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  CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY JOURNAL, 2010, VOL. 2 (ISSUE 1: 91-95) 

The Central Issues of the  

Women’s Liberation Movement 

 

 

Annielynn Ibale 

Department of Sociology 

California State University, Los Angeles 

 

 

                       This paper examines the Women’s Liberation Movement, 

the generalized construct of women in society, and the 

underlying grievances of the Women’s Movement. Feminist 

scholars divide the movement in three “waves” that 

categorize the different aspects and issues historically and 

currently. Throughout most of history, male dominance has 

been the primary social order. As a result, women have 

been considered inferior and naturally incompetent, both 

physically and intellectually, compared to men. Today, 

women are still being socialized through generations of 

traditional beliefs about gender. Thus, feminism will still 

continue as long as we do not address this social issue.  

 

 
1
The Women’s Rights Movement was a 

significant crusade for women’s equality 

that begun in the late nineteenth century 

to present-day. Advocates for women’s 

rights initiated the insurgency as they 

yearned for equal participation and 

representation in society. Throughout 

most of history, male dominance was of 

primary importance to social order. 

Women in particular were considered 

inferior and naturally incompetent both 

physically and intellectually, and they 

were often stereotyped as less capable 

                                                           
1
 Annielynn Ibale is an undergraduate student at 

the Department of Sociology. Her paper was 

originally submitted to SOC 418 Crowd 

Behavior and Social Movements, taught by 

Professor Hyojoung Kim in Summer 2009. 

than men. Furthermore, women are 

robbed of their self-confidence and self-

respect, reinforcing their dependence on 

their husbands. Research done by 

Shulamith Firestone (1970) constitutes 

the central grievances that the feminist 

movement sought to challenge, which 

vary on issues regarding employment 

and pay, equal opportunities in 

education, property and voting rights, re-

productive issues such as abortion and 

contraceptives, improved facilities for 

childcare, tightening the legal sanctions 

of violence against women in both 

public and private spheres which 

includes sexual and domestic violence, 

and most pre-dominantly to put an end 

to discrimination on grounds of 

 



CENTRAL ISSUES OF THE WLM by Anneilynn Ibale                                                               92 
 

     CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY JOURNAL, 2010, VOL. 2 (ISSUE 1: 91-95) 
 

sexuality, race, religion, and ethnicity 

(Ryan, 1992). As a significant account of 

women’s historical struggles, feminist 

scholars divided the movement in three 

“waves” that categorized the different 

aspects of the issues that were being 

called forth. The seven key arguments 

will be further discussed throughout the 

following divisions of feminist disparity. 

 The first-wave which refers to 

the movement of the 18
th

 through the 

20
th

 century was perhaps the first 

instigation of Women’s liberation. It 

mainly dealt with issues underlying the 

Suffrage movement, primarily con-

cerning women’s rights to vote. There 

were many prominent leaders during this 

era including American Civil Rights 

leader, Susan B. Anthony who played an 

important role in the anti-slavery 

movements, and most notably, Elizabeth 

Cady Stanton, who was also another 

leading advocate in early 19
th

 century 

repression. Stanton wrote Declaration of 

Sentiments, which was presented at the 

first women’s rights convention in 1848 

held at Seneca Falls, New York (Salper, 

1972). The words documented fought for 

women’s voice and mandated in-

equalities. Women during this period 

begun to make their voices heard 

through organized marches and 

campaigning advocacy on equal 

suffrage. World War II paved the way 

for expanding women’s roles in work 

places. However, higher education was 

off-limits, and wealthy women held no 

property rights or economic autonomy. It 

was not until the 19
th

 Amendment was 

passed in 1920 that women were finally 

granted the right to vote, which also 

included reforms in the areas of 

education and partial healthcare. 

Nonetheless, many women still ex-

perienced less control and liberation in 

the aspects of gender stratification. 

While subtle changes took place during 

World War II, in that they were able to 

occupy military and industrial jobs, as 

well as there was a rise in female college 

graduates, women’s return to traditional 

domesticity increased yet again 

(Wrigley, 1992) Their career options 

were restricted to gender-based 

occupations as male workers still 

dominated the majority of high-end 

professions. This major up-rise in work 

discontentment and dissatisfaction with 

domestic restriction led to a new age of 

activism, which encompassed a broad 

spectrum of political beliefs and 

ideologies. 

 The second-wave came about 

during the 1960’s to 1980’s. Feminism 

took a continual turn towards particular 

issues concerning the inequality of laws, 

addressing official and unofficial legal 

discrimination on sexuality, family, and, 

most controversially, on reproductive 

rights (Ryan, 1992) There were many 

groups and factions that contributed to 

the women’s liberation expansion. One 

of which was the National Organization 

of Women (NOW) that was first 

established in 1966, which sprang after 

The Equal Employment Opportunity 

Commission (EEOC) failed to eradicate 

sexism in the workplace, opting to take 

on racial discrimination instead. (Salper, 

1992) The organization focused on 

issues on rape, domestic violence, 

abortion, and access to childcare, some 

of which was established by the first 

wave. Through constant and persistent 

campaign struggles, feminism grew into 

a mass movement, gaining support from 

other women of common discriminatory 



CENTRAL ISSUES OF THE WLM by Anneilynn Ibale                                                               93 
 

     CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY JOURNAL, 2010, VOL. 2 (ISSUE 1: 91-95) 
 

experiences. Thus, the slogan “The 

personal is political” appositely summed 

up the goals of the second wave 

feminism. This period predominately 

marked many uphill challenges for 

women as they strove to address the 

issue and bring awareness to the public. 

(Haussman, 1992) Many other 

significant key contributions during the 

second wave took effect such as the 

written words of The Feminine 

Mystique, a book by Betty Friedan, 

which described the victimization of 

women to a false identity in that they 

lose their sense of fulfillment and 

freedom. The rise of radical feminism in 

the 1970’s was also notable during this 

period due to their fight against 

patriarchal roots of inequality. 

Subsequently, legal victories included 

the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which 

requires that both men and women be 

given equal pay for the equal amount of 

work under the same establishment, Title 

VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 

prohibiting employers from dis-

criminating against employees based on 

race and gender, Title X of the Public 

Service Act, opting to provide family 

planning services to those in need, as 

well as major court cases such as 

Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. 

Wade (Ryan, 1992). These court rulings 

gave substantive rights to privacy in the 

use of contraception and cases regarding 

a women’s right to abortion. To put it 

simply, the second wave fought to 

educate women to see their personal 

lives as reflective of the patriarchal 

structure of power, domination and 

sexism, that these gender inequalities 

classified women within a false image, 

which socialized them to behave or act 

in a certain way because society 

expected that of them. But even with all 

this, there was still a feeling of failure 

during the second movement, which 

eventually led to a new phase in history 

that still exists today. 

 The third-wave which begun in 

the early 1990’s to the present arose as a 

response to the hostile response and 

criticism against the movement brought 

on by the second wave. It also addressed 

much deeper issues of women’s 

perception in America in regards to the 

differences pertaining to the standpoint 

of “oppression” between race and class, 

as well as issues on the bounds of sexual 

harassment and the definition of 

“femininity” (Rosen, 2000) In other 

words, third-world feminists basically 

tried to challenge the second-wave 

paradigm of what is good or what is not 

good for women, as they defined it by 

their own classification of its 

understanding. Momentous authors 

during this time such as, Jennifer 

Baumgardner and Amy Richards, wrote 

Manifesta, concluding that the word 

‘feminism’ is never wholly consistent 

because its definition changes and 

evolves overtime with each new 

generation. The 1991 case (Anita Hill vs. 

Clarence Thomas) in regards to sexual 

harassment was perhaps the root 

subjectivity of the third-wave, which 

focused on the intersection between race 

and gender (Adler, 1991) While the 

second-wave fought for the rights of 

women concerning reproductive rights, 

rape and domestic abuse, the women’s 

studies program and policies of sexual 

harassment within the work place 

became the third-waves prolongation. 

Derogatory words that down-grade 

women are also fought by this present 

movement, including the most 



CENTRAL ISSUES OF THE WLM by Anneilynn Ibale                                                               94 
 

     CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY JOURNAL, 2010, VOL. 2 (ISSUE 1: 91-95) 
 

significant debate in regards to the 

“glass-ceiling” case in which women are 

discriminately unable to rise to higher 

positions within the corporate system 

due to gender barriers (Cott, 1987). Most 

of the third-wave feminists try to fight 

for women’s right as far as career 

inequality is concerned. For instance, 

women, who bear children, are opting 

for fair maternity leave, where in some 

cases women are trapped between their 

career and their children in which they 

are most likely compelled to leave their 

job to maintain the welfare of their 

family due to the social roles that 

constrain them.  

This period, hence, marked the 

existence of how women are portrayed 

in the post-modern world. As far as the 

media and the depiction of women in 

contemporary pop-culture, we are 

greatly sensitized to the unhealthy and 

derogatory representation of females in 

entertainment as sexualized objects 

solely for men’s pleasurable needs. In 

fact, most women of today are socialized 

to be finer and slimmer than the average 

mass; hence, this is why so many of 

these cases results in eating disorders 

and bad dieting consumption due to 

extreme weight lose problems. Women 

of today experience constraints in what it 

means to be “feminine” in a masculine 

world. On the one hand, they feel 

compelled to be attractive and sexually 

appealing due to social coercion, yet 

they are restricted to becoming “too 

loose” or open to such advances 

because, in doing so, they run the risk of 

being constrained and mocked for being 

overtly sexual; this is apparent in cases 

between opposite-sex relationship in 

which a male significant other restricts 

his girlfriend for being voluptuously 

exposed, but, all the while, expects her 

to be sexually appetizing for his own 

personal pleasure. And, insofar as work 

occupations are concerned, I believe that 

women are not entirely as “free” as they 

assume they are in the current global 

economy. Even though strong female 

leaders such as Hilary Clinton, Nancy 

Pelosi, and Oprah Winfrey have greatly 

contributed to rapture of the glass-

ceiling, there is still a pattern of gender 

bias within the workforce. Linda Martin-

Alcoff, a professor of Philosophy and 

Women’s Studies in Hunter College, 

states that while women are occupying 

approximately 49% of jobs today, it does 

not provide inclusive wages between 

men and women (Salper, 1992) The fact 

is that elderly women in the United 

States are more likely than men in the 

later stages to be poor and on welfare; a 

pattern that is still consistent in our 

society over the years. Thus, the 

Women’s Movement is still existent in 

that they are trying to reform the social 

order and the ways that they are 

perceived. Conditions such as the choice 

of occupations and the majority of 

people occupying certain jobs are 

witnessed to be more gender-related than 

they are diversely structured. 

Today, conscious-raising of 

feminism has increasingly appealed to 

young men, although Nancy Cott (1987) 

reported that there is still very little 

awareness on the side of the male 

population presently. I believe this is 

due, perhaps, to the underlying factor of 

socialization in that most men find it 

difficult to speak out among the ranks of 

feminism beliefs because it is contrary to 

the social ideals of masculinity. Indeed, 

the historical women’s movement may 

have created a change for humanity, but 



CENTRAL ISSUES OF THE WLM by Anneilynn Ibale                                                               95 
 

     CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY JOURNAL, 2010, VOL. 2 (ISSUE 1: 91-95) 
 

did not inclusively revolutionize the way 

we ideologically perceive the meaning 

of “gender” in our society. From a 

personal observation, I have witnessed 

countless women who have successfully 

reached the corporate ranks of male-

dominated occupation, yet women still 

suffer as victims of sexual taunts and of 

unfair representation. Examples include 

“supermoms,” who are able to juggle 

both career and family life but are not 

getting the same constructive feedback 

as men who occupy a comparable job 

and are not required to  attend to family 

means, and women, who are also the 

victims of derogatory name-calling and 

are victimized in sexual harassment for 

wearing provocative clothing. To put 

simply, women are still being socialized 

through generations of traditional beliefs 

about gender. Perhaps it may be because 

we are simply accustomed to the social 

ordering of individuals in our society 

that we do not question its existence. To 

most people, primarily young children, it 

becomes a normative way of under-

standing world. The main problem in the 

contemporary third-wave of feminism is 

that people see the feminist standpoint as 

antiquated in the sense that feminism is 

all about suffrage and the right to work 

(Cott, 1987). The issue lies in the ways 

society masks that perception into our 

awareness. Individuals believe that since 

women of today are essentially better off 

than they were in the past in regards to 

work that they should have no other 

reason to invoke further demands due to 

the foregoing success of the women’s 

movement. The fact is that patriarchy is 

still the dominant force that shapes our 

society and social order, even with the 

present success of women’s right to 

vote, higher education, and self-

determination laws. By studying the 

earlier Women’s Movement, I have 

learned that mobilizing a unified 

ideology of goals is an important part in 

opting for social change. Feminism will 

still continue as long as we do not 

address the issues and differences among 

women and their experiences. 

 

REFERENCES 

 

Adler, Leonore  (1991). Women in 

Cross-Cultural Perspective. 

New York: Greenwood 

Publishing Group, Inc. 

Cott, Nancy (1987). The Grounding 

of Modern Feminism. New 

Haven: Yale University  Press. 

Firestone, Shulamith (1970). The 

Dialectic of Sex: The Case 

for Feminist Revolution. 

New York: Bantam. 

Haussman, M.A (1992). The 

Personal is Constitutional: 

Feminist Struggles for 

Equality Rights in the United 

States and Canada. Indiana: 

University Press. 

Rosen, R. (2000). The World Split 

Open: How the Modern 

Women's Movement Changed 

America. New York: Viking. 

Ryan, Barbara (1992). Feminism and 

the Women’s Movement. New 

York: Rutledge. 

Salper, Roberta (1972). Female 

 Liberation: History and 

Current Politics. New York: 

Alfred A. Knopf. 

Wrigley, Julia (1992). Education and  

Gender Equality. London:  

The Falmer Press. 

 

 


