...Why did the Women’s Liberation Movement Emerge in the late 1960’s? Discuss with reference to Britain and the United States of America. In a decade where the whole world was experiencing revolutions due to social discontent, this increased the desire, of women, in the late 1960’s to ‘confront existing structures of oppression,’ giving the impetus for the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Caine argues the emergence of the movement bought a ‘new tone,’ when discussing women’s oppression. Rather than focusing directly on women’s suffrage, this was a political movement demanding ‘rapid and radical change,’ in an ever increasing ambience of liberalisation. Upon inception, it is vital to highlight one can account different reasons for the emergence of the movement in Britain and America, as different domestic situations led to different reasons for the emergence of a more radical form of feminism. This essay, together with a multiplicity of historians, will consider the importance of World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, and the impact they had on the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Linked to this is the ever apparent discrimination women faced and increasing desires to change this, coupled with developments of new opportunities, demonstrated by the aforementioned world events. Additionally, the impact of literature such as Betty Friedan’s, The Feminine Mystique, needs to be considered. Whilst all the factors play an important role in contributing...
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...“Invisible Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” by Bernice McNair Barnett, Barnett explores the intersectionality of race, gender, and class and its effects on African American women and their unique experience in the Civil Rights Movement. During the Civil Rights Movements, women were allowed to participate, and they even played essential roles that helped to further the movement. From helping to organize the famous Bus Boycott, raising money, and initiating protests, black women in the Civil Rights Movement had a significant hand in creating one of the social movements. However, because of their gender, African American women weren’t allowed to receive any recognition for...
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...ENG 105 September 21st, 2015 A Decade of Revolution for Women Most people, when they think of the 1960s, think of a decade of extremes, transformational change, bizarre contrasts, flower children and rebellion. Others refer to it as the baby boom generation. However, do not forget a decade of change for women. Deep cultural changes altered the role of women in American society. More females entered the workplace, women looked up to their greatest idol, Betty Friedan, and there were profound changes happening in the bedroom (birth control). Women were starting to gain respect, value their place in society and stand up for their civil rights. Before the 1960s, women were limited to jobs as teachers, nurses, or secretaries, generally unwelcomed into professional programs. According to tavaana.org, one medical school dean declared, “Hell yes we have a quota, we do keep women out as much as possible. We don’t want them here.” As a result, women accounted for only six percent of the doctors, 3 percent of lawyers, and less than one percent engineers. The conditions of their employment were unequitable because they were paid much less, were denied opportunities, and many employers assumed women would quit once they were pregnant so they were often not even hired (Walsh). The feminist movement in the 60’s originally focused on these issues. In 1964, Representative Howard Smith of Virginia wanted to help women and proposed to add a prohibition on gender discrimination in the...
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...Women’s Health Movement WEEK 4/Tue Key Organizations • 1970 - Boston Women’s Health Collective publishes Our Bodies Ourselves • • • • 1971 - Feminist Women’s Health Centers 1973 - Committee to End Sterilization Abuse 1974 - National Women’s Health Network 1984 - National Black Women’s Health Project Ideology of the Grassroots Feminist Health Movement • Knowledge - critique medicalization • Empowerment / Authority • Consciousness raising groups “the personal is political” • Lay leadership • Refuse corporate sponsorship Carol Downer • Women’s Health in Women’s Hands http://www.womenshealthinwomenshands.org/index.htm Feminist self-help centers * women reclaimed power from the paternalistic and condescending medical community * women reclaimed the right to control their reproduction * women reclaimed the right to assume control of their own health 1969-1973 Chicago, “Jane” “This is Jane from women’s liberation. If you need assistance, leave your name and phone number and someone will call you back” Feminist self-help centers “Feminist” because: • Controlled by women • Health care seen as a highly politicized issue Common features: • information about women’s bodies • empowerment through validation of one’s own experiences • preference for female health care providers • critique of male- physician-controlled health care • critique of capitalist health care • challenge to impersonality and instrumentality National Women’s Health Network • envisioned...
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...There were many prominent male figures in the Civil Rights Movement, such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or A. Philip Randolph. However, many women played a large role in the movement. Rosa Parks became the symbol of the Montgomery Bus Boycott when she refused to give up her seat. Ella Baker helped form both the SNCC and the SCLC. Frances Beal brought up the issue of the exploitation of black women in America’s economic system. The role of gender was still an issue, as it was men who held more leadership positions. Without the involvement of women in the movement, charismatic leadership would have been the main way of leadership, and there would not have been as much group-centered leadership. The involvement of women in the movement brought...
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...Women’s Suffrage Movement David Mondor U.S. History 1865 to 1945 Paul Sadler February 19, 2005 Abstract The Women’s Suffrage Movement can trace its roots, back to Anne Hutchinson’s conviction and expulsion in 1637 for sedition in Massachusetts. This movement has had many achievements, disappointments, and internal disagreements, throughout its history, the right to vote given, then taken away, many times before it became enshrined in the United States Constitution. Through ratification by 36 states of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, women finally had the same rights as men, the right to be considered citizens and vote, the right to be considered equal to men. This struggle for equality and voting rights we discuss in this paper. Women’s Suffrage Movement Women’s Suffrage in America began in 1637 when Anne Hutchinson dared to defy church leaders, with her thoughts on religion. This contemptuous display of women’s rights at a time when women were considered the property of men landed Anne, before a tribunal of men. They convicted her of ‘sedition’ and expelled her from Massachusetts’s colony. Mary Dyer, having been the only person to stand up for Anne during her trial, was also expelled a few months later from the colony, along with her husband William. In 1652 Mary Dyer visited England for five years and during that time she joined the Society of Friends, the Quaker religion founded by George Fox. Returning to New England, Dyer headed back to the Massachusetts’s Bay...
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...Womens Liberation Movement Why did the Women’s Liberation Movement Emerge in the late 1960’s? Discuss with reference to Britain and the United States of America. In a decade where the whole world was experiencing revolutions due to social discontent, this increased the desire, of women, in the late 1960’s to ‘confront existing structures of oppression,’ giving the impetus for the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Caine argues the emergence of the movement bought a ‘new tone,’ when discussing women’s oppression. Rather than focusing directly on women’s suffrage, this was a political movement demanding ‘rapid and radical change,’ in an ever increasing ambience of liberalisation. Upon inception, it is vital to highlight one can account different reasons for the emergence of the movement in Britain and America, as different domestic situations led to different reasons for the emergence of a more radical form of feminism. This essay, together with a multiplicity of historians, will consider the importance of World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, and the impact they had on the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Linked to this is the ever apparent discrimination women faced and increasing desires to change this, coupled with developments of new opportunities, demonstrated by the aforementioned world events. Additionally, the impact of literature such as Betty Friedan’s, The Feminine Mystique, needs to be considered. Whilst all the factors play an...
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...the civil rights movement of the 1960’s when speaking of social movements, however, another major social movement was taking place during this time period. The fight for women’s rights. The women’s movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s sparked the second-wave of the “feminist movement.” Feminism can be defined as “a theory and/or movement concerned with advancing the position of women through such means as achievement of political, legal, or economic rights equal to those granted men (Offen, Pg. 123).” There are still no clear origins for the word feminism...
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...Women of the Civil Rights Movement: The role of women in the Civil Rights Movement In The American Journal of Legal History, Bernie D. Jones reviews the work of Legacies of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Grofman (2000), and describes the ends to the means. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act indisputably were effectual for altering the framework of the questionable American life, for the most part in the southern states. As a consequence, both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were accountable for the stoppage of vast opposition to the civil rights movement and the fitting fusion into the American Society by African Americans. By way of the Acts, public facilities that avidly participated in segregation became outlawed. Throughout the nation, as a result of the enforcement of the Acts, the former, not so easily attainable education opportunities and employment prospects that consistently had been refused, now, awarded African Americans impressively large supporting political control. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 pioneered immeasurably. Women were given distinctive safeguarding subject to employment discrimination law. Emphatically, invigorating the women’s movement, consequently, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 served movements of other ethnic civil rights. (p. xvi) VOICE OF OMISSION No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women. We are rarely...
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...It only takes one voice to start a conversation. It only takes one person to make a difference. Many people look at today’s way of life and simply believe that there is nothing they can do on how society functions. This way of thinking is completely wrong. It takes action and leadership to change how society is and viewed. The women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement took action and fought for their rights which lead to the equal society that America has today. The students from all over the country are also standing up and demanding change in today’s schools. Thousands of students are letting their voices be heard demanding change in society, which is the only way society can be truly changed, through words and actions that are not willing to...
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...woman’s hero in her time because she was all about women having equality. She spent five years researching a book dealing with what she called the “problem with no name”. This excerpt gives a general view on how she felt as a woman who took a back seat to her own life to become the “American House Wife”. She discuss how women would try to make themselves believe that being the good wife was what you had to be and living behind the shadows of a man was acceptable. In this document Friedan wants people to know exactly what occurred during the feminist movement. How women's rights came to a reality, how women believed there was only one role to have which is a typical housewife that has a husband to overpower her. Not being able to vote, or have any rights as an equal to men. This means father not mother, children of both sexes needed to learn, recognize and respect the abilities and functions of each sex. No matter what, the men were in charge. Next, Friedan discussed how women where brought up believing when they grow up, they are to marry and have children. Going to college is what is a woman had to do, but graduating wasn’t required. Being well educated is shown to be unfeminine. Men didn't enjoy a woman knowing information they knew. Men wanted women uneducated, men were supposed to be the only one educated in the household. The role of women was to find a husband to support the family that they would raise. Many women dropped out of college or never went in the first...
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...Sexualization of Girls and Women in the United States: A Growing Epidemic Kayla Johnson Chamberlain College of Nursing Sexualization of Girls and Women in the United States: A Growing Epidemic Brittany, a freshman in High School arrives at her home after school and turns on the T.V to watch MTV music videos. She watches the T.V. as half naked girls dance in the background of male singers. She picks up her phone to get on Instagram where she scrolls through images of famous women like Rhianna and Kim Kardashian who post scantily clad images of their bodies. Brittany thinks to herself, “I wish that I looked like these girls, maybe if I looked more like them the boys at school would like me more”. Brittany’s mother gets home from work and puts dinner on the dining room table. Brittany sits down and eats only a portion of her meal because in the back of her mind she is still feeling as though her own body is inadequate, she could probably lose more weight and if only she had bigger boobs and longer legs, maybe then she would feel better about herself. She lies in bed that night and wishes that she had a better body so that she could feel beautiful and happy. If only she knew that thousands of other girls were feeling the same way, maybe she would realize that the issue isn’t her own body- the issue is the cultural emphasis on female sexualization that has become a norm in our society. Unfortunately girls all over the world are struggling with self-confidence related to...
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...Play Analysis For Colored Girls is a play written by Ntozake Shange at the peak of the black feminist movement, in 1975. It is a collection of poems that tell the story of seven women of color and how their lives interconnect. The play deal with deep subject matter such as rape, abortions, domestic abuse, and faith, as is delves into the lives of these women. The play ends as all of the women come together with an empowering scene about the strength in womanhood. How do struggles, specifically ones imposed on women such as rape and domestic abuse, create strength and empowerment that would have never been attained without enduring such life experiences? In For Colored Girls, all of the women find strength in each other and faith in order to overcome their individual struggles and find strength to continue on with life. They become stronger individuals that they once were and that strong power that they now posses is from believe in themselves and their ability to persevere. In the 2009 film, Precious, a young girl lives through torment as she grows up in section 8 housing with an abusive mother and father, but when she decides that she has had enough she breaks free to try to obtain the life she has always dreamed of. Precious can be understood within the context of Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls because Precious endures many similar life experiences as the women of For Colored Girls. Precious is a sixteen year old girl who lives with her mother and father in section...
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...The movement for women's rights in the United States can be traced back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. First-wave feminism refers to the feminist movement of the 19th through early 20th centuries, which focused mainly on women's suffrage, or right to vote. During the early part of the 19th century, agitation for equal suffrage was carried on by only a few individuals. The first of these was Frances Wright, a Scottish woman who came to the country in 1826 and advocated women's suffrage in an extensive series of lectures. In 1836 Ernestine Rose, a Polish woman, came to the country and carried on a similar campaign so effectively that she obtained a personal hearing before the New York Legislature, though her petition bore only five signatures. In 1840, Lucretia Mott and Margaret Fuller became active in Boston, the latter being the author of the book The Great Lawsuit; Man vs. Woman. Gerrit Smith, who was the Liberty Party's candidate for President in 1848, successfully championed a plank in his party's position calling for women's equal rights. Conventions and Resolutions The first women's rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July of 1848. The Seneca Falls Convention was hosted by Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M'Clintock and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Figure 1); some three hundred attended including Frederick Douglass, who stood up to speak in favor of women's suffrage. After two days of discussion and debate, 68 women and 32 men signed a Declaration of...
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...In the social spectrum, women are faced with unrealistic standards set by society that women feel like they must meet in order to be popular and successful. In a study at Duke University, women reported spending an unrealistic amount of effort on things such as diets and clothes. While at the same time in order to be still liked by males, they had to mask their smarts from their male colleagues (Quindlen). Women are forced to keep up with men in their studies, while at the same time instill their feminine qualities like looking good and being popular. This push by society to be popular is one of the reasons that women are severely outnumbered in the math and sciences. Liz Dennerlein of USA Today explains how a study by Boston College sociologists...
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