First wave of feminism=effective
Second wave of feminism=mixed bag
Thrid wave of feminism=underway, fixing what the second wave failed at
(I'll go more in depth on this in relation to the OP later)
Alright, now that I'm back from orchestra rehearsel...
beckysoup61 said:
What do you think? Was the feminist movement effective or has it destroyed America sas we know it?
If we're going to look at the feminist movement and the results of it, it is probably best to look at it in the way some academics have broken it down (
the three waves). The feminist movement in the United States has had different goals at different times and had periods of time where it wasn't really that active at all.
The first wave of feminism did acheive its main goal in the end, as well as gaining women some other rights. The first wave of feminism was the women's suffrage movement, in which the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was the catalyst. It took until 1920, but women did eventually get the vote. Therefore, the first wave of feminism was effective, and after women having the vote for approximately 85 years, we can see that giving women the vote hasn't destroyed America.
After the first wave, the feminist movement was practically dormant until the 1960s. The 1960s brought about the second wave of feminism, in which Betty Friedan's
The Feminine Mystique was an influential work. The
Commission on the Status of Women of the Kennedy administration showed that women faced inequalities. The major push in the second wave was to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. It wasn't the sole goal of the second wave, but it was the one of the major ones. As we know, the Equal Rights Amendment never passed (thus the second wave was ineffective in this regard). However, there were many pieces of legislation and some executive orders that improved the condition of women during the second wave. Because of the
Commission on the Status of Women, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963. However, in order to pass the legislation, advocates had to give up on the concept of "equal pay for comparable work" for "equal pay for the same work." Though women still are not being paid at the same rate of men, even to this day, the pay gap is closing. Therefore, the second wave could be considered effective in this regard. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was originally intended only to alleviate racial discrimination in education, employment, and public accomodations, but a Southern Democratic congressman proposed that Title VII (dealing with employment discrimination) sex be included in the hopes that adding sex would result in the defeat of the Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act did pass, though, and thus women were protected from discrimination in employment, which is good, but some problems did arise in how to handle employment discriminiation and such (I won't go into that). Also passed were the Education Amendments, also known as Title IX. These were passed in 1972 in the aims of alleciating discrimination against women in eduation, specifiying that federal funds wouldn't go to educational institutions that practiced sex discrimination in any of their programs (admissions, athletics, financial aid, counseling, facilities, employment, etc.). Title IX has been controversial when it comes to athletic programs because sometimes less popular men's sports were cut so more popular women's sports could receive equal funding. The Reagan administration took a lackadaisical appraoch in enforcing Title IX. President Johnson issued executive orders 11246 and 11375 that required companies doing work with the federal government to take affirmative action. Therefore, we can see that the second wave accomplished quite a bit, but failed at getting the Equal Rights Amendment passed and some of the second wave's acheivements have been a sort of mixed bag once put in place. Of course, Supreme Court decisions such as Griswold v. Conneticut in 1965 and Roe v. Wade in 1973 resulted in women gaining some more reproductive freedom (Griswold establishing a right to privacy and dealing with contraceptive use and of course we all know Roe v. Wade).
It was also the second wave that gave rise to radical feminism ("making the personal political"), which is what anti-feminists like to criticize all of feminism as being. There are actually several feminist ideologies.
So thus, the second wave is a mixed bag of effectiveness, if that makes sense.
I'm not as well read in depthly on the third wave of feminism, but its aim is to finish what the second wave started. The Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings inspired a lot of third wave feminists and some of the issues of third wave feminism overlap with issues of the first two waves, such as women in employment, quality and affordable child care, reproductive rights, etc. Social justice issues also play a role to many third feminists, such as issues of racism and poverty. We have yet to see how effective the third wave is. There has been what many feminists would consider a set back, with the recent Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart that upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. So, we'll see what happens with the third wave.
As you can see, feminism is more complex than many would think. Overall, I think the feminist movement has been quite effective, but there's still a ways to go yet. Also, I don't think it has destroyed America, but made America a stronger, more free country.
I really doubt anyone's even going to read this post.
If you did, have a cookie.
