Second-Wave Feminism

Examples of Second-Wave Feminism in the following topics:

• Second-Wave Feminism

  • Second-wave Feminism is a period of feminist activity that manifested in the United States during the early 1960s, lasting through the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
  • Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on overturning legal obstacles to gender equality (i.e. voting rights, property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities.
  • Many feminists view the second-wave feminist era as ending with the intra-feminism disputes of the Feminist Sex Wars , which ushered in the era of third-wave feminism.
  • This book is widely credited with having begun second-wave feminism.
  • Second-wave feminism was largely successful, with the failure of the ratification of the ERA the only major legislative defeat .

• The New Wave of Feminism

  • Second-wave feminism distinguished itself from earlier women's movements in that it expanded to include issues of sexuality, family, and reproductive rights.
  • Women's movements of the late 19th and early 20th century (later known as first-wave feminism) focused primarily on overturning legal obstacles to gender equality, such as voting rights and property rights.
  • In contrast, the second wave of feminism in the 1960s, inspired and galvanized by the civil rights movement of the same era, broadened the debate of women's rights to encompass a wider range of issues, including sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities.
  • Second-wave feminism radically changed the face of western culture, leading to marital rape laws, the establishment of rape crisis and battered women's shelters, significant changes in custody and divorce law, and widespread integration of women into sports activities and the workplace.
  • Outline the key events in the development of the second wave feminist movement

• The New Feminism

  • The 19th- and early 20th-century feminist activity that sought to win women's suffrage, female education rights, better working conditions, and abolition of gender double standards is known as first-wave feminism.
  • The term "first-wave" was coined retrospectively when the term second-wave feminism was used to describe a newer feminist movement that fought social and cultural inequalities beyond basic political inequalities.
  • Feminists did not recognize separate waves of feminism until the second wave was so named by journalist Martha Lear, according to Jennifer Baumgardner.
  • Baumgardner reports criticism by professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of the division into waves and the difficulty of categorizing some feminists into specific waves, argues that the main critics of a wave are likely to be members of the prior wave who remain vital, and that waves are coming faster.
  • The "waves debate" has influenced how historians and other scholars have established the chronologies of women's political activism.

• Women's Activism

  • The term "first wave feminism" describes the women's movements during the Gilded Age, which primarily focused on women's suffrage.
  • First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early 20th century in the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States.
  • Matilda Joslyn Gage of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), resembled the radicalism of much of second-wave feminism.
  • The first wave of feminists, in contrast to the second wave, focused very little on the subjects of abortion, birth control, and overall reproductive rights of women.
  • The end of the first wave is often linked with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1920), granting women the right to vote.

• Domesticity and "Domestics"

  • Early feminist opposition to the values promoted by the cult of domesticity culminated in the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and later influenced the second wave of feminism.

• Women's Rights

  • "First-wave feminism" refers to the feminist movement of the nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, which focused mainly on women's suffrage, or right to vote.
  • The earlier forms of feminism have been criticized for being geared toward and focused on white, middle-class, educated women, to the exclusion of the diverse experiences of other women.
  • Second- and third-wave feminist movements followed this initial first wave, working to further combat social, cultural, and political inequalities.

• The Spanish Flu

  • The second wave of the pandemic struck in the autumn of 1918 and was much deadlier than the first.
  • But in August 1918, when the second wave began in France, Sierra Leone and the United States, the virus had mutated into a much deadlier form.
  • The second wave began and the flu quickly spread around the world again.
  • This effect was most dramatically illustrated in Copenhagen, which escaped with a combined mortality rate of just 0.29 percent (0.02 percent in first wave and 0.27 percent in second wave) because of exposure to the less-lethal first wave.
  • After the deadly second wave, new cases dropped abruptly to almost nothing after its original peak.

• Women and Church Governance

  • Women constituted the majority of converts and participants in the Second Great Awakening and played an important informal role in religious revivals.
  • Women made up the majority of the converts during the Second Great Awakening and therefore played a crucial role in its development and focus.
  • In an effort to give sermons that would resonate with the congregation, Christ was gradually "feminized" in this period to stress his humility and forgiveness.
  • Despite the influential part they played in the Second Great Awakening, these women still largely acted within their "status quo" roles as mothers and wives.
  • During the antebellum period, the Second Great Awakening inspired advocacy for a number of reform topics, including women's rights.

• Demographic Shifts

  • Third wave feminism gained momentum in the 90s, with violence against women taking center stage, more women taking on positions of leadership, and the rise of queer theory initiating important discussions about gender and sexuality.

• The Age of Reforms

  • The Second Great Awakening spurred waves of social change and reform.
  • The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States.
  • The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian Theology, by which every person could be saved through revivals, repentance, and conversion.
  • The Second Great Awakening stimulated the establishment of many reform movements designed to remedy the evils of society before the anticipated Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
  • They did not stem entirely from the Second Great Awakening, but the revivalist doctrine and the expectation that one's conversion would lead to personal action accelerated the role of women's social benevolence work.