The passage of the 19th Amendment changed the game for women across America in terms of voting rights. What many women soon discovered, however, was that the 19th Amendment did not grant them equality on all fronts. The publishing of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” would spark a second wave of feminism which reignited American women in their fight for equality on a greater scale. The legacy of the 19th Amendment has been essential to the twentieth and early twenty-first century feminist movements, opening the door to a life beyond the home. Women’s suffrage paved the way for two defining ideologies and perspectives on the role of women in American culture and society: the New Left and the New Right.
Post-World War II brought with it the suburbs and the new American dream. According to Friedan, this bubble created for women in the home was “the problem with no name.” In “The Feminine Mystique,” Friedan says, “Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor” (Friedan 18). This was the expectation for women, despite the progress of women’s suffrage. But many women were still left wanting more. Friedan stated, “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 32).
The first wave of feminism left the work largely unfinished. Women’s suffrage as a movement dictated a shift from state government to the federal government in issues of social regulation. Between 1870 and 1920 the U.S. had become more formally democratic than ever, making way for new questions when it came to women’s rights. Progressive politics arguably did not go far enough, but it also brought into question whether the government can govern morality, a central part of the feminist movements, especially first-wave feminism, which was tied to the temperance movement. This would open conversations regarding abortion, the gender pay gap, and other topics previously untouched by women.
The 2020 nine-part mini series “Mrs. America,” produced by FX, provides a fresh take on the Equal Rights Amendment, or the ERA, an amendment that would guarantee women and men equal protection under the law. This was a motivating force behind second-wave feminism, and the show dramatizes this fight for the ratification of the ERA. Front and center in the series are notable feminists of the 60s and 70s time period, including Friedan (portrayed by Tracey Ullman) and Gloria Steinem (portrayed by Rose Byrne), pitted against Phyllis Schlafly (portrayed by Cate Blanchett) and her “anti-feminist” followers under the STOP ERA movement. When Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique” in 1963, women’s suffrage had been around for more than 30 years. Even so, feminists like Friedan argued women wanted self-fulfillment beyond the confines of the housewife role, and the ERA could help to eliminate gender-based pay discrimination for women who did decide to pursue careers.
In episode one, “Phyllis,” character Schlafly argues that if you push women into the workforce, “women are going to find themselves with two full-time jobs and they’re going to be exhausted and unhappy and feel like they’re not doing either well, until eventually they decide not to have children at all” (00:38:03--00:38:17). She continues to point to the liberationists’ icon, Gloria Steinem, who Schlafly calls “a single, childless woman nearing 40… the sort of miserable, pathetic woman they aspire to be” (00:38:17--00:38:27). Character Schlafly says of Steinem, “She wants some kind of constitutional cure for her personal problems...They want us to join them in some new sisterhood of frustrated togetherness because none of them can find a man who wants to marry them” (00:38:28--00:38:56) Schlafly used issues like the draft and unisex bathrooms as reasons to fight the ERA, and she preached anti-feminism while she was a hardworking, educated woman herself.
The show tends to portray the protests and efforts to ratify the ERA like more of a cat fight between women than a conflict of political ideologies. Steinem herself contributed to a piece for the LA Times entitled “Why ‘Mrs. America’ is bad for women.” According to the true Steinem, the actual enemy of the ERA was corporate lobbyists. Although New Right conservatives like Schlafly did not help their case, “Mrs. America” seeks to frame women like Schlafly as the driving force behind the amendments failure to ratify in 38 states by the deadline. What the show does get right, however, is giving a clear look into the conflicting ideologies between the New Left and New Right. The New Right’s basis was in opposing just about everything the New Left supported, while the New Left criticized the system itself, advocating for further Constitutional protection beyond the 19th Amendment.
Women like Angela Davis were able to represent both Black Power and Feminist movements at once, using an intersectional approach to Black feminism, a topic lightly broached for the time. Davis also openly criticized capitalist conformity and the prison industrial complex, creating a platform for herself to discuss the ways women, and specifically black women, suffered from both of these features of America. Maya Angelou pushed the boundaries for Black female writers, publishing “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in 1969. She used her poetry to capture the experience of a Black woman living in America, expanding on the work that suffrage started. While Black men obtained the right to vote in 1869, Black women were perhaps the most forgotten and marginalized group of all, battling inequalities on all sides. Angelou criticized the Vietnam War and used her writing to bring attention to issues of social justice.
Each of these arenas of discussion had previously never been considered a place for women and their input. The countercultures of the 60s and 70s were evidence of the impact that women’s suffrage continued to have on American feminism. Even anti-feminists like Schlafly were educated women with power in politics, an idea that was still relatively new for the time. Overall, the 19th Amendment shifted the political sphere for women, and it laid the groundwork for future movements and waves of feminism to come. It challenged the norms and the dominant culture of what femininity meant and could mean. Today our country continues to build on the legacy of women’s suffrage as an entryway for women to have a say in equality and global issues.
Works Cited:
1. “Phyllis.” Mrs. America, season 1, episode 1, FX, 15, April. 2020. Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/38ebc9f0-a131-4a11-82a0-80890d8ec52e
2. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, INC., 1963.
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