The 1960s-70s American Feminist Movement: Breaking Down Barriers for Women
Social movements tie every aspect of sociology together. Not only are some social movements based on historical oppression and how that effected a current group’s lives, they changed history and how we live today. Both of these aspects are linking to C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination. Sociological imagination is “the ability to connect the most basic, intimate aspects of an individual’s life to seemingly impersonal and remote historical forces” (Conley, 2017, p. 4). For example, the feminist movement helped to develop legislation that has shaped my life as a woman. I can now vote and work in the labor force.
The feminist movement has been one of the most influential movements in American history. In the emergence stage of this movement there was a wide spread frustration among women. These women had no power and those who were in the labor force were paid significantly lower wages than their male counterparts (Tavaana). The emergence stage as defined by Research Starters (2009), is when “social movements are very preliminary and there is little to no organization” (p. 2). The next stage of a social movement is coalescence. This stage is “characterized by a more clearly defined sense of discontent” (Tavaana). In 1962, Betty Friedan wrote the book The Feminine Mystique. This was said to be the spark to the second wave of the American feminist movement. This brought women together in a more collective sense of discontent (Tavaana). Seeing how this is the second wave we can also see that the “first wave” of the American feminist movement declined into a success when the 19th amendment was passed. The movement now started to organize and strategize about their acts and outlook. Representative Howard Smith of Virginia wanted to add to the Civil Right Act to prohibit gender discrimination. But after being laughed at for this proposition and seeing that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was not going to help, they began to progress into the third stage of social movements: bureaucratization (Tavaana). Bureaucratization is “characterized by higher levels of organization and coalition-based strategies” (Research Starters, 2009, p. 3). Betty Friedan accompanied by many other women founded an organization that was going to fight for their rights. In 1966, the National Organization for Women was born (Tavaana). Betty Friedan tried to make the movement a more mainstream idea but with so many different types of protest and feminists. This almost led organizational failure in the decline stage of social movements (Research Starters, 2009, p. 4). But with the help of the post-World War II boom in the economy the nation had to come to accept the idea of women being in the workforce. It also became more desirable to have a dual family income as the expectations of what constituted comfortable in the middle-class rose. Although they were still in lower paid positions until the introduction of birth control, when employers knew they could count on employees not leaving to have an unexpected child (Tavaana). Even with all of this, women are still not represented in the workforce as equal to men.
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Conley, D. (2017). You may ask yourself: An introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Research Starters. (2009). Four stages of social movements. EBSCO Publishing, Inc.
Tavaana. (n.d.). The 1960s-70s American feminist movement: Breaking down barriers for women. Retrieved from https://tavaana.org/en/content/1960s-70s-american-feminist-movement-breaking-down-barriers-women
