Sisterhood Essays - Second-wave Feminism, Third-wave Feminism

Sisterhood Historically, women have been relegated to a limited role in society. In our male dominated culture, a considerable number of people view the natural role of women to be that of mothers and wives. Thus, for many, women are assumed to be more suited for childbearing and homemaking than for involvement in public life. Despite these widespread and governing beliefs, women, frustrated and tired of their inferiority and subordination, began seeking personal and political equality, including equal pay, reproductive choice, and freedom from conventional societal restraints. Massive opposition to a demand for womens equality with men prompted the organization of women to fight collectively for their rights. The birthplace of American feminism was Seneca Falls, New York. Here in 1948, at a landmark convention, the first wave of womens rights activists gathered. Their primary goal was to obtain voting rights for women (Moore 1992, 21). In the mid 1960s, the seeds of oppression (which spread from earlier civil movements) were scattered and sown among other dissatisfied women. These seeds began to take root, and grow dramatically, initially within the context of the growth of more general and widespread left radicalism in Western societies. As a result, beginning about 1965, the second wave of womens rights activists began to emerge with an autonomous agenda for female liberation. The movements objective was to secure equal economic, political, and social rights for women. The womens liberation movement was composed of an association of women working together in a common cause. Young radical women who had been active in the Civil Rights Movement gathered in small groups and began to focus on organizing in order to change attitudes, social constructs, the perception of society toward women, and, generally, to raise the consciousness of their sisters. The women adopted the phase Sisterhood is Powerful, in an effort to express succinctly the aim of the movement. This slogan was also an attempt to unify women by asserting a shared connection and circumstance, and thereby to build fundamental and lasting cohesion. Sisterhood is powerful was embraced by the women in order to convey a common identity of sisterhood, one firmly grounded in family-based concepts of interdependence. Biological sisterhood is an easily understood relationship within the nuclear family. According to social identity theory, one way to define an in-group is to define an out-group (Hinkle and Brown 1990, 48). The liberation movement attempted to define females as the in-group and males as the out-group, with the two groups distinctively and sharply separated. The rallying cry Sisterhood is Powerful was primarily designed to solidify the identity of the in-group. However, in reality, it is easier to define racial groups than it is to define gender groups as separate divisions, since black people and white people are generally geographically and socially separated from each other, white men and women are not. In order to incorporate women successfully into the movement, it was essential to broaden and expand the meaning of sisterhood to that of a common bond between women. Consolidated by sisterhood, by a common connection of gender, heterogeneous women were expected to develop an allegiance and common purpose. Although the women working within the movement were mostly white and middle class (Tax, 319), the slogan Sisterhood is Powerful was directed at all women - married and single, young, middle aged, and old, mothers and daughters, of every race and religion, rich, poor, employed, unemployed, women on welfare, and those with different cultures and sexual orientations (DuPlessis and Snitow, 15). The objective of the slogan was to foster a common identity for the multifaceted group of women who were committed to (or might be committed to) womens liberation. Empowerment for women was considered both possible and attainable only within the context of this type of common identity. Therefore, by organizing collectively these women would acquire capacity to become a force with which to be reckoned. Equally important, as a cohesive group, the women would be difficult to divide and suppress. According to the ideology of womens liberation, the solidarity of those joined in sisterhood guaranteed not only the ability, but also the means required to obtain their goal of equal economic, political, and social rights for women. In the United States, where a patriarchal society dominates, an isolated woman lacks personal and political power and carries little, if any, influence. Indeed, the majority of females in the womens liberation movement clearly understood from earlier experiences that the solitary voice of a woman would be treated by men