Feminism

  • Social forces behind the women’s movement

    • First wave

      • 1890s-1920

      • mainly about winning the right to vote for women

      • advocated for greater freedom for women outside of the traditional housewife or wife and mother

      • in 1920s they finally won the right to vote

    • second wave

      • 1960s-1970s

      • equal rights advocation

        • employment

        • family life

        • sexuality

        • public life

        • over turning constraining norms regarding femininity

    • third wave

      • 1990s-present

      • maintain rights

      • gain more diversity and individualism

      • new feminist currents and theories

        • intersectionality

        • sex positivity

        • vegetarian ecofeminism

        • transfeminism

        • postmodern feminism

  • Social forces behind new possibilities for women

    • birth control

      • pill invented in the 1950s and approved by the FDA in 1960

    • Education

      • In the 1960s, fewer than 40% of female high school graduates attended college

      • Then, in the 1970s, around 50% of women with a high school degree were attending college

    • legislation

      • The National Defense Education Act of 1958 provided financial aid for women to attend college

      • The Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination against women in employment

  • Betty friedman and reform feminism

  • from reform to militancy

  • the civil rights movement as an incubator and model

    • younger women developed far more reaching critique of masculinity/patriarchy that we associate with the more militant side of femisnism

  • Kate Miller's Sexual Politics

    • Politics does not mean the world of meetings, chairmen, and parties it is instead the power-structured relationships where one group of people is controlled by and dependent on another

  • patriarchy

    • The birthright priority whereby males rule females, and the structures perpetuate this power structure

  • millet

    • sexual politics obtains consent through the socialization of both sexes with regard to temperament, role, and status

    • compares the aggressive, intelligent force and efficacy within the male phenotype to the female phenotype and came to the conclusion that the differences between males and females are cultural and not biological

  • Millets critique of the family

    • many people consider family havens from a competitive society a place for love and nurtering however millet did not think that way

    • from her view

      • The family was a quintessential patriarchal institution

      • Men ruled the family

      • sometimes violently

      • sometimes through economic power

      • Women were expected to be more subordinate and something like property to the male within the husband-wife relationship

  • other sources of women’s oppression, according to millet

    • unpaid labor in the household

      • second shift

    • discrimination and low wages in the labor market

    • systemic ignorance of how technology and institutions work, and access to male-dominated fields

    • Legal systems support male dominance

    • religious injunctions

  • Second-wave feminism generated opposition as well

    • In 1967, Indiana conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly launched the Eagle Trust Fund to receive donations related to conservative causes

    • After the 1972 proposal for the Equal Rights Amendment, Schlafly organized her efforts to defeat its ratification, founding the group “stop ERA.”