Women's Movements in the United States

Steven Buechler has written a comparative sociological analysis of the woman suffrage movement (1840-1920)and the contemporary women's movement (1960s to the present). His identification of similarities and differences between these movements reveals persistent feminist issues over time as well as the distinctive concerns of each movement in its sociohistorical context. Buechler compares these two movements in terms of their origins, organizations, ideologies, class and racial diversities, countermovements, and outcomes. He uses resource mobilization theory to understand and compare these movements, but also uses these movements to call for a critical reformulation of resource mobilization theory. Steven M. Buechler is an associate professor of sociology at Mankato State University in Minnesota and the author of The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850-1920.