ECON 460 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Lavender Menace, Marital Rape
22 May 2018
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Day 11: April 4
Guest Lecture on Trans-National Feminism by Alex Ketchum
• Op-eds are due next class
• The take-home final is due April 23, will be given out in the last class (April 11)
Today: 20th century feminist movements
• Historical roots, broader meaning of activism, pluralism
• Starting points are debated
o One is Betty Friedan’s “The Feminist Mystique”-- 1963
▪ But it isn’t inclusive, only talks to some women’s experiences
o Or earlier points? Voting rights, labor movements, etc. all related to feminism
• Commonalities/general issues among the eras/movements:
o Housework, work within and without the home
▪ Women increasingly work outside the home, have new educational
opportunities
▪ Language about sexual harassment emerges
o Health
▪ Guides for women’s health come out because most doctors are men--
they also explain alternative health methods
▪ McGill students published the “Birth Control Handbook” despite it being
illegal to distribute info about birth control at the time
o Violence against women
▪ Marital rape used to be legal, that’s since changed
o Race
▪ Intersections between anti-racism and feminist campaigns, but there was
also lots of racism within women’s rights mvmts
o Sexuality
▪ There was a divide between straight and lesbian (/queer) feminists
▪ “The lavender menace” = fear that allowing lesbians in the feminist
movement would make it unpalatable to people outside it who would
otherwise support them
▪ Lesbian feminists create their own farms, coops, sometimes kicked out
male children when they grew up which made them controversial
o Media
▪ Not the same sex-positivity there is now
▪ News reports from the time of women burning bras are false-- they just
threw them in trash cans
▪ Some feminists demanded to only be arrested by female police and talk
to female journalists to point out the lack of equality in those professions
o The family
▪ Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, women couldn’t get a line of credit
without a male relative signing on
▪ Divorce laws changed, the definition of family changed
• There are many movements besides the gender one and activists rarely just pick one
o Many feminists first introduction to activism is through anti-Vietnam War protests
▪ There’s sexist language in that movement though-- “I won’t sleep with
soldiers,” etc.
▪ Women are pushed to the periphery of other movements-- there’s also
erasure of their involvement in history
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