Second-wave feminism Totally Explained

Everything about Second-wave Feminism totally explained

Second-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the 1960s and lasted through the late 1970s. Where first-wave feminism focused on overturning legal (de jure) obstacles to equality, second-wave feminism addressed unofficial (de facto) inequalities as well.

Overview

Second-wave feminism is generally identified with a period beginning in the early 1960s. It is referred to as second-wave feminism as social changes tend to occur in waves. Its proponents ascribe its arrival to what they see as the failure of first wave feminism to achieve its aims.
The movement encouraged women to understand the psychological implications of sexist stereotypes, and to make them realize that they could achieve more in life than being a housewife. It is credited by some as having opened up the eyes of American women to a world of careers and achievement. During the Second World War, many women experienced working life for the very first time. Women and men were working side by side, and achievements were being recognized. In the wake of the war, it's often argued that the short-lived affirmation of women's independence gave way to a pervasive endorsement of female subordination and domesticity, and it wasn't until the 1960s that the women's movement became successful.
However, the second wave focused mainly on middle to upper class women who wanted to work, but not on working class women who were facing poor conditions in their factory jobs.

Significant events

There were many significant moments during the 1960s which defined the second wave of feminism.

The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women was created in the USA by the Kennedy administration, with Eleanor Roosevelt as its chair. The report issued by that commission in 1963 documented discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established in 1964 to enforce laws concerning equal opportunities within the work place. Alice Hernandez resigned from the EEOC as the organisation was reluctant to act on women's issues.

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique appeared on bookshelves in [1963]. This book became extremely popular among American housewives. Friedan conducted a survey of the 1942 graduating class at Smith College, her alma mater, which showed that 89% of women regretted rushing into marriage and not putting their education to good use. It was through this type of research that she was able to reach out to American women, and make them think about the importance of being women and achieving their goals. It is argued by some that Friedan allowed women to talk for the first time about a problem that for so many years had oppressed women: what she called the feminine mystique.

Due to a combined effort from many different sorts of activists, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 of the USA was passed, including Title VII which made illegal employment discrimination on the basis of sex, along with race, religion, and national origin. Historians commonly note that the category "sex" was actually included in an eleventh-hour attempt to kill the bill.

During this time organizations were formed to address issues related to feminism. All of these groups were started by a small group of people, but as the years went by more groups were organized to meet more specified objectives. Some notable groups include:

National Organization for Women, known as NOW was founded in 1966 and is currently the largest American Feminist Organization
Citizen Advisory Council on the status of Women organized groups to urge state legislation to be passed.
Women's Equity Action League was created with the objective to attain equality through the full enforcement of existing laws and through encouraging girls to prepare for more rewarding jobs.

Eight years after Title VII, Title IX in the Education Amendments of 1972 was passed, which forbade discrimination in the field of education. Many people see Title IX as extremely important to young women today, contributing to equal provisions for women's sports in school and feminist campus activism, among other things. However, it soon became clear that many existing anti-discrimination laws were not enforced. For instance, within the commission's first five years, it received 50,000 sex discrimination complaints, but did little to investigate them.

Inspired in part by the legal victories of the 1960s and 1970s, but still worried about de facto discrimination, many feminists supported and worked to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment into the United States Constitution. The Amendment, proposed in 1972, said:

Equality of rights under the law shan't be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Opponents, such as Phyllis Schlafly, charged that passage of the ERA of the USA would lead to men abandoning their families, unisex toilets, gay marriages, and women being drafted. Despite polls consistently showing a large majority of the population supporting an Equal Rights Amendment, when the deadline for ratification came in 1982, the ERA was still three states short of the 38 needed to write it into the U.S. constitution.

On January 22, 1973, Roe vs. Wade was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision legalized abortion in all 50 states, by stating that the right to decisions regarding one's reproductive system was consistent with a right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The National Women's Conference was held in Houston, Texas, the first meeting in the United States of its type since the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York.

The Feminist Sex Wars of the late 1970s and 1980s between anti-pornography feminism and sex-positive feminism led to deep divisions within the feminist movement and laid the groundwork for many issues that were important in third-wave feminism.

The second wave also saw the beginning of streams of feminist thought which were critical or hostile to transgender and transsexual women. Feminists such as Mary Daly, Janice Raymond, and Gloria Steinem penned writings which asserted that transsexualism was inherently conservative and that sex reassignment was a way to preserve rigid, oppressive gender roles. In 1991 (the beginning of the Third Wave) Sandy Stone, a transsexual woman, published a rebuttal to these writings in her essay "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto."

Education

One debate which developed in the United States during this time period revolved around the question of coeducation. Most men's colleges in the United States adopted coeducation, often by merging with women's colleges. In addition, some women's colleges adopted coeducation, while others maintained a single-sex student body.

Seven Sisters Colleges

Two of the Seven Sister colleges made transitions during and after the 1960s. The first, Radcliffe College, merged with Harvard University. Beginning in 1963, students at Radcliffe received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard and joint commencement exercises began in 1970. The same year, several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students experimentally and in 1972 full co-residence was instituted. The departments of athletics of both schools merged shortly thereafter. In 1977, Harvard and Radcliffe signed an agreement which put undergraduate women entirely in Harvard College. In 1999 Radcliffe College was dissolved and Harvard University assumed full responsibility over the affairs of female undergraduates. Radcliffe is now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Women's Studies at Harvard University. The second, Vassar College, declined an offer to merge with Yale University and instead became coeducational in 1969.
The remaining Seven Sisters decided against coeducation. Mount Holyoke College engaged in a lengthy debate under the presidency of David Truman over the issue of coeducation. On 6 November 1971, "after reviewing an exhaustive study on coeducation, the board of trustees decided unanimously that Mount Holyoke should remain a women's college, and a group of faculty was charged with recommending curricular changes that would support the decision." Smith College also made a similar decision in 1971. In 1969, Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College (then all male) developed a system of sharing residential colleges. When Haverford became coeducational in 1980, Bryn Mawr discussed the possibly of coeducation as well, but decided against it. In 1983, Columbia University began admitting women after a decade of failed negotiations with Barnard College for a merger along the lines of Harvard and Radcliffe (Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia since 1900, but it continues to be independently governed). Wellesley College also decided against coeducation during this time.

Mississippi University for Women

In 1982, in a 5–4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan that Mississippi University for Women would be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause if it denied admission to its nursing program on the basis of gender. Mississippi University for Women, the first public or government institution for women in the United States, changed its admissions poliicies and became coeducational after the ruling.
In what was her first opinion written for the Supreme Court, Justice O'Connor stated, "In limited circumstances, a gender-based classification favoring one sex can be justified if it intentionally and directly assists members of the sex that's disproportionately burdened." She went on to point out that there are a disproportionate number of women who are nurses, and that denying admission to men "lends credibility to the old view that women, not men, should become nurses, and makes the assumption that nursing is a field for women a self-fulfilling prophecy."
In the dissenting opinions, Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist suggested that the result of this ruling would be the elimination of publicly supported single-sex educational opportunities. This suggestion has proven to be accurate as there are no public women's colleges in the United States today and as a result of United States v. Virginia, the last all-male university in the United States, Virginia Military Institute, was required to admit women. The ruling didn't require the university to change its name to reflect its coeducational status and it continues a tradition of academic and leadership development for women by providing liberal arts and professional education to women and men.

Mills College

On May 3, 1990, the Trustees of Mills College announced that they'd voted to admit male students. This decision led to a two-week student and staff strike, accompanied by numerous displays of non-violent protests by the students. At one point, nearly 300 students blockaded the administrative offices and boycotted classes. On May 18, the Trustees met again to reconsider the decision, leading finally to a reversal of the vote.

Other colleges

Pembroke College merged with Brown University. Sarah Lawrence College declined an offer to merge with Princeton University, becoming coeducational in 1969. Connecticut College also adopted coeducation during the late 1960s.

Careers

While women's education was improving, career prospects for women were also widening thanks to such organisations as ALSSA (Air Line Stewards and Stewardesses Association) who fought a long battle to get equal rights in employment. Airline stewardesses were fired once they were married; since the average age of a woman getting married was 20, this didn't provide a very long career for air stewardesses. Dusty Roads and Nancy Collins campaigned for age restrictions on air stewardesses to be removed, and this coincidentally brought about the battle for equal rights in the work place.

Media

Media representations of women have been much discussed by advocates of second-wave feminism. Some have argued that popular magazines during the 1960s represented a repressive force, imposing damaging images on vulnerable, impressionable American women. Many magazines defined the role of a housewife as exciting and creative and often featured articles on baking. Magazines also had positive influences on the movement, and published articles that encouraged women to live a fulfilled life. Reader's Digest, Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion, and Life Magazine, are just some of the magazines that influenced women during the 1960’s. There were also a few African American magazines, such as Coronet, which featured articles on strong black women who balanced a career and a family.

Success

It is argued by many that second-wave feminism saw a transformation of consciousness and changed how most American women saw themselves and the world around them. Through organisations such as NOW, WEAL and PCSW, discrimination in the work place on the basis of sex was made illegal. The impact of media allowed the spread of feminist ideals through articles, newspapers, television and books, and this made it acceptable to talk about women's issues.

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