began in the 1960’s. By this time, a very broad and diverse movement had developed a mass following. The National Organization of Women (NOW) was established in 1966. Within a few months, many other women’s organizations were established. NOW represented an older, more conservative movement; but many younger radical women’s liberation groups were emerging with no national organization. Young women were often involved with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In the early 1970’s, the conservative feminists and more radical feminists began to work toward common goals. Ms. Magazine was first published in 1972. The second wave feminist movement wanted a complete restructuring of American society which included the restructuring of family, individuals free to determine their own life style, sexual preference, occupation, and personal values. They were concerned with the availabilityof abortion, and called for 24-hour childcare, and equal education and employment opportunity. In the 1980’s, the feminist movement had many of the same concerns. Women had lobbied legislatures, initiated lawsuits, marched in demonstrations, and boycotted major corporations to secure their rights. The women’s movement was still calling for equal pay, education and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand, 24-hour nurseries under community control, legal and financial independence, an end to the discrimination against lesbians, freedom from the intervention by threat of violence of sexual coercion, regardless of marital status, and end to the laws, assumptions, and institutions that perpetrate male dominance and men’s oppression of women. Though the feminist movement had supporters from most of the political spectrum, many were associated with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Present feminists would agree they are still concerned with the issues they were in the eighties,...
