Feminisms Choppy Seas

A Discussion with Professor Myra Marx Ferree

The ring of unified shouts and the scene of women standing together holding signs declaring, Women Unite and Women Need Constitutional Equality Now filled the streets of New York in the late summer of 1970. Anger, discontent, and empowerment covered the faces of every woman at one of the biggest protests of the Womens Liberation Movements fight for equality. Many would attribute this scene to a unique, nuclear period in American history labeled as the Second Wave Movement, which fought for womens equality in every realm of society from the workforce to politics to relationships. Professor Myra Ferree would disagree. The distinguished professor of Sociology and Gender and Womens Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of numerous books such as Controversy and Coalition: the New Feminist Movement specializes in feminism and social policy and transnational social movements and change. Ferree resists the temptaion to call the late 1960s and early 1970s, Second Wave Feminism because it promotes looking only at specificpoints in the Womens Liberation Movement.Not as waves, but choppy seas, Ferree said. There are times where things go up, but they go up in one place and down in another, there is a lot of uneveness. Professor Myra Ferree knows a thing or two about feminism and its attachment to social turmoil and uncertainty. Parallel to the Womens Liberation Movement, albeit on a different scale than the feminist movement of the early 1960s, was the Civil Rights Movement and the Students Resistance to War. It was a period of time when people really began to question the way things were done, and put those questions into action. Feminism gets a shot in the arm when organizations challenge the status quo and begin to think, Hey the way things have been done, doesnt have to be the way things are, Ferree said. Feminism, like every other social movement, flares up during periods of social upheaval. Were going to make a better society, its very empowering, Ferree said. Yet, during times of relative contentment and quiet, feminism seems to fade, or disappear. There is a tendency to say, I dont know if we can change this, this is so much bigger than me, she said. Today, Ferree believes people have moved on from the adjustment and adaption of the 1980s adn the uncertainty of the 1990s, to anger. The 1960s and 1970s demonstrated that when people get mad, feminism gets a boost in the arm, Ferree said. Were coming back in the US to being more willing to challenge, question and kick back and say this is not the way we want to live our lives.

Feminism gets a shot in the arm when organizations challenge the status quo.