Graduation Year
Spring 2014
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Environmental Analysis
Reader 1
Matthew Delmont
Reader 2
Tamara Venit-Shelton
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2014 Emma Foehringer Merchant
Abstract
Since the 1960s, the modern environmental movement, though generally liberal in nature, has historically excluded a variety of serious and influential groups. This thesis concentrates on the movement of working-class housewives who emerged into popular American consciousness in the seventies and eighties with their increasingly radical campaigns against toxic contamination in their respective communities. These women represent a group who exhibited the convergence of cultural influences where domesticity and environmentalism met in the middle of American society, and the increasing focus on public health in the environmental movement framed the fight undertaken by women who identified as “housewives.” These women, in their use of both traditional female stereotypes as well as radical influences from other social movements, synthesized their own unique type of activism, which has had a profound influence on the environmental movement and public health in the United States, especially in its relation to environmental justice.
Recommended Citation
Foehringer Merchant, Emma, "Radical Housewife Activism: Subverting the Toxic Public/Private Binary" (2014). Pomona Senior Theses. 101.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/101
Included in
Environmental Policy Commons, Other American Studies Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, United States History Commons, Women's History Commons
