Facing a Renewed Right: American Feminism and the Reagan/Bush Challenge

Abstract

Abstract American feminism at the point of Ronald Reagan's first election to the White House in 1980 appeared to merge the mobilizational strengths of social movement activism with the institutional professionalism that comes from interest-group experience. Unlike the British women's movement at the time of Margaret Thatcher's first majority in 1979, or organized feminism in Canada at the point of Brian Mulroney's first majority in 1984, the American movement appeared virtually unassailable. Yet observers who documented the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the unravelling of reproductive choice provisions and sustained resistance to affirmative action policies during the Reagan/Bush years would tend to question this assumption. The author evaluates the clash between right-of-centre and feminist interests in the United States, providing one of the first empirical assessments of legislative and judicial decision making in the Reagan/Bush years in key policy areas identified by the American women's movement.

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