It's Not Feminism, It's Humanism

Second-Wave Feminism

Introduction
By the end of the 1920s, women were enjoying many of the rights they had long campaigned for, and it's probably reasonable to guess that they thought things would just keep getting better. However, within a short decade, the world had become involved in World War Two. Afterwards, with everyone desperate to return to a normal society that they could never regain and perhaps hadn't existed in the first place, more conservative values crept into society and the media, Femininity was again paramount and women's places were once more in home.
Then the sixties swept in and with it the sexual revolution and start of second-wave feminism in America, known as the women's liberation movement. A wave of increasingly liberal attitudes swept society; drug-taking, long hair, rock music, increasingly rebellious teenagers breaking away from the drab conformism they identified with their parents' generation and... sex. People were not only having sex but talking about it, and women were coming up with some pointers for improvement. Traditionally, a women's sexuality was tangled up with societal pressure not to have sex and a lack of available contraception, leading to a raft of problems including social judgement if she did have sex. If a woman got past these obstacles, she often found that her own sexual pleasure was sidelined in favour of her male partner's.
It wasn't just in the bedroom that women were dissatisfied. By the 1970s, despite considerable social advancement, women could still be (and were) paid less than a man while the same job, sexual harassment was known only as a 'bit of harmless fun' and posts were advertised by gender.

Boiling Point
In the years following World War Two, America struggles to re-establish 'normality' in the wake of the turmoil and tragedy it had suffered. Although understandable, this led to a kind of societal over correction, with gender roles being more firmly entrenched than ever before and domesticity returning to the centre of many women's lives. Meanwhile, in France, Simone de Beauvoir published her philosophical text The Second Sex, which discussed the fallacy of women's inferiority to men and which had previously been justified by their biological differences. (Women have been battling myths about the inferiority of their bodies for thousands of years, from the idea that crops would die in the presence of a menstruating woman to the fear that their wombs would fly out if they travelled on a train). De Beauvoir also explored the historical and social factors involved in women's positions, moving on from the legislative concerns of first-wave feminism and setting the tone for second-wave feminism.
In 1961 the contraceptive pill was introduced to the US and Britain. This gave women more control over whether they had children, which meant they had more control over their bodies as well as their careers. Then 1963 arrived, thought to be the tipping point in generating the second wave of feminist activism. Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, criticising how women were depicted in the media and the waste of women's potential by limiting their sphere to the home. Also in this year, John F. Kennedy's administration commissioned and published 'The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women', which highlighted that legislation that had meant to 'protect' women due to 'biological' differences had actually led to employers avoiding hiring women in the first place or paying them equal wages.
Towards the end of the sixties and the start of the seventies, the feminist thinking of the US was spilling out into the rest of the world, particularly into the UK. In 1967, British women gained further control their bodies with the Abortion Act being passed, and, in 1968, women at the Ford automobile plant in Dagenham went on strike for equal pay. For the next decade, feminist activities and thinkers raised awareness and campaigned for not only equal rights in the workplace but also a change in perspective of women's bodies and sexuality.

Key Thoughts
The Personal is Political
The phrase 'The personal is political' was popularised by a 1969 essay by Carol Hanisch, although she denies originating the phrase herself. It is a handy summing up of the argument of second-wave feminists: personal experience and problems have political origins and solutions. Issues that women faced concerning sex, contraception, abortion, appearance, childcare, and division of labour in the home were not just each woman's personal problem but something that stemmed from historical and social issues and could be solved with increased awareness and changes in legislation and policy.
One example of this is Germaine Greer's 1970 book The Female Eunuch. She argued that there was no difference between the brain of a man and that of a woman and that it was the traditional nuclear family that oppressed women. She said that society taught women self-imposed limitations (e.g. through emphasis on motherhood and 'ladylike' behaviour) and that by limiting their place in society, both men and women were taught subconsciously to hate women. She said the freedom she was looking for was 'Freedom to run, shout, talk loudly, and sit with your knees apart.'
By adopting 'the personal is political' as their mantra, second-wave feminists made it acceptable to talk about these issues. It meant they weren't dismissed as private problems but could be used to analyse why we think certain things about how a woman should behave and whether those things are actually true, or whether they come from long-held assumptions. It also meant problems based in the home could be combatted by the law: in 1976, the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act meant people could seek legal protection against a violent spouse or partner, criminalising domestic abuse.