How was 1970s radical feminism different from the new feminism of the 1960s?

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Though many feminists considered themselves liberal, or mainstream, and focused on concrete changes at an institutional, political, and governmental level, radical feminism was prevalent within the movement. These radical feminists aimed to completely restructure what they viewed as an inherently patriarchal society, often using drastic methods to do so. One example is the activists who demonstrated at the Miss America pageant, with the aim of the protest being to bring attention to the exploitation of women, both in the contest and in society as a whole.

This wave of feminism was largely defined and led by educated, middle-class white American women, so the movement was centered on issues affecting white women. Alienated women of color viewed white feminists as incapable of understanding their concerns. Black women became increasingly excluded from the central platforms of the mainstream women’s movement, which didn’t view the issues of women of color, such as stopping the forced sterilization of people of color and people with disabilities, as a priority.

Despite its problematic underrepresentation of women of color, which led to the rise of intersectionality in later waves, Second Wave Feminism is viewed as being characterized by a general feeling of solidarity among women who were fighting together for equality and was responsible for many legal and cultural victories that brought about greater equality, building on the work of first wave feminists and suffrage. Both the successes and the problems associated with the feminist movement during the 1960s and 1970s can be explored using the historical primary sources available in Gale’s Women’s Studies Archive, which is an essential resource for researchers seeking to understand the history of feminism and women’s experience.

Grassroots Feminist Organizations, Part 1: Boston Area Second Wave Organizations, 1968‒1998

The archives of eight Boston-area second-wave organizations are represented, with materials on feminism spanning a period from 1968 to 1998. Figuring prominently are the documents from the Women’s Educational Center; the Women School; the Abortion Action Coalition; and the Boston chapter of Women Against Violence Against Women, which combated offensive representations of women in media. Materials include meeting minutes, records of personnel and finances, correspondence, newsletters, files regarding affiliated organizations and opposition groups, and course descriptions. The collection documents the wide range of issues Boston feminists tackled, such as domestic violence, racism, pornography, rape, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights. The Female Liberation, Boston Women’s Union, and Boston Area Feminist Coalition records highlight theoretical underpinnings of the feminist movement, especially socialist feminism.

Both Boston and San Francisco were hubs of the feminism movement. This collection is an essential source for researchers examining second-wave feminism and other social movements in the United States during the period from 1968 to 1998.

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Grassroots Feminist Organizations, Part 2: San Francisco Women’s Building/Women’s Centers, 1972‒1998

The materials from San Francisco detail the work of the first woman-owned-and-run women’s center in the United States from 1972 to 1998. Many of the files document the founding, planning, and daily administration of the center, including the building itself and its place in the surrounding community. The Women’s Building/Women’s Center housed or sponsored more than 100 projects and women’s groups. Documents highlight its extensive involvement with organizations that supported women from different countries, cultures, religions, races, and life circumstances. Other projects involved gay and lesbian rights; health care; legislation; reproductive rights; and even issues not explicitly connected with feminism and women’s rights, such as Central American intervention, AIDS, and affirmative action. The collection also details the many film, theater, poetry, music, and visual arts events hosted and sponsored by the organization. Materials include meeting minutes, financial records, correspondence, newsletters, records of center-related groups, and flyers about events and projects.

Boston and San Francisco were hubs of the feminism movement. This collection is an essential source for researchers examining feminism and other social movements in the United States during the period from 1972 to 1998.

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Herstory Collection

The Herstory Collection comprises full texts of journals, newspapers, and newsletters tracing the evolution of feminism and women’s rights movements in the United States and abroad from 1956 to 1974. Compiled by the Women’s History Library from materials donated by the organizations that published them, the collection includes documents from the National Organization for Women (NOW), Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Women Strike for Peace (WSP), and many other groups.

Among the longest-running periodicals in the collection is The Ladder, the journal of the Daughters of Bilitis, which was the first organization in the United States specifically dedicated to lesbian civil and political rights. Issues include those from October 1956 to August 1971—nearly a complete run. Also featured are the newsletters of many local and regional chapters of the National Organization for Women, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Portland, Oregon, and many larger and smaller cities in between. Several newsletters are devoted to efforts to legalize abortion. Among these are the newsletters of the Women’s Ad-Hoc Abortion Coalition, the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws, and the Indiana Abortion Coalition. These texts date from 1969 to 1971 and provide unique insight into the activism leading to the 1973 Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe v. Wade.

Researchers interested in the evolution of feminism and women’s rights in the late twentieth century will find this collection indispensable for its primary source materials on a wide range of topics, from equal pay and reproductive rights to the role of women in the peace movement.

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Sex was everywhere in the 1970s.

As a generation of women became liberated in their sexual identities, they wanted that liberation to extend beyond the bedroom.

The sex freak-out of the 1970s

Women’s equal rights advocates like Gloria Steinem, Susan Brownmiller and Kate Millett emerged and became the faces and voices for a generation.

Here are some of the key women and events that helped – or hindered – women’s liberation throughout the decade.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which states that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” was originally introduced to Congress in 1923 – three years after women gained the right to vote – but never reached the House or Senate floor.

The National Organization for Women, which was founded in 1966 and advocated for a “fully equal partnership of the sexes,” soon endorsed the ERA and made passing it into the U.S. Constitution a top priority. (The amendment had been unsuccessfully presented to every session of Congress between 1923 and 1970.)

However, the ERA was just one part of what the new, “second-wave” feminists wanted to accomplish, as TIME’s article “Who’s Come a Long Way, Baby?” from August 31, 1970, points out:

“They want equal pay for equal work, and a chance at jobs traditionally reserved for men only. They seek nationwide abortion reform – ideally, free abortions on demand. They desire round-the-clock, state-supported child-care centers in order to cut the apron strings that confine mothers to unpaid domestic servitude at home. The most radical feminists want far more. Their eschatological aim is to topple the patriarchal system in which men by birthright control all of society’s levers of power – in government, industry, education, science, the arts.”

In the same article, TIME spotlights Kate Millett, an author who was able to capture the feminist movement’s most radical ideology into a book that became a must-read for any supporter.

“Until this year, however, with the publication of a remarkable book called ‘Sexual Politics,’ the movement had no coherent theory to buttress its intuitive passions, no ideologue to provide chapter and verse for its assault on patriarchy. Kate Millett, 35, a sometime sculptor and longtime brilliant misfit in a man’s world, has filled the role through ‘Sexual Politics.’

” ‘Reading the book is like sitting with your testicles in a nutcracker,’ says George Stade, assistant professor of English at Columbia University. He should know; the book was Kate’s Ph.D. thesis, and he was one of her advisers.”

Gloria Steinem’s 1969 New York Magazine article “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation” also brought nationwide attention to the women’s movement. The following year, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and TIME published her essay on what a world with gender equality would look like.

In “What It Would Be Like If Women Win,” from August 31, 1970, Steinem writes:

“In Women’s Lib Utopia, there will be free access to good jobs – and decent pay for the bad ones women have been performing all along, including housework. Increased skilled labor might lead to a four-hour workday, and higher wages would encourage further mechanization of repetitive jobs now kept alive by cheap labor. … Schools and universities will help to break down traditional sex roles, even when parents will not. Half the teachers will be men, a rarity now at preschool and elementary levels; girls will not necessarily serve cookies or boys hoist up the flag.”

The women’s movement attracted women of all races, backgrounds and political beliefs because many of them felt that they were being treated like second-class citizens. Despite making up more than half the American population, women were not admitted to colleges at the same rate as men or allowed equal pay or job opportunities.

As the feminist wave swept across the country, the support for ERA picked up even more steam.

The amendment was passed by both houses of Congress and President Richard Nixon in 1972, and was sent off to be ratified into law by the states. At the end of 1973, the ERA only needed five more states to ratify it by March 1979 in order to get the three-fourths approval it required.

Mid-decade, the women’s liberation movement had inundated America. The changes were so rampant that TIME awarded its “Man of the Year” in 1975 to “American women.” Their article “Great Changes, New Chances, Tough Choices” from January 5, 1976, reads:

“They have arrived like a new immigrant wave in male America. They may be cops, judges, military officers, telephone linemen, cab drivers, pipefitters, editors, business executives – or mothers and housewives, but not quite the same subordinate creatures they were before. Across the broad range of American life, from suburban tract houses to state legislatures, from church pulpits to Army barracks, women’s lives are profoundly changing, and with them, the traditional relationships between the sexes. …1975 was not so much the Year of the Woman as the Year of the Women – an immense variety of women altering their lives, entering new fields, functioning with a new sense of identity, integrity and confidence.”

Then, feminism hit a roadblock: Her name was Phyllis Schlafly.

Schlafly, a staunch conservative, began speaking to the women who felt that the feminist movement was not for them – women who enjoyed their roles as mothers and housewives.

Schlafly, who was known to open her speeches by thanking her husband for letting her attend because “it irritates the women’s libbers,” rallied together the anti-ERA crowd. In Schlafly’s eyes, the ERA would strip away any protections that women had, like child support and exemption from the military draft. TIME notes this in their article “Great Changes, New Chances, Tough Choices” from January 5, 1976:

“The sweeping simplicity of the amendment – ‘Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex’ – made many voters, especially women, nervous. The anti-ERA lobby, led by Phyllis Schlafly – a conspicuously liberated woman who at 51 is working for a law degree – conjured up the prospect of unisex public toilets, an end to alimony, women forced into duty as combat soldiers.”

In January 1977, Indiana became the 35th state to ratify the ERA. The amendment was now only three states shy of becoming law, but the effort was losing momentum. Many feminists saw the National Women’s Conference in November 1977 as a chance to breathe new life into it. More than 14,000 women gathered to discuss the problems facing women and formulate a plan of action to deliver to President Carter.

As the “What Next for U.S. Women” TIME article from December 5, 1977, shows, the conference was a chance for many women on the fringe of the movement to finally become a part of it:

“Ida Castro, from New Jersey: ‘It was a total high to get together and discover so many people who agree on so many issues, and finding that I am not alone.’

“Sharon Talbot, a 19-year-old Smith College student, put it, ‘I didn’t have to be a radical to be a feminist. Before I went, I hadn’t really decided where I stood. Now I know that all those other women feel the same way I do, so if they call themselves feminists, or whatever, then that’s what I am too.’ “

Ultimately, more radical hot button issues like abortion and gay rights drove a wedge in the conference.

“During a conference vote favoring abortion, one woman cried, ‘I never thought they would come to this. It’s murder!’ Said another: ‘It will be old people next.’

“Dorris Holmes, a Georgia delegate, said ‘Lesbianism has been an albatross on the whole movement since the last century. It is an extra burden we do not need.’ “

The new women warriors: Reviving the fight for equal rights

While the National Women’s Conference was taking place, Phyllis Schlafly was leading a counter rally of “pro-family” supporters.

“The Equal Rights proponents,” she charged, “want to reconstruct us into a gender-free society, so there’s no difference between men and women. I don’t think babies need two sex-neutral parents. I think they need a father and a mother.”

Many women left feeling more empowered than ever before, but the momentum did not translate into more votes for the ERA. After Indiana, no other state voted for its ratification. TIME also noted that during the conference “American women had reached some kind of watershed in their own history, and in that of the nation.”

Steinem and other movement leaders expressed a similar sentiment.

“In terms of real power – economic and political – we are still just beginning. But the consciousness, the awareness – that will never be the same,” Steinem said.