The American Women's Movement Analysis

There is so much happening in the world around you if you stop your inner dialogue and just take a second to listen to what is happening around you. Listening has always been something that has been hard for me; I’ve always wanted to make sure that my ideas were heard. However, in shouting out my ideas have I been covering up other ideas of people whose voices are barely heard in the first place? I as young white woman have been able to voice my opinions pretty openly, but I never thought of whose voices I was covering up and those in which I should be listening to instead of talking over. This idea of being heard and listening to new perspectives is not something new to 2016; it has been an issue long before that. When tracing the history …show more content…
While women involved in the black and non-white feminism movement were concerned with their race, mainstream feminism never had to cross that barrier. In the identities of the women the groups differed. The difference in their goals are apparent when works featured in Nancy MacLean’s The American Women’s Movement, 1945-2000, a chapter by Michelle Wallace from Gloria T. Hull’s All the Women Are White, All the Men Are Black, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women 's Studies, and Kimberle Crenshaw’s Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics are examined. Throughout the analysis of the works and in comparing the goals of each movement, the most significant seemed to be the goal of being heard. While both movements had goals where they wanted their ideas to be heard, the way in which black and non-white feminism were able to assert their voice, had significantly less audiences and power to do so in comparison with their mainstream feminism …show more content…
Maclean features a document that gives these women a voice. The document, Feminism in the $12,000-a-Year Family by Susan Jacoby that discusses the rise feminism, aging, being in the working class, Jewish, Italian, and women. Jacoby’s document features interviews with women that fall in these categories Ann Nussbaum saying, “I agree with Ruth that it’s hard to talk about these things after a lifetime of being silent, but I don’t see how we can get anywhere unless we speak up about what’s bothering us,”(“Feminism in the $12,000-a-Year Family,” MacLean, 119). These women wanted to participate in the mainstream feminist movement, but they weren’t sure how to get their voice out because they weren’t the typical demographic of the mainstream movement. While mainstream feminism was using their voice in protests and getting their goal accomplished, it was harder for the feminists outside of the mainstream movement to even get a whisper to be