The 1980's Second Wave Feminism

During the 1980’s feminism fell out of favour with women. The fanaticism second wave feminists exhibited to carry out their plan to win equality and freedom for women made it infamous among its progeny. Feminist theorists like Betty Friedan, Kate Millet and Elaine Showalter promulgated “activism” as female ethic. Friedan in Female Mystique(1963) argued that white middle-class women suffers from ‘the problem that has no name’— which is responsible for wide spread unhappiness among women. Friedan states that “We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: “I want something more than my husband and my children and my home”(Friedan 1963:78). She gave a call to move beyond the domestic space and explore the professional realm for self-actualization.
They considered gender to be a social construct, which has a repressive effect on women. Collective action became the norm, Sisterhood was emphasized and ‘personal’ was considered ‘political’. All these inspiring ideas led women to a point where they resembled the very object they were fighting against i. e ‘man’. According to popular media “Feminism came to mean denigrated motherhood, pursuing selfish goals and wearing a suit” (Rye 2003:105-109). The Second Wave Feminism came to be associated with workaholism, unshaven underarms and man like demeanor. The young women were fed up with the strenuous routine and tiring activism which being feminist demanded of them. They thought that by not being the male idea of what women should be and by being the opposite have done them no good. Though these women did acknowledge the fruits of second wave feminism, which were tangible and ubiquitous, they considered that fight was over since equality and freedom has been secured the wave has become obsolete. These women acknowledged through all these achievements they were effectively robbed of the one thing upon which the happiness of most women rests—men. These women inaugurated a new age feminism, which according to them will cater to the needs of contemporary women who are economically and sexually liberated and instead of choosing a
McRobbie calls this the process of female individualization. The empowered and liberated individual, who is aware of the ideologies surrounding her (and including feminism), is able and expected to make decisions. As the strength of the social structures a woman is expected to fill (marriage, childbearing, etc.) decreases, the capacity for personal agency increases. Postfeminism presents collective agency as a thing of the past, once necessary as a political strategy, but now obsolete and certainly inferior to the strength of personal agency which one can exercise in the postfeminist world. (Wlodarczyk 2010:7). A celebration of the individual and individual achievements leads to the postfeminist fascination with consumption. In postfeminism consumption becomes a measure of one’s success and, simultaneously, a tool of empowerment. The successful postfeminist woman can afford to buy expensive clothing and accessories and uses this power to improve her mood and boost her