Feminism Unfinished Book Report

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Recommended: Feminism and gender studies

In their book, Feminism Unfinished, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry explore the varying priorities and achievements of Women’s movements throughout American history beginning after the passage of the 19th amendment. The book’s key objective is to differentiate Women’s Rights movements from one another, and to illuminate their drastically different goals and motives. There are several types of feminism, which arise from groups and feminist leaders who have differing visions of women’s liberation. While the term “feminism” is appropriate for all of these movements, as the different movements overlap in that they wanted to make America a better place for women to live, their platforms differed from and often conflicted with one another. Although the several types of feminism divided the feminist …show more content…

For example, the target audience for the feminist book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was the college educated, middle class, suburban stay-at-home mom who wished for her life to be less monotonous and more meaningful. This type of feminism was centered on challenging the traditional gender roles in the home. One of their goals was to challenge the idea that women had to stay in the home with their children in order to be a good mother. They used the platform that they weren’t slaves to their family and deserved to live a life of their own, instead of being “tethered” to the home. This movement differed greatly from the work of Myra Wolfgang and Addie Wyatt, who worked to bring an end to Jim Crow in the workplace. While still working toward the broader goal of making America a place for women to flourish, their motives were different than those who related to The Feminine Mystique, as their struggle stemmed from their contrasting

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