Women's Lives and Women's Liberation: Opportunities and Imperatives

289 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1986.The major focus of this comprehensive study is the multi-textured women's movement that reemerged in the United States during the 1960s. This history of the movement includes an examination and an analysis of its origins, the organizational development of its various strands, and the subsequent activities of its participants. The particular issues addressed in feminism and the evolving theoretical debates spawned by the diverse interests involved are discussed in order that the kaleidoscope nature of the revived movement may be understood on its own terms.Because the contemporary women's movement grew from historically specific circumstances and articulated a public reaction to those circumstances, the larger social environment in which the movement evolved is also analyzed. An account of the recent past and present sexual and familial ideology along with the actual social and economic position of women today is presented and criticized in terms of the limits and constraints placed on all women's full participation in the totality of social institutions making up American society.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD