Women across the nation in the early 20th century were portrayed as weak and in need of a man to swoop in and save them from themselves and the potential “harms” of working, education, and participating in other social spheres. They were sheltered in order to keep them pure and innocent. However, this instead kept them compliant to men’s every desire. They were to exist only for and through their husband and children, as Betty Friedan noted in her groundbreaking study The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 74). Second wave feminists sought to change that, and fought to liberate women by empowering them.

A basic dictionary definition will tell you that power is the “possession of control, authority, or influence over others” (Power). Women in the 1960s and 1970s pursued power through having control and influence over themselves. This was a struggle, for it was not easy to break past the cookie cutter molds assigned to them. As Nancy MacLean notes in her introduction to the American Women’s Movement, “Collectively, their action showed that the debate was no longer over whether women should participate in public life but over how and towards what ends” (MacLean, 4-5). The power and strength it took women to free themselves from those roles liberated them from continuation in a system that treated them as fragile. Some women did this through self love and body positivity (Processes, 60). Others accomplished this by working outside the home or writing poetry. Poetry was a powerful tool for women in the second wave. “The inner lives of women came into language during that crucial decade and a half, as manifested in poems… because in the process of speaking what was hidden, we began to identify with one another as women, to become a ‘we’” (Moore, xv-xvi). Audre Lorde’s essay “Poetry Is Not A Luxury” speaks to the invaluable tool it is for women:

For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives. (Lorde, 37)

Many poets used that medium to talk about the struggles they and other women faced in everyday life.

In her poem, “Daydream A Poem,” Chris Llewellyn addresses this shift by painting women as warriors, fighting for women’s rights. She begins her poem with an encounter between two housekeepers and a secretary. There is tension between the women, for the secretary is seen as someone with just a “cushy desk job.”  She continues by saying she will surprise them by becoming a warrior in lines 24-36. Throughout the poem, the three women band together in this fight. The placement of the scene in an office (specifically in the area of a desk where a secretary might sit) speaks to the types of jobs that women commonly were allowed to hold. By the end of the poem, Llewellyn seems to grow tired of this positioning of herself and other women: “Yes we will write it. / Our Amerikan Graffiti: / WE AINT TAKIN / NO MORE SHIT!” Her poem empowers the women in it, and portrays them as everything except weak. They band together to fight the injustices they face in the world.

Adrienne Rich further illustrates women’s strength in her poem “Power.” Rich tells the story of Marie Curie, a scientist who conducted research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win two Nobel Prizes for her work in both physics and chemistry. Curie risked her life to continue her research, which was the “same source as her power.” Curie’s story speaks volumes about the courage and devotion of women throughout history in their continuous pursuit of what they believe in. Rich illustrates this in lines 7-9: “she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness / her body bombarded for years by the element / she had purified.” Her word choice in this poem paints a picture of importance of Marie Curie and her accomplishments.

Prior to 1973, nearly every state across the nation criminalized abortion except in instances to save the mother’s life. Approximately 10,000 women a year died from those laws. It was dangerous for women who sought an abortion during this time. Many could not afford one, or they obtained them illegally (MacLean, 24). Feminists during the Second Wave fought for reproductive freedom for women. The landmark court case, Roe v. Wade, overturned nationwide laws that banned abortion, and altered the definition of reproductive rights and privacy as previously understood.

In her testimony, “Hidden History: An Illegal Abortion,” Margaret Cerullo tells about her abortion experience from 1968 (Cerullo). Cerullo highlights the danger and shame from unwanted pregnancy she and other women faced during the time. Her story is one in which she had to make coded phone calls to various places in hopes they could help her. After that was unsuccessful, Cerullo found the number of a council who put her in contact with an illegal clinic in Towson, Maryland. They instructed her to bring $600 in small bills to pay for the procedure. This was a steep price for the time, equating to roughly $4,300 in value in 2018. On her way to the clinic, Cerullo stated, “For the first time, I understood something about what it meant to be a woman in this society– that the lives of women were not of value. And I realized, in an inchoate rage that is with me today as I recall this story, that in this society, because I had sex, someone thought I deserved to die” (Cerullo, 81).

Sadly her story is not an isolated incident. Stories from women all over depict their experiences of reaching out and getting abortions. Those experiences took a significant emotional and physical toll on them. The first issue of Everywoman, a feminist periodical, contains a story similar to Margaret Cerullo’s about a girl named D and her experience in flying to California to get an abortion. The front cover of this issue calls for a “Fight for Abortion!” Many of the issues following this one contain similar messages, until the end of publication in 1972.

Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. Picture by McKenzie Stoker

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, in 1973 changed the definition of reproductive privacy across the nation. In this landmark Supreme Court case, the Court held in a 7-2 decision that a woman’s right to an abortion is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Women were able to abort a fetus through the first trimester, and the decision set guidelines for state interests for limits in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. This ruling overturned 46 state laws regarding reproductive privacy (United).

After the decision, women were free to choose if they wanted an abortion within the framework of the laws. That choice was no longer criminalized, and fewer women died due to unsafe abortions (Wright). While the decriminalization of abortion brought about legal and some social change, there was still a strong stigma attached to terminating a pregnancy, and women faced significant shame in doing so. Lucille Clifton’s poem, “the lost baby poem,” illustrates the difficulty of this choice. There is tension throughout the poem surrounding the choice of terminating her pregnancy. The mother thinks of her lost child with great sorrow, regret, and shame. A potential reason for undergoing an abortion is the mother’s poverty. The baby would have “been born into winter / in the year of the disconnected gas / and no car.” Without gas to heat the house in the dead of a Canadian winter and a car to get places, the mother might not have enough money to properly take care of the unborn child. Aside from a lack of money, the mother’s attention is focused on her other children, which could be another reason for terminating her pregnancy. “if i am ever less than a mountain / for your definite brothers and sisters / let the rivers pour over my head.” These three lines show the pain it took to end the pregnancy, but the mother’s difficult decision to abort the fetus would not be for nothing. She wants to be a good mother for her remaining children.

Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, explores the idea of the “the problem that has no name” (48). Women across America felt the effects of this problem, but denied its existence or could not name it. They felt “empty somehow…incomplete” or as if they “don’t exist” (48). She explains how women were discouraged from working outside of the home after 1949. It was bad to want a career or education, because they were supposed to find life fulfillment in the domestic sphere as a “suburban housewife” (46). However, excerpts she included from domesticated women all contain an underlying theme: a feeling of emptiness, loss of personality, and incompleteness. Friedan coined this unnamed problem the “feminine mystique.” “The feminine mystique,” she explains, “says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity” (70). This was damaging to women, for they were encouraged to ignore the question of their identity in the name of a socially constructed feminine fulfillment. “Culture does not permit women to accept…their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings” (101).

Women were expected to ignore their identity and find fulfillment in domestication. Living up to this expectation was tiring, and left women feeling incomplete and empty. Ms. K illustrates this in her poem “The Cake.” The woman in the poem is exhausted from taking care of her family and working. “I had to come home from working in / one hot kitchen, and too tired to / work in my own.” She further explains this in the seventh stanza, in which she says “I am tired of taking / care of everyone but myself.” Ms. K highlights the lack of recognition women receive for the work they do in and out of the house: “I want recognition as being a part of the human race / and not its caretaker.” Her poem calls attention to the repetitive and tiresome facade women participated in, in attempts to find feminine fulfillment.

However, culture was advancing because of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Women joined and emerged from fields previously dominated by white males. One prominent field for feminists was poetry. Women poets began publishing their work more, and many came together for poetry readings. The Poetry Foundation’s new podcast series, A Change of World, explores books, workshops, and poetry from the time to tell stories of how women formed communities during the Women’s Movement. In their episode “Shattering the Blue Velvet Chair,” Carolyn Forché discusses what she calls the Blue Velvet Chair occupied by women poets. She tells the interviewer that she came up with this label when looking at photographs of American poets. Most, if not all, the people in the photographs were white and male. If there was a woman, she would appear seated in a cushioned chair. It was her way of speaking to the tokenization of women poets during the time. However, women rejected this tokenization, and instead turned to poetry as a way to define culture outside the boundaries imposed on them.

In challenging and changing those boundaries, many women broke out of the cage of domesticity and began to fight for workplace equality. It became more acceptable for women to work and have careers, rather than solely finding fulfillment in being a housewife. This process of change in working social norms eventually led to legal protections. President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibited sex-based wage discrimination between men and women in the same place of work who do the same job that require the same skill, effort, and responsibility. One year later, Title VII, as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

Cerullo, Margaret. “Hidden History: An Illegal Abortion,” 1968, The American Women’s Movement, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents, Ed. Nancy MacLean, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009, pp. 79-81, 2009.

Clifton, Lucille. “the lost baby poem.” Poems from the Women’s Movement, Ed. Honor Moore, Library of America, 2009, p. 35.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, ch. 1-4.

Lorde, Audre. “Poetry Is Not A Luxury.” Sister Outsider, Crossing Press, 1984, pp. 36-39.

MacLean, Nancy. The American Women’s Movement, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.

“Money, Fame, and Power.” Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 2, Diana Press, 1974, p. 74.

Moore, Honor, editor. Poems form the Women’s Movement, Library of America, 2009, pp. xv-xvi.

“Power.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/power. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.

“Processes of Change.” Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1, Diana Press, 1974, pp. 2-9, 26, 58-64.

“Shattering the Blue Velvet Chair.” A Change of World: Episode 3 from the Poetry Foundation, 20 Mar. 2018, www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/143653/shattering-the-blue-velvet-chair. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.

Rich, Adrienne. “Power.” The Dream of a Common Language, W. W. Norton & Company, 1978, p. 3.

United States, Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade. United States Reports, vol. 410, 22 Jan. 1973, pp. 113-78. Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep410113/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.

Wright, Jennifer. “How Roe v. Wade has saved women’s lives.” New York Post, 6 July 2018, https://nypost.com/2018/07/06/how-roe-v-wade-has-saved-womens-lives/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.