Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred throughout the Western world and aimed to increase women's equality by building on the feminist gains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Second-wave feminism built on first-wave feminism and broadened the scope of debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, domesticity, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities. First-wave feminism typically advocated for formal equality and second-wave feminism advocated for substantive equality. It was a movement focused on critiquing patriarchal or male-dominated institutions and cultural practices throughout society. Second-wave feminism also brought attention to issues of domestic violence and marital rape, created rape crisis centers and women's shelters, and brought about changes in custody law and divorce law. Feminist-owned bookstores, credit unions, and restaurants were among the key meeting spaces and economic engines of the movement.
Because white feminists' voices have dominated the narrative from the early days of the movement, typical narratives of second-wave feminism focus on the sexism encountered by white middle- and upper-class women, with the absence of black and other racialized women and the experience of working-class women, although black women wrote and founded feminist publications and political activist groups throughout the movement, especially in the 1970s. At the same time, some narratives present a perspective that focuses on events in the United States to the exclusion of the experiences of other countries. Writers like Audre Lorde argued that this homogenized vision of "sisterhood" could not lead to real change because it ignored factors of one's identity such as race, sexuality, age, and class.Lorde, Audre. 2000. "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Women." Pp. 288-293 in Wendy Komar and Frances Bartkowski, eds., Feminist Theory: A Reader. Mountain View, California: Mayfield. The term "intersectionality" was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw at the end of the second wave. Many scholars believe that the beginning of third wave feminism was due to the problems of the second wave, rather than just another movement.
Overview in the United States
The second wave of feminism in the United States came as a delayed reaction against the renewed domesticity of women after World War II: the late 1940s post-war boom, which was an era characterized by an unprecedented economic growth, a baby boom, a move to family-oriented suburbs and the ideal of companionate marriages. During this time, women did not tend to seek employment due to their engagement with domestic and household duties, which was seen as their primary duty but often left them isolated within the home and estranged from politics, economics, and law making. This life was clearly illustrated by the media of the time; for example television shows such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver idealized domesticity.Murray Knuttila, Introducing Sociology: A Critical Approach (4th ed. 2008 Oxford University Press)
Some important events laid the groundwork for the second wave, specifically the work of French writer Simone de Beauvoir in the 1940s where she examined the notion of women being perceived as "other" in the patriarchal society. Simone de Beauvoir was an existentialist, meaning she believed in the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. She went on to conclude in her 1949 treatise The Second Sex that male-centered ideology was being accepted as a norm and enforced by the ongoing development of myths, and that the fact that women are capable of getting pregnant, lactating, and menstruating is in no way a valid cause or explanation to place them as the "second sex".Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949. This book was translated from French to English (with some of its text excised) and published in America in 1953.
In 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved the combined oral contraceptive pill, which was made available in 1961.Tone, Andrea (2001). Devices & Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. New York: Hill and Wang. This made it easier for women to have careers without having to leave due to unexpectedly becoming pregnant. It also meant young couples would not be routinely forced into unwanted marriages due to accidental pregnancies.
Though it is widely accepted that the movement lasted from the 1960s into the early 1980s, the exact years of the movement are more difficult to pinpoint and are often disputed. The movement is usually believed to have begun in 1963, when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, and President John F. Kennedy's Presidential Commission on the Status of Women released its report on gender inequality.
The administration of President Kennedy made women's rights a key issue of the New Frontier, and named women (such as Esther Peterson) to many high-ranking posts in his administration. Kennedy also established a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt and comprising cabinet officials (including Peterson and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy), senators, representatives, businesspeople, psychologists, sociologists, professors, activists, and public servants. The report recommended changing this inequality by providing paid maternity leave, greater access to education, and help with child care to women. However, the extent of Kennedy's support for women's rights has been disputed, with some alleging that a major factor in his support included his efforts to cover up his own womanizing ways. His wife Jackie was also known for presenting herself as a traditional wife, including in the time after Friedan published The Feminine Mystique.
There were other actions by women in wider society, presaging their wider engagement in politics which would come with the second wave. In 1961, 50,000 women in 60 cities, mobilized by Women Strike for Peace, protested above ground testing of nuclear bombs and tainted milk.
In 1963, Betty Friedan, influenced by Simone de Beauvoir's ground-breaking, feminist The Second Sex, wrote the bestselling book The Feminine Mystique. Discussing primarily white women, she explicitly objected to how women were depicted in the mainstream media, and how placing them at home (as 'housewives') limited their possibilities and wasted potential. She had helped conduct a very important survey using her old classmates from Smith College. This survey revealed that the women who work in the workforce while also playing a role in the home were more satisfied with their life compared with the women who stayed home. The women who stayed home showed feelings of agitation and sadness. She concluded that many of these unhappy women had immersed themselves in the idea that they should not have any ambitions outside their home. Friedan described this as "The Problem That Has No Name".DuBois and Dumenil. Through Women's Eyes: An American History Since 1865. (Bedford; St Martin's, New York) The perfect nuclear family image depicted and strongly marketed at the time, she wrote, did not reflect happiness and was rather degrading for women. This book is widely credited with having begun second-wave feminism in the United States. The problems of the nuclear family in America are also heteronormative and is utilized often as a marketing strategy to sell goods within a capitalist driven society.Snider, Ashton R., "Heteronormativity and the Ideal Family" (2016). Theses. 220. https://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/220
The report from the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, along with Friedan's book, spoke to the discontent of many women (especially housewives) and led to the formation of local, state, and federal government women's groups along with many independent feminist organizations. Friedan was referencing a "movement" as early as 1964.
The movement grew with legal victories such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court ruling of 1965. In 1966 Friedan joined other women and men to found the National Organization for Women (NOW); Friedan would be named as the organization's first president.
Despite the early successes NOW achieved under Friedan's leadership, her decision to pressure the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to use Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to enforce more job opportunities among American women met with fierce opposition within the organization. Siding with arguments among several of the group's African-American members, many of NOW's leaders were convinced that the vast number of male African-Americans who lived below the poverty line were in need of more job opportunities than women within the middle and upper class. Friedan stepped down as president in 1969.
In 1963, freelance journalist Gloria Steinem gained widespread popularity among feminists after a diary she authored while working undercover as a Playboy Bunny waitress at the Playboy Club was published as a two-part feature in the May and June issues of Show. In her diary, Steinem alleged the club was mistreating its waitresses in order to gain male customers and exploited the Playboy Bunnies as symbols of male chauvinism, noting that the club's manual instructed the Bunnies that "there are many pleasing ways they can employ to stimulate the club's liquor volume". By 1968, Steinem had become arguably the most influential figure in the movement and support for legalized abortion and federally funded day-cares had become the two leading objectives for feminists.
Among the most significant legal victories of the movement after the formation of NOW were a 1967 Executive Order extending full affirmative action rights to women, a 1968 EEOC decision ruling illegal sex-segregated help wanted ads, Title IX and the Women's Educational Equity Act (1972 and 1974, respectively, educational equality), Title X (1970, health and family planning), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974), the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the outlawing of marital rape (although not outlawed in all states until 1993), and the legalization of no-fault divorce (although not legalized in all states until 2010), a 1975 law requiring the U.S. Military Academies to admit women, and many Supreme Court cases such as Reed v. Reed of 1971 and Roe v. Wade of 1973. However, the changing of social attitudes towards women is usually considered the greatest success of the women's movement. In January 2013, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the longtime ban on women serving in US military combat roles had been lifted.
In 2013, the US Department of Defense (DoD) announced their plan to integrate women into all combat positions by 2016.A History of Women in the U.S. Military. Infoplease.com. Accessed December 28, 2013.
Second-wave feminism also affected other movements, such as the civil rights movement and the student's rights movement, as women sought equality within them. In 1965 in "Sex and Caste", a reworking of a memo they had written as staffers in civil-rights organizations SNCC, Casey Hayden and Mary King proposed that "assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every much as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro", and that in the movement, as in society, women can find themselves "caught up in a common-law caste system".