Second Wave Feminsim

In our lecture this week, we were informed that consciousness raising is a form of structured discussion in which women connected their ideas to larger ideas of gender.  Before I learned this, I thought of consciousness raising as a bit extreme, but I honestly feel that it is a good idea to connect personal thoughts with “the big picture.”  It is easy to weaken one’s claim of rape, but when presenting the case that rape is highly prevalent within our society, it is much harder to ignore.

             I feel the same way about consciousness raising, as I do about the women who participated in the Seneca Falls convention; the more people you educate, the stronger your cause will be.  I feel that consciousness raising was and could be effective in our present situation with social inequality.  Not many people realize that women are underrepresented in the government.  There are a lot of things that fly under society’s radar (mainly due to the fact that a lot of people have forsaken the news—even the news is biased sometimes so we miss more.), and if people knew more about the issues, I feel they would try to make more of a difference.  For instance, Nancy Pelosi is the highest-ranking female politician in the history of the United States.  I am sad to say that I did not even know who she was until I saw her on the television.  If more people knew how much she has achieved, maybe other women would be motivated to aim for such greatness.

            If I were to write a manifesto, I think it would probably have to do with the gender wage gap.  Ever since I came across this issue in my Sociology class, I have been reading about the many different industries in which women are oppressed.  It is a fact that if a man takes a job in a stereotypical “woman’s position” or care work, such as an elementary school teacher, school nurse, etc., he is paid more money than his female counterparts, he receives more raises, and he is often promoted to the highest position within that field in record time (i.e. Principal).  My point is, that if women take a “masculine” job, they are paid less.  Similarly, if they work where society deems as an appropriate “feminine” job, they are still paid less.  The women of our society are stuck in a Catch-22.

            In the case of the radical Second Wavers, I feel that they lost their momentum because they did not focus enough on intersectionality.  Not all women in the 50’s were heterosexual, Caucasian, middle-class homemakers.  Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique makes many great points, but she neglects to highlight the suffering of the working class, or African-American women.  People just did not write much about women of color, alternate sexualities, or lower-class women; when they did, there was no way they could fully grasp the position of the women they were writing about, unless they belonged to one of those minorities.