Gordon, Linda; Cobble, Dorothy Sue; Henry, Astrid. Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements. Liveright, 2014.

Summary
eminism Unfinished details the first history of the Americans women’s movement over the approximately one hundred years since the women suffrage amendment passed in 1920 (long Woman's movement). In detailing this history, the book also challenges many popular understandings of the women’s movement; in particular, the popular history that the women’s rights movement came to a halt in 1920 and was not re-awakened until the 1970s to only evaporate again in the 1980s. This book presents a history of feminism that is continuous, contingent, and contentious. The book thus “decenters” the movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which is “often taken to be the main expression of twentieth century feminism.” The authors argue that there “was no period in the last century when women were not campaigning for greater equality and freedom.” (xiv) They also argue that feminism was constantly changing, as all social movements do (contingency – middle class lawyers in the 1920s had different demands and experiences than women feeding their families on food stamps in the 1970s). Given this, there has never been a single, unified feminist agenda; there have been multiple feminisms. Yet, a “bottom line” did exist for feminist, in which all sough educational opportunity, economic opportunity, equal rights to political participation, an end to violence against women, an end to the sexual double standard, respect for women’s work and jobs that allowed them to still fulfill familial responsibilities. This book also shows that feminists and the women who participated varied across political, religious, and class lines as well as ideological; just as some tended toward eradicating gender different, others celebrated women’s differences from men. They also argue it’s important to recognize (like the CRM) that the movement has not always been steadily “upward,” especially if one considers the loss or limitation of reproduction rights gained during the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, as a whole, feminism “has taken many forms, always responding to changing historical circumstances, and will be reinvented by future generations.” (xxi)