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

Historical Context Essay

Yvonne Johnson (Central Missouri State University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Gender Politics
Reform movements and reformers

Dates

Date of occurrence 1960-1980

Places

United States (Location)

Resources

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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

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.

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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 31 October 2024.]