FEMINISM IN THE 1970s

...It surfaces in strange as well as familiar ways —in the comments of a middle-aged woman who says in a routine phone conversation, "I'll have to check with my husband," and then feels called upon to add: "We're a traditional couple...

...Overall, though, the movement for women's liberation seems to be in the vanguard FEMINISM IN THE 1970s of one of the most important, potentially beneficial social changes in our history...

...Obviously, white and black women have different priorities and concerns...

...The 20th-century suffrage movement also lacked contact with the realities of the day...

...Having the ballot did not materially alter the division of labor or authority between men and women...

...And their theme is that the culture has denied females their right to be human, first by insisting that they be "feminine" and then by defining "feminine" in such a way that women are deprived of the freedom to shape their own lives...

...Conven tional ideas on woman's "place" might still 509 prevail, but the reality of woman's "place" had been destroyed...

...Looked at from the perspective of unsettled marriages, shaky cultural norms, and difficult personal adjustments, the losses may appear great...

...This effort is based on the conviction that the male world has failed to achieve conciliation, that men would rather fight than admit error, and that women have a better and more humane way of solving problems...

...The nature of the change is difficult to specify...

...Some feminists believe that only the total abolition of the nuclear family will bring freedom to women...

...Thus it appears that women from different social and economic backgrounds are responding to feminist ideas...

...And the more the movement succeeds in generating awareness of the issue, the greater the obstacle becomes...

...Women and men should be equally free to pursue careers, care for children, travel, select social companions, follow avocations...

...Such women do not believe that they have been duped by their husbands or the culture...

...VI Despite these problems, what remains most impressive is the degree of change that appears to be taking place...

...But for our own freedom and fulfillment, most of us need a set of relationships with others that we are committed to and can depend on...

...The facts of female employment flew in the face of social stereotypes...

...Needless to say, social revolutions do not develop solely from the emergence of new perceptions and ideas...

...Indeed, many women's liberationists believe deeply that "leaders" are unnecessary, that women can make decisions collectively, and that concepts of hierarchy and command are products of a male culture, hence to be avoided...

...Thus the movement is characterized by tolerance of diversity in activism, which partially grows out of the decentralized structure of the movement, and partially also from a realization that the problem is so large that everything is important...

...There are risks...

...But they also know that success in any of these ventures only means that there will be a new problem to work on...

...The trend appears also among older women...

...The personal anguish is as likely to occur among women as men...

...Thirty years later, that figure had nearly doubled...

...In both the 19th and 20th centuries, social conditions were not conducive to the development of a large feminist constituency...

...Hence, they encourage a multifaceted approach that gives each group maximum leeway to attack the manifestation of inequality concerning it the most...

...As a direct corollary, the movement oper ates through a decentralized structure...

...The latter were the issues that meant most to the older generation of suffragists...

...These values, in turn, were reinforced in the late '60s by the ideology of feminism and the population control movement...

...As long as people in a given place share a common desire for change, the movement is largely self-sustaining...

...Over the past three decades, significant shifts have occurred in the makeup of the labor force, the type of activities men and women engage in, the size of the average family, and the values of the culture...

...Movement followers have declaredthat they will stand together on their own terms, and not be divided by the terms of the larger society...

...A dynamic relation now exists between "objective" changes in the society and feminist efforts to shape those trends...

...In 1940 approximately 25 percent of all women over 16 were in the labor force...

...Such men see an effort to take away their role as breadwinner and to sabotage their leadership in the home...

...Others accept the family but seek to change its structure...

...WILLIAM H. CHAFE On the other hand, a movement rooted in a thousand local situations and organized around a hundred separate issues is far less vulnerable to symbolic defeats...

...Rather, it seems to have freed women to work on the area or issue which concerns them most...

...But it remained overwhelmingly native-white and middleclass...

...514 WILLIAM H. CHAFE Both of these positions are deeply rooted in the culture...

...There is no way to quantify this consciousness, or to state with precision what it may mean...

...Feminist objectives seemed so far outside the realm of most people's daily experience, and women as well as men dismissed the feminists as a lunatic fringe...

...Third, there is growing evidence to contradict the popular image of the contemporary movement as white and middle-class...

...The one area where "emancipation" did take hold—that of sex—also proved a major point of contention among women's rights advocates...

...The values espoused by today's feminist movement hold out the prospect of something better...

...Suffrage organizations shared the antiblack and anti-immigrant prejudices of their age, passing resolutions that disparaged both groups...

...The Seneca Falls feminists grasped the depth of the problem and sought to address the many specific areas where women were denied their freedom...

...This emphasis parallels what many observers see as a second sexual revolution, characterized by greater openness toward a diversity of sexual experiences and a decline in guilt over premarital sex encounters...

...For most women, marriage still seemed the primary definition of female "success," and the prospects for combining marriage and a career were dim at best...

...But their approach was too radical, too farreaching...

...Not surprisingly, the absence of conventional leadership structures has been a source of controversy...

...Toward the beginning of the 20th century, the movement softened its rhetoric and broadened its base, becoming linked with Progressivism...

...But historically, the chances for success seem greater than at any time in the past...

...They see the problem as pervasive...

...The problem was that the symbolic issue gradually became identified in toto with the larger problem...

...It is a feeling, ultimately, of sisterhood--of sharing a com mon struggle and a common discovery...

...Although some feminists were concerned that identifiFEMINISM IN THE 1970s cation with lesbianism would destroy the movement's credibility with the public, a larger number—representing all political and social viewpoints—appeared to accept the cause of lesbian rights as their own and to affirm the unity of all women who experience discrimination on the basis of sex...

...If a majority of women identify with some feminist ideas, only a tiny minority view themselves as part of the movement...

...Others, such as Joe Freeman, have warned about a potential "tyranny of structurelessness," claiming that the deliberate rejection of structure can create situations where a few women with staying power will dominate the movement because of the absence of regularized procedures to guarantee fairness and order...

...In some cases, that might be true...

...The issue was important, and incorporation of the ERA into the Constitution would have provided a crucial lever for seeking change in women's status wherever questions of law were involved...

...As a result, feminists and antifeminists alike came to expect too much from the 19th Amendment...

...What makes the current feminist drive different from those in the past is that this one is in touch with prevailing social trends...

...To deviate from this network of attributes has historically been a cause for shame...

...Or in the remark of a 516 young woman—not an avowed feminist— who was bothered that the epilogue to American Graffiti ignored the women in the movie: "Why did they just tell us what happened to the boys ten years later...

...While it is true that most supporters of women's liberation are middle-class, the charge of elitism seems less true of today's movement than of earlier ones...

...Nothing reinforces this view more than the popular image of consciousness-raising sessions where women reputedly tell each other intimate details about their marriages, families, and experiences with men...

...Sociological studies showed that holding a job gave women a greater sense of independence, more power in the home, and increased confidence in dealing with the outside world...

...Black women play a prominent role in national feminist groups...

...Women's liberationists who received their baptism in movement politics in 1963 and '64 took that lesson (among others) to heart and spread it wherever they went...

...Certainly the risks are substantial...

...The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) met a few months ago in Chicago,* and the re * See Patricia Cayo Sexton, "Workers (Female) Arise...

...Well-off women can afford to send their children to nursery school or hire help...

...What about the girls...

...For women born after 1900, rates of premarital and extramarital intercourse were approximately double those for women born before 1900...

...The commitment to equality is seen most clearly on college campuses...

...Most supporters of women's liberation recognize that there is no single answer to inequality and sex role stereotyping...

...As with any movement, there are numerous pitfalls...

...and if they were able to work out arrangements by which, living together, they could respect and encourage each other's development, then the potential for human fulfillment and community would be almost limitless...

...Similar divisions exist on other questions, such as whether men should play any role in the movement...

...Nor did the suffrage victory mean greater emancipation for women in the economy...

...Despite the advantages of a decentralized structure, disagreement over tactics and goals persist...

...It does not depend on national leadership...

...And that common ground provided the starting point from which women could move toward greater consciousness of their grievances...

...At present, there seems to be a healthy tension between a cutting edge of militant radicals and those in the movement who favor a more gradual, accommodating stance...

...But the same workers knew in their gut that they did not receive equal pay with men...

...We live by our values as well as our actions, and a change of values almost always requires an ideological catalyst...

...it has an organizational base that is diverse and decentralized...

...There is also some danger that the norm of conciliation will be used as a justification for imposing a narrow and partisan point of view...

...The labor crisis of World War II permanently reversed that pattern...

...To correct these flaws, supporters of the current woman's movement seek to dismantle, or radically alter, some of the fundamental institutions of the culture...

...Perhaps most important, men and women might learn to view each other as individuals, separate and independent of each other, each with the right to self-determination and fulfillment...

...FEMINISM IN THE 1970s Ideological protest and underlying social changes reinforce each other...

...In a similar way, the National Women's party (NWP) concentrated on the belief FEMINISM IN THE 1970s that an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) would be a panacea...

...Needless to say, both the indictment and the proposed solutions profoundly threaten millions of people who have been brought up to believe that existing norms of behavior are morally sacrosanct...

...A woman might have affairs, smoke, and swear without improving the status of women...

...Demographers disagreed about the reasons for the downturn, some citing the development of oral contraceptives, others economic and social instability...

...Instead of helping women, these men say that feminists seem intent on wrecking the family, turning wife against husband, and transforming men into dishwashers and baby-sitters...

...But to polarize the two or deny the possibility of coalition across racial lines seems increasingly less justified...

...Furthermore, a recent poll by Social Research Inc...

...As a result, most oftoday's feminists recognize that the problem of inequality is like a box within a box within a box...

...Conceivably, many of the women involved in changing their own lives would have done so regardless of the movement, and as a natural by-product of the underlying changes in the society and economy...

...The birth rate reached an all-time low in 1972 and 1973, reaching the level required for Zero Population Growth...

...512 This is not to say that feminists do not have a keen sense of participation in a na tional movement...

...Despite the existence of such organizations as NOW, the movement functions primarily through small, informal groups on a local level...

...Behavioral change, prompted by impersonal social forces, can go only so far...

...The contemporary movement seems both more realistic and more visionary...

...V As in the history of all social movements, of course, there are numerous barriers to success...

...First, women's liberationists decided not to exclude anyone from the movement for reasons of political unorthodoxy or social unpopularity...

...Second, most of the demands of today's movement promise to help the poor more than the rich or middle-class...

...But the gains are greater when seen from the perspective of enhanced personal freedom and social well-being...

...Throughout the '60s, women married later, delayed the birth of their first child, and bore their last child at an earlier age...

...if they acquired the ability to communicate honestly to each other the nature of those needs...

...Many forces contributed to this decline of the birth rate, but the interaction of female employment with changing attitudes toward women's roles seems to have been a key...

...Fathers could develop their nurturant role, learn to cook, develop a greater capacity for sharing feelings of sorrow, vulnerability, or dependency...

...Although women's liberation advocates warn that under the guise of sexual freedom women can be victimized anew, the movement's support for abortion, homosexual rights, and free body expression place it in close relationship to new cultural attitudes toward sexuality...

...Or finally, in the edged comment of a 40-year-old mother: "I need to be recycled, only no one wants to give me a chance...

...There was thus a common ground on which feminist activists and their potential constituency could stand...

...Although suffrage leaders expected many women college graduates to enter careers and carry on the struggle, the new generation failed to respond...

...Earlier in the 20th century, the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) sought to achieve objectives sounding simi lar, but the WTUL was essentially a middle class organization that spent most of its en ergy trying to persuade middle-class citizens to support social legislation...

...As late as 1962, a Gallup Poll showed that a majority of female respondents did not believe American women were discrim inated against...

...At worst, raising the issue produces bitter hostility and outright rejection...

...CLUW, in con trast, grows out of the working-class and excludes nonunion members...

...in DISSENT, Summer 1974...

...It is at least possible—if not likely—that such local initiative and diversity would be difficult to sustain in a hierarchical organization with established policies and strict procedures...

...When women's rights advocates were on the margin of society, their organizational base was narrow...

...Working-class women have also developed their own identification with the concerns of the woman's movement...

...Female workers might not consider themselves feminists...

...In the years before World War II, female employment was dominated by young and single women...

...When attention is riveted on a single national group, too much depends on the caprice of personality and the right juxtaposition of events and issues...

...The loss or submergence of either of these perspectives could deprive the movement of its capacity to speak prophetically in a voice that people can hear...

...Only part of the change now taking place, of course, can be attributed to the woman's movement...

...They showed little sympathy for those women who were speaking for liberation in their personal lives...

...The issue of sex—especially when flaunted and sensationalized—appeared insignificant, even counterproductive when compared with the fight for equal treatment in politics, the job market, and the home...

...But heightened awareness is a prerequisite for social change, and it seems likely that as consciousness of sex-role stereotyping and discrimination mounts, it will cast other social relationships in a new light and spur a rethinking process about one's entire life...

...Yet most feminists were repelled by the "revolution in manners and morals...

...Thus the greatest obstacle the movement must overcome is the commitment of millions of people to the institutions, values, and personal self-images associated with traditional sex roles...

...In this political atmosphere it made sense to select one issue symbolizing the larger questions...

...Or it can be devastating, as when you are caught, or catch yourself, in an act or statement that springs from a lifelong routine, and suddenly appears transparently sexist...

...Although occasional working-class women or black heroines like Sojourner Truth became identified with feminism, the movement generally represented radical and alienated members of the elite...

...When feminism had a narrower constituency, ac tivity tended to focus on a national or state level...

...Where the new feminism and its goals will end remains difficult to predict...

...recently, the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) held its first convention with over 400 delegates who asserted the special interests of black women...

...The problem of inequality was imbedded in the day-to-day routines of men and women, and until those began to alter, there was little chance of a popular base for feminism...

...And for a movement without centralized struc tures, an enormous amount of informal com munication takes place...

...Our sex roles define who we are, what bearing we adopt toward people, which responsibilities we assume in the household, what emotions we display, how much and what kind of power we exercise, which jobs we will hold, and how we relate to our bodies...

...Some observers have criticized the movement for its lack of focus, implying that a disciplined national organization could mobilize a concerted following and get immediate results...

...The proportion of women who held jobs changed hardly at all from 1910 to 1940 and there were few, if any, advances in working conditions...

...With few role models to emulate and a substantial degree of public opposition, only a small minority of women struck out in pursuit of careers...

...Having a job and extra money tended to emphasize the advantages of a small family and the freedom to pursue individual interests...

...The deeper benefits are perhaps more subtle...

...showed substantial support for feminist goals (though not feminist tactics) among working-class women...

...Somewhat similarly, many men believe that the woman's movement is conducting an insidious campaign to undermine their strength, deny their authority, destroy their self-image...

...More important, the characteristics of the female labor force changed drastically...

...Thus a movement can be judged dead or alive on the basis of a vote in Congress or a series of public relations maneuvers...

...One can only voice the impression that it is there—growing, spreading, taking root...

...In the past, the demands of women's rights organizations were far removed from the immediate concerns of most women...

...Discontented homemakers had a similar sense of recognition...

...Women who have spent a lifetime devoting themselves to the roles of homemaker and helpmate frequently take the feminist charge that women have been enslaved as a direct attack...

...It is not inconceivable that in some situations, the stronger, the more persistent, and the more power-hungry will use the ideal of sisterhood to drive across a point of view, and that those who act most con sistently on the philosophy of conciliation will end up regularly on the losing side...

...Through most of the 19th century, feminism drew its support from a scattering of educated upper and upper-middle-class women who became angry at the absence of opportunities to use their abilities...

...Throughout the first three decades of the 20th century, a "sexual revolution" was in progress...

...Ten years later, the figures were reversed...

...Many supporters of the movement do come out of the best universities and from prosperous families...

...A profound feeling of community unites the diverse women work ing in disparate local settings...

...Rather than remain aloof from other dissident groups, feminists are likely to support organizations such as the United Farm Workers and to work in alliance with other groups seeking social change...

...Here, incidentally, is one area where an accepted national voice of the movement might help discourage distortion...

...The chief advantage of the present femi nist movement lies in the extent to which its goals and programs speak to the realities of today's society...

...Although feminism is not new to America, the present movement is distinctive in at least three ways: it is grounded in and moving in the same direction as underlying social trends...

...To many men, therefore, the movement is a symbol of anarchic and amoral forces, seeking to untie all the knots, loosen all the bonds that give life its stability...

...Sup porters of feminism were homogeneous, the organizations they formed national in scope...

...It is workingclass women who will benefit most from universal day care, equal pay, an end to job discrimination, and available inexpensive abortions and birth control assistance...

...Yet the movement seems, on balance, decisive to the heightened consciousness of WILLIAM H. CHAFE today's generation...

...A bold document anticipating future feminist platforms, the Declaration bore, however, little relationship to the world in which most women found themselves at the time—nonurban, full of large families, and increasingly suffused with Victorian morality...

...In 1963 and 1964, many participants in the civil rights struggle also believed that passage of a civil rights act would bring instant equality...

...As a result, feminist programs for the first time spoke directly to the daily experience of millions of women...

...The issue of sexuality represents another illustration of the close "fit" between contemporary feminism and dominant social trends...

...Others supposedly are discontented wives, bored by suburban bridge parties...

...They knew that most of the higher paid jobs carried a "male only" tag...

...indeed, they might shun association with the abstract cause of women's rights...

...They are not stupid—they enjoy the nurturant and supportive roles of wife and mother, they believe that the family should operate with a sexual division of labor, and they deeply resent the implication that their lives have been wasted...

...But if women's rights advocates were not sufficiently in tune with their environment, the larger problem was the environment itself...

...It is part of the process, and sensitivity toward it may enhance the prospectthat the end will be constructive and happy rather than destructive and bitter...

...Gaining the right to vote was primarily a symbolic victory...

...The past tendency to concentrate on a single issue grew largely out of the political and social environment in which the movement found itself...

...Beginning in 1923, the NWP devoted its entire energies to the fight for an ERA...

...Two Gallup Polls highlighted the shift in values...

...Suffrage was such an issue, and women's rights advocates used it brilliantly as an instrument for creating broader support...

...On the other hand, awareness that the problem is multi-dimensional has not, in the case of most feminists, produced numb ing resignation or cynicism...

...In theory at least, the movement pursues the Quaker ideal of reconciliation rather than conflict...

...Thus 20th-century suffragists, like their 19th-century counterparts, were somewhat out of touch with the underlying forces at work in their society...

...First, supporters of the movement are highly conscious of the issues of class and race...

...According to some FEMINISM IN THE 1970s critics, these women are indulging in the luxury of fashionable protest, inventing the false issue of sex discrimination because they have never experienced the real problems of hunger, poverty, and race...

...Much of today's movement, in contrast, is almost without an overarching structure...

...Most common, perhaps, is the argument over style or political tactics...

...And they saw that a large number of their coworkers experienced difficulty because there were no adequate day-care facilitis or after-school centers...

...Growing out of the counterculture, there is a feeling in some circles that freedom entails the absence of group norms and regulations...

...The vast major ity of American women may still disavow any overt association with feminism ("I'm no women's libber," "they're too radical for my taste"), but the same women now sup port many substantive programs of the move ment...

...In any case, the current movement is both diverse and decentralized...

...They overestimated the importance of the ballot and underestimated the extent to which inequality was rooted in the socialization process...

...Association of feminism with free love, divorce, and competition for careers aroused almost universal hostility...

...Some observers have described women's liberation as a "guerrilla movement," because it exists in every kitchen or bedroom where women's minds are changing...

...Nor is it difficult to imagine the impact on most Americans when the media sensationalizes the actions of the most radical feminists and portrays these as representative of the entire movement...

...II One of the best examples of the interplay of social trends and the revival of feminism is the dramatic change in women's employment over the last 35 years...

...The structure may not be the nuclear family, but it is likely to be some "family" in the generic sense of a group coming to live together on the basis of mutual obligations and responsibilities...

...Feminism is often associated with "liberal" towns, university centers, affluent suburbs, the cosmopolitan cities...

...But all agreed there would be a new baby boom in the early 1970s when the children born 20 years earlier began to reproduce...

...Furthermore, a two-career family required modifications in the traditional roles of husbands and wives, which had little precedent and less public support...

...What the results will be we do not know, but for the first time in history, the feminist message speaks to the realities of contemporary society, and the audience for that messagee is now in a position to hear it...

...There needs to be a greater awareness on everyone's part of the pain and anxiety that change in sex roles can cause...

...The second approach—growing out of the first—is to espouse the conviction that conflict can be resolved in a spirit of love and conciliation...

...individuals like Shirley Chisholm and Eleanor Holmes Norton work for civil rights for blacks and women...

...Like the Progressives generally, the suffragists represented a homogeneous middleclass constituency...

...Or should they moderate their rhetoric and attempt to move one step at a time, even at the risk of sacrificing principle...

...In face of such con flicts, there is the continuing potential that the movement will become polarized as it was for nearly five decades after 1920, and that energies needed for positive action will be diverted into sectarian feuding...

...But the change went deeper than fads of dress and manners...

...And socially, the goal seems well worth the effort...

...The vitality of the present movement lies in the proliferation of small organizations, each growing out of the experience of different groups of women...

...They are not women who easily can be classified as a lunatic fringe, because a great many of them are hard-working, respectable citizens by ,anyone's standards...

...Only, it happens that they were wrong...

...It can be exhilarating, as when a whole new set of life possibilities opens up...

...suits astounded even the most optimistic organizers...

...Should movement supporters denounce the status quo in uncompromising terms and demand immediate thoroughgoing change...

...Feminist ideas are still far in advance of what most Americans are willing to accept...

...Through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, feminist organizations have tended to focus on single issues...

...Reflecting the life of each participant, it is imbedded in the social process...

...The new morality was symbolized on a popular level by the emergence of the flapper with her short skirt, rolled hose, and risque language...

...None of these changes has produced equality, but they have helped prepare a foundation on which a strong movement for equality could be built...

...But because of the changes that have taken place, feminists now have a substantial audience, they are speaking to concerns that are important for most women, and they are get ting results...

...Finally, the division over tactics poses a constant threat of open conflict...

...This shift in the labor force disrupted the status quo of traditional sex roles...

...If people developed the capacity to understand their own complexity and the diversity of their own needs...

...Whether as cause or effect, this trend coincided with many women finding occupations away from the home...

...Women, in turn, could choose their own career, fulfill their assertive as well as passive instincts, define for themselves the balance of time spent inside or outside the living unit...

...The same charge of being narrow, elitist and middle-class has been leveled at the women's liberation movement...

...These questions expose our vulnerability and insecurity...

...There is no single answer, and no reason to be disillusioned over the failure of any one reform...

...Children, most of all, might grow up with the sense of being able to become what they most want to be...

...If a society with sex equality existed, men and women might each spend the same amount of time with children...

...At a minimum, success for the movement will mean significant progress toward eliminating economic exploitation of women...

...The second major obstacle faced by the movement is that of internal dissension...

...It is important to emphasize how relatively small the woman's movement is compared to the entire female population...

...Perhaps the vision of autonomy in a world without invidious sex stereotypes cannot be achieved...

...There is a world of difference between denouncing the contented homemaker as a deluded Sambo, and reaching out to make contact with women in the home...

...The most serious obstacle today is the extent to which the movement seems to threaten the sense of identity each of us has received from our common culture...

...From their point of view, the feminist movement is guilty of arrogance and contempt toward the majority of women...

...A new set of life experiences provided the basis for the development of new attitudes toward woman's "place...

...Long-term demographic shifts provide another example of the way social trends and feminist ideology have reinforced each other...

...At best, pain and anguish accompany discussion of sex roles and power relationhips between men and women...

...And a tremendous chasm separates those who view men as congenitally oppressive and those who see males as victims too...

...By contrast, the contemporary movement al most defies categorization...

...There were crusades to be won, political battles to be fought, careers to be opened up...

...With the possible exception of the issue of race, it is difficult to imagine an issue that goes more to the foundation of personal as well as social identity...

...I gave away my career 15 years ago when I dropped out of graduate school to stay home with the kids...

...It might also be helpful to acknowledge more openly the need of most people for structure and stability in their lives...

...510 WILLIAM H. CHAFE III T he organization and structure of the movement is also significantly different from that in the past...

...The Declaration issued at Seneca Falls in 1848 called for equal economic and educational opportunity, an end to the double standard of morality, the right to vote, and an end to the notion that women occupied a "sphere" different from that of men...

...The same culture, it is charged, has denied males the right to be fully human, because it has ruled "out of bounds" the idea of fatherhood as a fulltime vocation, denied men the chance to be homemakers, and established as "inappropriate" for men the expression of vulnerability, gentleness, or dependence...

...The 1967 survey showed that 34 percent of women in the prime childbearing years anticipated having four or more children...

...A few devoted activists would work out of a regional or national headquarters, and seek to persuade legislators of the virtue of their cause...

...One of the first things we are taught as children is a set of personality traits labeled "masculine" and "feminine...

...Much of it grows out of longstanding trends in the economy, demographic patterns, and changes in cultural values...

...IV The third quality distinguishing the current movement from its predecessors is the range and depth of its objectives...

...They campaign for ratification of the ERA, they demonstrate for repeal of abortion laws, and they organize women's political caucuses...

...The issue surfaced quickly when feminists had to face the question of whether to endorse the struggle of female homosexuals...

...Its strength is more likely to be found in local communities than in national hier archies...

...After the "baby boom" of the late '40s and early '50s, there ensued a prolonged decline in the birth rate, which by the late '60s resulted in the lowest birth rate since the Great Depression...

...It does not require a public opinion poll to recognize that many potential recruits are alienated when some feminists defend the right to lesbianism, or that other latent sympathizers are angered when some feminists denigrate the nuclear family or equate all men with a capitalist, war-mongering conspiracy...

...Events or issues that are national in scope (such as the Equal Rights Amendment) are not ignored, but the day-to-day direction of the movement derives from local conditions close to the lives of the women most involved...

...Except in families living on the edge of poverty, it was almost unheard of for wives or mothers of young children to hold jobs...

...The women's liberation movement has launched a drive for social change that promises to alter some of the fundamental values by which we live...

...Most Americans believed that wives who worked were calling into question their husband's ability to be a good provider (the key masculine role...

...A substantial minority of women did not vote (it was inconsistent with "woman's place") and those who did almost always chose the same candidates as their husbands or fathers...

...By 1970, 51 percent of all mothers with children aged 6-17 were employed, and it was just as likely for a middle-class woman to hold a job as for a working-class woman...

...Perhaps more important is the need to come to grips with some of the potential consequences of the movement...

...But after such legislation was passed, they saw that racism did not stop and that having the right to buy a steak at the Holiday Inn did not give one the money to do so...

...Even when the popular base of the movement broadened in the early 20th century, the structure remained hierarchical...

...If marriage is to remain a viable institution, feminists say, perhaps a contract is in order, specifying the responsibilities of each partner...

...Nearly 7 million women went to work during the war, the vast majority married and over 30...

...Now, an acute, radical attack on the whole syndrome has emerged from a movement of women...

...A strong theme of women's liberation is the importance of women knowing their own bodies and having the freedom to use them as they see fit...

...The energy of the movement comes from the bottom, not the top...

...They seem to have learned from the history of their own movement as well as from the experience of the civil rights movement, out of which so many younger women organizers came...

...A new awarenes's of contraceptive devices, an increased recognition of female sexuality, and growing disapproval of the double standard all signified a dramatic expansion of sexual freedom...

...By 1971, in contrast, the figure had dropped to 15 percent...

...But at its roots, it seems to be a change of consciousness, a new awareness about women and their relationship to men...

...In addition, the pattern of decentralization and diversity ensures that the current movement will not rise or fall on the basis of one organization's decisions...

...Despite disagreements that appear to the outside observer as irreconcilable, members of the movement repeatedly try to place their allegiance to the common goal higher than their views...

...But in the process, the NWP, already a small elitist organization, alienated most working women (the ERA prior to 1941 would have meant invalidation of protective legislation for working women, such as minimum wage laws), spent an excessive amount of energy battling other women's organizations, and tended to ignore the extent to which the roots of sex inequality were beyond the reach of any constitutional amendment...

...it seeks objectives that strike at some of the root causes of sex inequality...

...Although suffrage supporters believed they were struggling for full equality, social conditions were not ripe for the achievement of their goals...

...If only the suffrage were won, or an Equal Rights Amendment passed, the problem of sex inequality would begin to disappear...

...When the war ended, the working wife became an institution as families learned the value of an extra pay check and women discovered the enjoyment of a role outside the home...

...The woman's movement has provided such a catalyst to American society in the last decade, exposing our assumptions about ourselves, our power, our self-images, our needs...

...As with most social movements, the divisions tend to focus on methods of achieving common goals...

...Current activists seem acutely aware of such pitfalls...

...To women's rights advocates, the flapper seemed frivolous...

...Women students in growing numbers are declaring their intention to enter professions, postpone marriage until embarked on a career, and establish families on an egalitarian basis...

...In addressing this problem, supporters of the movement seem to have adopted two complementary approaches...

...Although ideally one might wish to combine the energy of local grass-roots efforts with the discipline of a national organization, such a synthesis appears unlikely—even contradictory— given the internal dynamics of women's liberation...