Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Wave Metaphor

IN THE FALL OF 1920, women across the United States, many for the first time, cast ballots in a presidential election. The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified that August, provided women with a federal guarantee of enfranchisement. This event brought to a triumphant end what schola...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFeminist studies Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 658 - 680
Main Author Hewitt, Nancy A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published College Park Feminist Studies, Inc 22.09.2012
Feminist Studies
Subjects
Activism
African Americans
Anarchists
Comparative analysis
Elections
Females
Feminism
Heads of state
Historical criticism
History
Metaphor
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Political Parties
Presidents
Radio
Radio waves
Radios
Role models
Second wave feminism
Social activism
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (1815-1902)
Third wave feminism
Truth
Truth, Sojourner (1799-1883)
U.S.A
United States of America
Voting rights
Wave frequency
Women
Women's rights
Women's studies
Womens rights
Womens rights movements
Womens suffrage movements
United States
United States > US
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Summary:IN THE FALL OF 1920, women across the United States, many for the first time, cast ballots in a presidential election. The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified that August, provided women with a federal guarantee of enfranchisement. This event brought to a triumphant end what scholars and activists would later label the 'First Wave of feminism.' On November 2, as women voted either for Republican Warren G. Harding or Democrat James M. Cox, other types of waves were in the air-markers of technological rather than political progress. Radio waves were all the rage in 1920, and November 2 of that year also marked the first commercial broadcast when Pittsburgh station KDKA announced election returns in the presidential contest over a 100-watt transmitter. Art deco buildings and prints endlessly repeated the trope of radio signals, often imagined as a series of expanding rings radiating out from a modernist microphone. However, when women's liberationists of the 1960s recognized their historical predecessors by defining themselves as 'Second Wave feminists,' they were thinking of tides rather than towers, of maritime phenomena rather than Marconi. Adapted from the source document.
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ISSN:0046-3663
2153-3873
2153-3873
DOI:10.1353/fem.2012.0065