Feminism's Forgotten Fight: The Unfinished Struggle for Work and Family

Kirsten Swinth reconstructs the comprehensive vision of feminism’s second wave at a time when its principles are under renewed attack. In the struggle for equality at home and at work, it was not feminism that failed to deliver on the promise that women can have it all, but a society that balked at making the changes for which activists fought.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 05 November 2018
Publisher: Harvard University Press

When people discuss feminism, they often lament its failure to deliver on the promise that women can "have it all." But as Kirsten Swinth argues in this provocative book, it is not feminism that has betrayed women, but a society that balked at making the far-reaching changes for which activists fought.

Feminism Forgotten Fight resurrects the comprehensive vision of feminisms second wave at a time when its principles are under renewed attack. Through compelling stories of local and national activism and crucial legislative and judicial battles, Swinth's history spotlights concerns not commonly associated with the movement of the 1960s and 1970s. We see liberals and radicals, white women and women of color, rethinking gender roles and redistributing housework. They brought men into the fold, and together demanded bold policy changes to ensure job protection for pregnant women and federal support for child care. Many of the creative proposals they devised to reshape the workplace and rework government policy—such as guaranteed incomes for mothers and flex time—now seem prescient.

Swinth definitively dispels the notion that second-wave feminists pushed women into the workplace without offering solutions to issues they faced at home. Feminisms Forgotten Fight examines activists' campaigns for work and family in depth, and helps us see how feminisms opponents—not feminists themselves—blocked the movements' aspirations. Her insights offer key lessons for women's ongoing struggle to achieve equality at home and work.

Weight: 698g
Dimension: 165 x 242 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780674986411