revised 4/14/98
*the historical background.
** categories: the following divides feminist thought into categories
loosely following Tong, Rosemarie. Feminist
Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction
(Boulder and San Francisco: Westview Press, 1989).Variations of this
taxonomy may be found in Scott, Joan W. "Gender: A Useful Category of
Historical Analysis." American Historical
Review 91 (1986): 1053-1075. For an
earlier summary of feminist thought (including "liberal" feminism)
from the the "socialist feminist" position see Jaggar, Allison M.
Feminist Politics and Human
Nature (Sussex, Eng.:The Harvester Press,
1983). A less complete and hence less satisfactory taxonomy of
feminist thought may be found in Ferree, Myra Marx and Hess, Beth B.
Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist
Movement (Boston: Twayne, 1985), ch. 7,
who distinguish four positions within contemporary feminism: "career"
(highest priority on parity in labor force); "liberal" (equality
under law); "socialist" (fundamental change in social order); and
"radical" (altered consciousness tending toward separatism).
Wandersee, Winifred D. On the Move:
American Women in the 1970s (Boston:
Twayne, 1988), pp. xiii-xvii labels the first two "liberal" (or
"reform") feminism" and the latter two "radical," noting a split in
the radical camp between "New Left feminists" ("politicos") and
"cultural feminists." See also Donovan, Josephine. Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American
Feminism (New York: Frederick Ungar,
1985).
Conservative. As
used in the literature, describes a variety of critics of feminism,
whether from the sociobiological or other perspectives.
Liberal. the
tradition goes back to Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and
Harriet Taylor. Stresses primary of individual, equality before law
(and in economic life), autonomy of self, and efficacy of individual
effort.
Radical.
Stresses culture more than politics in traditional sense. Radicals
"argue that it is the patriarchial system that oppresses women, a
system characterized by power, dominance, hierarchy, and
competition...It is not just patriarchy's legal and political
structures that must be overturned; its social and cultural
institutions (especially the family, the church, and the academy)
must also go." (Tong,, p. 3) Distinctive concerns are (a)
reproduction and mothering; and (b) social construction of
gender.
Existentialist. Rooted in Simon de Beauvoir's The
Second Sex and her notion of women as
"Other."
Psychoanalytic.
Also stresses sexuality *(like radicals) but roots in Freudian theory
(e.g. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of
Mothering).
Socialist.
Attempts to combine the analysis regarding the structures of
production (Marxist), reproduction and sexuality (radicals), and
socialization of children (liberals).
Marxist. Rooted
in Engels' claim that the oppression of women began with the
introduction of private property.
Post-modern. A
variety of recent theories rooted in post-structuralist and
deconstructionist analyses. Rejects all attempts to define a single,
consistent "feminist" vision of reality as another example of "male
thinking."
Note:
rather than treat these as competing positions, some (many, most?)
feminists prefer to see as different approaches arising out needs of
different groups of different ages at different times. Thus, for
example, they maintain that both "liberals" and radicals" of
the 1960s-early 1970s were interested in rights and in liberation. "Rather [that
representing contesting positions] " (write Ferree and Hess p. 48)
"each branch emerged from a unique set of historical circumstances
involving a particular age group of women."
For an approach to the definitional problems see Offen, Karen.
"Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical
Approach." Signs
14 (1988): 119-157.
I. Decline of Feminism
1920-1940s
*considerable disagreement on how much, let alone why.
(i) Through the 1960s, most historians argued (or assumed) that the
grant of the vote not only failed to produce promised changes, but
signalled the end of pre-war agitation for women's rights. William
O'Neill's verdict in Everyone Was
Brave summed up the case: "The struggle
for woman's rights ended during the 1920s, leaving men in clear
possession of the commanding places in American life."[1]
(ii) In The Woman Citizen (1973), J. Stanley Lemons insisted that "social feminism"
was and remained a vital force, finally providing a link between
progressivism and the New Deal. "If. . . feminism 'failed," Lemons
wrote, "the tombstone will have to bear another date, perhaps the
1930s or 1940s."[2]
Pushing this date forward, Susan Ware in Beyond the New Deal (1981)
identified a network of women who, if not active in fighting for
feminist issues during the 1930s, played an important role in shaping
and implementing New Deal programs.
(iii) Adding an important twist to this debate, Nancy Cott in
The Grounding of Modern
Feminism (1987) noted that the term
"feminism" in fact first came into general use in the 1910s, just as
the phrase "the woman movement" was starting to sound archaic if not
downright ungrammatical. This shift proved crucial. Although narrower
in its appeal, feminism was "broader in intent" than suffragism or
the movement for women's rights in that it proclaimed "revolution in
all the relations of the sexes." Much that has been said about the
demise of pre-World War I activism was true. But traditional accounts
of this "decline" ignored the more important fact that"the name and
phenomenon [of feminism] had just recently cropped up." This new
consciousness embodied paradoxes that were relatively invisible in
the earlier struggles: sexual equality with sex differences; individual
freedoms to be gained and enjoyed through sexual solidarity;
diversity among woman and a recognition of a basic unity. But its very existence
revealed the beginning of a new era, not simply the end of an
old.[3]
(iv) Two other historians have argued further that organized feminism
remained a vita force, if dimninished in numbers, through the 1950s.
See Rupp, Leila J. and Taylor, Verta. Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights
Movement, 1945 to the 1960s. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987. **If the Mark Twain-like death of
feminism was thus "greatly exaggerated," there remains a need to
explain why prewar hopes were not fulfilled during the twenties and
thirties, even if the old impulses took new forms or sought new
channels. Although no single explanation will suffice, several at
least remain arguable
A. Flapperism. Prewar feminists, instead of attacking prevailing
definitions of femininity, traded on and hence strengthened these
stereotypes, ironically paving the way for the "flapper" whose
lifestyle they probably disapproved, and eventually for the "feminine
mystique" of the forties and fifties.
*argument later developed for the 1950s in Ehrenreich Hearts of Men.
B. Ethnicity and class cut against gender, not only by alienating
middleclass WASP activists from potential allies among working women
and new immigrants,[4] but
in being more important than gender to would-be feminists among the
children of these immigrants
C. Depression Backlash.Women were victimized by a backlash that was
often strongest in the area where they had made the greatest gains, a
backlash that assumed epidemic proportions during the Depression of
the thirties.[5]
D. Professionalization/Bureaucratization.
1. Statistics. In terms of numbers, the picture was one of increasing
opportunity through the early twenties, followed by gradual decline
thereafter, precisely the time the generation of 1900 was coming of
age. By the early 1930s, as William Chafe noted in American Women , journalists
were sounding an obituary for the "vanishing race of pioneer women"
of the prewar years. In her discussion of the issue, Nancy Cott has
detailed this decline. The percentage of employed women classified as
professional rose from 8.2% in 1900 to 14.2% in 1930. The group of
"professional and kindred" workers was 40% female when the total work
force was only 20% female. But these figures as stated are
misleading. Three-fourths of the increase in female professionals
before 1920 was the result of the expansion of teaching and nursing.
the traditional male professions, especially after 1920, witnessed
set-backs for women in varying proportions. In academia, for example,
women made up 30% of college faculties by the 1910s (many, of course,
in women's colleges). But by the late 1920s, virtually every index of
female participation was down: the proportion of women students, of
Ph.D.s, and of faculty members. "[The] high point in woman's share of
professional employment (and attainment of advanced degrees) overall
occurred by the late 1920s, and was followed by stasis and/or decline
not reversed to any extent until the 1960s and 1970s., " Cott
concluded. "[6]
2. The effects of professionalization.
Although more difficult to gauge, are also
generally agreed to have worked against feminist activism. In
The Woman Citizen , Lemons wrote: "One marked effect of the developing
professionalism among women was a decline in social concern and an
increase in narrowly professional issues." An apparent exception was
the support professional women gave to the E.R.A.--apparent, because
this support was out of self-interest and bred a split within the
woman's movement that persisted for decades.[7]
Without supporting this interpretation, Cott added that the suffrage
movement "temporarily masked the ongoing trend for women in
professions to dissociate their vocational aims from aims of women as
a group." The professional "angle of vision" was thus
"counterproductive to feminist practice." But, she added, since
individual success in a career was one aim of the woman's rights
crusade, the question remains whether this development should be seen
as the fulfillment or exhaustion of feminism. [8]
Far less explored is the related issue of what attracted women to the
professions. Money, prestige, and the promise of doing useful
work--the same things that attracted men --are obvious if only
partial answers. Another is the fact that entry into the professions
typically required neither extensive capital (as in business) or
public clout through the the vote (as in politics). Finally, as Cott
again has noted, the professional emphasis on reason, scientific
standards, and objectivity "constituted an alternative to
subjectively determined sex standards." [9]
3. Bureaucratization compounds. scientific objectivity
translated into group research, financed by large, bureaucratically
organized foundations, could women social scientists function as
effectively as in the age of individual scholarship, even those who
chose to compete?
Note: on
interrelationship. Speculate on relation between ethnicity,
professionalization, and bureaucratization.
II. Intellectual Climate
*science (both scientism and Freudianism) were responsible. See
Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender
and Science (1985)
III. Revival.
A. Consumerism. Although some feminists
disagree)[10] an
economic perspective sees feminism against a background of change
from early industrial to consumer capitalism and finally to the
service economy of the post-industrial era. The pre WWI struggle for
women's rights at bottom was a response to the needs of a modernizing
, industrial economy, training women to produce goods and services
outside the home that were previously produced within it. The
tensions between individualism and solidarity that surfaced in the
1920s reflected the promises and perils of an increasingly
professionalized and a consumer oriented society.
*A further aspect so far as the 1960s was concerned was the rise of
post-materialist ethic (Ferree and Hess).In effect, same to question
values of achievement,. self-sacrifice etc. that underlay the older
"liberal" feminism."
B.Demographic and economic realities
also set the stage for significant changes
in the work-force participation of women after the 1940s--a necessary
if not sufficient condition for the revitalization of feminism two
decades later. Statistics highlight these changes: work-force
participation increased from 30% (1940) to 50% (1970); the percentage
of women aged 35-59 working outside the home up dramatically to
49-54% by 1970; and an equally dramatic rise in the employment of
younger, married women. Underlying these changes, the sociologist
Valerie Oppenheimer has argued persuasively, was the "inherent
instability" of earlier attempts to articulate the family system
within the industrial order by hiring only young, unmarried women and
segregating the work force. By the 1940s, this sex-segregation
effectively gave women a monopoly in precisely those areas destined
to expand most dramatically in post-industrial America, notably
occupations providing service and/or information management
(including university teaching).[11]
C. The disruption and insecurities of the
Second World War played a part, whereby demography and economics translated
first into a "feminist mystique," and then into feminist activism,
although the issue remains more problematic, as does the expanding
role of advertising and the media in mobilizing American women, first
for the war effort, then for prosperity. But still at issue is
whether these developments laid the basis for a new cult of
domesticity or a future feminism.[12]
D. The post-war decades, a period which saw the continued activity of the National
Women's Party and other feminist groups diminished in size but not in
spirit.[13]
The revitalization of feminism in the mid-1960s, in turn, certainly
owed much to the idealism of the decade. But the complex nature of
this relation has only begun to be explored.[14]
IV. Crosscurrents: intellectual feminism chronologically considered.
A. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second
Sex (1957). A French existentialist and
socialist, she argued that women are not treated as subjects of their
own experiences but as objects of men's desires and interests, hence
as the "Other."
B.Betty Friedan and the Liberal Tradition. Although F's emphasis on
the psychological dimension of the "problem with no name" might
appear to anticipate the cultural analysis of early 1970s "radicals,"
several aspects of her thought mark The
Feminist Mystique as "liberal."
ANALYZE READING IN HOLLINGER AND CAPPER, AM
INTELL TRAD.
a. emphasis on individual activity: take a job out side the home (cf.
Booker T. Washington?)
b. moderation: continues to think it possible to combine career,
home, and family.
c. emphasis gender-neutral laws in spirit of "civil rights"
tradition.
* By the time she published The Second
Stage, however, she may be said to have
moved from a "classical" to "welfare" liberalism, specifically in her
advocacy of gender-specific legislation.
3. Criticism of Friedan.
a. "never raised. . .the question of why women alone should be held
responsible for housework and childcare." (Ferree, p. 36)
b. ignored class and race (Ferree, p. 37), and hence the problems
that arise because there are not enough high status jobs to go
around.
c. assumption that women not achieving orgasm as much as they
should, "assumed
that more of the same--heterosexual, monogamous, genitally focused
intercourse--was a satisfactory goal." (ibid.) p. 37)
+ all stated in slightly different form, Tong, pp. 24-25.
4. Weaknesses of "Liberal" Feminism (from Tong, pp. 31 ff..
a. "tendency to accept male values as human values."
b. "tendency to overemphasize the importance of human freedom over
that of the common good"
c. conception of the self "as a rational and autonomous agent"
5. Strengths. See Zillah Eisenstein, The
Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (1981).
Boils down to fact that many of later feminist advances build on
victories of liberals, and still require pushing for equality of
rights and economic opportunity.
C. "Radicals"
*although some disagreement about the term, describes phase that grew
directly from the counterculture.
** expressed in several books and anthologies of the early 1970s
Kate Millet, Sexual
Politics (1970)
Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of
Sex (October 1970)
Robin Morgan, ed. Sisterhood is
Powerful (September 1970)
Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran, Woman
in Sexist Society (1971)
Judith Hole and Ellen Levine, Rebirth of
Feminism (1971)
1. Background was the emergence of feminism from New Left.
***for general discussion see Wandersee, On
the Move ch. 1. Personal accounts include
Susan Stern, With the Weathermen: the
Personal Journal of a Revolutionary Woman (1975); Robin Morgan, Going too
Far (1977); Sara Evans, Personal Politics (1979); Jane
Alpert, Growing Up
Underground (1981). For discussion of Old
and Mew Left and women see
** began (according to Wandesee) when Jane Alpert call Robin Morgan
in January 1970 saying women had taken over New Left journal
Rat to protest
male chauvinist journalism. (pp. 1-2). Was culmination of series of
evens that raised consciousness within the New Left.
a. Incidents within SNCC that led to Doris Robinson, "The Position of
Women in SDNCC."
b. open confrontation at 1967 meeting of National Conference of New
Politics in Chicago (1977).Led Firestone and Jo Freeman to
protest.
c.Ellen Willis writer for Village
Voice and member of feminist group
Redstockings wrote article in Guardian February 1969.
Formulates complaints. etc. see Wandesee, On the Move, ch. 1.
*CASE STUDY; SARA EVANS, PERSONAL POLITICS
(analysis)
D.Psychologic:
E. Marxist and Socialist
F. Postmodernist perspectives.
*key texts
**for further discussion see Alcoff, Linda. "Cultural Feminism versus
Post-Structuralism." Signs 13 (1988): 405-436; Joan W. Scott, "Deconstructing
Equality-versus-Difference: or the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory
for Feminism." Feminist
Studies 14 (spring 1988): 33-50; Weedon,
Chris. Feminist Practice and
Post-Structuralist Theory. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987; and Mary Poovey, "Feminism and
Deconstructionism." Feminist
Studies 14 (1988): 51-65.
V. .. "Conservative
Backlash.By late 1970s, many feminists
were seeking new direction. The meeting of the First National Woman's
Conference in Houston in November, 1977 forged new understanding and
alliances, much energy now focusing on the passage of the Equal
Rights Amendment. In hindsight, however, the meeting was probably the
high-point of seventies activism. An antifeminist backlash, already
in the making, took shape in the anti-ERA campaign led by Phyllis
Schlafly; in an anti-abortion crusade that by the end of the decade
had attracted eleven million members to the National Right to Life
Committee; and in profamily organizations closely allied with a
variety of conservative political groups. Despite several attempts
further to extend the deadline for ratification, the ERA finally
failed.[15]
Within this context varieties of "conservative feminism" also
surfaced, many in one way or other defending the family.
*For discussion see Breines, Wini, Cerullo, Margaret and Stacy,
Judith. "Social Biology, Family Studies, and Antifeminist Backlash."
Feminist Studies 4 (1978): 43-76; and Stacey, Judith."The New Conservative
Feminism." Feminist Studies 3 (1983): 559-83.
1. Midge Decter
2. Alice Rossi, "Biosocial perspective on Parenting," Daedalus 106 (1977). Major
target of Breines et al. cited above.
3. Judith B. Elshstain, Public man, Private
Woman. In this and other writings argues
that collapsing between public and private (such as in "the personal
is political") leads to the erosion of both realms. Argues that the
politicizing of private life heralds an end to privacy and to
politics.
VII. "Power Feminism"
* as represented in work of Naomi Wolf:
Wolf, Naomi, The beauty myth : how images
of beauty are used against women ( New
York : W. Morrow, c1991.[McCabe Honors Soc 120: Gender &
Culture]
Wolf, Naomi., Fire with fire : the new
female power and how it will change the 21st century (New York : Random House, c1993.) [Canaday HQ1426 .W565
1993