Which is the real women's movement? The 1960s guerilla theater with feminists chanting "No more male legislators"? Or the political action committees of the 1970s distributing money to progressive candidates? Geraldine Ferraro and Diane Feinstein winning nomination to important political office in the 1980s? Or the crying, shouting, angry women of Mills College in 1990, protesting their school's decision to admit male undergraduates? According to Anne N. Costain, the movement's diversity and longevity have given it political strength--and have made it very difficult to define. In Inviting Women's Rebellion Costain examines the development of the women's movement from its appearance in the 1960s, through its formative years to its peak in the 1970s, and into its current decline.

Political scientists have generally understood it as a traditional social movement one that gathered its constituents and mobilized its resources to fight for change--in part, against a government that was hostile or indifferent to women's rights. Costain argues instead for a "political process" interpretation that includes the federal government's role in facilitating the movement's success. In Costain's analysis, the crumbling of the New Deal coalition in the late sixties created a period of political uncertainty. Realizing the potential electoral impact of a bloc of women voters, politicians saw the value of making serious efforts to attract women's support. In this sympathetic political climate, the women's movement won early legislative stories without needing to develop significant resources or tactical skills. It also encouraged the movement's emphasis on legislation, particularly the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

From its inception, the women's movement focused on changing the laws that perpetuate gender difference--seeking to free both sexes from rigid regulations which assumed, for example, that women were not qualified to sit on juries or that men should have the sole responsibility after divorce for alimony and child support. Costain argues that the movement's emphasis on legal change was not its inevitable course--and perhaps not its best. The women's movement brought significant changes in language, health care, education, the arts, individual psychology, and a myriad of other areas of American life and culture. Yet, since the defeat of the ERA, the talk is of backlash and decline. Offering a new understanding of the movement's successes and failures, Inviting Women's Rebellion records the political lessons the next generation will need to learn and remember as it wrestles with the issues of equality and fairness.