To what extent did Second Wave Feminism in the United States facilitate a broader shift in attitudes towards women?

By Bethany Marris, Third Year History Student

In assessing the impact of the Women’s Rights Movement (WRM) of the 1960s on attitudes towards women, it is necessary to acknowledge the social position of American women at the beginning of the 1960s. As put forward by Bird and Green, ‘fifties trends’ of ‘white flight’ suburbanization, the ‘cult’ of motherhood underlying the baby boom and the patriarchal expectation that women were pre-destined to become ‘homemakers’ persisted at the close of the 1950s. Of course, the experience of women in the post-war era was inevitably multifaceted, yet regardless of race or social class, according to the constitution in 1960; men and women were not equal.  One only has to observe Kennedy’s nationally televised, 1962 proclamation that ‘the primary responsibility of women’ is ‘in the home’ to understand that such discriminatory legislation was endorsed by high politics, and thus influenced the contemporary attitudes of many in the US into the 1960s. Furthermore, when studying this era, we must understand that the sixties were one of the most ‘colourful, complex and eventful periods in American History’. Green puts forward that 1960 ‘kickstarted’ a decade that ‘uniquely lends itself to study as a self-contained entity’. The occasion of an escalated civil rights struggle, the war in Vietnam and the sexual revolution provide a few examples that are responsible for the omnipresence of social atavism at this time. Moreover, it was in this political climate that the women’s rights movement gained huge momentum. As argued by Nusbaum, for the first time, women in vast numbers ‘looked critically’ at the subordination that they had suffered for so many years, and through a vast array of tactics, they began to fight back. However, to truly determine the extent to which the women’s rights movement of the 1960s ‘changed’ attitudes as such, we must look beyond the decade in question.  Focusing primarily on the 15 years that immediately followed the 1960s, this essay will argue that whilst the WRM had a profound impact upon the way in which many women both understood and valued themselves as members of society beyond the domestic realm, the extent to which it ‘changed’ attitudes across the United States must not be overstated. Through the examples of the anti-feminist movement, opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and the governmental disregard for two reports that explored the subordinate position of women: ‘American Women’ and ‘A Simple Matter of Justice’, this essay will demonstrate that ‘traditional’, patriarchal attitudes persisted far beyond the 1960s, into the 1980s. 

The Women’s Right’s Movement 

1963 was a particularly significant year in the context of the US women’s rights movement as it saw the publication of Betty Friedan’s seminal work ‘The Feminine Mystique’. The ‘radical persuasion’ of ‘The Feminist Mystique’ provided a new vocabulary for second-wave feminism and women’s liberation, as it spoke to housewives who felt ‘trapped’ within their suburban domestic spheres. Friedan articulates that these women yearned for ‘something more’ than their husband, children and home, and wanted to ‘fulfil an ambition’ or career path of their own. As a work of the women’s rights movement, ‘The Feminine Mystique’ becomes incredibly relevant to this argument when we understand the question surrounding ‘attitudes towards women’ to encompass not only the ways in which women, as a gendered social class were viewed by their male counterparts, but also the ways that women perceived and understood their own ‘place’ in society. Huffington lauds the book for ‘forever changing the way women view themselves’, and whilst this certainly exaggerates the prestige of ‘The Feminine Mystique’, many predominantly white, middle-class educated women confined deeply in Friedan’s writing, and as a result came to understand their frustrations with the limitations of suburban domesticity. Despite this, Friedan wrote her text in the midst of the Civil Rights Struggle, and as Coontz points out, Friedan blatantly neglects the experiences of African American women of all classes, and working-class women across all racial groups. Friedan dismisses that working class-class women could experience the ‘intangible rewards’ of independence and self-fulfilment through jobs such as office work, labour in private homes or manufacturing, as she concluded these roles as ‘unfulfilling’ and ‘uncreative’. Interviewed by Coontz, one woman emphasised ‘I really liked my Job, it gave me a sense that I was ‘someone’, more than just being a wife gave me’, therefore the extent to which ‘The Feminine Mystique’ touched women from across all walks of American society should not be overstated. 

Even so, Friedan’s feminist impact is not limited to her literary debut, as she became an established figure within the broader WRM. Whilst researching for her subsequent book in 1966, Friedan attended the National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women, where a resolution to enforce the Sex Provision of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in employment was vetoed by the Federal Government. In response to both this, and concerns surrounding women’s rights that had been brought to the fore by the Women’s Bureau under the Kennedy administration, the National Organisation for Women (NOW) was established with Friedan as president. In October 1967, NOW boasted over 300 male and female charter members, and by 1973 over 8,000 members, symbolising an appetite for gender equality and thus a potential shift in widespread, pre-existing patriarchal attitudes. Furthermore, the organization was highly successful in harnessing ‘reflexive and effective’ media strategies to gain publicity, in turn, contributing to the formulation of a ‘public agenda’ for women’s rights in the United States. Evidence of this can be seen in 1975, where at the peak of its coverage in the New York Times, NOW featured in 70 stories. That said, there is a marked difference between simply spreading a message and ‘changing attitudes’ as such. Freeman argues that NOW had the tendency to project an impression of ‘being larger than it was’, and whilst it became a ‘central voice of feminism’ in the mainstream media, as with any social movement that threatens the ‘status quo’, there were male and female members of American society who were not so enthusiastic about the liberal ideas of 1960s Second Wave feminism.   

Antifeminism and the ERA 

In relation to the anti-feminist movement, Bailey highlights that where the sixties was a period of ‘radical protest’, it was also a seedbed of ‘contemporary conservative movements’. Contrary to the liberal feminist stance, the conservative, ‘pro-family contingent’ position was dependent on the idea that the ‘traditional nuclear family’ should be preserved, maintaining the attitude that women must accept first and foremost their ‘natural’ position as housewives and mothers, as this constituted the ‘moral foundation’ of American society. Anti-feminists dismissed the second-wave feminist opinion that women ‘didn’t understand the power’ that men held over them, and continued to endorse the patriarchal ideology of ‘sexual asymmetry’, where the biological differences ‘divinely assigned’ to men and women determine that they are suited to ‘different tasks’. One ‘feminist demand’ that a large proportion of anti-feminists perceived to be particularly threatening to this ‘traditional’ way of life, was that of the implementation of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Exploring the debate surrounding the ERA is incredibly useful in allowing us to gauge the extent to which the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s affected attitudes towards women, as it placed the question of whether the ‘equality of rights under the law’, should be ‘denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex’, therefore we may understand that those who opposed the bill did not feel that women and men should be classified as constitutionally equal. The ERA was initially proposed in 1923 by the National Women’s Party, yet failed to pass through Congress until March 22 1972. Effective lobbying by various feminist groups in the late 1960s, including NOW, may be credited for bringing the bill ‘to the senate floor’ in 1971. However, congressional favour did not accurately reflect national opinion, as staunch opposition to women achieving the legislative equality detailed in the ERA became highly visible throughout the 1970s. By 1975, 14 states had ratified the ERA, where 16 had rejected it, exposing that the efforts of the WRM had not succeeded in convincing a considerable portion of US citizens to endorse equality. 

Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the conservative interest group ‘Eagle Forum’, provided an incredibly prominent voice of opposition to the ERA at this time.  Schlafly argued that the amendment would be detrimental to women, as it would eliminate protections guaranteed by labour laws and state-level domestic relations. Furthermore, anti-ERA campaigners heavily defended that ‘women should have the choice not to serve’, thus drawing upon aforementioned ideas of ‘sexual asymmetry’ under the belief that women were not, by nature, prepared for armed service.  Moreover, Schlafly pursued the stance that the ERA would ‘take away the right of the housewife to be supported by her husband’ in a debate with Friedan, where she argued from a point of privilege that ERA legislation would make it impossible for wives to ‘obtain credit in the store based on her husband’s earning’. While today, Schlafly’s case for ‘store credit’ against Friedan’s bid for equality appears redundant and futile, Schlafly’s views were undoubtedly shared, and evidence of this can be seen in Eagle Forum membership, which exceeded 50,000 by the early 1980s. On top of this, the healthy membership of Concerned Women for America (CWA), a socially conservative, Christian activist group founded in opposition to the ERA in 1979, exemplifies that traditionalist attitudes towards women into the 1980s were not a complete anomaly. Significantly also, CWA membership has continued to grow into the 2000s, standing at over 500,000 in 2007, which exemplifies a persistent anti-feminist agenda amongst many conservative women, long since the explosion of second-wave feminism in the 1960s. Of course, the membership of  Eagle Forum and other conservative groups such as the CWA comprised a clear minority of the 231.66 million strong population in 1982,  yet as pointed out by Schreiber, they provided a prominent voice for many of the  ‘silent majority’, and the failure of the ERA to pass in this year demonstrates that far beyond the 1960s, preferences of constitutional inequality remained, as only 35 of the required 38 states voted for its implementation. 

‘American Women’ and ‘A Simple Matter of Justice’ 

In December 1961, spurred by Esther Peterson under J.F. Kennedy, the President’s Commission on the Status of Women was established (PCSW). Chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt until her death in 1962, the purpose of the PCSW was to press for gender non-discrimination policies and equal pay reforms. Addressing these concerns, on 11 October 1963, the commission published the report ‘American women’. Despite its motives, ‘American Women’ recommended that young girls should receive ‘teaching of home management’ from an early age, also referring to a woman’s early adulthood as her ‘homemaking years’, thus demonstrating that patriarchal expectations of women remained prominent at the beginning of the 1960s. That said, the report also stressed that ‘opportunities’ to pursue ‘advanced training’ in business and the armed forces were limited to women where they were not for men, emphasising that ‘men and women are equally in need of education’, alongside the claim that ‘specialized’ education has the capacity to ‘lift aspirations beyond assumptions’ of  traditional ‘women’s roles’ . Whilst this exposes contradictions within the report, it did, in some ways, clearly respond to the same undercurrents of change as ‘The Feminine Mystique’, and promoted the idea that women could realise their practical and academic potential outside of the family and the home.  The report did also encourage the introduction of the 1963 Equal Pay Act, yet this had many shortcomings , and failed to address the issue of equal pay in domestic and agricultural industries, nor did it cover administrative, executive and professional work, providing evidence to support the suspicion that this act was introduced as an anti-ERA ploy, and therefore cannot necessarily be seen as  symbolic of a progressive pro-equality government.

Moreover, less than a decade later, ‘American Women’ inspired a similar investigation under the Nixon administration. In 1969, with pressure from Republican congresswomen such as Florence Dwyer and Margaret Hecker, the president’s ‘taskforce’ on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities was formed, and a report entitled ‘A Matter of Simple Justice’ (AMSJ) was produced. AMSJ was written with a tone of urgency, stating that ‘discrimination’ towards women was dangerously ‘widespread and pervasive’, further highlighting that ‘women are increasingly aware’ of the ‘denial of equal opportunities’ that they suffer on a daily basis, notably highlighting that sexist attitudes affected women’s day-to-day experience beyond the 1960s. Comparing both reports, the ‘advice’ given in AMSJ is considerably more radical than the suggestions made in ‘American Women’, and carries a stronger sense of influence from the broader WRM at the time. For example, the 1970 report calls for the president to ‘appoint more women to positions of responsibility’, and states that ‘America has not capitalised fully’ on women’s capabilities, ‘specifically at leadership level’, whereas in 1961, careers advised for women ‘outside the home’ were limited to ‘nursing’ or ‘teaching’. Despite this, Nixon made a conscious effort to suppress the report, and it was not until serialisation by the Miami Herald that it became public knowledge. AMSJ also appealed for governmental help in serious issues of ‘female unemployment’, ‘prostitution’ and ‘inequality in education’. The presidential dismissal of the report is an incredibly strong indicator that attitudes towards women had not particularly changed by the end of the 1960s. Evidently, the impassioned campaigning of women in feminist groups such as NOW, across the country throughout the decade, had little persuaded Nixon and his cabinet that taking action to legally, politically and socially increase opportunities for American women was of great importance. 

Conclusion

Indeed, the women’s rights movement of the 1960s was not limited to Betty Friedan’s writing and the liberal feminism of the National Organisation for Women, and the plethora of women’s groups that comprised the ‘women’s rights movement’ differed enormously from one another, yet Bailey emphasises that regardless of social and racial disposition, all of these groups sought ‘fundamental and revolutionary change in existing American society’. As this essay has argued, through the examples of Friedan’s writing and NOW, the women’s rights movement inspired a remarkable ‘change in thought’ amongst women, as huge numbers began to demand full agency, ‘subject hood’ and freedom, and came to understand that their lives did not have to be defined in relation to those of men. However, we may conclude that the extent to which the women’s right’s movement caused a ‘fundamental’ change in attitudes must not be exaggerated. Through the examples of anti-feminist groups such as Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and Concerned Women for America, alongside opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, we are able to see that a substantial portion of patriarchal attitudes amongst Americans had not necessarily been affected, nor ‘changed’ by the women’s rights movement of the 1960s. This, placed beside the reluctance of presidents such as Kennedy and Nixon to take legal action to advance the subordinate status of women in the United States, supports the conclusion that the women’s rights movement did not cure the ‘deep inconsistency’ that existed between American aspirations of liberty and equality, and the ‘normative conception’ that women should refrain from political participation and self-determination.

Bibliography

Primary Sources 

J. F. Kennedy, speaking on ‘Prospects of Mankind’, June 1962 [https://vimeo.com/85280922], Accessed 20/11/2018 

P. Schlafly, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WncN6PWEMGo&t=223s] (Good Morning America), 28/01/1976, Accessed 16/11/2018

Report of the President’s commission on the Status of Women, ‘American Women’, (US department of Labour), 28/10/1963

The Equal Rights Amendment, [https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/incongress/], (US Congress), 1982, Accessed  20/11/208

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Cover Photo Credit: Annie Spratt on unsplash