Seminar Paper Draft

Her Amendment From Second-Class Discrimination to Second-Class Citizen / or From SecondClass Citizen to Second-Class Discrimination Two leading figures of the first Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, first met at an antislavery convention in London, England in 1840.1 They supported the abolitionists long before initiating women’s suffrage. This is true for many feminists and other supporters of the women’s rights movement. Initially, the two movements were compatible, since they were advocating the same goals. Both, African-Americans and women felt oppressed by those in power and demanded freedom, the right to vote, and eventually complete political equality. Black people and women had morally and legally been treated as property and were just beginning to cast of those shackles, but the road to equality, that was ahead of them, was long, winding, and full of obstacles. In fact, the Seneca Falls meeting resulted in the declaration of a number of resolutions demanding equal political rights for women.2 However, it likely would have turned out differently if it had not been for Frederick Douglass who supported Stanton and helped her convince the audience of their merits with “masterful arguments and matchless eloquence.”3 The demands were extremely radical for that time and even Lucretia Mott apparently was not convinced that it was the right time to go forward with them: “Lizzie, thee will make us all ridiculous.”4 We need not speculate whether this was the right time for women to identify these issues and set forth demands, but it is clear that the groundwork had been set even though the 1

Monroe, Judy. The Nineteenth Amendment: Women’s Right to Vote…, p.9 Id at 7. These resolutions outlined the main issues and goals for the emerging women’s movement. For the full text of this Declaration of Sentiments, see http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/senecafalls.html. 3 Mary Church Terrell. Frederick Douglass. in the book American Protest Literature. Ed. Zoe Trodd, p.171. 4 Id. 2

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movement had to take the back seat to the abolitionist movement, the Great Depression, World War II, and it was not until 1919 that the first major milestone, the Nineteenth Amendment had been reached. We have long recognized that there were many factors that contributed to the evolution of civil rights, the women’s movement, and other legal developments. In his acclaimed book “The Hollow Hope: Can courts influence social change?,”5 Rosenberg asserts and in my opinion successfully demonstrates that courts are not the primary instigators of social change, but that they rather react to what is already happening in the public sphere.6 The book argues in favor of the Constrained Court view,7 asserting the lack of power over either the “sword or the purse8.”9 Specifically, courts cannot effectively change society because 1) they are limited by the Constitution, 2) they lack judicial independence, and 3) they are incapable of developing appropriate policies and lack powers of implementation.10 They are further constrained by precedents and the beliefs of the dominant legal culture, so that judges are not likely to act as crusaders.11 First, this paper will briefly identify the different factors that contributed to each movement as analyzed by Gerald Rosenberg.12 Rosenberg was very thorough with his analysis and paints a good picture of what contributed to these movements. This paper, 5

Cite Rosenberg For more information on how the public rises up and changes the national agenda see Ackerman: We the People? 7 The Constrained Court view is the opposite from the Dynamic Court view which sees courts as effective producers of significant social reform. Id at 4 8 This expression comes from….(Referring to the fact that the Supreme Court can neither tax citizens nor does it have any enforcement powers and they are thus utterly dependent on the legislative and executive branches, which are constitutional and elected by those they represent.) 9 Id. 10 Id. at 10. 11 Id. at 12. 12 Id. 6

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however, will go one step further and look at those contributors more closely. Specifically, it will analyze the ways that the civil rights movement influenced the women’s rights movement and acted as a catalyst for them. Here, the paper asserts that there were several factors that contributed to it and that without them the women’s rights movement would not have happened the way it did. It is outside of the scope of this paper to answer the question of whether the woman’s rights movement would have been more or less successful had it been independent of the civil rights movement from the beginning.13 Rather, this paper asserts that these two movements had to separate in order to achieve their objectives.14 Initially, they were complimentary because they were asking for much of the same. But eventually, women and racial minorities were asking for different things and thus their paths, which were to cross again, separated. This paper has three parts. In the first part, I summarize the origins of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement as laid out in Rosenberg’s “The Hollow Hope.” The second part goes on to propose several ways in which the civil rights movement influenced the women’s movement and acted as a catalyst for it. Finally, in the third part the paper analyzes why the two groups had to go their separate ways as it proposes several instances where women have to be treated differently in order to achieve equality under the law (and in society –for legal recognition has to come before societal recognition, as evidenced by over 150 years of history?). Part I: What Led to the Civil Rights and Women’s Movement? 13

The influence worked both ways. It is not just the women’s movement/suffrage that was influenced by the civil rights movement but it also works vice-versa. However, this paper is only concerned with the ways in which the effects that the civil rights movement had on the women’s movement. 14 The paper only look at the women’s movement and how it was influenced by the civil rights movement and what the status of women today is.

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1) The Civil Rights While attempting to show that the courts were not the primary factor in the success of the civil rights movement, Rosenberg identifies economic, political,15 international, and societal changes that contributed to the success of the movement. I agree with Rosenberg that the civil rights movement happened from the bottom-up for the most part (as did the woman’s movement). Alternatively, many see the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education16 as a turning point in the fight for desegregation and thus equality under the law. Rosenberg, however, looks at empirical data to prove that this decision did not really contribute to the desegregation of public schools as many assume and as the Justices intended.17 Rosenberg looks at other factors that contributed to the change. First, after the Second World War “the military demands and labor shortages created by the war had opened new opportunities for blacks”18 in that the high demand for labor led to desegregation of workplaces because companies were under pressure to perform.19 This continued into at least the 1950s and 1960s due to rapid economic growth that made it in the self-interest of many white employers not to discriminate against blacks20 because they constituted a valuable labor force. This situation improved the financial condition of blacks because their wages increased and more blacks worked in white-collar jobs.21 15

In his chapter The Tides of Hisotory, Rosenberg specifically focuses on electoral changes that contributed to the success of the civil rights movement, the height of which was the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. 16 17

Id. at 4 Id. at 157 (quoted from Blaustein and Zangrando 1968, 355) 19 Id. (quoted from Willhelm 1981, 850) 20 Id. 21 Id. at 158. In 1939, the median wage and salary income of non-white primary families and individuals was 37 percent of what their white counterparts earned but by 1952 that ration had increased to 57 percent. Further in 1940 only 10 percent of the non-white work force was employed in professional, managerial, clerical, sales, or craft professions. But by 1960 this proportion more than doubled, reaching 22.2 percent. (for more detailed statistics see Burgess 1969, 266-67) 18

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Further economic effects of segregation were that it gave communities a bad reputation and made it unlikely that new businesses would move in22 and “prevented white business owners from collecting black dollars,” the amount of which appeared to have been about 30 billion dollars by 1964!23 A major consequence of the economic changes was the population shift, since “a population that was both rural and Southern had become urban and, to a large extent, Northern.”24 Blacks moved north into urban areas in order to take advantage of available jobs25 but also to escape discrimination and ill-treatment in the South. The migration from the rural South to urban areas also improved the economic position of blacks by increasing the pressure for civil rights. First, this economic change allowed for the strengthening of black organizations26 and second southern black churches expended greatly and eventually became a crucial institution in the civil rights movement.27 And finally the enrollment in black colleges and the NAACP increased greatly.28 Another major influence are the electoral changes. Through migration, blacks formed powerful electoral districts, so that politicians no longer could ignore the “black vote.”29 And finally the international demands of the time deserve a mention. The Second World War cast the United States into the international spotlight. Specifically, it was the Cold War that was “an important concern for government officials in assessing civil rights.”30 The United States did not appear in a positive light if it portrayed itself as the 22

Id. Id. 24 Id. at 159 25 Id. 26 Id. This was possible because rural Southern blacks lacked time, money, education, and communication networks to organize for civil rights; they feared for their lives as lynchings were common; new 27 Id. (quoted from McAdam 1982) 28 Id. 29 Id. at 160. 30 Id. at 164. 23

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defender of freedom and political leaders and commentators argued that “segregation hampered foreign relations and provided ammunition for Communist propaganda.”31 In sum, it was a combination of several factors, like growing civil rights pressure form the 1930s, economic changes, the Cold War, population shifts, electoral concern, and the increase in mass communication that created the pressure that led to the advancement of civil rights.32 2) The Women’s Movement: There doesn’t seem to be as much scholarship on the origins of the women’s rights movement as there is for the civil rights movement. These two groups have crossed paths repeatedly. First, women’s suffrage corresponded to the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement, which was about gender as much as it was about race. However, I argue that women did not benefit from the Civil Rights Act as much as racial minorities did. Most of the points in the Act do not apply to what women were asking for. Rather, it specifically addresses problems that African-Americans were dealing with, like desegregation, the right to use hotels, restaurants, theatres, etc. Title VII does apply to women, but there is evidence that sex was included as a classification in an effort to stop the passing of the bill. Therefore, while a definite success for women (even though it would take a long time for the Act to be actually enforced), the Act was a success for African-Americans and other minority races who had suffered under the segregation principle. This illustrates that not only were women and civil rights advocates concerned with different outcomes, the discrimination that women and racial minorities (especially blacks) experienced was different.

31 32

Id. at 162. Id. at 167.

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Even though there were many similarities, women’s struggle was separate and distinct. The civil rights movement acted as a catalyst for the struggle of women but as I said earlier, these two groups had to go their separate ways. Just as the civil rights movement, the women’s movement had a strong economic background. Here too, the Court was just “falling in line with the changes happening around it.”33 Rosenberg offers some factors other than the court that contributed to its evolution: massive economic and technological changes that brought women out of the home, the formation of women’s groups, and the growth of communication.34 Women started entering the workforce in huge numbers during World War II.35 This not only gave women the opportunity to earn an income and get outside of the house, but it also challenged the existing beliefs about appropriate gender roles.36 The change was astonishing. While in 1940, just before the war, only about one quarter of American women had jobs outside of their home,37 this number increased 57 percent by the end of the war.38 Before the war most women who worked outside their homes were either foreign-born whites or blacks, which indicated poverty.39 The government was anxious to encourage women to go to work, so they took steps to fight discrimination.40 For example in 1942, the government for the first time endorsed the idea of equal pay for equal work.41 Even though a lot of women left their jobs after the war (some voluntarily, some were fired), the myths surrounding the role of women had been broken.42 Further 33

Id. at 247. Id. 35 Id. 36 Id. 37 Out of those, only 15.2 percent were married women. 38 Id. at 248. 39 Id. 40 Id. 41 Id. However the motivation for this is unclear as the government may have just wanted to ensure that women would be fired once the men returned and not pose a lower-paid competition. 42 Id. at 249. 34

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rising inflation and consumer demand made it more and more necessary for women to work outside the home, because families could not live off of one income alone.43 Suddenly women’s time was worth money.44 (Discuss Equal Pay Act of 1963 here?) Economic need helped racial minorities and women alike but for women this shift was temporary. Another cause for women receiving more rights is decreasing fertility. Traditionally, women have been the ones staying home, raising the children, and taking care of the family. However, as women were having fewer children, they had more time to work outside the home and/or be active in the women’s suffrage and feminist movement. In 1900, white women had on average just under four births over the course of their fertile years; however by 1970 hat number had dropped to about two!45 This is due to improved methods of contraception, decreasing economic benefits derived from large families, and increasing job opportunities.46 As this paper will illustrate later, the women’s role in the bearing and rearing of children plays a major role in subjugating women. Further, more and more women were graduating from high school and completing undergraduate and graduate level degrees.47 As mentioned earlier, the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was also important for the women’s movement even though it did not lead to the desired results right away. After the bill was passed, there is evidence of bad, sexist attitudes, as a lot of politicians did not take it seriously.48 For racial minorities, the Civil Rights Act was what 43

Id. Id. 45 Id. at 250 46 Id. 47 Id. at 251. 48 Id. See for example the attitude and behavior of the Equal Rights Opportunity Commission, which was an enforcement mechanism for Title VII which was created by the Act. Its leaders dismissed the sex amendment as a “fluke” refused to enforce it when women complained about discrimination at work. Id. at 44

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they had been fighting for, for many years and society seemed ready to accept it, even though it they faced significant obstacles as well. But discrimination against racial minorities already required strict scrutiny for judicial review and there have been many successes for blacks49 prior to its passing. However, this victory was bittersweet for women. The inclusion of sex as a protected class in the act was apparently the result in large part from “the failure of a tactical move by opponents of the bill.”50 Specifically, it was introduced by its opponents because they believed that the act would not pass if sex was included.51 The passage of the act first elated but then angered many politically active women, which led to the formation of the National Organization of Women (NOW) led by Betty Friedan, which was the first of a large number of women’s rights groups that was formed around that time.52 The struggle to legalize abortion was another part of the women’s movement. Here, too it was not the court that brought on the change. Rather, there was an increasing number of activists that started to push for a total repeal of abortion laws and by the time Roe v. Wade53 was decided, public opinion had dramatically shifted to substantial (if not majority) support.54 Finally, better ways to communicate as well as increased and positive press coverage also contributed to the success of the women’s movement. Communication is important because it is a moral booster to know that there are others who feel the same way and the ability to spread information more quickly and efficiently helped to reach 252. 49 See for example: Brown, Atlanta Motel, etc. 50 Id. 51 Id. Also, this same strategy had been successfully applied by the opponents of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. 52 Id. at 253. 53 Roe v. Wade …. 54 Id. at 263.

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more people and spread the message.55 Press coverage for the women’s movement was scarce and negative at the beginning of the movement. The press either ignored the women’s rights activities or treated them with a “mixture of humor, ridicule, and disbelief.”56 But starting around 1969 the coverage began to change in tone and a strike in August of 1970 was the “first time the press gave a feminist demonstration purely straight coverage.”57 As the press coverage took off in the 1970s, women across the country were able to see that they were not the only ones who felt the way they did and that women were organizing and actively working to change their conditions. II. How the Civil Rights Movement Influenced the Women’s Movement This paper will look at four ways in which the civil rights movement contributed to the women’s movement. These are: 1) the general “spirit of change,” that is women realizing the situation they were in and that their situation is not hopeless by observing (and often participating) in the civil rights movement; 2) the Civil Rights Act of 1964; 3) ‘jump start’ in organizing the groups and movement; and 4) heightened scrutiny when courts review discriminatory legislation. 1) “Spirit” of Change Women had been involved with abolition since its early days and their “movement evolved in the wake of antislavery activism!”58 Many abolitionists like Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Parker, and Frederick Douglass were active in the early women’s rights movement.59 Zoe Trodd remarks that “aspects of modern feminism grew 55

Id. at 264. Id. (quoted from Freeman, 1975, 111) 57 Id. at 265. (quoted from Freeman 1975, 84) 58 American Protest Literature. Ed. by Zoe Trodd (introduction to Wendell Phillips’ “Shall Women Have the Right to Vote?”), p.133 59 Id. Theodore Parker imagined how America might look if women were in charge: “I doubt that we should have spread slavery into nine new states…the Fugitive Slave Bill would never have been an Act.” Id. 56

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out of the civil rights movement a century later.”60 In fact, the first Woman’s Rights Convention was first announced at an antislavery meeting and antislavery women were leaders in women’s rights.61 Observing the fight for civil rights gave women insights and a theory for social change, as well as an example of this theory in practice.62 This meant that they did not have to start “from scratch” but were able to follow into the footsteps of the abolitionists and civil right movement, as they saw what worked and what did not work for AfricanAmericans and their struggle for equal rights. Just as Virginia Wolf asserted that women had no literary tradition to rely on and had to borrow from male writers, the activists in the women’s movement “borrowed” from the successes of the civil rights activities. The early feminist Abbie Kelley observed: “We have good cause to be grateful to the slave…In striving to strike his irons off, we found most surely that we were manacled ourselves.”63 Before women were able to attempt to change their political and social situation, they had to first recognize that they deserved more rights and the abolitionist/civil rights movement gave them the necessary insight. For example, in 1848, J. Elizabeth Jones declared: “Slaves we are, politically and legally” and in 1850 Stanton said that married women had “not more absolute rights than a slave.”64 These attitudes show us that women of that time, who ultimately became the leaders of the women’s rights movement absolutely sympathized with the slaves and saw their situation reflected in that of the slaves. Thus the early abolitionists were able to “wake up” the early women’s rights leaders from complacency. 60

Id. Id. for example black women like Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells. 62 Id. 63 Id. 64 Id. 61

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2) Civil Rights Act of 1964 [discussion on how the act helped the women’s rights movement] 3) Inheritance of Organizational Techniques When women first started to ask for universal suffrage and other rights they had been denied, they did not have a strong foundation to start with. So, they looked at the abolitionist and later the Civil Rights movement as an example of how to organize a massive effort at reform like the one they were facing. One of their (very effective) organizing techniques was “consciousness-raising.”65 This term was coined by Kathie Sarachild, a former civil rights worker in Mississippi. The inspiration for this organizational tool came specifically from the civil rights movement and Sarachild commented: “We were applying to women and to ourselves as women’s liberation organizers the practice a number of us had learned in the civil rights movement in the South in the early 1960s.”66 [more on organizational influence?] 4) Heightened Scrutiny / Gender as a protected class Unlike race, gender is not afforded the highest possible scrutiny when courts review discriminatory laws. Discrimination that is based on sex can apparently be easier explained / justified than discrimination on the basis of race. Courts have long recognized that discriminating on the basis of race can really only be based on racism and therefore it is almost impossible to claim that the law being reviewed serves a compelling governmental interest. This stringent standard is highly deferential to the person

65 66

Id. at 255 Id. (quoted from Echols 1989, 83)

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challenging a law and only in a very few cases that have applied this standard was the challenged law decided to be constitutional. Women, on the other hand, are fundamentally different than men. Laws that discriminate on the basis of gender only need to pass intermediate scrutiny. Intermediate scrutiny is still a form of heightened scrutiny, but it is much less stringent that strict scrutiny. Even though the Supreme Court came close in declaring sex to be a suspect classification in Frontiero,67 most justices have been reluctant to apply the highest standard of strict scrutiny to women, because women are biologically different than men and in some instances it is justified to treat them differently under the law. After the initial women’s suffrage movement and after women had achieved important economic rights such as the right of contract and property rights, a lot of the laws that the courts were reviewing were actually beneficial to women68. However, even though some justices act under the impression of helping women, they have done women a disservice. By treating discrimination based on sex as second-class discrimination, women have been kept in the place of second-class citizens. Yes, there are differences between the sexes that need to be taken into account (unlike between races), but that should not preclude women from getting the full protection of the Constitution. The following section will go into more detail about this claim. III. How and Why Women Went Down a New Path As we have seen, women were initially inspired by abolitionists and later by the civil rights movement to fight for their own rights, but why is it that they had to go their own way and pursue their own goals. Frederick Douglass, who at first was a champion

67 68

cite Frontiero See for example….(here cite some of those cases)

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for women’s suffrage, split from the women’s rights activists over the question of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment, which excluded women.69 Elizabeth Cady Stanton commented on the Fourteenth Amendment: “If that word ‘male’ be inserted…it will take us a century at least to get it out.”70 Further, the exclusion of women from the Fifteenth Amendment acted as a sort of official recognition that the universal suffrage movement had failed and in 1869 the Equal Rights Association became the National Woman Suffrage Association.71 This exclusion of women from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments marked the split between women’s suffrage and black suffrage. African-Americans had for now achieved what they had been asking for: freedom and the right to vote, but women had to continue to fight for this right. The right to vote has long been considered a fundamental right and it seems that this right was a prerequisite to anything else that minority groups might want. [discuss political power(lessnes) here that court regards as necessary to grant heightened scrutiny] Therefore, blacks were able to go further with their demands, as the Fifteenth Amendment granted black men the right to vote. Women, of any color, however, still had to fight for this right before they could/would attempt anything else. And as we know today, Stanton was right. Stanton would not live to see her life’s work fulfilled when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed to give women the right to vote thus ending women’s suffrage in 1919. After “splitting” from the abolitionists, suffragists sought alliances with labor activists, thus shifting from comparisons with slaves to comparisons with degraded 69

Id. at 170. Frederick Douglass would rejoin the movement in 1870 though. Id. at 133. 71 Id. 70

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workers.72 It seemed that women (or society) were not ready to be completely on their own and sought to be part of a bigger struggle that included not only women, but also the dominant sex, men.? It seems that many were only willing to listen, when it was men who were disadvantaged by sex discrimination.73 Then finally in the 1960s, Crystal Eastman, cofounder of the ACLU remarked that: “The woman’s battle [is] distinct in its objects and different in its methods from the workers battle for industrial freedom.”74 This split, first from the abolitionist and then the labor movement, was necessary because only then were women truly able to advocate for those rights unique to them and without which, I argue, there cannot be true equality75 between the sexes. The Nineteenth Amendment was not the end, but rather the beginning for a lot of women. Now that women had the right to vote, they could strive for further political, social, economical equality. In 1920, in her essay “Now We Can Begin,” Crystal Eastman, an early feminist, who confounded the ACLU, wrote: “Most women will agree that August 23, the day when the Tennessee legislature finally enacted the Federal suffrage amendment, is a day to begin with, not a day to end with. Men are saying perhaps ‘Thank God, this everlasting woman’s fight is over!’ But women, if I know them, are saying, ‘Now at last we can begin.’”76 However, the fight for women’s rights had to be put on hold because there were other more pressing issues that the nation had to deal with, so that women’s rights lost their place on the nation’s agenda. Eastman expended the feminist agenda beyond 72

Id. at 175. Wiesenfeld,at all. 74 Id. at 187. 75 define “true equality” –equal treatment/protection under the law, the achievement of which (I argue) sometimes requires more than simply being treated equally (maybe talk about Casey) 76 Id. at 188. 73

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suffrage. She wanted to “arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of activity – housework and childraising.”77 Eastman was decades ahead of her time and she recognized which hurdles women would have to overcome, a lot of which feminists still fight for today. She argued that this second part of the revolution will be more passionately resisted that the first because “men will not give up their privilege of helplessness without a struggle.”78 She argued that the next step was not to change any laws or revolutionary decrees, but rather that the next step was to change the nature of man, so that “he will honorably share [household] work and responsibility and thus make the homemaking enterprise a song instead of a burden.”79 Eastman saw this as a problem of education, arguing that in order to overcome this problem, women would have to bring up feminist sons.80 Here we see that Eastman recognized that this agenda could not likely be resolved in her lifetime. It would take a new generation of men to change their perspectives on the gender roles and Eastman saw it as the duty of the woman to teach their sons these virtues. However, since the women’s movement did not have major successes until a series of cases in the early 1970s, like Reed v. Reed, Frontiero, Roe v. Wade. A lot of issues that were on the feminist agenda post-1919, did not appear again until after Wade. Eastman further asserts that women cannot be free to choose their occupation and cherish their economic independence unless they stop having children.81 Here, she says that birth 77

Id. at 188. Id. 79 Id. at 190. 80 Id. 81 Id. 78

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control is just as important to feminist agenda as is equal pay as she argues for voluntary motherhood. This means that women should only have babies if they chose to do so, and if they do chose to have children they should be compensated for their time at home as they provide a valuable “service to society.”82 It can be hard to remember that Eastman wrote this in the 1920s! A lot of feminists today are fighting for similar things. Their agenda includes pregnancy leave, government-subsidized daycare, etc., which are all things that would help elevate women to a more equal status with men. It seems that here economics and children play a big part. First, as Eastman recognized over eighty years ago, women are bound to the home, as long as they have children, a bind that keeps women economically dependent on men. Programs like pregnancy leave and affordable quality childcare would allow women to care for their children, while remaining economically independent from their partners. This does mean though that equality between the genders requires more than equal treatment. It sometimes requires different treatment in order to create at least an equal starting point for men and women. At the conclusion of arguing the Frontiero case in front of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (then a volunteer lawyer for the ACLU) quoted the nineteenthcentury abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Sarah Grimke: “I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”83 I, however believe that true equality for women requires more than simple equal treatment. Rather, the goal should be to put men and women on equal footing. The place that women occupy in society has improved greatly since that meeting at Senaca Falls

82 83

Id. Sterbeigh, Fred. Equal: Women Reshape American Law. W.W. Norton & Co. 2009. p.55

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over 160 years ago. But women are still subjugated in many areas of life. For example, women are the primary caregivers for children, even when there are two parents in a family (that is a father and a mother). Traditionally they are the ones who leave work to care for their children, be it because women are the ones who nurse the infants, be it because women develop a stronger attachment to the baby, or be it because women earn less money than the father and therefore it makes economic sense to the family to have the mother stay home and the father continue to work. So, the women are the ones who go without work for weeks, months, and sometimes years and thus their careers might suffer and they become financially dependent on their husbands. However, if we had the “true equality” that this paper is referring to, women would have options when it comes to raising their children, whether they decide to stay home and care full-time for their children or whether they decide to return to work, in which case government-subsidized daycare (especially for single parents) would ensure that a single parent (which predominantly is the mother) can provide for herself and her children who would be safe and taken care of. [include more here] For example, the government in Austria allows for some six to twenty-four months maternity/paternity leave. Here the couple gets to chose to either take longer time off of work and get less compensation or they may take only six month off and get the full compensation they are entitled to, depending on their salaries. But even more remarkable is the fact that the mother and the father may chose to split this time between them.84 For example the mother might stay home for the first 18 months and then return to work, at which point the father is eligible to take the remaining six months off. Further, the government there subsidizes daycare for low-income families, who, if they qualify do 84

cite Austria fact…

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not pay anything for the daycare. A system like the one in Austria gives couples (and thus women) more choices how they want to raise their children and plan their careers. Ultimately, women are less, if at all dependent on their partners because they get the necessary support to raise their children the way they chose and still continue in their perspective careers. I am not advocating for some sort of socialist reform here. Rather, I am illustrating how traditional gender roles lead to women’s dependency and subjugation in society. This often means that women (also men, but majority is women) are caught in a vicious circle, for they might be forced to chose between their children and their careers, a choice which men rarely have to make. As I mentioned before, the women’s movement came to a halt after the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. Not much happened between then and the civil rights movement, even though there were women who continued to lobby. [here talk about ERA] The suffragist movement was in some ways very different than the Second Wave Feminism. For example one suffrage poster stated: “Women are by nature and training housekeepers. Let them help in the city housekeeping.”85 This shows a respect for domesticity and the role of women and it was counter to any idea that suffrage was incompatible with traditional roles. The society (men as well as women) were not ready to change the traditional roles that the sexes were in and therefore suffrage activists had to work within that parameter and not go against it, as would be the case half a century later. After WWII, many women returned home, leaving their jobs to once again become mothers, devoted wives, homemakers. Some did this voluntary, while others 85

Id. at 175.

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were forced to leave their jobs.86 Public opinion once again turned against female employment and “by the 1050s, the cult of the happy housewife and ‘momism’ was firmly entrenched.”87 The 1950s and to a degree 1960s are synonymous with the “happy nuclear (suburban) family”88, where the father goes to work and the mother takes care of the family. However, many of those “perfect” wives and mothers were unhappy and could not explain why. Before writing The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan interviewed many women and saw the same problem wherever she went.89 This problem came to be known as “the problem that has no name.”90 Women reported feeling “empty somehow… incomplete” or said they felt like “[they] don’t exist.”91 Masses of women were tired even though they slept more than an adult needed and the actual energy they expended on housework did not tax their capacity.92 Soon people realized that the problem lay with something else. Was it boredom? Doctors prescribed “a day off” and even tranquillizers.93 Eastman, however, was able to diagnose the problem that has no name: “But the chains that bind her in her trap are the chains in her own mind and spirit. They are chains made up of mistaken ideas and misinterpreted facts, of incomplete truths and unreal choices. They are not easily seen and not easily shaken off.”94 Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was not just the diagnosis but to a degree also the cure for the problem that has no name. The book focused on middle-class women and

86

Id. at 249. Id. 88 explain more about nuclear family and the “ideal” family of that era 89 Id. at 395. 90 Id. 91 Id. A Cleveland doctor called this “the housewife’s syndrome.” Id. 92 Id. 93 Id. 94 Id. at 396. 87

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life in the suburbs, as well as unhealthy forms of masculinity and social and psychological roots of women’s oppression.95 Friedan felt that women needed something new to affirm before rejecting the old. She looked to the civil rights movement and wanted women to have their own political movement.96 So, once again we see that the civil rights movement acted as an inspiration but not a solution for women. Friedan writes that women had left the path of the “old-fashioned” feminists, in that they were taught “to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights – the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for.”97 The Feminine Mystique changed women’s lives and women described their conversion experiences as the “click” of sudden recognition.98 Excerpts of it even appeared in “Good Housekeeping” and “Ladies Home Journal,” which Friedan saw as two magazines that perpetuated the “feminine mystique.”99 Friedan’s book was eye-opening and inspired women to change their existence and join the feminist movement. With this work, the foundation for a second wave of feminism was set.100 [discussion of MacKinnon’s article? + conclusion]

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Id. at 394 Id. 97 Id. at 395. This was evident because fewer women worked in the 1950s than had worked in the 1940s and the average marriage age of women had dropped so low, that 14 million girls were engaged by the age of 17. Also the proportion of women attending college in comparison to men dropped from 47 percent in 1920 to 35 percent in 1958 and evidenced showed that many girls went to college in order to find a husband and by the mid-1950s, 60 percent dropped out to marry because they were afraid that too much education would be a bar to marriage! Id. 98 Id. at 394. 99 Id. 100 briefly explain three waves of feminist movements (suffrage, 70s, and modern movement) 96

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