O’Connor became the first female Supreme Court
justice and Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman
nominated as a vice presidential candidate by a ma-
jor political party. However, large numbers of women
were still segregated to “pink-collar” jobs in the ser-
vice sector of the economy, jobs that were often low-
paying and without benefits. This unequal division
of labor served to increase the gendered wage gap,
but even within the professions, women continued
to earn less than men while doing the same work
with the same education and years of experience.
Feminists focused on changing employers’ hiring
and promoting policies, arguing that gender equity
made for good business.
Feminist Theories Feminism is not a monolithic
movement or ideology. Because of the defeat of the
ERA, the backlash of the Reagan years, and internal
issues in the movement, uncertainty existed as to
which of a variety of feminisms entailed the most
useful core values and strategies. One dominant
feminist theory that formed the basis for much of
the U.S. women’s movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s
was liberal feminism, which resisted women’s in-
equality, locating it specifically in the division of la-
bor into women’s work and men’s work in a world
that still saw women as primary caregivers and home-
makers. Another major strand of feminism rose to
prominence in the 1970’s and greatly influenced
the academic discipline of women’s studies in the
1980’s. This strand focused on issues of representa-
tion, saw fundamental differences between men and
women in Western societies, and argued that patriar-
chal cultures improperly validated masculine values
and denigrated feminine values.
The academic feminist study of representation
and difference was further subdivided into two
camps. One camp (often called biological determin-
ism, or essentialism) believed that some values are
inherently masculine or inherently feminine. The
other camp believed that there is no inherent bio-
logical connection between sex, gender, and values,
but that each society creates such connections, mak-
ing “masculinity” and “femininity” themselves his-
torically and culturally specific constructions. Those
feminists who focused on the representation of gen-
der were sometimes suspicious of the call for “equal-
ity,” because they worried that “equality” meant the
acceptance of male values and the opportunity for
women to become just like men, rather than valuing
their own difference. During the 1980’s, however,
this criticism failed seriously to shape debates out-
side academia. In the political arena, feminists con-
tinued to resist inequality.
Since gender inequality persisted despite changes
in the law, feminists began to look for other reasons
for its continued existence. Socialist feminists saw a
need for changes in the workplace itself, including
pay equity for those with “pink-collar” jobs, salaries
and benefits for homemakers, better and more af-
fordable day care, and equal access to all govern-
ment positions. Very few of these demands were met.
Some radical feminists cited the increase of violence
against women and children as a cause of continued
inequality. They emphasized that women continued
to be exploited and objectified in pornography and
prostitution, as well as experiencing sexual harass-
ment at work. Other feminists focused on the multi-
ple oppressions of women of color and immigrant
women, who were exploited not just because of their
gender but also because of their race and status
as immigrants. Although the 1980’s was a decade
of backlash and roadblocks for feminism, then, fem-
inists continued to work for and theorize about
the transformation of society into a more gender-
equitable one.Further Reading
Faludi, Susan.Backlash: The Undeclared War Against
American Women. New York: Crown, 1991. Close
examination of the challenges women faced in
the 1980’s.
Ferree, Myra Marx, and Beth B. Hess.Controversy and
Coalition: The New Feminist Movement Across Four De-
cades of Change.New York: Routledge, 2000. A de-
finitive account of the women’s movement over a
forty-year period, with a critical analysis of the
1980’s.
French, Marilyn.The War Against Women.New York:
Summit Books, 1992. Contextualizes American
women’s inequality within a global perspective on
the 1980’s.
Lorber, Judith.Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and
Politics. Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2005. Using selec-
tions from original sources, Lorber explains the
full range of feminist theories and their strategies
for change.
Mansbridge, Jane J.Why We Lost the ERA. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986. Analyzes the
development and defeat of the ERA.364 Feminism The Eighties in America