Many past studies of the U.S. women's movement have been primarily descriptive, focusing solely on the differences
between groups. In Feminism and the Women's Movement, Barbara Ryan integrates a broad historical view with
an analytical framework drawn from the theory of social movements. Relying on participation and observation of
diverse groups involved in the women's movement, interviews with long-term activists, and readings of historical
and contemporary movement publications, she discusses the changing nature of feminist ideology and movement organizing.
Ryan examines the interactive and transformative relationship of feminist groups to each other, and to processes
of social change within the larger society. From a detailed discussion of the early women's movement and women's
suffrage, through mobilization for the ERA and the "post-feminist" period which followed its defeat,
to the rise of a new mobilization for reproductive rights and the continuing challenge to incorporate race and
class difference into feminist thought and organizing efforts, Ryan portrays the successes and difficulties that
women have faced in their efforts to effect social change in recent history.
Feminism and the Women's Movement offers a unique analysis of the meaning of feminism for the various
sectors of the women's movement. It will be an important source to students and scholars involved in the fields
of women's studies, American history, and feminist theory.
Table of Contents
1. The Early Women's Movement:From Equal Rights to Suffrage
2. The Women's Suffrage Movement and the Aftermath of Victory
3. Resurgence of Feminism:the Contemporary Women's Movement
4. Ideological Purity:Divisions, Splits, and Trashing
5. Social Movement Transformation:the Women's Movement from 1975 to 1982
6. Changing Orientations in Ideology and Activism
7. American Women and the Women's Movement During the Reagan Years
8. Divisions Revisited:Pornography, Essentialism/Nominalism, Class and Race
9. The Search For a New Mobilizing Issue:the Women's Movement After the ERA
