principal land of a country, region, etc., as distinguished from adjacent
islands or a peninsula; (in
Mercenary - working or acting merely for money or other reward; venal
Monopoly - exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices
P
Patronization - to act as a patron toward (an artist, institution, etc.); support
Plague - to trouble, annoy, or torment in any manner
R
(to) Ratify - to confirm by expressing consent, approval, or formal sanction
Rebel - a person who refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in arms against the government or ruler of his or her country
Republicanism - republican principles or adherence to them
S
Seamstress - a woman whose occupation is sewing
Settler - a person who settles in a new country or area
Sovereign - having supreme rank, power, or authority
Stingy - reluctant to give or spend; not generous; niggardly; penurious
T
(to) Trust - to push forcibly; shove; put or drive with force
Trait - a distinguishing characteristic or quality, esp. of one's personal nature
Twofold - having two elements or parts
U
Unalienable - not to be separated, given away, or taken away; inalienable
V
Virtue - conformity of one's life and conduct to moral and ethical principles; uprightness; rectitude.
Voluble - characterized by a ready and continuous flow of words; fluent; glib; talkative
W
Wedlock - the state of marriage; matrimony
Bibliography
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the
Lerner, Gerda. The Female Experience: An American Documentary.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Prometheus's Great Books in
Philosophy Series).
Chafe, William H. Women and Equality: Changing Patterns in American Culture
(Galaxy Book).
Allen, Robert Loring and Allen, Pamela P. Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in
the United States.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins and Mayering, Sheryl
L. Women and Economics
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mistique. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc., 2001
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2006
DuBois , Ellen Carol , Dumenil, Lynn , Dumenil, Lynn Dumenil , Lynn. Through Women's Eyes: An American History with Documents Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005
Firestone, Notes from the
First Year".
Stanton,
Epstein, Barbara. "Feminist consciousness after the women's movement". Monthly Review, Sept.2002
Rownmiller, Susan In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. Dial Books, 1999
Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights
Movement in the
|
Politica de confidentialitate | Termeni si conditii de utilizare |
Vizualizari: 3337
Importanta: 
Termeni si conditii de utilizare | Contact
© SCRIGROUP 2024 . All rights reserved
