American Feminism: Second Wave Women's Movement (USA)

Historical Context Essay

Yvonne Johnson (Central Missouri State University)
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The decade of the 1960s and 1970s witnessed both striking successes and profound failures in the attainment of women's rights, as these decades became a staging ground for the struggle for women's liberation.

The Sixties

The Sixties

Several events and political movements provided the catalyst for the second wave of the women's rights movement in the United States. One of the first activist women's organizations, “Women Strike for Peace”, was started by 5 women who had been members of the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy. These women wanted to act quickly in response to international events like atmospheric testing and possible contamination in food and milk. As a radio-nuclear dust cloud floated across the U.S., they asked women to go on “strike for peace on November 1, 1961.

2624 words

Citation: Johnson, Yvonne. "American Feminism: Second Wave Women's Movement (USA)". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 January 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=4152, accessed 29 March 2024.]

4152 American Feminism: Second Wave Women's Movement (USA) 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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