How Popular Cultural Feminism Changed Women’s Attitudes about Gender

• In Event: 30807 - The Consequences of Collective Action

Abstract

Movement scholars recognize that movements’ most important and enduring impacts are on people’s beliefs, values, and everyday behaviors. But they have not demonstrated those kinds of impact empirically. We argue that people learn about movements and the merits of their claims not only in the news but in popular movies, television shows, books, and magazines. We appraise this argument in relation to second-wave feminism by analyzing a unique 1975 survey that asked American women about their attitudes toward feminism and women’s roles and about their consumption of different genres of news and entertainment. Our analysis shows that five years after the movement gained widespread coverage, and controlling for a range of demographic factors associated with progressive gender attitudes, women who regularly consumed news held more feminist views. Women who were avid consumers of entertainment had even more feminist views, and unlike consumers of news alone, saw the movement as improving their lives personally. If movements have influence by getting their claims into the public sphere, our analysis suggests the need for a broader understanding of what constitutes the public sphere.

Authors

• Francesca Polletta, University of California-Irvine

• Yeryeng Choi, University of California Irvine