Author: Fiona McCall

Recent UoP history graduate Rebekah Sistig’s dissertation looked at how inherited racism divided members of the second-wave feminist movement in the USA.  She discusses her research below, with some good tips on breaking down the process. Rebekah’s supervisor was Dr Lee Sartain.

Angela Davis, Betty Friedan, bell hooks and Gloria Steinem – all icons of the second wave feminist movement in the US, all women who dedicated their lives to fight against sexism. But were they truly united in their fight against the patriarchy? Was the supposed ‘sisterhood’ all it was chalked up to be? Judging by their contrasting books, organisations, ideologies, and social groups, I think it may not be. 

The 1960s and 1970s in the US was a time of immense social change and political movements, all of which interacted and influenced each other. Many of the women who were at the forefront of the feminist movement were also heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement, the New Left movement and many others. The impact of these movements all occurring in the same time period lead to great divides in ideological thought even within the movements themselves. In the feminist movement there was much divide over which tactics were most effective in achieving equality amongst men and women and how best to use the movement’s resources. 

Through my dissertation, I sought to investigate why and how black and white feminists were divided in their cultures and experiences throughout the second wave movement. I investigated key literature, spanning from Friedan’s mighty The Feminine Mystique to grassroots magazines like Azalea: A Magazine by and for Third World Lesbians, and organisations as large as NOW: the National Organization for Women, founded in 1966, to as small as Bread and Roses, a socialist women’s collective founded in 1969. What I concluded was that the divide between white and black feminists was fuelled by decades of racial discrimination and exacerbated by white feminists’ lack of accountability and acknowledgement of their inherited racism in ideological theory and practice. This led to a necessity for black feminists’ to create their own feminist spaces, cultures, and ideology in order for them to tackle the duel oppression they faced in the US. 

My decision to research the experiences and cultures of women during the second wave movement came from a specific lecture I had during my second year of learning. In the lecture the different forms of feminist ideology were being described, beginning with liberal feminism and trickling down to black feminism and intersectionality. I found myself asking how this separation in ideology had occurred and how this separation may have represented itself in the lives of black and white feminists of the 1970s. Did it change the clothes they wore? The music they listened to? The books they read? This is where I began my research. I began researching feminist music and fashion of the 1970s which I soon found a challenging endeavour, both because of the growing complexity of some of the reading I was finding and due to the seemingly limited amount of historical analysis of feminist culture – particularly relating to black women. So my comparison began to look rather one sided, with many sources either referring to ‘feminists’ as one unified group or focusing blatantly on white feminist groups. So,  I expanded my topic outward. 

I went back to my second year lecture reading list, as well as one which my supervisor, Dr Lee Sartain, had provided me with after my dissertation proposal, and spent the start of my third year familiarising myself with the wider movement and the most prominent pieces of analysis on the topic – scholars like bell hooks, Wini Breines and Margaret A. Simons to name a few. While doing this foundational research was where my supervisor was most helpful. When I was unsure or unaware of a particular book, organisation, or individual, my supervisor was extremely helpful in recommending reading and documentaries to familiarise myself with certain aspects of the second wave feminist movement. 

Writing your dissertation can be an extremely daunting task. From the word count, the structural formalities, referencing, researching and even your acknowledgements, it can be extremely stressful and overwhelming. A helpful tactic for writing your dissertation is to follow your initiative when it comes to your research and to choose a topic which interests you, or at least one you think you would be able to write 10,000 words about. Either way by the end of your writing you might find yourself completely sick of your topic, I know I certainly did at times. 

What I found most helpful in regulating my own stress and keeping my research and writing somewhat manageable was to break it all down as much as possible. I viewed the dissertation as three 2,500 word essays (each one a chapter) put together, one on the historiography surrounding my topic, and two based off of the most comparable aspects of black and white feminist cultures – literature and organisations. Then I broke each chapter down even further. The historiography chapter I divided into different debates/issues which existed in existing research on the second wave movement. Due to my dissertation being a comparison, I was able to divide my second and third chapters into two sections, one focusing on black feminists and the other on white feminists. Once I had broken down my workload into what seemed more manageable, I did my research in sections as well, focusing on one second of my dissertation at a time, allowing me to relax a little bit more. 

I’m sure many of my fellow graduates will agree that your final year of study goes much quicker than you would expect! Between your dissertation, assessments, final year dinners, parties, and nights out, to your graduation, your final year is one to remember. Try to stop and smell the roses, look after yourself and your peers, and be proud of all that you have and will accomplish!