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Chapter 10 - The New Politics of Participatory Democracy Viewed through a Feminist Lens
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The New Politics of Participatory Democracy Viewed through a Feminist Lens Rosalyn Baxandall 270 In this essay I examine the contribution of second-wave feminism to new forms of democracy and equality. To establish a foundation for my line of reasoning, I explore why a democratic mobilization to challenge female inequality was necessary and long overdue. Finally, I present a historic overview of the accomplishments and shortcomings of consciousness-raising, because the feminist practice was a key contribution to the idea and practice of participatory democracy. The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s was the largest social movement in the history of the United States. Its impact has been felt in every home, school, and business, in every form of entertainment and sport, in all aspects of personal and public life in the nation . Like a river overflowing its banks and seeking a new course, it permanently altered the landscape. For a movement of such breadth, the extent of misinformation, false mythology, and amnesia, even among scholars, is surprising. There are few scholarly studies of the American women’s movement. Part of the problem may be the movement’s very success: its achievements—the work women do, the treatment women expect, the way women express themselves—have become the very air we breathe, so taken for granted as to be invisible, and consequently we do not ask how they came about. There are also deeper reasons for the lack of reliable studies of late- twentieth-century feminism, for despite the huge changes in our society brought about by the women’s movement, its fundamental ideas are still controversial. Indeed, they underlie the hottest debates of our times, such as abortion rights, contraception for teenagers, welfare, women in the armed forces, gay marriage and adoption, and affirmative action. The rapid spread of feminism, unlike other social movements or even first-wave feminism, occurred almost overnight and never shared a single focus comparable with that of suffrage. The immediate “tidal wave,” with little ebb, lasted until the mid-1970s.1 In fact, by the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, the women’s movement had taken center stage, dwarfing the New Left, a term used to describe the loosely linked groups of mainly white college-aged men and women engaged in challenging the basic values and institutions of American society in the 1960s. Feminism was long overdue; the sudden surge of activity came from thirty years of pent-up frustration. Women had been largely excluded from the New Deal, owing to benign neglect and sexism, not deliberately like African Americans, who were denied the vote in the Democratic South until the civil rights movement forced change. The National Recovery Act codes and the Social Security Act did not cover the majority of female jobs: domestics, clericals, and agricultural workers. Pay differentials from five cents to twenty-five cents were mandated in a quarter of the codes. The Social Security Act provided grants for mothers with dependent children, but many of its provisions discriminated against female wage earners, especially married ones. Only 8,000 young women, in contrast to 2.5 million men, gained employment in the Civilian Conservation Corps.2 Women temporarily gained some rights and respect during the war, but afterward they were encouraged to return to the home, and a new form of domestic containment prevailed in kitchens and bedrooms as well as in Pentagon boardrooms.3 Women would not become a priority in Kennedy’s New Frontier legislation , even though they had been key to his winning the election. The women who participated in the Peace Corps and the poverty programs did gain confidence, organizing experience, and exposure to different sectors of their society and the world. Inadvertently, some of Kennedy’s and Johnson’s programs, especially in the Peace Corp and antipoverty programs, opened up spaces for women and heightened these women’s awareness of gender inequality and female poverty.4 But these were Participatory Democracy through a Feminist Lens 271 [34.229.172.86] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:39 GMT) changes felt in the long term. Women remained on the sidelines in the early 1960s. The fourteen top assistants to the Peace Corp director were all male; women held only 2.4 percent of all executive positions in the Kennedy administration, the same percentage they had held under the two previous presidents.5 One exception to the pattern of exclusion was Kennedy’s Presidential Commission on the...