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Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades before ushering in a third wave of feminism beginning in the early 1990s. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to gender equality (e.g., voting rights and property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, domesticity, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities. It was a movement that was focused on critiquing patriarchal, or male-dominated, institutions and cultural practices throughout society. Second-wave feminism also drew attention to the issues of domestic violence and marital rape, created rape crisis centers and women's shelters, and brought about changes in custody laws and divorce law. Feminist-owned bookstores, credit unions, and restaurants were among the key meeting spaces and economic engines of the movement.Missing from the typical narrative told about second-wave feminism is the experiences of black and other women of color as well as working-class women as some narratives focus on the sexism encountered by white middle- and upper-class women. Some narratives present a viewpoint focusing on events in the United States to the exclusion of experiences in other countries and neglect the works of white anti-racist feminism. While the term "intersectionality" was not coined until 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw after the end of the second wave, women of color were writing and creating feminist political activist groups throughout the entire movement, particularly in the 1970s.The concept of difference is something that was explored towards the end of the second wave of feminism since the voices of white feminists had dominated the narrative since early on in the movement. The ideals of Liberal feminism worked towards the idea of women’s equality with that of men because liberal feminists felt that women and men have the same intrinsic capabilities and that society has socialized certain skills out. This elimination of difference works to erase sexism by working within a pre-existing system of oppression rather than challenging the system itself. Working towards equality preserves a system by giving everyone the same opportunities regardless of their privilege whereas the framework of equity would address problems in society and find solutions to target the problem at hand.A general critique of the second wave was that it ignored differences in women and did not take into account how for example a black woman of color would experience sexism differently from a white woman even if they are both women grappling with the issue in a patriarchal society. Writers like Audre Lorde think critically about how attempts to homogenize “sisterhood” neglects all the factors of one’s identity such as race, sexuality, age, and class.The term "second-wave feminism" itself was brought into common parlance by American journalist Martha Lear in a March 1968 New York Times Magazine article titled "The Second Feminist Wave: What do These Women Want?". She wrote, "Proponents call it the Second Feminist Wave, the first having ebbed after the glorious victory of suffrage and disappeared, finally, into the great sandbar of Togetherness.": 323  The term wave helped link the generation of suffragettes who fought for legal rights to the feminists of the 1960s and '70s. It is now used to not only distinguish the different priorities in feminism throughout the years but to establish an overarching fight for equity and equality as a way of understanding its history. This metaphor however is critiqued by feminists as it generalizes the contradictions within the movement and the different beliefs that feminists hold. Many scholars believe that the start of third wave feminism was in due to the problems of the second wave rather than just another movement.In the United States, second-wave feminism ended in the early 1980s with the feminist sex wars and was succeeded by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. Source: Wikipedia (en)

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