Synopses & Reviews
This examines the emergence of feminist movements from the Civil Rights/Black Liberation movement, the Chicano movement, and the white left in the 1960s and 1970s. The author argues that the 'second wave' was comprised of feminisms: organizationally distinct movements that influenced each other in complex ways. The making of second wave feminisms resulted from decisions that feminists made about their political choices given constraints that affected their activism. These constraints were placed on them by structural inequalities that militated against unity among feminists from different racial/ethnic communities; by loyalties that feminists, particularly feminists of color, felt to other members of their movement communities; and by the necessity of making political decisions within a competitive and complex extra-institutional oppositional milieu.
Review
'\"Her capacity to problematize widely accepted approaches to the study of the second wave enables us to see that field anew.\" Tim Hodgdon, Duke University, H-Net'
Synopsis
This book is about the development of white women's liberation, black feminism and Chicana feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, the era known as the "second wave" of U.S. feminist protest. Benita Roth explores the ways that feminist movements emerged from the Civil Rights/Black Liberation movement, the Chicano movement, and the white left, and the processes that supported political organizing decisions made by feminists. She traces the effects that inequality had on the possibilities for feminist unity and explores how ideas common to the left influenced feminist organizing.
Table of Contents
Preface/Acknowledgments; Introduction: the emergence and development of feminism along racial and ethnic lines in the 1960s and 1970s; 1. To whom do you refer? structure and the situated feminist; 2. The âfourth worldâis born: intra-movement experience, oppositional political communities and the emergence of the white womenâs liberation movement; 3. The vanguard center: intra-movement experience and the emergence of black feminism; 4. Las Feministas: intra-movement experience and the emergence of chicana feminism; 5. Organizing oneâs own: the competitive social movement sector and the rise of organizationally different feminist movements; Conclusion: revisiting and âre-visioningâsecond-wave feminisms; Appendix: interviews and oral histories.