Carl J. Cuneo
Dept. of Sociology
Kenneth Taylor Hall, Room 608
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4
E-mail: cuneo@mcmaster.ca
Personal Web Page: Cuneo
Social change is rarely linear, balanced, or
evolutionary. The transition from patriarchy to feminism is one of
many such examples. Using a trade union organization (The Retail,
Wholesale, and Department Store Union in the United States and Canada)
as a case study, this paper employs a mult-media approach, combining
text, sound, and graphics, to illustrate the uneven withering away of
patriarchy, and the tentative and uncertain emergence of liberal and
trade union feminism between 1954 and 1986. Drawing on text, photos,
and cartoons from the union newspaper in the areas of domestic and wage
labour, sexism, sexual harassment, pinups, beauty contests, misogyny,
internal union activities, women's union organizing, day care,
maternity leave, gender discrimination, and non- traditional work, an
interregnum is demonstrated during the 1960s and 1970s when patriarchy
and feminism experienced a contradictory and unstable co-existence; this
divided the 1950s when patriarchy dominated, from the 1980s, when
liberal and trade union feminism made their tentative appearance. The
withering away of patriarchy was more pronounced than the growth of one
or more feminisms. Feminism did not replace
patriarchy as much as it continued to co-exist with its latent , and
sometimes, manifest forms.