Movement Scholarship and Feminism in the 1980s

The April 1992, reproductive rights march on Washington was one of the largest demonstrations in the United States' history. Despite the existence of this march and another of similar size in 1989, some feminist scholars were already describing movement institutionalization and decline. This article argues that feminist scholars prematurely abandoned college age feminists in the 1980s, and thus begins the work of analyzing their experiences. It suggests that we may be able to reconcile some of the contradictory findigs within feminist literature by looking at the experiences of college age feminist activists in the 1980s. And it finds that on the whole the experiences of the feminist activists interviewed for this project are quite similar to those described by early Second Wave scholars.