The Four Stages Of The Feminist Movement

The feminist movement was based on women´s rights. Women seek for equal rights in their economic activities, personal lives, and politics. The very first wave of feminism focused on women´s legal rights. This wave came into play around the 19th or 20th century. The second wave of feminism peeked on every area of women´s experience such as family, sexuality, and work.

With the help of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, woman gained access to jobs in every corner of the United States. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a federal agency that administers and enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. Employers with long histories of discrimination were required to provide timetables for increasing the number of women in their workforces. Employers were barred from firing pregnant women; and women’s studies programs were created in colleges and universities. In 1963, the publication of the feminist mystique came into play. The Feminist Mystique was one of the many catalysts for the second

wave feminist movement.

By the end of the 1980s, however, its flaws had been clearly identified.

Its arguments, broadly speaking, were less relevant, because twice as many women were in the workforce as had been during the 1950s. Furthermore, feminists of color, notably bell hooks, found Friedan’s manifesto both racist and classist, not at all applicable to African Americans and other working-class women who joined the labor force from necessity. Social historian Daniel Horowitz, in Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique (1998), revealed that Friedan had been dishonest about her vantage point, which she claimed was that of a suburban mother and housewife. She had been a leftist radical activist from the time she was at Smith College. It was, he concluded, a necessary fiction if both she and her feminist ideas were to be given a chance to take root. Still other critics noted that she based some of her theories on studies that have since proved

inaccurate.

Despite the ensuing criticism, the book undeniably galvanized many women to think about their roles and identities in society. Since its first publication, it has been reissued numerous times with additions—by Friedan and other feminist writers and scholars—that provide further context. Despite such dissension in its leadership and ranks, the women’s movement achieved much in a short period of time. With the eventual backing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1965), women gained access to jobs in every corner of the U.S. economy, and employers with long histories of discrimination were required to provide timetables for increasing the number of women in their workforces. Divorce laws were liberalized; employers were barred

from firing pregnant women; and women’s studies programs were created in colleges and universities. Record numbers of women ran for—and started winning—political office. In 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the Higher Education Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program receiving federal funds and thereby forced all-male schools to open their doors to women and athletic programs to sponsor and finance female sports teams. And in 1973, in its controversial ruling on Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion.