The Unread Red Feminists: Silenced Precursors of the U.S. Second Wave

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter focuses on how the repression of political ideologies can silence feminist voices. It examines how writings by women working with the U.S. Communist Party in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s have been overlooked even though they presaged important linchpins of U.S. second-wave feminist thought.

Methodology/approach

This study is based on historical and archival research.

Findings

Decades before the rise of second-wave feminism, women in the CPUSA had: (1) produced a political economy of domestic labor; (2) employed an intersectional analysis of the interlocking oppressions of race, gender, class, and nation; and (3) called for a global feminist analysis that linked these multiple oppressions to colonialism and imperialism.

Social implications

This study illustrates the costs of political repression and how the canon of feminist thought can be enhanced by resuscitating subjugated knowledges.

Originality/value

Too little attention has focused on the silencing of women because of their political ideologies. This chapter addresses this lacuna in feminist studies and calls into question the oft-repeated notion that the periods between the waves of U.S. feminism were times of movement stagnation. It shows how theory construction can flourish even when feminist activism wanes.

Citation

Mann, S.A. (2015), "The Unread Red Feminists: Silenced Precursors of the U.S. Second Wave", At the Center: Feminism, Social Science and Knowledge (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 291-310. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-212620150000020024