Feminist Essay

““Does your mother work?” “No, she’s a housewife.”” This statement is just an example of what was heard in and before the feminist movement and the 1960’s. Since then, women’s roles have changed dramatically – instead of being “just a wife”, or “just a mother”,  now women can be both and have jobs outside the house. However, women are still considered a subordinate group because not only do women have different physical characteristics than men (the dominant group), but they experience all of the other signs of a subordinate group as well: receiving unequal treatment, and  having to struggle for equality.

            In the early 1960’s, the Suffrage movement (also known as the Women’s Movement, or Women’s Liberation) formed to help women become considered equal to men by campaigning against a series of issues such as abortion, glass ceilings, equal pay, and sexual harassment. Feminism presented itself in three waves, the first starting in the late 19th century. Writers promoted the idea of feminism; Virginia Wolfe wrote a book entitled A Room of Ones Own. The argument of the book is that “women are simultaneously victims of themselves as well as victims of men and are upholders of society by acting as mirrors to men”. The second wave was the 1960’s through the 1980’s and primarily dealt with the inequality of laws and cultural status, such as women’s roles. At this time, women were simply housewives – it was rare to see a woman working outside of the house at all. This spiked Betty Friedan’s attention, and she went on to write a book called The Feminine Mystique, in which Friedan described middle class wives and mothers who were guiltily wondering if there was something more. She described how the feeling of dissatisfaction was a common occurrence in households. But Friedan, instead of blaming individual women for failing to adapt to women’s proper role, blamed the role itself and the society that created it, thus creating the power of The Feminine Mystique. The Feminist Movement grew during the Third Wave of feminism (1990’s to present) to incorporate a greater number of women who may not have previously identified with the dynamic and goals that were established at the start of the movement.