ASSIGNMENT

SECOND WAVE FEMINISM

NAME: HIRA SABIR ( 175418 )

ROLL NUM: 175418

SUBMITTED TO: TOUQEER IQBAL

SUBJECT: GENDER STUDY

DEPARTMENT OF PAKISTAN STUDIES

GOVT. POSTGRADUATE COLLEGE MANSEH

INTRODUCTION;

Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that began in

the United States in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It quickly
spread across the Western world, with an aim to increase equality for women by
gaining more than just enfranchisement.

Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal

obstacles to gender equality (e.g., voting rights and property rights), second-wave
feminism broadened the debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality,

Family,

Workplace,

 Reproductive rights

 De facto inequalities

Official legal inequalities

 It was a movement that was focused on critiquing the patriarchal, or male-
dominated, institutions, and cultural practices throughout society. Second-wave
feminism also drew attention to the issues of domestic violence and marital rape,
engendered rape-crisis centers and women's shelters, and brought about changes
in custody laws and divorce law. Feminist-owned bookstores, credit unions, and
restaurants were among the key meeting spaces and economic engines of the
movement.

The term "second-wave feminism" itself was brought into common parlance by
journalist Martha Lear in a New York Times Magazine article in March 1968 titled
"The Second Feminist Wave: What do These Women Want?" She wrote,
"Proponents call it the Second Feminist Wave, the first having ebbed after the
glorious victory of suffrage and disappeared, finally, into the great sandbar of
Togetherness.
Many historians view the second-wave feminist era in America as ending in the
early 1980s with the intra-feminism disputes of the feminist sex wars over issues
such as sexuality and pornography, which ushered in the era of third-wave
feminism in the early 1990s.

OUTER VIEW IN UNITED STATE

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.

Some important events laid the groundwork for the second wave. French
writer Simone de Beauvoir had in the 1940s examined the notion of women being
perceived as "other" in the patriarchal society. 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”. 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. This made it easier for
women to have careers without having to leave due to unexpectedly becoming
pregnant.
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.

In 1963, Betty Friedan, influenced by 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 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 played a role at home and the
workforce were more satisfied with their life compared to the women who stayed
home.

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 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.

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 Play
boy 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.

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. The US Department of Defense plans to
integrate women into all combat positions by 2016.

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."
The second wave of the feminist movement also marks the emergence
of women's studies as a legitimate field of study. In 1970, San Diego State
University was the first university in the United States to offer a selection of
women's studies courses.

Second-wave feminism was largely successful, with the failure of the ratification
of the Equal Rights Amendment and Nixon's veto of the Comprehensive Child
Development Bill of 1972 (which would have provided a multibillion-dollar
national day care system) the only major legislative defeats. Efforts to ratify the
Equal Rights Amendment have continued.

Second-wave feminism ended in the early 1980s with the feminist sex wars and
was succeeded by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s.

OUTERVIEW IN OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES

In 1967, at the International Alliance of Women Congress held in London,

delegates were made aware of an initiative by the UN Commission on the Status
of Women to study and evaluate the situation of women in their countries. Many
organizations and NGOs like the Association of Business and Professional
Women, Soroptimists Clubs, as well as teaching and nursing associations
developed committees in response to the initiative to prepare evaluations on the
conditions of women and urge their governments to establish National
Commissions on the Status of Women.

In Turkey and Israel, second-wave feminism began in the 1980s.

SPAIN

The 1960s in Spain saw a generational shift in Spanish feminist in response to

other changes in Spanish society. This included increased emigration and tourism
(resulting in the spread of ideas from the rest of the world), greater opportunities
in education and employment for women and major economic reforms.

 Feminism in the late Franco period and early transition period was not unified. It
had many different political dimensions, however, they all shared a belief in the
need for greater equality for women in Spain and a desire to defend the rights of
women.

 Feminism moved from being about the individual to being about the collective. It
was during this period that second-wave feminism arrived in Spain.

Second-wave Spanish feminism was about the struggle for the rights of women in
the context of the dictatorship. PCE would start in 1965 to promote this
movement with MDM, creating a feminist political orientation around building
solidarity for women and assisting imprisoned political figures. MDM launched its
movement in Madrid by establishing associations among the housewives of
the Tetuán and Getafe in 1969. In 1972, Asociación Castellana de Amas de Casa y
Consumidora was created to widen the group's ability to attract members.

Second-wave feminism entered the Spanish comic community by the early 1970s.
It was manifested in Spanish comics in two ways. The first was that it increased
the number of women involved in comics production as writers and artists. The
second was it transformed how female characters were portrayed, making
women less passive and less likely to be purely sexual beings.

SWEDEN

In Sweden, the Second-wave feminism is foremost associated with Group 8, a

feminist organization which was founded by eight women in Stockholm in 1968.

The organization took up various feminist issues such as demands for expansions
of kindergartens, 6-hour working day, equal pay for equal work and opposition to
pornography. Initially based in Stockholm, local groups were founded throughout
the country. The influence of Group 8 on feminism in Sweden is still prevalent.

THE NETHERLANDS

In 1967, "The Discontent of Women", by Joke Kool-Smits, was published; the

publication of this essay is often regarded as the start of second-wave feminism in
the Netherlands. In this essay, Smit describes the frustration of married women,
saying they are fed up being solely mothers and housewives.
BEGINNING AND CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING

The beginnings of second-wave feminism can be studied by looking at the two

branches that the movement formed in:

the liberal feminists and the radical feminists. The liberal feminists, led by figures

such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem advocated for federal legislation to be
passed that would promote and enhance the personal and professional lives of
women. On the other hand, radical feminists, such as Casey Hayden and Mary
King, adopted the skills and lessons that they had learned from their work with
civil rights organizations such as the Students for a Democratic
Society and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and created a platform
to speak on the violent and sexist issues women faced while working with the
larger Civil Rights Movement.

THE LIBERAL FEMINIST MOVEMENT

After being removed from the workforce, by either personal or social pressures,
many women in the post-war America returned to the home or were placed into
female only jobs in the service sector. After the publication of Friedan's The
Feminine Mystique in 1963, many women connected to the feeling of isolation
and dissatisfaction that the book detailed.

. Many of these women organized to form the National Organization for

Women in 1966, whose "Statement of Purpose" declared that the right women
had to equality was one small part of the nationwide civil rights revolution that
was happening during the 1960s.

THE RADICAL FEMINIST MOVEMENT

Women who favoured radical feminism collectively spoke of being forced to

remain silent and obedient to male leaders in New Left organizations. They spoke
out about how they were not only told to do clerical work such as stuffing
envelopes and typing speeches, but there was also an expectation for them to
sleep with the male activists that they worked with. 
While these acts of sexual harassment took place, the young women were
neglected their right to have their own needs and desires recognized by their
male cohorts. Many radical feminists had learned from these organizations how
to think radically about their self-worth and importance, and applied these
lessons in the relationships they had with each other.

BUSINESSES

Feminist activists have established a range of feminist businesses,

including women's bookstores, feminist credit unions, feminist presses, feminist
mail-order catalogs, feminist restaurants, and feminist record labels. These
businesses flourished as part of the second and third waves of feminism in the
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

In West Berlin sixteen projects emerged within three years (1974–76) all without
state funding (except the women's shelter). Many of those new concepts the
social economy picked up later, some are still run autonomously today

CAUSES BEHIND SECOND WAVE FEMINISIM

MUSIC AND POPULAR CULTURE

Second-wave feminists viewed popular culture as sexist, and created pop culture
of their own to counteract this. "One project of second wave feminism was to
create 'positive' images of women, to act as a counterweight to the dominant
images circulating in popular culture and to raise women's consciousness of their
oppressions."

"I AM WOMAN"

Australian artist Helen Reddy's song "I Am Woman" played a large role in popular
culture and became a feminist anthem; Reddy came to be known as a
"feminist poster girl" or a "feminist icon". Reddy told interviewers that the song
was a "song of pride about being a woman". The song was released in 1972. A
few weeks after "I Am Woman" entered the charts, radio stations refused to play
it. Some music critics and radio stations believed the song represented "all that is
silly in the Women's Lib Movement". Helen Reddy then began performing the
song on numerous television variety shows. As the song gained popularity,
women began calling radio stations and requesting to hear "I Am Woman"
played. The song re-entered the charts and reached number one in December
1972. "I Am Woman" also became a protest song that women sang at feminist
rallies and protests

Olivia Records

In 1973, a group of five feminists created the first women's owned-and-operated

record label, called Olivia Records. They created the record label because they
were frustrated that major labels were slow to add female artists to their rosters.
One of Olivia's founders, Judy Dlugacz, said that, "It was a chance to create
opportunities for women artists within an industry which at that time had
few." Initially, they had a budget of $4,000, and relied on donations to keep Olivia
Records alive. With these donations, Olivia Records created their first LP, an
album of feminist songs entitled I Know You Know. The record label originally
relied on volunteers and feminist bookstores to distribute their records, but after
a few years their records began to be sold in mainstream record stores.

Olivia Records was so successful that the company relocated from Washington
D.C. to Los Angeles in 1975. Olivia Records released several records and albums,
and their popularity grew. As their popularity grew, an alternative, specialized
music industry grew around it. This type of music was initially referred to as
"lesbian music" but came to be known as "women's music". However, although
Olivia Records was initially meant for women, in the 1980s it tried to move away
from that stereotype and encouraged men to listen to their music as well.

WOMEN'S MUSIC

Women's music consisted of female musicians combined music with politics to

express feminist ideals. Cities throughout the United States began to hold
Women's Music Festivals, all consisting of female artists singing their own songs
about personal experiences. The first Women's Music Festival was held in 1974 at
the University of Illinois. In 1979, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival attracted
10,000 women from across America. These festivals encouraged already-famous
female singers, such as Laura Nyro and Ellen McIllwaine, to begin writing and
producing their own songs instead of going through a major record label. Many
women began performing hard rock music, a traditionally male-dominated genre.
One of the most successful examples included the sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson,
who formed the famous hard rock band Heart

FILM

GERMAN SPEAKING EUROPE

The Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie Berlin gave women a chance: from 1968

on one third of the students were female. Some of them - pioneers of women's
movement - produced feminist feature films: Helke Sander 1971. In West
Germany Helma Sanders-Brahms and Claudia von Alemann produced feminist
documentaries from 1970 on. 1973 Claudia von Alemann and Helke Sander
organized the 1. Internationale Frauen-Filmseminar in Berlin. In 1974 Helke
Sander founded the journal Frauen und Film – a first feminist filmjournal, which
she edited until 1981.

In the 1970s in West Germany, women directors produced a whole series

of Frauenfilm - films focusing on women's personal emancipation. In 1980s
the Goethe Institute brought a collection of German women's films in every
corner of the world. “…here the term ‘feminist filmmaking’ does function to point
to a filmmaking practice defining itself outside the masculine mirror. German
feminism is one of the most active women's movements in Europe. It has gained
access to television; engendered a spectrum of journals, a publishing house and a
summer women's university in Berlin; inspired a whole group of filmmakers; ...”
writes Marc Silberman in Jump Cut (journal). But most of the women filmmakers
did not see themselves as feminists, except Helke Sander and Cristina Perincioli.
Perincioli stated in an interview: “Fight first … before making beautiful
art”. There, she explains how she develops and shoots the film together with the
women concerned: saleswomen, battered wives - and why she prefers to work
with an all female team. Camera women were still so rare in the 1970 that she
had to find them in Denmark and France. Working with an all women film crew
Perincioli encouraged women to learn these then male dominated professions.

ASSOCIATION OF WOMEN FILMWORKERS

In 1979, German women filmworkers formed the Association of women

filmworkers which was active for a few years. In 2014, a new attempt with Proquote
Film (then as  turned out to be successful and effective. A study by the University of
Rostock shows that 42% of the graduates of film schools are female, but only 22% of
the German feature films are staged by a woman director and are usually financially
worse equipped. Similarly, women are disadvantaged in the other male-dominated
film trades, where men even without education are preferred to the female
graduates. The initiative points out that the introduction of a quota system in Sweden
has brought the proportion of women in key positions in film production around the
same as the population share. 

As a result, the Swedish initiative calls also for a parity of film funding bodies and the
implementation of a gradual women's quota for the allocation of film and television
directing jobs in order to achieve a gender-equitable distribution. This should reflect
the plurality of a modern society, because diversity can not be guaranteed if more than
80% of all films are produced by men. ProQuote Film is the third initiative with which
women with a high share in their industry are fighting for more female executives and
financial resources

USA

In the USA, both the creation and subjects of motion pictures began to reflect
second-wave feminist ideals, leading to the development of feminist film theory.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, female filmmakers that were involved in part of
the new wave of feminist film included Joan Micklin Silver (Between the
Lines), Claudia Weill (Girlfriends), Stephanie Rothman, and Susan
Seidelman (Smithereens, Desperately Seeking Susan). Other notable films that
explored feminist subject matters that were made at this time include the film
adaptation of Lois Gould's novel Such Good Friends and Rosemary's Baby.[96]

The documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry was the first documentary

film to cover feminism's second wave
SOCIAL CHANGES

USE OF BIRTH CONTROL

Finding a need to talk about the advantage of the Food and Drug

Administration passing their approval for the use of birth control in 1960, liberal
feminists took action in creating panels and workshops with the goal to promote
conscious raising among sexually active women. These workshops also brought
attention to issues such as venereal diseases and safe abortion. Radical feminists
also joined this push to raise awareness among sexually active women. While
supporting the "Free Love Movement" of the late 1960s and early 1970s, young
women on college campuses distributed pamphlets on birth control, sexual
diseases, abortion, and cohabitation.

While white women were concerned with obtaining birth control for all, women
of color were at risk of sterilization because of these same medical and social
advances: "Native American, African American, and Latina groups documented
and publicized sterilization abuses in their communities in the 1960s and 70s,
showing that women had been sterilized without their knowledge or consent...
In the 1970s, a group of women... founded the Committee to End Sterilization
Abuse (CESA) to stop this racist population control policy begun by the federal
government in the 1940s – a policy that had resulted in the sterilization of over
one-third of all women of child-bearing age in Puerto Rico." The use of forced
sterilization disproportionately affected women of color and women from lower
socioeconomic statuses. Sterilization was often done under the ideology
of eugenics. Thirty states within the United States authorized legal sterilizations
under eugenic sciences

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

The second-wave feminist movement also took a strong stance against physical
violence and sexual assault in both the home and the workplace. In
1968, NOW successfully lobbied the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission to pass an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
which prevented discrimination based on sex in the workplace. This attention to
women's rights in the workplace also prompted the EEOC to add sexual
harassment to its "Guidelines on Discrimination", therefore giving women the
right to report their bosses and coworkers for acts of sexual assault.

Domestic violence, such as battery and rape, were rampant in post-war America.
Women were often abused as a result of daily frustration in their husband's lives,
and as late as 1975 domestic battery and rape were both socially acceptable and
legal as women were seen to be the possessions of their husbands. Because of
activists in the second-wave feminist movement, and the local law enforcement
agencies that they worked with, by 1982 three hundred shelters and forty-eight
state coalitions had been established to provide protection and services for
women who had been abused by male figures in their lives.

EDUCATION
TITLE IX

COEDUCATION
One debate which developed in the United States during this time period
revolved around the question of coeducation. Most men's colleges in the United
States adopted coeducation, often by merging with women's colleges. In addition,
some women's colleges adopted coeducation, while others maintained a single-
sex student body.

SEVEN SISTERS COLLEGES

Two of the Seven Sister colleges made transitions during and after the 1960s. The
first, Radcliffe College, merged with Harvard University. Beginning in 1963,
students at Radcliffe received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of
Radcliffe and Harvard and joint commencement exercises began in 1970. The
same year, several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students
experimentally and in 1972 full co-residence was instituted. The departments
of athletics of both schools merged shortly thereafter. In 1977, Harvard and
Radcliffe signed an agreement which put undergraduate women entirely in
Harvard College. In 1999, Radcliffe College was dissolved and Harvard University
assumed full responsibility over the affairs of female undergraduates. Radcliffe is
now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Women's Studies at Harvard
University.

The second, Vassar College, declined an offer to merge with Yale University and

instead became coeducational in 1969.

The remaining Seven Sisters decided against coeducation. Mount Holyoke

College engaged in a lengthy debate under the presidency of David Truman over
the issue of coeducation. On November 6, 1971, "after reviewing an exhaustive
study on coeducation, the board of trustees decided unanimously that Mount
Holyoke should remain a women's college, and a group of faculty was charged
with recommending curricular changes that would support the decision. Smith
College also made a similar decision in 1971.

In 1969, Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College (then all male) developed a

system of sharing residential colleges. When Haverford became coeducational in
1980, Bryn Mawr discussed the possibly of coeducation as well, but decided
against it.

 In 1983, Columbia University began admitting women after a decade of failed

negotiations with Barnard College for a merger along the lines of Harvard and
Radcliffe (Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia since 1900, but it continues
to be independently governed). Wellesley College also decided against
coeducation during this time.

MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN

In 1982, in a 5–4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mississippi University

for Women v. Hogan that the Mississippi University for Women would be in
violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause if it denied
admission to its nursing program on the basis of gender. Mississippi University for
Women, the first public or government institution for women in the United
States, changed its admissions policies and became coeducational after the ruling.

In what was her first opinion written for the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor stated, "In limited circumstances, a gender-based classification favoring
one sex can be justified if it intentionally and directly assists members of the sex
that is disproportionately burdened." She went on to point out that there are a
disproportionate number of women who are nurses, and that denying admission
to men "lends credibility to the old view that women, not men, should become
nurses, and makes the assumption that nursing is a field for women a self-
fulfilling prophecy".

In the dissenting opinions, Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Lewis F.

Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist suggested that the result of this ruling would
be the elimination of publicly supported single-sex educational opportunities. This
suggestion has proven to be accurate as there are no public women's colleges in
the United States today and, as a result of United States v. Virginia, the last all-
male public university in the United States, Virginia Military Institute, was
required to admit women. The ruling did not require the university to change its
name to reflect its coeducational status and it continues a tradition of academic
and leadership development for women by providing liberal arts and professional
education to women and men.

MILLS COLLEGE

On May 3, 1990, the Trustees of Mills College announced that they had voted to
admit male students. This decision led to a two-week student and staff strike,
accompanied by numerous displays of nonviolent protests by the students. At one
point, nearly 300 students blockaded the administrative offices and boycotted
classes. On May 18, the Trustees met again to reconsider the decision, leading
finally to a reversal of the vote.
OTHER COLLEGES

Sarah Lawrence College declined an offer to merge with Princeton University,

becoming coeducational in 1969.[117] Connecticut College also adopted
coeducation during the late 1960s. Wells College, previously with a student body
of women only, became co-educational in 2005. Douglass College, part of Rutgers
University, was the last publicly funded women's only college until 2007 when it
became coed.

CRITICISM

Some black and/or working class and poor women felt alienated by the main
planks of the second-wave feminist movement, which largely advocated women's
right to work outside the home and expansion of reproductive rights. Women of
color and poor white women in the US had been working outside of the home in
blue-collar and service jobs for generations. Additionally, Angela Davis wrote that
while Afro-American women and white women were subjected to multiple
unwilled pregnancies and had to clandestinely abort, Afro-American women were
also suffering from compulsory sterilization programs that were not widely
included in dialogue about reproductive justice.

Beginning in the late 20th century, numerous feminist scholars such as Audre
Lorde and  critiqued the second wave in the United States as reducing feminist
activity into a homogenized and whitewashed chronology of feminist history that
ignores the voices and contributions of many women of color, working-class
women, and LGBT women.
The second-wave feminist movement in the United States has been criticized for
failing to acknowledge the struggles of women of color, and their voices were
often silenced or ignored by white feminists. It has been suggested that
the dominant historical narratives of the feminist movement focuses on white,
East Coast, and predominantly middle-class women and women's consciousness-
raising groups, excluding the experiences and contributions of lesbians, women of
color, and working-class and lower-class women.

Chela Sandoval called the dominant narratives of the women's liberation

movement "hegemonic feminism" because it essentializes the feminist
historiography to an exclusive population of women, which assumes that all
women experience the same oppressions as the white, East Coast, and
predominantly middle-class women. 

Many feminist scholars see the generational division of the second wave as
problematic. Second wavers are typically essentialized as the Baby
Boomer generation, when in actuality many feminist leaders of the second wave
were born before World War II ended. This generational essentialism
homogenizes the group that belongs to the wave and asserts that every person
part of a certain demographic generation shared the same ideologies, because
ideological differences were considered to be generational differences.

 For Blackwell, looking within the gaps and crevices of the second wave allows
fragments of historical knowledge and memory to be discovered, and new
historical feminist subjects as well as new perspectives about the past to emerge,
forcing existing dominant histories that claim to represent a universal experience
to be decentered and refocused.

REFERENCES

 Lear, Martha Weinman (March 10, 1968). "The Second Feminist Wave: What do
these women want?". The New York Times. Retrieved June 25, 2020

Gerhard, Jane F. (2001). Desiring revolution: second-wave feminism and the

rewriting of American sexual thought, 1920 to 1982. New York: Columbia
University Press. 

THE END