TRANSATLANTIC WOMEN’S MOVEMENT:
CULTURAL AND LITERARY PERSPECTIVES
Feminist Role Models of the 1960s
1. Introduction
 Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia Farham, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (1947):
 Influence of Sigmund Freud
“Feminism […] was at its core a deep illness,[…] the more educated the woman is, the greater chance
is of sexual disorder.”
 “The problem” of the housewife of the 1950s
2. Betty Friedan
 Writer, activist
 The Feminine Mystique (1963); critique of Freudianism; demystification of “the happy
housewife” image; identified “woman’s problem” as identity crisis
 In 1966 co-founded US National Organization for Women (NOW)
 Other works:
 It Changed My Life (1976)
 The Second Stage (1981)
 The Fountain of Age (1993)
 Beyond Gender (1997)
 Life So Far (2000)
3. Gloria Steinem
 Writer, journalist
 Advocate of an alliance between Civil rights and women’s rights
 The 1970 Senate speech:
“During 12 years of working for a living, I have experienced much of the legal and social
discrimination reserved for women in this country. I have been refused service in public restaurants,
ordered out of public gathering places, and turned away from apartment rentals; all for the clearlystated, sole reason that I am a woman. And all without the legal remedies available to blacks and
other minorities. I have been excluded from professional groups, writing assignments on so-called
“unfeminine” subjects such as politics, full participation in the Democratic Party, jury duty, and even
from such small male privileges as discounts on airline fares. Most important to me, I have been
denied a society in which women are encouraged, or even allowed to think of themselves as firstclass citizens and responsible human beings.”
 In 1972 she launched Ms. Magazine
4. Radical Feminism
 Men identified as oppressor class:
“We identify the agents of our oppression as men…. All other forms of exploitation and oppression
(racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are extensions of male supremacy…. All men receive economic,
sexual and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women.”
5. Robin Morgan
 Poet, writer, anti-war activist
 In 1968 helped to create W.I.T.C.H (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) a
group of radical feminists who wanted to do guerilla theaters
“The oppressed have a right to class hatred against the class that is oppressing them…. I hate that
class.”
 Notable works:
 Sisterhood is Powerful (1970)

Going Too Far (1978)
 Sisterhood is Global (1984)
 Sisterhood is Forever (2003)
6. Valerie Solanas
 Sexually abused by her father, aggressive towards men
 S.C.U.M Manifesto (1967) – Society for Cutting Up Men
“The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, has an
incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking
abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a
deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.”
 Advocated creation of all-female society
 Attempted to murder Andy Warhol in 1968
7. Bibliography
Attebury, N. G. Gloria Steinem: champion of women's rights. Minneapolis: Compass Pont Books, 2006. pp. 45
66.
Bender, P., Brown, J., Rosenzweig, R. “’All Our Problems Stem from the Same Sex Based Myths’: Gloria Steinem
Delineates American Gender Myths during ERA Hearings.” History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on
the Web. Available at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/7025 (access date: September 1, 2011)
Castro, G. American Feminism: A Contemporary History. Elizabeth Loverde-Bagwell, trans. New York: New
York University Press, 1990.
Freeman, J. “W.I.T.C.H- Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell.” Jo Freeman.com. Available at:
http://www.jofreeman.com/photos/witch.html (access date: September 2, 2011)
Lewis, J.J. “Betty Friedan.” About.com. Available at:
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/bettyfriedan/p/betty_friedan.htm (access date: September 1,
2011)
Napikoski, L. “Gloria Steinem: Biography of Gloria Steinem, Feminist and Editor.” About.com. Available at:
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/gloriasteinem/a/gloria_steinem.htm (access date: September
1, 2011)
Shukla, B.A. Feminism: from Mary Wollstonecraft to Betty Friedan. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2007. pp. 109
118.
Solanas, V. SCUM Manifesto. Edinburgh: AK Press, 1996.
Brigitte Remy-Hébert
Handout
The first women's movement
Suffragist struggles in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Chronology: The status of women in England
1792 Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women presents the first clear statement
of the need for political and civil equality for women
1832 First female suffrage petition presented to Parliament by Mary Smith
1857 Matrimonial Causes Act sets up divorce courts. Women obtained limited access to divorce,
though, unlike men, this could only be obtained on a specific cause other than adultery.
Rights of access to children after divorce extended. Women given right to their property
after a legal separation or a protection order given as a result of husband's desertion
1867 The Manchester Women's Suffrage Committee was established
1867 John Stuart Mill published speech on Admission of Women to Electoral Franchise followed
by The Subjection of Women (1869)
1872 Local women suffrage societies united to form a Central Committee of the National Society
for Women's Suffrage
1873 Custody of Infants Act extended access to children to all women in the event of separation
or divorce
1882 Married Women's Property Act allowed women to own and administer their property
1884 Married Women's Property Act makes a woman no longer a “chattel” but an
independent and separate person
1886 Guardianship of Infants Act
1889 Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) founded the Women's Franchise League
1894 Local Government Act. Women eligible to vote for parochial councils
1897 Foundation of National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, a federation of existing
women's suffrage groups under the presidency of Mrs Millicent Fawcett (1847-1929)
1903 Foundation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) by E.Pankhurst and her two
daughters, named the Suffragette Movement
1918 The Representing People Act gave more representation to women (8.5 millions over 30
years)
1928 Equal Franchise Act, universal suffrage was granted to all women
Chronology: Woman Suffrage in the United States
1820s In her writings Course of Popular Lectures and Free Enquirer Fanny Wright's advocated
vote for women, birth control, more liberal divorce laws, free secular education
1869 The National Woman Suffrage Association (NSWA) was formed by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton (1815-1902) and Susan B. Anthony
1870 Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and other leaders formed the American Woman Suffrage
Association
1890 Wyoming became the first state to grant women the right to vote
1890 Suffragists came together in a new organisation, the American Woman Suffrage
Association (NAWSA), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
1893 Colorado granted women the right to vote
1896 followed by Idaho and Utah
1910 to 1912 Washington, California, Kansas, Oregon and Arizona followed the lead of the other
western states by enfranchising women
1913 Alice Paul founded the Congressional Union and later renamed it the National Woman's
Party
1917 New York opened the way to the states east of the Mississippi River in adopting universal
suffrage
1918 Woodrow Wilson announced that women's suffrage was urgently needed as a “war
measure”
1920 Universal woman suffrage, Nineteenth Amendment
Bibliography
Aileen S. Kraditor, The ideas of the Women Suffrage movement 1890-1920 (New York London
Columbia University Press, 1965)
Jane Lewis, Women in England 1870-1950 sexual divisions & social change, (Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1984)
John M. Murrin, Paul E. Johnson, James M McPherson, Liberty, Equality, Power, A History of the
American People, volume II, since 1863 (Thomson Wadsworth, 2006)
George Brown Tindall, David Emory Shi, America a Narrative History, brief 8th edition (WW
Norton&Company, New York London 2010)
Mike Ashley, Taking Liberties The Struggle for Britain's Freedoms and Rights (British Library,
2008)
Barry Cunliffe, Robert Bartlett, John Morrill, The Penguin illustrated History of Britain and Ireland
from Earliest times to the Present Day (Penguin Books, 2004)
Sandra Holton, Feminism and Democracy: women's suffrage and reform politics in Britain 19001918, (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
Martin Pugh, The Pankhursts, (Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 2001)
The Transatlantic Women's Movement: Cultural and Literary Perspectives
Groovy Baby! W men’s Fashion in the 1960s
The Revolution of retail
Women’s fashion of the 1960s maintained a complex relationship with identity politics, gendered stereotypes,
socio-cultural and political ideologies, and notions of liberation. Evolving at an accelerated pace, fashion and
retail interacted with the metamorphosing consumerist counterculture of America. Strident feminists like
Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were transformed into fashionable celebrities, idols to thousands of college
educated women who copied their styles and the idea of being an independent “Single Girl”. Between 1960
and 1971, the uniform for women’s liberation took on many guises. It ranged from the smartly dressed
newspaper columnist in a dress, fake eyelashes, and immaculately styled hair, to the “dress-for-success”
woman in man’s suit and make-up-less face. Although the symbiosis between 1960s fashion and feminism is
undeniable, it is theoretically problematic because materialism, consumerism, and the aesthetic expression of
femininity regularly conflicted with the ideologies of radical left-wing feminist groups like WITCH (Women's
International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell). It is easy to consider “the feminists” as a homogenous mass of
women, unified by gender and their defiance of patriarchy. However the multiple factions within feminism
which took over a decade to come into full fruition demonstrate that political ideology is never universal.
Fashion Timeline:
“Busy Gal” Barbie (19601961)
1959: Introduction of the Barbie Doll – originally modelled on a “naughty”
cartoon character which had been translated into a 3d German adult doll.
1960: Birth control pill comes onto the market; Jacqueline Kennedy becomes
First Lady and introduces the pillbox hat.
1962: Diana Vreeland becomes Editor of Vogue, Helen Gurley Brown writes Sex
and the Single Girl.
1963: Publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.
1964: Civil Rights Act; Mary Quant introduces the mini-skirt; the Beatles come
to America and working-class “mod” culture booms. Simultaneously French
designer Andre Courréges introduces the “space age” look.
1965: “Go-go boots” and “Mary Jane” flats are popularised.
1966: Edwardian influences replace space age fashion; NOW (National
Organisation for Women) founded by Betty Friedan.
1967: “Cover Girl” forced to remove hexachlorophene from their products and
launch medicated “natural look” make-up.
1968: Vogue writer Anthony West, publishes “Who Takes Advantage of
American Women? Men”; Women protest at Miss America finals in Atlantic
City; Ti-Grace Atkinson unites far left radical women’s groups into the
“Feminists”.
1969: Apollo 11 lands on the moon.
1970: Publication of Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, Shulamith Firestone’s
Dialectic of Sex, and Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood is Powerful.
1971: Retailers begin to endorse the no-bra look, as mannequins appear with
nipples.
Models of the 1960s: Veruschka (Vera von Lehndorff), Twiggy (Leslie Hornby), Jean Shrimpton, Penelope Tree,
Angelica Huston, Edie Segdwick, Marisa Berenson, Peggy Moffitt, Colleen Corby.
1
The Transatlantic Women's Movement: Cultural and Literary Perspectives
Primary sources
Mary Quant: “I came in wanting to create for people like me and for a life that was very real: women who had a
job a fantasy life that took that job into account.” (Lobenthal 1990, 9)
Gloria Guinness: “You asked me to report to you on the new super world of the young. Well, I have bad news.
We are being licked. They are invading our territories, stealing our pleasures and destroying our illusions.
(Guinness 1964, 120-121)
Penelope Tree: “You can’t look like Vogue. It doesn’t want you to… It just wants to show you what individuality
is.” (Lobenthal, 181)
Germaine Greer: “Women are so brainwashed about the physical image that they should have that, despite
popular fiction on the point, they rarely dress with éclat. They are often apologetic about their bodies,
considered in relation to that plastic object of desire whose image is radiated through the media.” (Greer 1971,
261)
Una Stannard: “[Women] obediently conform every time the fashion masters crack the whip. A woman
conforms to all the whims of the cosmetic and fashion industries so that she will not be singled out from the
mass of women, so that she will look very like other woman and thus manage to pass as one of the fair sex.”
(Stannard 1971, 188-189)
Secondary sources
1) “Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, Kate Millett, and others who were prominent in the
movement differed from each other, often dramatically, in their dress, grooming and manners. Their styles
of self-presentation were visible statements of philosophy, identity and past history that connected them to
other women who shared similar beliefs, loyalties and experiences.” (Scott 2005, 284)
2) “All subcultures establish trends which feed back into the dominant culture and in fashion as elsewhere,
nonconformist space must be continually renegotiated. By a process of symbiosis, cultural “deviance” is
disarmed.” (Evans and Thornton 1981, 31)
3) What typified the 1960s was “the consolidation of a new feminine ideal. Young, single, economically selfsufficient, the ideal incarnated the notion of movement, of a culture in transition.” (Radner 2000, 128)
Bibliography
Evans, Caroline, and Minna Thornton. Women and Fashion: A New Look. London: Quartet, 1989.
Greer, Germaine, The Female Eunuch. London: Palladian, 1971.
Guinness, Gloria. “A Letter from Gloria Guinness,” Harper’s Bazaar (Aug 1964): 120-121.
Scott, Linda M. Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism. New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005.
Lobenthal, Joel. Radical Rags: Fashions of the Sixties. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990.
Radner, Hilary. “On The Move: Fashion Photography and the Single Girl in the 1960s.” In Fashion Cultures:
Theories, Explorations, and Analysis, edited by Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson, 128-142.
Oxon, New York: Routledge, 2000.
Stannard, Una. “The Mask of Beauty.” In Women in Sexist Society, edited by. Vivian Gornick and Barbara
Moran, 188-189. New York: Times Mirror, 1971.
2
SESSION 2.
Violante Massari (University of Turin)
FEMINIST PEDAGOGY
WHAT IS FEMINIST PEDAGOGY?
“By most accounts, it is a perspective on teaching which is anti-sexist, and anti-hierarchical,
and which stresses women's experience, both the suffering our oppression has caused and
the strengths we have developed to resist it.” (Fisher, 1981: 20)
It can be defined as:
-result of the application of basic feminist principles to education.
-new theories of feminist pedagogy and development of alternative teaching models.
NEED FOR SOCIAL CHANGE: new strategies for the education of the oppressed
AIMS:
- empowering the self
- building community
- developing leadership
“Not only concerned with gender justice, feminist pedagogy seeks to remove oppressions
inherent in the genderedness of all social relations and consequently of all societal
institutions and structures.” (Shrewsbury, 1987 in Sandell, 1991: 180-181)
- promotion of student-centered experience, as opposed to teacher-based one
“critical to the education of the oppressed, be they women, minorities or others, it attempts
to foster a confirmation of self-knowledge for the knower that is not provided by teaching in
the traditional academic style” (Sandell, 1991: 181)
- emphasis on collaboration over competition
- relating problems to each other without categorizing them as inferior or superior
CHANGES AND PROPOSALS:
1. in the subject matter
2. roles teacher-student
3. structure of classes
- a new approach: SELF AS SUBJECT and SELF-AS-INQUIRER (not only to ask
question, but to pose them!) (Maher, 1985 in Sandell, 1991: 182)
- Proposal of the diminishment of the teacher's authority: theoretical model in which the
teacher assumes the role of a midwife.
TEACHERS ASSIST STUDENTS IN DELIVERING THEIR IDEAS TO THE
WORLD (see Socrates' concept of Maieutics) (Belenky et al., 1986: 127 in Sandell, 1991:
181)
- Revision of people's place in society in terms of racism, sexism, oppression, and
domination.
Suggestion for further discussions:
Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed, London: The Continuum International Publishing
Group Ltd, 2000.
Introduction of the concept of education as an instrument of oppression vs the problemposing concept of education as an instrument of liberation (see post-colonial approach:
the reconstruction of the fragmented self begins with the acknowledgement of principles of
personal liberation, critical democracy and social equality, hitherto despised and condemned
by the oppressors)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Crabtree, Robbin; Sapp, David Alan. “Theoretical, Political and Pedagogical Challenges in
the Feminist Classroom: Our Struggles to Walk the Walk”, College Teaching, Vol. 51, No. 4
(Fall, 2003), http://www.jstor.org/stable/27559155
Fisher, Berenice. “What is Feminist Pedagogy?”. The Radical Teacher, No. 18 (1981),
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20709295
Maher, Frances. “Toward a Richer Theory of Feminist Pedagogy”. Journal of Education,
Vol. 169, No. 3.
Sandell, Renee. “The Liberating Relevance of Feminist Pedagogy”. Studies in Art
Education, Vol. 32, No. 3, (Spring, 1991), http://www.jstor.org/stable/1320688
Shrewsbury, Carolyn. “Feminist Pedagogy: an Updated Bibliography”. Women's Studies
Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. ¾, Feminist Pedagogy: an Update (Fall-Winter, 1993),
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40022018