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Gender Studies

Ruth Rosen (p. 3) begins her chronology of the ôwomenÆs movementö and its issues in The World Split Open: How the Modern WomenÆs Movement Changed America by citing feminist poet Anne Sexton. While making references to the ôfirst waveö of feminism (suffrage), RosenÆs (p. 27; 85) work focuses on the ôsecondö and ôthird wavesö of feminism from the 1950s to the present. In so doing, the author reveals a number of political and social forces, from the F.B.I. to the media, that impacted the womenÆs movement, as well as numerous issues and topics of the movementÆs focus and internal factions. Despite the struggles and challenges of activism collectively labeled the ôwomenÆs movement,ö Rosen reveals the transition of local movements oriented toward womenÆs liberation in the U.S. to the current global womenÆs human rights movement, a much more diverse, united and powerful phenomenon.

The ôfirst waveö of feminism originated the ôwomenÆs movementö in the United States. Suffrage, labor, housing and other issues began to galvanize women to develop a stronger voice and influence concerning issues and rights important to their gender. However, this movement would be followed by the ôsecond waveö of feminism in the 1950s, a time when Cold War containment and rigid notions of gender served to make women detached from political, social, and economic issues outside the home, (Rosen, p. 8). In many ways, women who forged this ôsecond waveö of feminism were of a similar mentality as those before they began the ôfirst waveö of feminism. For surely many women in 1950s America related to the words of Anne Sexton who wrote, ôUntil I was twenty-eightàI had a kind of buried self who didnÆt know she could do anything but make white sauce and diaper babies,ö (Rosen, p. 3).

The dawning of an era of collective discontent among women began to take shape during the 1950s and 1960s, or what Rosen (p. 85) refers to as the ...

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Gender Studies. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 19:17, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710377.html