SECTION 2: The Women’s Rights Movement
WITNESS HISTORY 
AUDIO
Challenging a Stereotype
“The unspoken assumption is that women are different. They do not have executive ability, orderly minds, stability, leadership skills, and they are too emotional. It has been observed before, that society for a long time discriminated against another minority, the blacks, on the same basis—that they were different and inferior. The happy little homemaker and the contented “old darkey” on the plantation were both produced by prejudice. As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.”
—Shirley Chisholm, Address to the United States House of Representatives, May 21, 1969
Objectives
- Analyze how a movement for women’s rights arose in the 1960s.
- Explain the goals and tactics of the women’s movement.
- Assess the impact of the women’s movement on American society.
Terms and People
- feminism
- Betty Friedan
- NOW
- ERA
- Gloria Steinem
- Phyllis Schlafly
NoteTaking
Reading Skill: Identify Causes and Effects Record the causes, effects, and main figures of the women’s movement in a chart like this one.
Why It Matters Following World War II, most women gave up their jobs to returning servicemen and went back to their homes to take care of their families. Social analysts and popular culture portrayed women, especially suburban housewives, as the personification of America’s achievement of the good life. By the end of the 1960s, however, a broad-based movement to attain sexual equality had arisen. The women’s movement fundamentally changed American life—from family and education to careers and political issues. Section Focus Question: What led to the rise of the women’s movement, and what impact did it have on American society?
A Women’s Movement Arises
Historians often refer to the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s as the second wave of feminism, or the theory of political, social, and economic equality of men and women. They want to emphasize that the struggle for women’s rights has had a long history, going back at least to the 1840s, when women drafted the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, New York. The phrase second wave of feminism also reminds us that the first wave, which culminated with women’s winning the right to vote in 1920, ended well before the nation addressed the call for full equality. In the decades that followed, women made little legal or social headway. Several factors influenced the rebirth of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
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