Riding the Second Wave: Organizing Feminism and Organizational Discourse — Stewardesses For Women's Rights

Abstract As part of the women's movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, flight attendants formed an organization to fight discrimination in the industry. That organization was called Stewardesses forWomen's Rights (SFWR). Formed in 1972, SFWR attracted a lot of high profile feminist attention and served as a powerful challenge to sexist attitudes and practices in the commercial aviation industry in the USA. Avowedly feminist in organization and orientation, SFWR nonetheless folded in 1976 under the weight of bitter infighting and a lack of funding.Drawing on archival material, this paper sets out to analyze the rise and fall of SFWR and the lessons for feminist organizing. Using critical hermeneutics (Prasad and Mir 2002) to interrogate the material, we conclude with suggestions for alternative forms of organizing based on Acker's (1995) distinction between organization and organizing and on Ferguson's (1984) call for change strategies based on feminist discourse.