The Women's Movement

1) Ongoing changes in the underlying patterns of mother-hood and paid work created novel conditions and new demands
2) A vanguard of feminist intellectuals articulated a powerful critique of gender relations, which stimulated many women to rethink their assumptions and challenge the status quo
3) Dissatisfied individuals recognized that they had to band together if they were to infludence politics and secure fundamental reforms

- Written by Simone de Beauvoir in 1949
- Philosopher
- Influential works
- Was a "dutiful daughter" of the bourgeoisie
- Influenced by her mother's submissive behavior, showed her the dangers of a life she did not want
- She analyzed the position of women within the framework of existential thought
- Women, like all human beings, were in essence free but almost always had been trapped by inflexible and limiting conditons
- Only by means of courage and self-assertive creativty become completely free and escape the role of inferior "other" that men had constructed for her gender could she become a Free Woman

- Beauvoir's massive investigation inspired a generation of women intellectuals, like Betty Friedan

- Played a key role in reopening a serious discusson of women's issues in the U.S.
- Became acutely aware of conflicting pressures of career and family
- Wrote the Feminine Mystique in 1963
- Identified this dissatisfaction as the "problem with no name" the cause was a crisis of identity
- Founded NOW (National Organization for Women) in 1966

- Founded by Friedan in 1966
- Grew from 700 members in 1967 to 40,000 in 1974

- Shared the common strategy of entering the political arena and changing laws regarding women:
1) advocates pushed for new statutes in the workplace: Laws against Discrimination, "equal pay for equal work"
2) It concentrated on gender and family questions incl. the right to divorce, legalized abortion, needs of single mothers and protection from rape and physical violence

- Legal changes less than revolutionary
- By 1988, divorce and abortion were common in Italy

- Won new rights for women
- Mobillized many other groups: Gay men and lesbian women, end to legal discrimination and harassment, people with physical disabiliities
- Many subordinate groups challenged the dominant majorities and the expansion and redefinition of human liberty, one of the great themes of modern Western and world history