BiblioVault - Books about Second

Daring to Care

American Nursing and Second-Wave Feminism

Susan Gelfand Malka

University of Illinois Press, 2007

Beginning in the 1960s, second-wave feminism inspired and influenced dramatic changes in the nursing profession. Susan Gelfand Malka argues that feminism helped end nursing's subordination to medicine and provided nurses with greater autonomy and professional status. She discusses two distinct eras in nursing history. The first extended from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when feminism seemed to belittle the occupation in its analysis of gender subordination but also fueled nursing leaders' drive for greater authority and independence. The second era began in the mid-1980s, when feminism grounded in the ethics of care appealed to a much broader group of caregivers and was incorporated into nursing education. While nurses accepted aspects of feminism, they did not necessarily identify as feminists. Nonetheless, they used, passed on, and developed feminist ideas that brought about nursing school curricula changes and the increase in self-directed and specialized roles available to caregivers in the twenty-first century.

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Feminist Coalitions

Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States

Edited by Stephanie Gilmore. Foreword by Sara Evans.

University of Illinois Press, 2007

Much of the scholarship on second-wave feminism has focused on divisions within the women's movement and its narrow conception of race and class, but the contributors to this volume remind readers that feminists in the 1960s and 1970s also formed many strong partnerships, often allying themselves with a diverse range of social justice efforts on a local grassroots level. These essays focus on coalitions and alliances in which feminists and other activists joined forces to address crucial social justice issues such as reproductive rights, the peace movement, women's health, Christianity and other religions, and neighborhood activism, as well as alliances crossing boundaries of race, class, political views, and sexual identity. The contributors bring fresh perspectives to feminist history by calling attention to how women struggled to include and represent diverse women without minimizing the difficulties of conceptualizing a singular feminism.

Contributors are Maria Bevacqua, Tamar Carroll, Marisa Chappell, Andrea Estepa, Sara M. Evans, Amy Farrell, Stephanie Gilmore, Cynthia Harrison, Elizabeth Kaminski, Wendy Kline, Premilla Nadasen, Caryn Neumann, Anne M. Valk, and Emily Zuckerman.

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Radical Sisters

Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, D.C.

Anne M. Valk

University of Illinois Press, 2010

Radical Sisters offers a fresh exploration of the ways that 1960s political movements shaped local, grassroots feminism in Washington, D.C. Rejecting notions of a universal sisterhood, Anne M. Valk argues that activists periodically worked to bridge differences for the sake of alleviating women's plight, even while maintaining distinct political bases. While most historiography on the subject tends to portray the feminist movement as deeply divided over issues of race, Valk presents a more nuanced account, showing feminists of various backgrounds both coming together to promote a notion of "sisterhood" and being deeply divided along the lines of class, race, and sexuality.

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