The second wave of feminism in the United States came at a time of great tumult over the rights of all people within the country. Fresh off of the return of women to the home after having experienced significant time working in the place of male soldiers, women grew increasingly restless while people of color who had fought in the war, were continuously disappointed at their treatment stateside. Oftentimes the issues of feminism are considered the issues of all women, but throughout this era it became apparent that the issues of mainstream feminism were not necessarily the issues of feminism in other ethnic and racial groups. When looking at the literature of the times, particularly articles from magazines and newspapers the aims and concerns …show more content…
of mainstream (white) feminism and the feminism of women of color was different, because the communities they belonged to were different. The second wave of mainstream feminism began with the publishing of the book by Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique. Friedan’s in depth look at what she coined as “the problem with no name” (1963), pertained to the disillusionment of housewives throughout Middle-America. What Friedan did not consider besides the women who were perfectly fine with their job as a homemaker, were the women who were unlike her subjects. There were many women who would have loved to be housewives, if not only to be in a financial position to have the option of not working outside of the home, or even to work minimally. In her book, Feminist Theory: from Margin to Center, bell hooks underscores this discretion stating, “When Friedan wrote the The Feminine Mystique, more than one third of women were in the workforce” (1984). The concerns of these women were also that with an increase of upper middle-class white women going into the workforce, someone would need to pick up the slack in their homes. This need would eventually be filled by women of color and financially challenged women, in large part because they could not qualify for the types of jobs these women left the home for. Feminism in America has never been an exclusively “black or white” issue, there is a long history of Native American feminism in this country.
A very specific difference between mainstream feminism and the feminism of Native American Women, was the difference between social structure in tribal groups as opposed to social structure in America as a whole. Native Americans take a collectivist view toward issues, meaning that if any gains were to be made for women. In their own words, through their own newsletter, the Wisconsin Tribal Women’s News: Najinakwe, native American feminists’ main goal was, “to promote a better future for all Indian people” (1974). Their concerns were often similar to those of mainstream feminism, such as the pay gap between men and women, domestic abuse, and reproductive rights but their viewpoint was that any gains for women would have to be for the greater good of the tribe, not to be “liberated.” As Native American women already played a large role in their own communities, we see that the sentiment of the feminist movement of Native American Women was different from that of mainstream feminism. This would be seen also, with African American …show more content…
Feminists. When it did come to Afro-Feminism (feminism regarding African American women) the issues were often in line with mainstream feminism, but the scale was different.
Whereas generally white feminists were looking for the opportunity to move up in office jobs, African American women were looking to be considered for them not only as women, but also as African Americans. Author June Sochen points out that “The elite professions continued to discriminate against women, blacks, and other minority groups well into the 1960s” (1974). This exhibits that the road leading into second wave feminism showed two strikes against African American women to begin with, a concern often downplayed by women’s liberation activists who chose to amplify the voices of those women of color who felt they were discriminated against more for being women. The same can be said in regards to reproductive rights, as many women of color were concerned with forced or coerced sterilization while white women were seeking contraceptives and at times opted for sterilization. In the southern United States, especially, the concern of what political collectives such as the Black Panthers termed “Cultural Genocide” or “Black Genocide” (Caron, 1998), refers to the disproportionately administered contraceptives and sterilizations were of true concern. According to North Carolina’s Whole Women Catalogue, between the years of 1968 and 1974, 63% of sterilizations were performed on African American women (1974). This
problem, which was looked on by women from a privileged point of view, was one that left their sisters of color as victims, with little to no options for recourse an issue all too often overlooked by mainstream feminists. The second wave feminist movement was not a “one size fits all” movement. Women of different races and socio-economic backgrounds (two demographics which were often linked) had different concerns than those women who related to The Feminine Mystic. Differences within the communities of which these women belonged to caused differences in their points of view in turn their approaches to creating the change they wished to see in bettering the lives of themselves and others. Issues such as employment and sterilization are examples of concerns that impacted these communities and therefore their responses to them, in different ways best seen through the writing and experiences of these women themselves.
Native Americans have been fighting till this day for freedom. Millions of Native Americans have lost their lives fighting for freedoms and their lands. So far, not much have been done to the Native Americans and they have not achieved everything they had hoped for. Most Native Americans are still living on reservations and government are doing little to help them. A book titled “Lakota Women” by Mary Crow Dog takes us into the lives of the Native Americans, her childhood, adulthood, and her experiences of being an Indian woman.
The United States has had a long relationship with the Haudenosaunee people. When Europeans invaded North America, beginning in the end of the 15th century, they found a land already inhabited by a large group of people, who they called Indians. Although their subsequent relationship was plagued by disease, wars and fights for domination, there was, inevitably, some exchange of goods, like crops, and ideas between the two peoples. Most notably, even the “Founding Fathers” of the U.S. were influenced by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s ideas about democracy and government. One aspect of the relationship, however, is rarely mentioned: the impact that Haudenosaunee women had on early feminists in the U.S. The two groups of women interacted very closely during the 19th century, and prominent feminist voices in the U.S., like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Lucretia Mott, were heavily influenced by the native women’s many freedoms.
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
In the weekly readings for week five we see two readings that talk about the connections between women’s suffrage and black women’s identities. In Rosalyn Terborg-Penn’s Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, we see the ways that black women’s identities were marginalized either through their sex or by their race. These identities were oppressed through social groups, laws, and voting rights. Discontented Black Feminists talks about the journey black feminists took to combat the sexism as well as the racism such as forming independent social clubs, sororities, in addition to appealing to the government through courts and petitions. These women formed an independent branch of feminism in which began to prioritize not one identity over another, but to look at each identity as a whole. This paved the way for future feminists to introduce the concept of intersectionality.
Women, Race and Class is the prolific analysis of the women's rights movement in the United States as observed by celebrated author, scholar, academic and political activist. Angela Y. Davis, Ph.D. The book is written in the same spirit as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Davis does not merely recount the glorious deeds of history. traditional feminist icons, but rather tells the story of women's liberation from the perspective of former black slaves and wage laborers. Essential to this approach is the salient omnipresent concept known as intersectionality.
This wave of sterilization came crashing down on Native American women the hardest. As Sally Torpy asserts in her thesis, Endangered...
To begin with, there are many events in United States history that have shaped our general understanding of women’s involvement in economics, politics, the debates of gender and sexuality, and so forth. Women for many centuries have not been seen as a significant part of history, however under thorough analyzation of certain events, there are many women and woman-based events responsible for the progressiveness we experience in our daily lives as men, women, children, and individuals altogether. Many of these events aid people today to reflect on the treatment of current individuals today and to raise awareness to significant issues that were not resolved or acknowledged in the past.
But when the “Women’s Movement,” is referred to, one would most likely think about the strides taken during the 1960’s for equal treatment of women. The sixties started off with a bang for women, as the Food and Drug Administration approved birth control pills, President John F. Kennedy established the President's Commission on the Status of Women and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman, and Betty Friedan published her famous and groundbreaking book, “The Feminine Mystique” (Imbornoni). The Women’s Movement of the 1960’s was a ground-breaking part of American history because along with African-Americans another minority group stood up for equality, women were finished with being complacent, and it changed women’s lives today.
The late nineteenth century was a critical time in reshaping the rights of women. Commonly this era is considered to be the beginning of what is know to western feminists as “first-wave feminism.” First-wave feminism predominately fought for legal rights such as suffrage, and property rights. A major hallmark of first-wave feminism is the concept of the “New Woman.” The phrase New Woman described educated, independent, career oriented women who stood in response to the idea of the “Cult of Domesticity,” that is the idea that women are meant to be domestic and submissive (Stevens 27).
During the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, in the Native American culture, men and women lived as completely separate people. Even though they lived separately, the jobs they withheld were perfect stability due to what men were accomplishing women couldn’t and vice versa. Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change by Theda Perdue is a book that communicates and portrays how gender affected the Native American culture and the relations throughout the culture. Although the title of the book can lead you to believe it is solely about women, this book strongly suggests how Cherokee men and Cherokee women were not only separate in ways of gender but how they in fact differ throughout the time period and the impact that had on the culture. Theda Perdue argues how the appearance of Europeans completely shaped and molded the traditions held by the Cherokee tribe. She does an impeccable job describing and analyzing the way things prevailed in the seventeen hundreds through the eighteen forties. She goes above
...e and gender, were by default always arguing for universal equality. In no instance could black women argue specifically for their rights and freedom, without necessarily raising up the all blacks and females. As the famous phrase declares, black women were “lifting as they climb” (Brown, 44). In their fight for enfranchisement, they were advocating for universal suffrage; in their movement to end lynching, they were urging, “that every human being should have a fair trial;” in the demand for fair, living wages, they were insisting that all people should have the capacity to live honestly and adequately from their pay (Brown, 34). Black women, not only assumed a peculiar position in society, where they had to band together to fight for their own rights, but also they were in a powerful situation, which granted them the capacity to fight for everyone’s rights.
All men are created equal (Declaration of Independence). Yet, the Native Americans continue their fight for decades since colonization. There is a constant struggle to urge for equality from William Apess in his 1833 essay, An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man. In modern day, the fight continues after his lifetime. Equality and freedom is the goal for most Native Americans. Although securing the rights of the Native Americans are progressing, it is slow. Therefore, the inequality continues at a faster pace, as opposed to major changes that would impact the Native Americans positively. Throughout history, they are exploited for their land and natural resources and severely underfunded. As a matter of fact, the common theme seems to be that the Native Americans are continuously suppressed by the “superior race”, which showcases the prevalent thoughts in America. William Apess and
Gender roles played a huge part in the Iroquois Confederacy, however, their views on the men and women in their tribe were different from the “normal” gender norms. Women have always had an honored place in the Iroquois tribes. In many societies throughout history and around the world, women have not been treated equally and given equal rights to men. However, the Iroquoian woman had a great amount of authority and power in the community. “In the Iroquois community, women were the keepers of the culture. They were responsible for defining the political, social, spiritual, and economic norms of the tribe.” (Iroquois Confederacy.) Warner (1925) states, “In the Iroquoian political system, women possessed an unusual amount of power. All the male
Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism introduces ideas by Becky Thompson that contradict the “traditional” teachings of the Second Wave of feminism. She points out that the version of Second Wave feminism that gets told centers around white, middle class, US based women and the central problem being focused on and rallied against is sexism. This history of the Second Wave does not take into consideration feminist movements happening in other countries. Nor does it take into consideration the feminist activism that women of color were behind, that centered not only on sexism, but also racism, and classism as central problems as well. This is where the rise of multiracial feminism is put to the foreground and a different perspective of the Second Wave is shown.
The focus of The Women’s Liberation Movement was idealized off The Civil Rights Movement; it was founded on the elimination of discriminary practices and sexist attitudes (Freeman, 1995). Although by the 1960s women were responsible for one-third of the work force, despite the propaganda surrounding the movement women were still urged to “go back home.” However the movement continued to burn on, and was redeveloping a new attitude by the 1970s. The movement was headed by a new generation that was younger and more educated in politics and social actions. These young women not only challenged the gender role expectations, but drove the feminist agenda that pursued to free women from oppression and male authority and redistribute power and social good among the sexes (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000).