The Dreaded "F" Word... Feminism. Part Two: The Second Wave

Feminism

NOUN

The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.

When I first started this post I had no intention of making it a multi-part piece. However, the more I researched the topic the more I came to realise that it would be doing a disservice to the subject if I attempted to cover it all in a single post.

At the end of the Second World War both women and men were desperate for a sense of normalcy after the horrors of the war. As a result, many people fell back into what were considered "traditional" gender roles. Some women left their factory jobs in order to make room for the returning men, settled their families in the suburbs, and fell into their roles as wives and mothers. However, this love affair with the domestic life was short lived. While television shows like Leave it to Beaver depicted a blissful picture of domestic life the reality was far darker.

There was an epidemic of depression and alcoholism among the suburban Baby Boomer housewives. Women had had a taste of freedom and equality. They had seen what they could contribute and were capable of. They had seen their value. Betty Friedan wrote about this generation of post war women who found that they couldn't adjust to suburban isolation in the Feminine Mystique (1963).

Friedan's writing sparked what is widely referred to as the second wave of feminism that continued into the 80s. Her book and the FDA's approval of The Pill three years prior (giving women unprecedented sexual and employment freedom) changed the women's movement forever.

Women could now control how many children they had and when they would have them. This allowed women to focus on a career without the fear of an unexpected pregnancy. It meant that women could choose to have fewer babies and spend less of their adult lives raising children. This also gave many women a new found financial freedom and were no longer at the economic mercy of their husbands.

Up until the mid 70s domestic violence and marital rape was not only socially acceptable but also perfectly legal. Women were still seen as their husband's property. Changes in divorce laws allowed women to freely leave unhappy or abusive marriages. This led to an increase in the number of women's shelters needed and the introduction of marital rape laws.

This period saw the introduction of equal pay regulations, rules against discrimination against pregnant women in the work force, and the end of gender specific job ads, as well as bringing attention to and criminalizing sexual harassment in the workplace. Doors began opening up to women in all sectors or the workforce, including NASA and the Supreme Court. Women were also now free to join the military and schools were becoming less gender segregated.

One of the most contentious issues of the second wave was the legalization of abortion and the sexual liberation of women. Opponents of "free love" will argue that it wasn't, in fact, about liberating women at all, but was instead about allowing men to shirk the responsibilities of having and supporting a family while women take all the risks. However, women have always taken all the risk when it comes to sex and reproduction. Every relationship is a gamble and this round of feminism gave women the chance to mitigate some of that risk.

Second wave feminism had been largely criticised for not being inclusive of women of colour and the LGBT community, and for mostly focusing on the plight of middle class white women. By the mid 80s, it was believed that gender equality had been realised. And while gender equality has been achieved in a legal sense, culturally we still have a long way to go. Women still face harassment and discrimination in the workplace, especially WOC. Women are still having to choose between their family lives and their careers. And sexual assault and rape culture is running rampant.

So begins The Third Wave.