Concept
Body Politics and Biopolitics
Definition
Body Politics is how power functions in relation to the body, and biopolitics is the administration or regulation of physical bodies in pursuit of state-making.
Significance
Because managing who is able to reproduce and privileging certain population’s health over others has resulted in state-sponsored harm against marginalized people like women of color, LGBT people, and working-class women.
Examples
Sterilization map, Double Jeopardy Manifesto, La Operacion documentary, Mississippi Appendectomy, Erased by Respectability reading
The Great Depression
Definition
The Great Depression was an economic crisis that begin in 1929 and lasted through the 20s. It resulted in mass unemployment, homelessness, and food shortages.
Significance
Rural farming women, including Black and Mexican women experienced the worst of the depression due to the lack of electricity, eviction of sharefarmers, and threat of deportation for job competition. Women in general were also expected to do more at home with less resources to compensate for men’s employment struggles .
Examples
Bronx Slave Market, Wisconsin State Senate Resolution, Mother of Six jailed article, meat boycott article
Flappers
Definition
Flappers were a subculture of the 1920s that practiced anti-Victorian respectability. They indulged in vice, rejected strict behavior, and wore clothes that showed their figure and bare knees/arms.
Significance
Flappers mattered because they shaped ideals of modern womanhood in the aftermath of World War I that asserted the right to autonomous living.
Examples
Ruiz, The Mexican Flapper and Chaperone reading
Videos in powerpoint (must download to view)
Consciousness Raising
Definition
It is the act of making people aware and understanding of systemic and institutional issues.
Significance
It is the first step to activism for change, and one of the goals of the Women’s Liberation movement was to raise awareness of sexism among women.
Examples
Betty Freidan quote, Declaration of Women’s Independence by Bread and Roses Collective, Redstockings Manifesto, Miss America protest
Women's Historical Process of World War II
Definition
To incorporate women into the World War II effort, the United States had to manage femininity, manage race, and manage Americanness
Significance
Using these factors to understand women’s role in World War II is more useful than trying to measure if the war was a watershed for women’s employment. It allows for analysis of different women’s experiences during the war.
Examples
Blackout or Civil Service Poem, Victory Red lipstick advertisement, Americanos Todos questions
Civil Rights Movement
Civil Rights Movement
Definition
The Civil Rights Movement aimed to desegregate public accommodations, achieve equitable access to jobs and resources, and protect voting rights at the local, state, and federal levels.
Significance
Black women were critical grassroots organizers of the Civil Rights Movement because they were involved in more social networks. They were also less likely to be suspected as leaders, therefore, were not as targeted by law enforcement.
Examples
Gill, “Black Beauticians Were Very Important,” Women and Civil Rights documentary,
Cold War Domesticity
Definition
Cold War domesticity is defined by the increased birth rate known as the baby boom, expansion of homeownership and creation of suburbs, and the rise of American consumerism.
Significance
This is significant because these three processes produced a larger middle-class and became the basis for the American argument for why its way of life was better than what communism could offer. Domesticity was the ideological weapon against the Soviet Union, which would rely on women as the center of domesticity.
Examples
The Kitchen Debate video, “I Write of Russian Women” Ladies Home Journal, Suburbs video, Making Marriage Work, Home Appliance/Tech Advertisements
Women's Liberation Movement
Definition
The Women’s Liberation Movement of the 60s and 70s initiated the Second Wave of Feminism, and it targeted acheiving legal and social equality for women.
Significance
To achieve the goals of the movement, three strains of feminism emerged including liberal, socialist, and radical feminism. The movement relied on all three strains because they each highlighted how different elements of society worked together to disadvantage women. Together, the movement acheived critical legal and social gains.
Could also name a critique of it, that the mainstream movement had a narrow understanding of women’s struggle for its lack of intersectionality
Examples
Any of the laws from the legal gains timeline exercise, any of the manifestos/declarations. Adelitas de Aztlan resignation letter, Welfare is a Women’s Issue, Double Jeopardy (for its critique of the movement)
The Feminine Mystique
Definition
Betty Friedan coined this term, and it means the belief that women can only be fulfilled if they are housewives and mothers. This also became the name of her book.
Significance
This is significant because it was an early act of making women aware of social systems and power dynamics. It gave a name to what many women were feeling but were unsure if they could acknowledge it. While Freidan was correct in her assessment of housewives, she assumed a universal womanhood experience and mainly framed women’s issues in terms of white middle class womanhood.
Examples
The Problem that Has No Name, founding of National Organization for Women/NOW Women’s Bill of Rights
Double Jeopardy
Definition
Coined by Frances Beal as a way to express the compounding oppressions of being gender and race.
Significance
This was early iteration of intersectionality, and it was developed out of the experience of the black power movements not considering gender and the women’s liberation movement not seriously considering how race shapes womanhood.
Examples
The problem that has no name assuming universal womanhood, TWWA appendix, Combahee River Collective Statement, Triple Jeopardy magazine