Feminism’s Forgotten Fight: The Unfinished Struggle for Work and Family by Kirsten Swinth (review)

In histories of feminism, the phrase second wave has become controversial, seeming to describe a narrow and elitist movement. Among the most damning critiques of “second wavers” is that they helped to shore up hierarchical labor relationships and an unjust economy in the 1970s by demanding access to the workplace as it was. But as Feminism’s Forgotten Fight teaches us, that’s not what happened. Even in examining a traditional “second-wave” chronology and familiar types of movement actors, Kirsten Swinth offers an exciting new account that recasts the entire movement.

Feminism’s Forgotten Fight profiles liberal feminists, radical feminists, and feminists of color who argued that work and family needed structural transformation if gender equality was to be realized. They claimed that women should be able to “have it all,” not that they already could. These activists did not cause the decline of the family wage system, but they seized on its shortcomings, attacking its inherent race and gender inequalities and outlining “a breathtaking vision of comprehensive change” that “reconstructed the entire . . . system from the ground up” (3). Along the way, they “transformed what we consider fair and normal, so much so that we often can’t imagine a time before it” (5).

The movement began in the mid-1960s. In a strong economy when many Americans were optimistic about their ability to create social change, feminists began to denounce the rigid gender norms spouted by the “droning authorities” who were “herding women down ever-narrower paths” (15). By separating motherhood from womanhood and reframing working motherhood as a social good, they began to make “what seemed natural and normal appear contrived and unfair” (15). Male feminists began their own related project to dismantle traditional masculinity. These activists redefined male and female “selves,” asserting that the two sexes were equally well equipped to be workers and caregivers, that housework and childcare should command more respect and higher pay, and that employers needed to treat all workers as also having caregiving responsibilities.

Feminists next fought to link and politicize different forms of reproductive labor, demanding policies that rebalanced its costs among employers, the state, and individuals. Middle-class women “stripped the glow from housework,” reframing homemaking as involving a demanding set of tasks that wives performed out of necessity rather than love (104). Domestic workers also drove this redefinition, highlighting their skills and the often-overlooked value of their work. Mothers also needed meaningful options between appealing forms of paid labor or domesticity. Welfare rights activists “asserted a mother’s right to determine by herself where support would come from: her own labor, her partner, or the state” (135). They also framed affordable, high-quality childcare as a universal right. “They knew that without it, the movement itself was doomed, as were larger transformations in women’s lives and true equality” (157). Richard Nixon’s 1972 veto of the Comprehensive Child Development Bill, which had broad bipartisan support, was a stinging defeat, but some feminists responded by creating their own affordable child-care centers.

Feminists also pursued a woman’s right “to be a mother and have a job” (184). They ultimately persuaded the country, Congress, and courts that pregnancy and maternity could not be excuses to prevent women from labor force participation. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 held that workers could not be denied equal rights and benefits on account of pregnancy. Feminists also demanded more flexible jobs. Federal employees pursued, and won, legislation that offered them good part-time options and flexible scheduling. These policies are significant, but Swinth argues that the movement also scored points in other realms: laying the intellectual and institutional foundation for a fairer society, establishing the valuation of homemakers’ contributions to marital property, eradicating barriers to mothers’ employment, and inspiring many women and men to rebalance the work in their relationships.

A fierce resistance emerged in the late 1970s to stymie feminists’ campaign to revalue reproductive...