Feminism… Thoughts! 0.4

iruo May 13, 2022 2 Comments

Hello, y’all! I pray all is well. So today, we’ll pick up our article on feminism where we left off. If you haven’t read the prequels, please do. Let’s get right to it.

We left off talking about how Latina women were also fighting for women’s rights while promoting social reform.

Continuance of Feminism

The first-wave feminists and the women of colour were able to achieve a number of little wins toward women’s rights along the way as they sought their goals. For example, in 1916, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. That same year, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, even though New York state law prohibited the distribution of contraception. She later established the clinic that became Planned Parenthood. Nonetheless, first-wave feminists had to wait until August of 1920 to witness the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. Alas, due to racial discrimination, it was going to take much longer for women of colour to exercise their right to vote.

The Peroration of The First Wave

Finally, after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the impelling force of the first wave began to decline. For a number of the women, the 19th Amendment was the major legislative achievement they had been fighting for.

Nevertheless, other women continued to advocate for their rights within local organizations and special interest groups. Militant suffragist and National Woman’s Party founder Alice Paul considered that the 19th Amendment was not enough to ensure women’s full equality. In 1923, she presented the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress for solidifying women’s constitutional rights.

However, many other feminists opposed this legislation because it put women’s labour protections at risk. These ideological discrepancies further separated feminists, as this part of the movement came to a close. The next sustained large-scale feminist surge would not be until the second wave in the 1960s.

Feminism… The Second Wave

After the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, which granted women the right to vote, the first wave of feminism significantly diminished. Although many of these feminists continued to fight for women’s rights. The next prolonged feminist movement is believed to have begun in the 1960s. Much like the first wave that emerged during a period of social reform, the second wave also surfaced amidst other social and political movements.

Moreover, in the middle of the first and the second wave, French feminist author Simone de Beauvoir published a foundational book that is believed to set the tone for the next surge of women’s rights activism. Published in 1949, her book entitled “The Second Sex,” provided extensive explanations of womanhood and delineated how women have historically been treated as second to men. Originally published in France, “The Second Sex” quickly became a phenomenon and was published in the United States in 1953. Beauvoir was not only a feminist writer but she was also considered a philosopher because her writings often answered complex and philosophical questions. In “The Second Sex,” she questions, “What is a woman?” Ultimately, she determined that “one is not born but becomes a woman.”

A decade later, “The Second Sex” was published in the United States, American feminist writer Betty Friedan helped ignite the second feminist wave with her book “The Feminine Mystique.” Released in 1963, Friedan builds on the foundation of Simone de Beauvoir’s work.

However, Friedan not only employed philosophical thought to discuss feminism, she also contained oral histories and her personal experiences to address the issues many women were facing. Friedan started by researching the role of women in her society to see if other women shared her feelings of discontent and despondency as housewives. To her surprise, she was not alone, and her interviews became the source material for her first book.

In the mid-1950s, Friedan found herself as a stay-home mom after a long career as a journalist, writer, and activist. When she got married and had children, Friedan left her career and moved to the suburbs with her family. Although she did freelance jobs, she soon realized that she was unhappy solely as a housewife. Nonetheless, she felt the societal pressure to find ultimate happiness as a mother and a homemaker. In 1957 at her 15-year Smith College reunion, Friedan surveyed her classmates and found that they also were unhappy being restricted to the home.

For the next five years, Friedan conducted interviews with white middle-class women who were tussling with their roles as housewives.

She published her findings in “The Feminine Mystique,” and instantly became a household name. In her book, she criticized the separate sphere of motherhood and homemaking that women were relegated to. In contrast, men were allowed to flourish in the male sphere of work, politics, and power. Friedan’s book encouraged women to step outside of their “sphere,” and fight gender oppression, which she termed “the problem that has no name.”

Friedan’s book sold over three million copies within the first three years and quickly fueled a resurgence of the feminist movement. Middle-class women across the country began to organize to advocate for women’s social and political equality. The same year “The Feminine Mystique” was published, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into law. The new legislation stipulated that women could no longer be paid less than men for doing “comparable work” at the same job. This Act was the result of a group of women in the White House, led by labour activist Esther Peterson.

Peterson was appointed as the head of the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor in 1961. She convinced President Kennedy to establish a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women to work towards achieving equality. The commission included revolutionary women such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Height. After collaborating with the commission, Peterson submitted a draft of the Equal Pay Act to congress on behalf of the Kennedy administration.