Holly Kemble / Women’s Museum of California

Second Wave Feminism, also known as The Women’s Liberation Movement, was a wave of feminism from the 1960’s to the early 1980’s that rallied around women’s issues such as gender roles, marital rights, reproductive rights, domestic violence, rape, and divorce laws.

Second Wave Feminism followed a period of highs and lows for women’s equality and came to fruition nearly 40 years after First Wave Feminism. Whereas First Wave Feminism was interested in legally changing the rights of women, Second Wave Feminism sought to change how women were viewed in society.

The notion to change women’s portrayal in society came about after the 1950’s era in the United States, often referred to as the “Golden Age” or the “Fabulous 50’s.” While this era was a time of prosperity in the United States with American’s buying homes, cars, and new technologies, the 1950’s also popularized narrow views of women due in large part to the ways women were portrayed in the media.   [Read more…]

Holly Kemble / Women’s Museum of California

First Wave Feminism occurred in the late 19th to early 20th centuries with the mission of legally changing the rights of women.

During this time there were a variety of laws that kept women silent both professionally and at home. First Wave feminists saw that this was a problem and made it their aim to grant women legal rights in the United States. With legal equality in mind, pioneering feminists such as Alice Paul, Margaret Sanger, and Frances Willard tackled issues like women’s suffrage, contraception, and domestic abuse.

What was profound about the work that these women and others did during First Wave Feminism, was that it was instrumental to other causes that did not pertain to women. The Women’s Suffrage Movement first banned together with the Abolitionist Movement to secure the rights of all peoples, the use of contraceptives was produced as a means to control poverty rates, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union used their influence to fight for labor laws and prison reform. With these aspects in mind, it is fair to say that First Wave Feminism was not just about implementing laws to improve the lives of women, First Wave Feminism was also about bringing awareness to other marginalized groups.   [Read more…]

By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

Stephen Hawking was still in his final year at Oxford when he noticed what he first passed off as growing “clumsiness.” But he was soon diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 21. While it’s often thought of as a disease that strikes older people, ALS can afflict people of any age and diagnoses uses presages a rapid decline. He completed his graduate work on crutches. By the time he was appointed a visiting professor at  Caltech, he could no longer write, his speech was becoming distorted and he was in a wheelchair. By the time he returned to Cambridge, he was all but completely paralyzed.

And yet … And yet … he completed decades of work in astrophysics, defining for the first time many of the properties and behaviors of black holes. His 1974 work that showed how black holes could emit radiation brought together quantum physics and large-scale objects, in a way that both challenged accepted notions, and made Hawking one of the youngest ever Fellows of the Royal Academy. He was sometimes so on the leading edge that he both published a new theory, then published the paper that disproved it.   [Read more…]