The Emergence and First Years of a Grassroots Women's Movement in Northwest Arkansas, 1970-1980

Abstract

THE SECOND WAVE OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT was one of most important cultural and social phenomena of twentieth century.1 The movement's mobilization was a result of grassroots organizing undertaken by national feminist organizations and hundreds of local women's groups. Although, as Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin have argued, this mobilization produced many organizations that have worked for social change, few of them have been studied in depth and detail they deserve.2 Even more importantly, existing studies of women's move-ment have been largely limited to large metropolitan areas in North or on East and West Coasts.3 This focus on large metropolitan areas has created a bias in our understanding of movement's history. First, as Nancy Whittier notes, [p]eriodization based on national movement and on major cities does not. . . accurately describe course of movement at grassroots level in smaller cities.4 Second, lack of attention to what happened outside large cities has obscured centrality of grassroots movement to development of women-oriented services and greater integration of women into economic and political structure in mid-size urban areas. This study seeks to rectify this situation by examining emergence and first years of grassroots women's movement in Fayetteville, Arkansas.5 In doing so, it focuses on similarities and differences between local movement and those movements that emerged in larger cities. At beginning of 1960s, so-called woman's issue moved to center of public debate in U.S. John F. Kennedy's creation of President's Commission on Women in 1961, nearly simultaneous publication of commission's report and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963, and establishment of National Organization for Women in 1966 helped focus national attention on existing gender inequalities and fostered development of more mainstream, women's rights-oriented, feminist movement. On other hand, civil rights and New Left movements served as midwife to more radical, grassroots feminist movement. Unlike national women's organizations, radical grassroots groups operated outside of mainstream politics, sought to transform existing institutions, and emphasized importance of creating women's-only groups and building egalitarian organizations, rather than structuring its activities more bureaucratically and creating mixed organizations and groups.6 In 1960s, civil rights movement in South and various antiwar student groups concentrated in North, including Students for a Democratic Society, offered women opportunities for activism. In South, as Sara Evans has argued, feminist consciousness first emerged within network of women involved in Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. To become activists in civil rights movement, these women had to challenge ideals of southern femininity and create a new sense of self. In turn, participation in civil rights movement brought to their attention the tangled relationship between race and as well as recognition that racial equality required fundamental changes in sex roles.7 This changing consciousness, which was reinforced by disparaging treatment women activists received from some male comrades, prepared many southern women to become active participants in impending women's liberation movement. The mobilization of women in other parts of country resulted from their growing awareness of gender oppression, especially as they experienced gender discrimination and inequality within New Left itself. Between 1967 and 1968, Evans argues, women activists within civil rights and New Left movements became main constituency of radical feminist groups, which, in turn, gave birth to massive grassroots feminist movement.8 In Northwest Arkansas, however, majority of grassroots feminist activists did not have such experiences. …