Second-wave Feminism Research Articles

Liz Lochhead and the Fairies: Context and Influence in Grimm Sisters and Dreaming Frankenstein

Examines the Scottish poet Liz Lochhead's period of North American travel and her response to American second-wave feminist poetics, particularly to the anthology No More Masks! (1973) and the poetry of Adrienne Rich and Anne Sexton, the treatment of myth by J.G. Frazer and Robert Graves, and the perspective on Scottish fairy tales offered by folklorists, to explore Lochhead's creative reworking of both fairy tale and classical myth in her collections Grimm Sisters (1981) and Dreaming Frankenstein (1984).

Contesting Assumptions of Second-Wave Feminism: Māori Women’s Action in 1970s Aotearoa New Zealand

Contesting Assumptions of Second-Wave Feminism: Māori Women’s Action in 1970s Aotearoa New Zealand

Women’s Dilemmatic Constraints in Emerging Second-Wave Feminism, Heideggerian Ambivalence and Oscillation between Authenticity and Inauthenticity

This paper adopts Heidegger’s philosophy, its authenticity and inauthenticity in particular, to analyze ambivalent or even conflictual representations of women in emerging second-wave feminism. During the consciousness-raising stage of second-wave, women’s consciousness-raising enabled their struggles for feminist ways of living, while patriarchal society’s struggles against feminism were commonly witnessed to impose enormous constraints on women with consciousness raised, who were thirsty for employment but cringed from leaving homes to enjoy rights in the public sphere. This problem of “getting out” and “getting back” is explained by Heidegger’s existential (in)authenticity, especially the oscillation, with reference to humans’ existential structures. Authentically, to strive for economic independence, women as Dasein with feminist consciousness raised were encouraged to speak up for themselves to reclaim the long-lost authentic “Self of one’s own” by confronting the patriarchal oppression of “The They”. However, due to social constraints which exacerbated women’s fear of confrontation, women chose to live by the inauthentic status quo in average everydayness with full absorption where women largely gave up on reflecting on assigned domestic roles and on taking responsibility for feminist life-planning. This paper argues that volatile and oscillatory transitions between authenticity and inauthenticity among women constituted the ambivalent representations of struggling women, existentially due to first the temporariness of authenticity and strong pulling power of inauthenticity in the less influential emerging second-wave to render authenticity ineffective, and second the unavoidable existence of the powerful influence of “The They” – as ontologically Being-with – as patriarchal those on women to draw them back to homes.

Weaving in the Threads

Weaving in the Threads

Stitchers of Instagram

Stitchers of Instagram

Persephone at Mid-Life: Revisiting Feminist Archetypal Theory in a Personal Journey Through Menopause

This article suggests that feminist archetypal theory provides a helpful and empowering framework through which to understand embodied change as experienced in contemporary times. A mainstream approach associated with second-wave feminism, it has fallen victim to poststructuralist critiques and is rarely used, despite a renewed popularity of goddess archetypes in broader lay culture. I argue that this framework deserves revisiting as, in generating positive images and plots, it can serve as a source of empowerment and strength for women and especially so where hegemonic contemporary discourses are overwhelmingly negative and medicalised, as in the case of menopause. Using auto-ethnographic methods, I illustrate this with reference to my own lived experience of menopausal transition. Finally, and just as importantly, I show how this approach configures a different and more holistic kind of knowledge that recognises connection, relationality and communion of self, others and world, rather than separation and domination.

Life Dissatisfaction in an Older Childless Woman: A Case Study

Overtime, choosing not to have children has become a more common phenomenon. Alongside this change, studies have found that women without children are just as fulfilled, if not more so, in their lives as those who have had children. These studies, in the context of theories of second-wave feminism, psychosocial theory, and stigma theory, are reviewed. This study presents a dissatisfied older woman who has not had children to examine the differences in such cases. As a product of thematic analysis, five themes stand out during Holly's interview: focus on the past, stigma, fear, relationships with younger generations, and regret. Results are discussed in the context of what they may mean for future research and practice with the suggestion that perhaps an over-focus on the past, in lieu of present and future circumstances, may be a factor in childless women's dissatisfaction in life.

An Analysis of Novel Writing Styles of Ismat Chugtai

The research work focuses on analyzing Ismat Chughtai writing styles. From the analysis it was deduced that Ismat used humor in the plots, and casual communications between the novel characters to strike a sarcasm on the societal malpractices with needed instant eradication. The popularity of Ismat Chughtai’s work could be credited to her plain and simple language and the exact representation of the society especially the plight of women in the society post-independence. Chughtai began her writing in the second wave of feminism and therefore she hampered the progress of patriarchy in society. The research work presents vivid aspects of Chughtai’s writing skill and concludes that Chughtai is nothing but a trailblazer of feminism in independent India.

‘Let’s sharpen the blades’: ecofeminism in American COVID literature

ABSTRACT During the spring of 2020, literary responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were quick to appear. Poetry, essays and diaries proliferated, and collective initiatives sprang up, with authors delving into a crisis that was national as well as global; political as well as health-based. In their lockdown works, US-based authors tackled their experience in the context of the country, chronicling the virus alongside inequality, racism and environmental challenges. Sheltering in place on either side of the Continental Divide, Pam Houston and Amy Irvine maintained an intense correspondence that was later published as Air Mail. Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place, which this article approaches as representative of ecofeminist COVID literature. It tracks their epistolary journey from the self to the social and back, discussing their narrative of the pandemic within the framework of their shared stance. Their letters are read as heirs to second-wave feminism and analysed as one instance of the current permeation of ecofeminist theories, specifically the material perspective. Through the study of Houston and Irvine’s correspondence, this article aims to illuminate the cultural work done by American ecofeminist writers during an extraordinary period.

A Woman is Being Side-Kicked: Gothic Superheroes and the Suppression of Female Autonomy Amid Feminism’s Second Wave

This essay examines the treatment of women in the Gothic superhero comics of the 1970s through the lens of Michelle Massé’s In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism and the Gothic (1992). While superhero texts generally neglected women even at the height of second-wave feminism, the Gothic superhero sub-genre goes even further, drawing on the regressive trope of the suffering woman to ‘side-kick’ female characters and deny their agency and autonomy. Exploring four female characters who share this fate, we examine their different responses to the Freudian beating fantasy enacted in their narrative arcs, delineating the high costs and limited gains of traumatised women who dream of triumph.

Special section editorial Hitting home: representations of the domestic milieu in feminist art

The politics of the home was often a focus in second-wave feminist art in the West. Influenced by Betty Friedan's The feminist mystique (1963), which challenged the notion that women were content to be wives, mothers, and homemakers, artists often represented the domestic milieu as a space of oppression. Friedan's ideas would, however, be challenged by bell hooks, who indicated that such perceptions assumed a woman who was middle-class and white. As hooks observed in Feminist theory: from margin to center (1984:2), Friedan 'did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife'. It should also be noted that Friedan's views were shaped by a US-specific context and that the politics of home, domesticity, marriage, or parenthood may be perceived very differently in geographies outside the United States or the West, more generally, including South Africa.

Feminist Separatism Revisited

Conflict over who belongs in women-only spaces is now part of mainstream political debate. Some think women-only spaces should exclude on the basis of sex, and others think they should exclude on the basis of a person’s self-determined gender identity. Many who take the latter view appear to believe that the only reason for taking the former view could be antipathy towards men who identify as women. In this paper, we’ll revisit the second-wave feminist literature on separatism, in order to uncover the reasons for women-only spaces as feminists originally conceived them. Once these reasons are understood, those participating in debates over women-only spaces will be in a better position to adjudicate on whether shifting from sex to gender identity puts any significant interests at stake.

Binding and Liberating: Recipes for Environmental Narratives

Crafting narratives alternative to dominant discourses of natural-cultural depletion is one of the signature goals of the ecocritical “test kitchen.” This culinary analogy highlights deeper similarities: both recipes and eco-narratives create symbolic and material connections between people and the environment, which, in turn, enable transformative practices. But how can we craft messages that are generative of positive processes of transformation? Or, put it differently, what are recipes for eco-narratives? This article proposes a versatile method to test what uses of language and dynamics elicited by texts might produce environmental action. The culinary experiment draws on Italian second-wave feminism, a theoretical “cuisine” that has engaged with language to rework dominant relationships to others and to the world. Feminist strategies, including the practice of “starting from oneself,” the reclaiming of the personal as political, and the retracing of alternative genealogies, have used language as a means simultaneously of liberation and of reconnection with the material, embodied world. This liberating binding is repurposed as a key technique to craft and identify effective eco-narratives. Here, feminist strategies intersect with the chemical and social operations of cooking through discussion of three recipes tied to the author’s Mediterranean origins: a milk pudding, eggless fresh pasta, and a type of ancient-grains bread. Through the processes of binding and softening, common to preparations that employ starch, the analysis demonstrates that a starchy language used both to bind (us to material life) and to soften (power structures) has enormous environmental potential. While primarily serving scholars in Italian studies and ecocriticism, this culinary method invites adaptations across food cultures and gender identities.

Pas de statue pour Hubertine: Quand notre mémoire d’une pionnière du suffragisme fait des vagues

In 1914, the death of Hubertine Auclert, who had dedicated her life to the feminist cause, stirred great emotion. The idea of erecting a statue in her honour was considered, but never materialized. Auclert’s memory is thus preserved in more confidential sites of remembrance. We have identified three moments, each associated with a different place. Until 1930, the suffragist’s tomb was a place of feminist pilgrimage. The following years appear to have been a low point in the history of her memory, but it was then that activist Marie-Louise Bouglé collected Auclert’s archives for safekeeping in her library, preserving them from destruction. However, while Auclert gained a degree of recognition in the wake of the second wave of feminism, the Panthéon remains closed to her. In this respect, she is emblematic of women, and even more so of feminists, who occupy a place of secondary importance in France’s national memory.

Parched: An Archetypal and Cinematic Representation of Sisterhood

Thesis. The current paper deals with the idea of sisterhood which has been represented in a Bollywood movie named Parched. The movie manifests sisterhood as a way to find solace and to get rid of confinement from the oppressive and suffocating society that tries to confine women within the four walls of the house. Concept. Sisterhood is an association, group, society, or community of women who are linked by common interests. This alliance became popular during the second wave of feminism. A single woman cannot combat the oppressors. Only necessary solidarity and collective efforts would result in the desired improvements. Results and Conclusion. In our society, the term ‘brotherhood’ is used to designate camaraderie among men, but no term is used to denote companionship among women. In fact, it is assumed that women hate each other and this legacy of ‘women-hating’ is proved to be unfounded. Therefore, necessary solidarity is required to correct the patriarchal assumptions about women, and the idea of sisterhood is one effort in this direction.

Dorothy Smith’s Sociology for People: Theory for Discovery

Dorothy E. Smith was a second-wave feminist scholar of the 1970s who brought forward an insistent critique of women’s exclusion from knowledge production and the resulting distortions of sociological theory. I offer here a reading of the theory Smith developed as she worked toward a sociology that could move the field beyond those distortions, toward a method of inquiry that could be useful for women and generally for people puzzled by the circumstances of their lives. I highlight Smith’s commitment to knowledge that is anchored in a shared, material world; the originality of her approach to the investigation of textually mediated social organization; and the goal of mapping social organization that underlies her approach.

A Woman’s Place Is in the Workforce: American Gender Roles During the Second World War

World War II (1939-1945) was the most devastating conflict in global history. The United States underwent profound economic, political, and social change as the nation mobilized for war. Millions of American men were drafted into the armed forces, creating an acute labor shortage that the government addressed through propaganda campaigns to recruit women into previously male-dominated occupations. These dedicated efforts resulted in a surge of female employment in the defense industry, noncombatant military roles, and medicine. Female workers overcame significant discriminatory barriers and challenged traditional social norms with their critical wartime labor contributions. Despite post-war efforts to remove them from the workforce, female workers brought about lasting change to the American conception of gender roles that contributed to the later rise of the second-wave feminist movement.

New Bonds of Intimacy: In/ter/dependence and Ageing in Recent Women’s Writing in French

Abstract This article examines how female francophone authors in the twenty-first century are re-envisaging modes of love, intimacy, and connectedness in old age, in the process moving away from an ideal of independence towards a valorization of interdependence. While second-wave feminism concentrated its efforts on women’s bodily, reproductive, and financial autonomy as a reflection of the concerns of the young women at the heart of the movement, second-wave feminists have since questioned the goal of independence as they have moved into middle and old age. Modelling the interdependencies posited by second-wave feminists as sustaining both individual lives and wider communities, recent women’s writing in French is shown to engage with the re-evaluation of in/dependence in its contemplation of the relationships formed by its authors and textual subjects. Through a critical framework of research in feminist ethics and gerontology, this article offers close readings of recent works by Noëlle Châtelet, Annie Ernaux, Nancy Huston, and Douna Loup that feature new bonds of intimacy built on reciprocity, exchange, and mutual dependence to envisage scenarios of ageing that recognize our complex mutual dependencies while pushing back against the myths and stereotypes of ageing.

Sun the Mother and Moon the Father

This article discusses the construction of gender roles in contemporary Baltic Paganism through a case study of teachings and everyday practices among female members of the Ancient Baltic Religious Association Romuva in contemporary Lithuania. Reconstructionist Pagan religious groups usually represent a traditionalist worldview, while the impact of feminist ideas is mostly observed within goddess-oriented Pagan traditions like Wicca. Romuva represents a mixture of the two concerning gender roles. One of the main factors in this mixture is the influence, in her person and ideas, of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994), probably the only Lithuanian representative of second-wave feminism. Interviews with Romuva female members conducted in 2021 show that their conceptions of preferred gender roles and family practices varied. Factors like the interviewee’s age and education, experiences of Soviet so-called “gender equality policies,” and social conservatism all made an impact on them.

“Nothing Less Than Justice”

This article analyzes the significance of the 1977 California International Women’s Year (IWY) Conference, one of fifty-six state and territorial meetings held ahead of the 1977 National Women’s Conference (NWC) in Houston, Texas. The NWC was the first and only time that the U.S. federal government funded and authorized an event focused on women’s rights. Utilizing primary and oral history sources, we examine the political mobilization of women of color and lesbians from California. We focus on the efforts of these minoritized women to reach their respective communities and to form coalitions with one another, before and during the state meeting, in order to make collective impacts at the NWC. We make three arguments. First, these California activists built upon a longer tradition of political mobilization within and across communities defined in terms of race, indigeneity, and sexuality. Second, the timing of political engagement by women of color and lesbian-identified activists with the NWC, namely in the late 1970s, challenges the temporal understanding of so-called second-wave feminism, which tends to focus on the 1960s and early 1970s. Finally, the range of political ideas and strategies expressed at the California IWY Conference and the NWC reveals the intertwining of various ideologies and approaches to creating change. The NWC was a state-sponsored political event, but the grassroots mobilization that occurred at the local, state, and national levels enabled women of diverse backgrounds and beliefs to articulate and advocate for their political vision.