Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States

by Stephanie Gilmore, Sara Evans, Maria Bevacqua, Tamar Carroll, Marisa Chappell

Overview

Much of the scholarship on second-wave feminism has focused on divisions within the women's movement and its narrow conception of race and class, but the contributors to this volume remind readers that feminists in the 1960s and 1970s also formed many strong partnerships, often allying themselves with a diverse range of social justice efforts on a local grassroots level. These essays focus on coalitions and alliances in which feminists and other activists joined forces to address crucial social justice issues such as reproductive rights, the peace movement, women's health, Christianity and other religions, and neighborhood activism, as well as alliances crossing boundaries of race, class, political views, and sexual identity. The contributors bring fresh perspectives to feminist history by calling attention to how women struggled to include and represent diverse women without minimizing the difficulties of conceptualizing a singular feminism. 

Contributors are Maria Bevacqua, Tamar Carroll, Marisa Chappell, Andrea Estepa, Sara M. Evans, Amy Farrell, Stephanie Gilmore, Cynthia Harrison, Elizabeth Kaminski, Wendy Kline, Premilla Nadasen, Caryn Neumann, Anne M. Valk, and Emily Zuckerman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252033285
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	05/23/2008
Series:	Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Stephanie Gilmore is a former assistant professor of women's studies at Dickinson College and author of Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America.

Table of Contents

Foreword   Sara M. Evans     vii
Thinking about Feminist Coalitions   Stephanie Gilmore     1
Creating a National Feminist Agenda: Coalition Building in the 1970s   Cynthia Harrison     19
Attentive to Difference: Ms. Magazine, Coalition Building, and Sisterhood   Amy Farrell     48
The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: Rethinking Women's Health and Second-Wave Feminism   Wendy Kline     63
Taking the White Gloves Off: Women Strike for Peace and "the Movement," 1967-73   Andrea Estepa     84
Enabled by the Holy Spirit: Church Women United and the Development of Ecumenical Christian Feminism   Caryn E. Neumann     113
Fighting for Abortion as a "Health Right" in Washington, D.C.   Anne Valk     135
Reconsidering Violence against Women: Coalition Politics in the Antirape Movement   Maria Bevacqua     163
"Welfare's Green Problem": Cross-Race Coalitions in Welfare Rights Organizing   Premilla Nadasen     178
Unlikely Allies: Forging a Multiracial, Class-Based Women's Movement in 1970s Brooklyn   Tamar Carroll     196
The Cooperative Origins of EEOC v. Sears   Emily Zuckerman     225
Demanding a New Family Wage: Feminist Consensus in the 1970s Full Employment Campaign   Marisa Chappell     252
Learning from Coalitions: Intersections and New Directions in Activism and Scholarship   Elizabeth Kaminski     285
Acknowledgments     295
Contributors     299
Index     303

Editorial Reviews

"These fascinating and vivid essays complicate and expand our view of the coalitions that were able to come together and fight for common goals. Scholars and students in women's history, women's studies, and sociology will surely find this an invaluable reference as it introduces new histories of the women's movement and second-wave feminism."—Ruth Rosen, author of The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America

“[Feminist Coalitions] does well in calling attention to the many identities of second-wave feminisms and the movement’s successful initiatives in work, health, reproductive, peace, and civil rights campaigns.”—The Journal of American History

 “An important new dimension to the ongoing scholarship, revisioning the history of second-wave feminism.”—Oral History Review

"The most exciting work on the American women's movement to appear in years. Combining wisdom and hope, this paradigm-altering and agenda-setting volume is exactly what we need to meet the challenges of the new millennium. Its message is distinctive, invigorating, and vitally important for students of history to understand how change occurred in the past, and for citizens concerned with how to make changes in the present. A profoundly important intervention in feminist scholarship."—Nancy MacLean, author of Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace

From the Publisher