First we need to decide what feminism is. Is it the right of women to vote? Is it our right to work? Is it our right to have abortions? Is it our right to sell our bodies? Is it our right to attend the same schools as men? Is it our right to receive the same pay for the same jobs as men? Is it our right to hold the same jobs as men?

Now let’s consider the women who are considered “feminist leaders” in our country. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were first noticed for their public opposition to slavery. When that was completed, both women began leading a suffragette movement to have voting rights granted to women in the United States. Also included in this Right-to Vote movement were women such as Frances Willard, along with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the National Woman Suffrage Association (Stanton was President), amd Matitlda Gage.

These were all part of first-wave feminism, which ended when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1919, giving women the right to vote.

For the next 50 years, women in America were basically quiet. We worked through the wars, raised our children while our veteran husbands took over the industrial jobs, and basically did volunteer work in our Churches and communities.

But the 1960’s arrived with hippies, young men refusing to go to the war in Vietnam, demands from young adults for the right to live together without being married, and shocking realizations that Washington D.C. was in trouble.

This was the beginning of the problems within the family. Until then, divorce was scorned; Southern men who misused their wives were subject to “cultural enlightenment” by other men in the community; Northern men went to jail. Until the 1960’s, the women enjoyed being housewives, having children, and were raised with the understanding that when they graduated from high school, they could become a teacher, a secretary, or a nurse, if they couldn’t find a man.

Then came the book by Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, written in 1963. This book emphasized that there were women in America feeling guilty that with their college educations, and abilities to provide much to the advancement of the country, they were sitting in their nice houses, raising children and wondering if that was all there was to life.

Yes, these women were mothers, and that was important, but why couldn’t they work, and be mothers?

Feminists campaigned. They led marches, burned bras, and held speeches that were televised across the nation and encouraged women to take their place in the citizenry and make their choices known.

While the first-wave feminism was based on slavery and the right to vote, the second-wave feminism wanted women to understand their physical bodies, demand their right to the end of sexist discrimination, and have the right to abortion guaranteed them.

At the same time, some of us took the opposition to this second-wave movement. We fought the ERA, insisted upon being allowed to sit in the meetings of the women of our communities, and defied feminist demonstrations around our Churches.

But there was also something referred to as the third-wave women’s movement in our country. This time, our effort was to bring more women of color into the movement. Young feminists were brought into the effort when voter registration in poor and minority communities was offered. These young women are keeping the movement strong, while those of us who started it are getting older.

Even if we opposed much of what the radical women tried to get made into legislation, all of us welcome these new young women with open arms. We wish them well, and hope they will be able to advance the correct legislation for the God-given rights of women in this country for many years to come!