A History of U.S. Feminisms
Language: English
Pages: 216
ISBN: 1580055885
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The chapters cover: first-wave feminism, a period of feminist activity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which focused primarily on gaining women's suffrage; second-wave feminism, which started in the ’60s and lasted through the ’80s and emphasized the connection between the personal and the political; and third-wave feminism, which started in the early ’90s and is best exemplified by its focus on diversity and intersectionality, queer theory, and sex-positivity.
reform topics she cared deeply about, her life changed in 1847 when her husband opened a law practice in Seneca Falls, New York. In this rural town and amid the responsibilities of her ever-growing family—she would ultimately have seven children—Stanton felt isolated and overwhelmed by her life of domestic drudgery. Her friendship with Susan B. Anthony, which facilitated her involvement in the women’s rights movement, saved her from isolation and unhappiness. Although her name may be more
dollar men made. Married women could not get a credit card without their husband’s permission; they didn’t even have their own credit rating. If a woman needed help after her husband hit her, she could find little assistance both because domestic violence was not discussed in public—the term had not been coined yet—and because almost no shelters existed to house battered women. Single women had a hard time renting an apartment on their own, just as they might find it difficult to get served in a
who formed the first liberal feminist organizations. In some of its activism, NOW advocated the rights of ordinary working women. For instance, it supported a lawsuit filed by female flight attendants, who had to retire when they married or turned thirty-two, whichever came first; male flight attendants were subject to no such policy. While the youthfulness of female flight attendants helped make the job—and flying itself—seem glamorous in the 1950s and ’60s, age limits were discriminatory,
atmosphere hostile to further feminist activism. Chapter 4 Third Wave Feminism: Embracing Contradiction WHILE IT IS RELATIVELY EASY TO LOCATE the origins of the first and second waves of the women’s movement in the United States—we can point to the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 as the starting point for the first wave and, perhaps more arbitrarily, to the Miss America protest in 1968 for the second—finding a beginning moment for the third wave and talking about its history are more
resemble its own outraged and outrageous feminism. However, the contradictions embodied by a group such as the Spice Girls, which embraced both feminist empowerment and sexualized beauty culture, present a version of third wave feminism, which is frequently described in terms of its ability to embrace contradiction and oppositions. If the Spice Girls are considered third wave—and many would argue they are not—it would be as part of what’s known as “girlie feminism,” a segment of third wave