Second wave feminism was largely a product of the 1960s. Its genesis came from a variety of different sources and inspirations: the American Civil Rights movement, the global New Left movement, and other sources of political activism. First wave feminism dealt largely with the struggle for basic political rights for women i.e. equal voting rights, property rights etc. Second wave feminism differed from first wave feminism in that it broadened the struggle for gender equality to the private sphere: to the home, to the office space, to the hospital. Second wave feminism asked deeper questions about societal sexism and social discrimination of women on more subtle levels. First-wave feminists faced more explicit legal discriminations, compared to second-wave feminists who attempted to reconfigure cultural values regarding women's place in society.

To put the struggles of second wave feminists into more concrete examples, second wave feminists often supported the sexual liberation of women via use of the pill. They supported abortion rights, fought for affirmative action policies for women in the workplace and in schools, opposed pornography, and, in the US, supported the passage of an equal rights amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing full legal equality in all social sectors of society.

Second wave feminists ran into tensions, however, on questions of trans identity and sexuality. They saw womanhood as a particular and unique identity that ought to be embraced- for these feminists, the struggle for freedom was not to become like men with the same privileges, but to become liberated actors who openly expressed their womanhood. This became a problem when faced with the problem of trans people- second wave feminists were often severely transphobic because they thought that trans-women were just men that were violating the sacredness of female identity. When it came to sexuality, not all feminists were comfortable with second wave feminism's anti-porn stance- some feminists felt that a more "sex-positive" feminism was possible. Ultimately, the differences over these two issues was what marked the shift from second to third wave feminism in the 1980s. Transphobia has practically vanished from feminist circles, although I'd argue the debate surrounding pornography is still hotly contested.