Dr. Julia Sass Rubin, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University
For much of the history of the United States, women had many fewer rights and privileges than men. Laws did not allow women to vote and prohibited married women from controlling their property.[1] Women also were severely limited in their educational and career opportunities.[2]
The US feminist movement emerged in response to these restrictions, which discriminated against women in all spheres of their lives. The movement is commonly described as having multiple phases or waves.[3] The first wave was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitutions, which gave women the right to vote.[4]
US feminism’s second wave -- from the 1960s to the 1990s – took place in the context of the civil rights and anti-war movements. While the first wave of feminism was driven primarily by middle class, white women, the second wave saw race, class and gender oppression as related and worked to eradicate racism and homophobia along with sexism and misogyny.[5]
A primary focus of the second wave was passing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution and ensuring access to safe and legal contraception and abortion. The ERA states "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." The fight to pass the ERA was led by the National Organizations for Women (NOW) and ERAmerica, a coalition of nearly 80 organizations including the League of Women Voters. Opposition came from fundamentalist religious organizations and some industry groups.[6]
Congress approved the ERA in 1972 and, by 1977, the amendment had been ratified by 35 of the 38 required states.[7] Congress initially placed a seven-year deadline on the ERA ratification process, and then extended the deadline through 1982. The 1980 election of President Ronald Regan heralded the start of a conservative shift within the Republican party, which removed support of the ERA from its platform that year. No additional states ratified the amendment by the 1982 deadline and it was considered to have died. However, between 2017 and January 2020, the amendment was ratified by three additional states.[8]
In February 2020, the Democratically controlled US House of Representatives approved legislation removing the time limits on the ERA amendment’s passage. The Republican controlled US Senate did not take similar action, although legislation to that effect was introduced by Democratic and Republican Senators. If both houses of Congress remove the 1982 adoption deadline, the matter would likely go to the courts, which would have to resolve whether such a removal was allowed and how to treat five states that voted to rescind their approval between 1982 and the present.[9]
Abortion under all circumstances was illegal in every state between 1867 and 1969, and in most states until the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.[10] In Roe, the court ruled that abortion should be legal on the basis of the “right of privacy,” found in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty.[11] The court determined that abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy must be left to the woman, in consultation with her doctor. The state could regulate abortions during the second trimester, in ways reasonably related to the mother’s health, and could regulate or prohibit them entirely in the third trimester.[12] Subsequent Supreme Court rulings allowed states to impose greater restrictions on access to abortion, resulting in a patchwork of laws and regulations.[13] Congress has also enacted a ban on Medicaid funding of abortions, restricting access to the procedure for low-income women.[14]
The start of the third wave of US feminism is often attributed to Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas, which came to the forefront during his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.[15] Like their foremothers, third wave feminists fought for equity across the intersecting domains of race, gender and sexual orientation. Some also broke sharply with second wave feminists by reclaiming misogynistic words and expressing their freedom to dress in sexually explicit ways as forms of personal empowerment.[16]
Fourth wave feminisms have continued the focus on the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexual orientation.[17] Coming of age in the 2010s, these youngest feminists incorporate the use of the internet and social media into their advocacy and formed new organizations such as Generation Ratify to fight for passage of the ERA and Period.org to end menstruation-associated stigma around the world and ensure women have access to necessary menstrual products.[18]
[1] National Women’s History Alliance, Timeline of Legal History of Women in the United States. https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/resources/womens-rights-movement/detailed-timeline/
[2] National Women’s History Alliance
[3] Martha Rampton, Four Waves of Feminism. https://www.pacificu.edu/magazine/four-waves-feminism
[4] National Women’s History Alliance
[5] Rampton
[6] Alice Paul Institute (2018). History of the Equal Rights Amendment. https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/the-equal-rights-amendment
[7] Alice Paul Institute
[8] Alice Paul Institute
[9] Patricia Sullivan (2020, Feb. 13). U.S. House removes ERA ratification deadline, one obstacle to enactment, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/us-house-removes-era-ratification-deadline-one-obstacle-to-enactment/2020/02/13/e82aa802-4de5-11ea-b721-9f4cdc90bc1c_story.html
[10] Leslie Reagan (1997). When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
[11] Reagan
[12] Reagan
[13] Guttmacher Institute, An Overview of Abortion Laws. (as of December 9, 2020) https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/overview-abortion-laws
[14] Carrie N. Baker (2020, September 14). The History of Abortion Law in the United States. https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book-excerpts/health-article/u-s-abortion-history/
[15] Rebecca Walker (2002, spring). Becoming the Third Wave, MS Magazine. https://web.archive.org/web/20170115202333/http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2002/BecomingThirdWaveRebeccaWalker.pdf
[16] Rampton
[17] Rampton
[18] Jessica Abrahams (2017, August 14). Everything you wanted to know about fourth wave feminism—but were afraid to ask, Prospect. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/everything-wanted-know-fourth-wave-feminism