Historically, women have been relegated to a limited role in society. In our maledominated culture, a considerable number of people view the natural role of women to be that ofmothers and wives. Thus, for many, women are assumed to be more suited for childbearing andhomemaking than for involvement in public life. Despite these widespread and governing beliefs,women, frustrated and tired of their inferiority and subordination, began seeking personal andpolitical equality, including equal pay, reproductive choice, and freedom from conventionalsocietal restraints. Massive opposition to a demand for women’s equality with men prompted theorganization of women to fight collectively for their rights. The birthplace of American feminismwas Seneca Falls, New York. Here in 1948, at a landmark convention, the first wave of women’srights activists gathered. Their primary goal was to obtain voting rights for women (Moore 1992,21). In the mid 1960’s, the seeds of oppression (which spread from earlier civil movements) werescattered and sown among other dissatisfied women. These seeds began to take root, and growdramatically, initially within the context of the growth of more general and widespread leftradicalism in Western societies. As a result, beginning about 1965, the second wave of women’srights activists began to emerge with an autonomous agenda for female liberation. Themovement’s objective was to secure equal economic, political, and social rights for women. The women’s liberation movement was composed of an association of women workingtogether in a common cause. Young radical women who had been active in the Civil RightsMovement gathered in small groups and began to focus on organizing in order to changeattitudes, social constructs, the perception of society toward women, and, generally, to raise theconsciousness of their sisters. The women adopted the phase “Sisterhood is Powerful,̶...
