w2 part 4:From First Wave Suffrage to the Feminine Mystique: Foundations of Second Wave Feminism

Focused primarily on civil/political rights: suffrage, the right to run for office, and full legal citizenship.
Economic issues (wages, safe working conditions, unionization) largely sidelined.
Movement leadership profile:
- Urban, educated, middle-class white women in England, the United States, and Canada.
- Women of colour, Indigenous women, and working-class women were under-represented or outright excluded.
Working-class women were politically active, but mainly through trade unions aiming for equal pay and safer factories—separate from suffrage organizations.
Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” highlights historiographical gaps and the erasure of these intersecting oppressions.

Wartime Elections Act of $1917$ : granted vote to women who served as nurses or had male relatives in the military.
$1918$ : extended vote to all women over the age of $21$ .
Citizenship still restricted: women legally recognized as “persons” only after the Famous Persons Case (Supreme Court of Canada, $1929$ ).
Motivating factor for extending rights was wartime sacrifice, tying citizenship to militarism rather than recognition of intrinsic equality.

After legal victories, first-wave activists did not disappear but became less publicly visible—like a wave receding yet still part of the ocean.
Sets the stage for a "between-the-waves" period of apparent lull before resurgence.

Great Depression: begins $1929$ , extends through the early $1940$ s; massive unemployment reshapes gendered labour expectations.
World War II: starts $1939$ ; Canada, the US, and Britain join at staggered times but deploy similar gender labour policies.
Governments call women from private to public sphere to replace men in industry, agriculture, and nursing.

"Rosie the Riveter" icon markets female industrial strength; featured on wartime propaganda and later second-wave merchandise (calendars, notebooks, etc.).
Actual riveters frequently Black or other women of colour who had already worked as waitresses, domestic labourers, etc.
WWII offered:
- Higher wages and skilled-trade credentials.
- Union membership and labour-rights activism.
- First large-scale government-funded childcare in Canada so mothers could staff factories.
Parallel nursing front: women risk lives as military nurses, drawing later comparison with nurses in the COVID-19 pandemic.

War ends $1945$ ; surviving men reclaim jobs. Women: pressured or forcibly laid off (e.g., mass pink-slips in Windsor, Ontario on V-Day).
Popular culture (late $1940$ s– $1950$ s):
- Television shows (e.g., Leave It to Beaver) and magazines depict the suburban nuclear family.
- "Good Wife’s Guide" (Housekeeping Monthly) prescribes behaviours: have dinner ready, refresh makeup, ensure children are silent, etc.
- Re-inscribes Victorian "Angel in the House" trope—now with modern appliances.
Result: resurgence of patriarchal gender roles labeled as "success" for post-war women.

Psychological profession + pharmaceutical industry introduce tranquilizers/“uppers” like Valium.
By late $1950$ s: spike in diagnoses of hysteria, depression, psychosomatic illness among American suburban housewives.
Medical framing locates problem in individual women (“chemical imbalance”) rather than social conditions.

Friedan, a former WWII journalist, interviews housewives nationwide.
Identifies an "unnamed problem"—coined The Feminine Mystique:
- Ideology claiming women achieve fulfillment solely through beauty, perfect homes, obedient children, and supportive husbands.
- Reality: widespread housewife syndrome—extreme dissatisfaction, invisibility of domestic labour, yearning for intellectual/occupational growth.
Major arguments:
1. Structural, not individual: unhappiness arises from socially imposed limits, not defective psyche.
2. Economic independence via meaningful paid employment is essential for women’s freedom and even physical safety (escape from gendered violence).
3. Consciousness-raising: sharing experiences reveals systemic pattern, converting personal woes into political critique.
Cultural impact:
- Bestseller status; read in suburban book clubs.
- Validated taboo admissions (“I’m not always happy mothering”) and buoyed collective action.
- Credited with igniting Second Wave Feminism (mid- $1960$ s– $1980$ s).

Militaristic Citizenship: Women’s enfranchisement tied to wartime sacrifice > links patriotism, gender, and civil rights.
Economic Security ↔ Physical Security: Dependence increases vulnerability to gendered violence; stable wages foster agency.
Media Ideology: Post-war entertainment serves as ideological apparatus to reinscribe traditional gender norms.
Medicalization of Discontent: Pathologizing social oppression redirects attention from systemic reform to pharmaceutical fixes.
Continuity & Change:
- First-wave successes (legal rights) insufficient without economic, racial, and class inclusion.
- Second-wave broadens agenda: workplace rights, reproductive freedom, critique of domestic labour, intersectional concerns (though still critiqued for whiteness).

First Wave Feminism: movement (late $19^{th}$ cent.– $1920$ s) targeting legal equality and suffrage.
Suffrage: right to vote in public elections.
Wartime Elections Act ( $1917$ ): Canadian law enfranchising certain women linked to war effort.
Famous Persons Case ( $1929$ ): Supreme Court ruling that women are "persons" under Canadian law.
Rosie the Riveter: WWII propaganda icon symbolizing female industrial labour capacity.
Good Wife Ideology: post-WWII domestic ideal prescribing self-sacrifice, beauty, and homemaking perfection.
Housewife Syndrome: Friedan’s term for mental/physical malaise stemming from unvalued domestic work.
Feminine Mystique: socially constructed belief that female fulfillment lies solely in domesticity and service.
Consciousness-Raising: feminist practice of sharing personal experiences to reveal systemic oppression.

$1917$ – Wartime Elections Act.
$1918$ – Universal female suffrage ( $21$ +).
$1929$ – Famous Persons Case; onset of Great Depression.
$1939$ – Outbreak of WWII.
$1945$ – War ends; mass layoffs of women from industry.
Late $1940$ s– $1950$ s – Re-domestication & rise of tranquilizer prescriptions.
$1963$ – Publication of The Feminine Mystique; birth of Second Wave discourse.