Second-Wave Feminism

Second-wave feminism was a movement that began in the 1960s and developed in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. The term "wave" is used to distinguish periods of women's activism: the first wave focused on legal rights and voting rights, while the second wave broadened the agenda to include family life, work, sexuality, and culture.

Where the earlier movement had sought voting rights and property ownership, the second wave argued that legal equality alone was insufficient. It proposed that gender-based discrimination was embedded in society's broader structure—education, media, work, and domestic relationships. The slogan "the personal is political" captured this understanding.

Origins and period

Its emergence followed the postwar conditions after the Second World War, when many women who had taken paid work during the war were pushed back into domestic roles. Betty Friedan's book "The Feminine Mystique" (1963) is widely credited with catalyzing American debate. In France, Simone de Beauvoir's "Le Deuxième Sexe" (1949) provided intellectual foundations.

Major issues

These included wage discrimination and equal employment opportunity, women's rights to reproductive healthcare and family planning, divorce and marriage law, domestic violence and rape, and how media portrayed women. The period also saw the creation of advocacy organizations and small consciousness-raising groups where women shared their experiences.

Divisions among participants

The movement was not monolithic. There was a liberal wing seeking legal and political change within existing institutions, a radical wing arguing for fundamental social restructuring, and socialist tendencies linking women's oppression to class exploitation. There was also prolonged disagreement over the term "women"—many activists from communities of color and the Global South argued that the movement largely represented the experiences of white middle-class women.

Legacy

Many legal changes in work, education, and family law across different countries in the 1960s through 1980s are commonly attributed to debates of this period. By the 1990s, internal criticism of the movement's homogeneity and theorization of intersectionality contributed to what became known as third-wave feminism.