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Mackenzie Longo

Dr. Reyna

SLA 201 76

21 May 2021

Post-World War II Feminism in the United States and Beyond

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, feminism is defined as “the advocacy of

women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes” (“feminism”, n1). Upon further

investigation, it is clear that feminism can take on different meanings and forms, which is

especially dependent on the person asked and their age, cultural background, and socioeconomic

backgrounds. Feminism has looked different in the past, especially before World War II, and has

continued evolving ever since. Even today, the feminist movement pushes on in many different

ways and fights for women’s rights in different aspects of life. This includes being treated

equally in the workplace, equal consumer product pricing (i.e., “Pink Tax” upcharge on products

marketed to women), in politics, and the ideas that feminism and race/culture are inherently

linked. While that is more of an example of Western feminism, Asian, African and Middle

Eastern women are fighting for rights that Western women do not even think about, like the right

to go to school, have ownership over their own belongings, and control of their finances. Women

from different parts the world have to be careful of what they say on an international stage for

fear of retaliation from their governments or those in power in their homeland. While women

across the globe are shattering glass ceilings and pushing onward and upward, they could not

have done so without the path paved for them before and the path that is continuing to be foraged

by their peers.
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Modern European feminism arose from the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, an English

writer, during the Enlightenment. She argued that the idea that women should obey men did not

align with the new beliefs of the time, and that if women have reason (as all human beings

innately do, according to Enlightenment thought), they should have equal rights as men

(Spielvogel 510). While this is considered the origin of what is now known as feminism, the

movement had stagnated afterwards. The Enlightenment lasted from the late 1600s to

approximately 1800, and the feminist movement picked up again in the 1830s by women in

Europe and the United States. At this point in history, women were not allowed to own property,

nor were they allowed to file for divorce. Essentially, women were nothing without a husband.

As the feminist movement reignited, women chose to focus on specific goals, especially

marriage and family laws, and were not initially successful, especially in Catholic countries

(Spielvogel 731). Aside from the call for familial rights, women also made the push to enter into

the workforce and for voting rights in the decades following the 1830s. While women were

allowed to join the workforce, there were specific jobs that they were pushed into, like teaching

and becoming “women in white” (nurses) (Spielvogel 731). In the case of voting rights,

advocates, called suffragists, emerged. Their aim was and still is simple: provide women with the

right to be a full citizen in a nation-state. When World War I erupted, only some countries and

states had afforded women the right to vote. For the entirety of the United States, women were

afforded the right to vote in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th amendment. The movement

again took a backseat after this ratification and the first World War.

Whenever World War II erupted, it was an “all hands on deck” type of situation. Nearly

every major player in the war mobilized their resources and civilians to maximize the war effort.

In most European countries and the United States, this included mobilizing women to work in
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the factories and fill positions that had been traditionally filled by men. Now that the men were

away at war, women were needed for total mobilization. In the Soviet Union, women were even

used in combat as snipers, air-raid wardens, bomber aircrew members, and even pilots

nicknamed “Night Witches” (Spielvogel 851). Following the end of the war, women were

removed from their positions in order to allow for the soldiers returning to return to their jobs,

and while women seemed willing and birth rates boomed, this did not last long – only until about

1960 (Spielvogel 889). Many women had grown accustomed to their new roles in society,

including married women and single women alike. In the United States, married women had

made up 15 percent of the workforce in 1900, but this number had increased to 62 percent by

1970 (Spielvogel 889). These trends were mirrored in various capacities from across Europe.

The trends of increased employment for women also created familial issues. Many

women were engaged in the workforce in one way or another, either because they were a single

mother or because their family otherwise depended on their income. They also had the “burden

of maintaining the household” and entered traditional fields but were not intending “to be

housewives for some future husband” (Spielvogel 889). These familial issues extended beyond

the simple idea of women joining the workforce and into marriage and childbearing. In marriage

counseling in post-WWII Britain, “clients were encouraged to embrace the complementary

gender roles that were the cornerstone of the modern middle-class nuclear family” (Chettiar

272). The feminist movement in the postwar era greatly changed the dynamic and future of

marriage. Instead of solely focused on the aspect of marriage that aimed to create a family with

children, postwar marriage counselors and professionals (specifically in Britain and the United

States) aimed to “focus on the biological and sexual aspects of marriage and parenthood” as well

as the “emotional dimensions of the marital union” (Chettiar 274). The dynamic of families and
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marriages had been clearly upset by the war, and the fact that husbands left one day, and

suddenly returned again years later. Women had had to learn how to become self-sufficient, and

not everything could easily revert back to what it once was pre-war. Prior to this point in history,

women had not been seen as able to be leaders in many capacities.

Not only were women staying in or joining the workforce, but women were also pursuing

higher education. While the number of women overall in higher education decreased, “college

attracted one in every five U.S. women between the ages of 18-21” by 1957 (Eisenmann 134).

Even still, women were still pushed in different directions in life in the decades directly

following World War II and leading up to the women’s liberation movement that exploded in the

late 1960s. This was based in four different concentrations of ideologies: patriotic, economic,

cultural, and psychological (Eisenmann 134). The two most obvious ideologies that tied back to

women’s roles during the war are patriotic and economic, especially because women were called

upon to work during the war, as it was the patriotic thing to do to help the war effort and to keep

the economy from collapsing. Historians also suggest that the postwar emphasis of getting

women back into the homes and tending to their families was in order to “defend” them, as well

as to influence public life and feel in control or protected against the fears that accompanied the

Cold War (Eisenmann 135). Women were getting these messages that they needed to return to

the home and protect the American family from the Soviet Union and the clutches of

communism but were also compared to the women in the Soviet Union who were still actively

engaged in the war effort. The mixed messages that women were receiving made it difficult for a

woman to feel as though she was doing all she could to help.

This mixed messaging had clear psychological and cultural effects. Following World War

II, there was the infamous “baby boom” until the mid 1960s. More and more women were
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becoming mothers, but more and more women also sought to have a life outside of the home as

well. Culturally, women were made to feel as though they were “bad mothers” if they sought

work outside of the home, even though data shows that children’s physical and mental health

was not affected as long as the mother was still significantly involved in their lives, and women

were encouraged to make their husbands have a better sense of self-worth following the war

(Eismann 138). As expected, all of this also took a toll on women psychologically. Not only

were women now expected to work (or not, depending on the messages they received) and uplift

their husbands following the war, but they were still expected to singlehandedly continue to

maintain the home. Caring for a home included all of the perceived basics of cooking, cleaning,

general upkeep, and raising the children of the family – all on their own. Women turned to

magazines and psychological experts about mental health concerns, which was seen as an

increasing issue as they were supposed to be developing “healthy children” (Eismann 139). No

matter what a woman would do, it seemed nothing was enough. Everything came back to the

idea of the traditional female role.

For those who had decided that they wanted to get involved in the community, women

took up jobs or completed volunteer work. Even still, as echoed above, women felt as though

they were not receiving enough for their hard work. As one woman from a British Women’s

Liberation Workshop stated, “in jobs we do full work for half pay, in the home we do unpaid

work full time” (Spielvogel 900). Whether working a paid job, completing volunteer work, or

even being a stay-at-home mother, women were working, even if not in the traditional sense of

the word (meaning receiving compensation). By the 1960s, feminism was renewed and

sometimes referred to as the “women’s liberation movement”. During this time, women came

together to fight for the change that they wanted to see in the world. Aside from liberation
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workshops like the one mentioned above, women organized. One such group that women

organized into, National Organization for Women (known as NOW), was founded by Betty

Friedan, a journalist, mother of three, and the author of The Feminine Mystique. Even today,

NOW advocates for the same message – to take “action to bring women into full participation in

the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities

thereof in truly equal partnership with men” (Spielvogel 900 and 901). Some of groups

organized locally, while others took a national or even international stage, and many different

groups had different modes of fighting for what they believe in.

As the 1960s progressed, some of the movements for women’s liberation became more

radical. An example of this includes the protest at Miss America in Atlantic City, New Jersey in

1968 that was organized by the New York Radical Women. During this protest, items were

thrown into a trash can on the boardwalk that were termed “instruments of torture” to women,

including bras, girdles, high heels, eyelash curlers, wigs, etc., and the rumor (and later

assumption that it had happened) was that the can was set on fire (Dow 131). This protest was

not done to tear down the women competing for Miss America, but rather to protest the attitudes

that men had over women and the typical stereotypes associated with women. This protest was

also racially charged, as Miss America had never had any non-white contestants since its

inception nearly 50 years prior. Women had argued that the pageant had only included women

who were traditionally seen as beautiful and played into the idea of “beauty politics” (Dow 132).

The execution of this overall protest had not hit its intended mark, as many of the contestants felt

as though the protestors had pitted women against each other once more instead of recognizing

that they are sisters who suffered together, and that their feelings were invalidated in order to fit

the idea that Miss America contestants are brainless (Dow 133 and 134). Following this protest,
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the Miss America Organization rebranded and placed less emphasis on the swimsuit portion of

the competition, even though it had initially originated as a bathing suit contest.

Even still, organizations like NOW staged more protests at other Miss America

competitions. In their eyes, women were seen as nothing more than a piece of meat, and their

ability to flaunt around in a swimsuit or gown should not determine their scholarship worth.

Many of these other contestants had felt as though, given the opportunity to be Miss America,

that they could be a feminist activist as well (Dow 137). The relationship between feminists and

Miss America continued to be rocky following the scandal of Vanessa Williams being forced to

resign from her title in 1984. Even today, the Miss America Organization recently was under fire

for removing the swimsuit component of competition and shifting the entire program to a “2.0”

format. This recent change occurred in 2019 and shifted the program to include candidates

(rather than contestants) who compete more so as if they are applying for a job, as the MAO

maintains that that is what the position of Miss America is: a job. In 2020, the organization also

furthered themselves from the original format by moving the competition from Atlantic City to

the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. Miss America receives a six-figure salary in addition to over

$50,000 in scholarships, and the state titleholders who compete for the job also receive varying

degrees of scholarship funding and salary. Some states pay their Miss State, while others only

provide the young woman with her scholarship. Opinions on the Miss America Organization are

certainly quite mixed, especially from a feminist perspective.

Typical western feminism is oftentimes quite different from feminism in other parts of

the world. In the United States, women are debating whether or not a scholarship pageant serves

to empower women or objectify them. This is completely valid, but can pale in relation to what

other women across the world are fighting for, or even what other western women are fighting
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for. In European countries and America, women are fighting for equal pay and access to paid

maternity leave, or even still the ability to be hired for a job as a young woman or newlywed for

fear of “getting pregnant and leaving”. In other parts of the world and even in “developed”

nations, women of color are simply trying to gain equal treatment for the color of their skin.

Even still, in other places, women are fighting for the right to attend school, drive a car, or have

control over their own finances. Places like India, influenced by gender and development,

experience “spaces of Southern feminisms – understood as distinct sets of feminist ideas that

derive from their own indigenous, local, regional, or historical contexts”, and even though these

places are meant to be inclusive, they tend to be exclusive (Narayanaswamy 2156 and 2157).

Even though there is feminism present in a place does not mean that that feminism is all

inclusive. Many of the examples of early feminism in the United States were not intersectional,

such as the movements for women’s suffrage and access to birth control. These movements were

feminist, but really only for white women. This idea of elitist feminism is not exclusive to

western nations either, as in India’s All India Women’s Conference, most of the reformers were

highly educated and upper class. While they rallied for “reforms to women’s education”, they

“were not keen to grant equal voice to their working-class counterparts” and “felt that only a few

educated women of the land can speak, on behalf of our sex” (Narayanaswamy 2162). The idea

that feminism “is not for everyone’ is not new and is a barrier that still is being broken down

today. Women from all over the world are not necessarily united in their causes to fight back

against the prejudices they experience as women.

Feminism as a whole dates back centuries, or arguably even longer, but is consistently

evolving with the times. Feminism also inspires the world and society as a whole to continue to

evolve with the times in whatever fashion the time may demand. This includes the right for
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women to vote, have jobs, further their education, and to be treated equally in every aspect of

their lives. While this can range from significant life experiences like the Enlightenment and

global war efforts, it can also take the form of everyday experiences of getting paid on the same

scale as male counterparts or to live freely in whatever way one may choose. World War II

forever changed the course of postwar feminism, and the women’s liberation movements of the

1960s and 70s have continued to shape it into what it is today.

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Works Cited

Chettiar, Teri. “Treating Marriage as ‘the Sick Entity’: Gender, Emotional Life, and the

Psychology of Marriage Improvement in Postwar Britain.” History of Psychology, vol.

18, no. 3, Aug. 2015, pp. 270–282. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/a0039523.

Dow, Bonnie J. “Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs,

vol. 6, no. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 127–149. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/rap.2003.0028.

Eisenmann, Linda. “Educating the Female Citizen in a Post-War World: Competing Ideologies

for American Women, 1945-1965.” Educational Review, vol. 54, no. 2, June 2002, pp.

133–141. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00131910220133220.

"Feminism, n1.” Oxford English Dictionary Online. Accessed 17 May 2021.

Narayanaswamy, Lata. “Whose Feminism Counts? Gender(Ed) Knowledge and

Professionalisation in Development.” Third World Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 12, Dec. 2016,

pp. 2156–2175. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01436597.2016.1173511.

Spielvogel, J. J. (2018). Chapter 27, Chapter 28 and Chapter 29. In Western Civilization Volume

II: Since 1500 (10th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 863-919). Boston, MA: CENGAGE LEARNING.