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Sociology 432: Social Movements
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Sociology 432: Controversy and Coalition
The New Feminist Movement Across Four Decades of Change
Decline: chapters 6.2-8, (pages 137-219)
The main issues here are:
- The success or failure of the feminist movement after 1980, and
- The causes of that trend
Neither of these are easy questions and they are still hotly contested in the popular press and in social
science accounts. So don't expect the answers to be as clear as you would like.
We will address these two issues in the above order, although more of the material (but not all)
to answer the success question can be found in Ferree and Hess's last chapter while the causes answers
depends more on chapters 6 and 7.
Successes?
In chapter 8, Ferree and Marx divide their evaluation of success into three areas. I would subdivide their
first area, policy, into politics and economics. So we have four separate types of changes to evaluate:
- politics: legislation, court decisions, elections
- economics: work and pay equality
- organizational changes: feminist movement organizations
- culture: mainstream culture, language, and frames
What were the important successes or failures in each of these areas
in the 1980-2005 period?
In each area, can you come to some overall evaluation of success, failure, or stalemate?
Causes
What aspects of American society changed in the 1980s and later that affected the success of the feminist
movement? Eventually, we will categorize these into our four types of explanations.
But, first, we just need to list the changes and make some evaluation of how important each was.
| Last updated Octover 3, 2005 |
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Myra Marx Ferree and Beth B. Hess 