The feminist movement is an acknowledged force for social change, and yet, as a social movement, it has received very little serious analysis or study. Barbara Ryan has provided one of the first historical and comparative analyses of feminist ideology and activism, detailing feminist relations and social movement change in the women's movement in the US. The historical sweep covers the early women's movement, the suffrage movement, the emergence of contemporary feminism, and the post-1975 period of high mobilization around the Equal Rights Ammendmant (ERA). The author then traces the post-feminist' period that followed the defeat of ERA in 1982, and the rise of a new mobilization at the end of the 1980s, which was centred on reproductive rights, and the continuing challenge to incorporate race and class differences in feminist analysis.