What Accounts for the Resurgence

of Feminism in the 1960s?

• “It might seem that feminism caused the
deep economic and social changes in
American women’s lives, but it is more
accurate to say that it resulted from them.”
– TWE, 700
What Accounts for the Resurgence
of Feminism in the 1960s?

• Women’s changing lives

– Work
– Education
– Child-bearing

• The black freedom struggle

 Mainstream/Liberal Feminism
• Employment
• Education
• ERA
• Reproductive freedom
 The Equal Rights Amendment

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be

denied or abridged by the United States or
by any state on account of sex.”
 How did women’s legal status
change?

• Equal Pay Act of 1963

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
(EEOC)
• affirmative action, 1967
• Title IX, 1972
 How did women’s legal status
change?
• Credit discrimination, 1974
• Pregnancy discrimination, 1978
• Supreme Court cases
– Reed v Reed, 1971 and others
– Roe v Wade, 1973

• But. . . . failure to ratify ERA

 Women’s Liberation

•The “personal is political”

•Violence against Women
•Sexuality, Health and
Reproduction
Roe v. Wade
How was the movement for gay
and lesbian rights connected to
second-wave feminism?
 How did activism of poor women
and women of color challenge
white, middle-class feminism?

• National Welfare Rights Organization

• Reproductive rights
• Defining the oppressor(s)
The Feminist
Art Movement
 Global
Feminism
International Decade for Women,
1975-1985