First wave (late 1800s – 1940s)
“First-wave feminism” took place during the 1800s and early 1900s in the U.K. and the U.S. The term first wave, was coined after the term “second-wave feminism” began to be used to describe a newer feminist movement that focused as much on fighting social and cultural inequalities as political inequalities.
Women leaders in the U.S. fought to abolish slavery before fighting for women’s right to vote. American first-wave feminism involved a wide range of women, some belonging to conservative Christian groups. Originally it focused on:
- the promotion of equal contract and property rights for women
- the opposition to chattel marriage and ownership of married women (and their children) by their husbands.
By the end of the 1800s, the focus was on gaining political power, particularly women’s right to vote. However, some feminists were still fighting for women’s sexual, reproductive and economic rights.
In the U.K. (Britain), the “Suffragettes” campaigned for the women’s vote. In 1918 the “Representation of the People Act” was passed – granting women the right to vote if they were over the age of 30 and owned a house. In 1928 this right was extended to all women over eighteen.
One year later, the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in all states. First-wave feminism in the U.S. basically ended in 1919 after the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed.
Second wave (1960s – early 1980s)
At the beginning of the1960s (until the late 1980s) the second wave was was largely concerned with other issues of equality, such as ending discrimination.
The slogan “The Personal is Political” became synonymous with the second wave. Second-wave feminists saw women’s cultural and political inequalities as firmly linked. They encouraged women to examine aspects of their personal lives and to recognize theme as deeply connected to political issues that reflected sexist power structures.
The rights gained by feminist activists of the second wave included:
- creation of domestic abuse shelters for women and children
- acknowledgment of abuse and rape of women on a public level
- access to contraception and other reproductive services including the legalization of abortion
- creation and enforcement of sexual harassment policies for women in the workplace,
- child care services
- equal or greater educational and extracurricular funding for young women, and
- women’s studies programs
“Women’s Lib”
First used in the United States in 1964, the term “Women’s Liberation” was starting to refer to the whole women’s movement. For various reasons, this movement glossed over race and class and failed to address “issues that divided women”, particularly minority voices in the women’s movement.
The Feminine Mystique
In 1963 a book criticized the idea that women could only find fulfillment through childrearing and homemaking. It ignited the contemporary women’s movement and permanently transformed the social fabric of the U.S. It’s regarded by some people as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.
It hypothesizes that women are “victims of a false belief system” that requires them to “find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children”. This causes women, the author argues, to “completely lose their identity in that of their family”.
One of the great victories of second-wave feminism was the breakdown of much of the remaining formal institutionalization of gender roles in the workplace. In 1972, The New York Times stopped running separate “Help Wanted – Male” and “Help Wanted – Female” advertisements. Many women had found ways to take their domesticskills into the world of paid work. Certain jobs remain overwhelmingly female, and are still generally considered “pink collar“:
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- babysitter
- cosmetologist
- florist
- hairdresser
- maid
- nanny
- nurse
- receptionist
- secretary
- tutor
- waitress
- tutor
- secretary
- receptionist
- nurse
- nanny
- maid
- hairdresser
- florist
- cosmetologist
- babysitter
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“bra burning”
In the late 1960s, feminist activists took aim at some of the symbols of femininity and charged that these objects reduced women to merely sex objects.
When Germaine Greer stated that “Bras are a ludicrous invention,” her statement resonated with many women who had been questioning the role of the bra. The 1968 Miss America beauty pageant, seen as an oppression of women, has become a notorious protest. About 400 women from The New York Radical Women held a demonstration at the Atlantic City Convention Hall after the Democratic National Convention. Protesters saw the pageant as an oppression of women because of its emphasis on an arbitrary standard of beauty. A “Freedom Trash Can” was placed on the ground and filled with bras, high-heeled shoes, false eyelashes, curlers, hairspray, makeup, magazines, and other items thought to be “instruments of torture” and accessories of enforced femininity. Someone suggested lighting a fire, but a permit could not be obtained, and so (contrary to the urban legend) there was no burning, nor did anyone take off her bra.
The event received a lot of media coverage, but the idea of women burning their bras was merely a blurring by the mainstream media of several movements. Journalists who wrote descriptions of the incident drew parallels with the young men who had burned their draft cards, in opposition to the Vietnam War, with the women’s protest and used the term “bra-burning.” The New York Post carried a headline “Bra Burners and Miss America”. The phrase became headline material and was quickly associated with women who chose to go braless. Feminism and “bra-burning” then became linked in popular culture.
Anti-feminists have used “bra burning” and “braless” as derogatory and trivializing terms for the feminist movement. What got lost in the rhetoric is that it became quite acceptable in the 1960s and 1970s to not wear a bra. Clothing manufacturers capitalized on the attitudes of sexual liberation by emphasising allure. They also promoted “no-bra” alternatives like the “no-bra bra” and adhesive pads that supported the breasts and covered the nipples. These were clearly attempts to recover braless women as customers by offering them something that they could spend money on. The fashion industry saw this time as a crisis, which led indirectly to multiple mergers and acquisitions and the development of large corporations.
Third wave (1989 – 1999)
The third wave has its roots in the mid-1980s, and in the early 1990s, as a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by the second wave, the third wave gained momentum.
The rights gained by feminist activists of the second wave served as a foundation for third-wave feminists:
Social issues:
- race
- social class
- sexuality
Workplace issues:
- the glass ceiling
- sexual harassment
- unfair maternity leave policies
and Motherhood:
- support for single mothers by means of welfare and child care
- respect for working mothers
- respect for mothers who decide to temporarily leave their careers to raise their children full-time
Third-wave feminists wanted women to be seen as intelligent, political beings with intelligent, political minds; some claimed that there was a lack of diverse, positive female representatives in pop culture. They also wanted to put attention to the media’s unhealthy standards for women; the glamorization of eating disorders like anorexia, the portrayal of women as sex objects (catering solely to the man’s needs), and anti-intellectualism.
Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas
Third-wave feminism intended to avoid the second wave’s over-emphasis of the experiences of upper middle-class white women and focus more on minority women’s challenges.
Feminist leaders rooted in the second wave and many black feminists tried to bridge the gap in feminism of race-related issues. An important landmark was in 1991 when Anita Hill accused Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Judge Thomas denied the accusations and, after extensive debate, the U.S. Senate voted 52–48 in favor of Judge Thomas.
Define ‘feminist’
Third-wave feminism sought to challenge any universal definition of femininity. Some third-wave feminists preferred not to call themselves feminists. Others kept and redefined the term.
Third-wave feminism dealt with issues that seemed to limit or oppress women. In their 2000 book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, the authors wrote:
“Consciousness among women is what caused this [change], and consciousness, one’s ability to open their mind to the fact that male domination does affect the women of our generation, is what we need… The presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have it—it’s simply in the water.”
My body, my rights
One of feminism’s primary concerns is a woman’s life and respect for her body.
“It is not feminism’s goal to control any woman’s fertility, only to free each woman to control her own.”- Jennifer Baumgardner, Amy Richards
In the famous 1973 case Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to guarantee the right to abortion in the United States. However, restrictions on this guarantee, including mandatory waiting periods, parental-consent laws, and spousal-consent laws, have become more and more common in states around the country. (In 2006 South Dakota attempted to ban abortion in ALL cases, except when necessary to save the mother’s life, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recently voted to uphold the partial birth abortion ban.) These decisions restrict women’s civil and reproductive rights.
“Bitch is the new black”
Words such as chick, bitch, whore, and cunt continue to be used in derogatory ways to demean women. Third-wave feminists (as well as fourth-wavers) believe it is better to change the meaning of a sexist word than to censor it from speech. Many of these words were originally neutral (such as cunt – to mean ‘female genitalia’) but were hi-jacked by misogynists and morphed into insults.
Politically Correct
Using “inclusive” and “neutral” language is based upon the idea that “language represents thought, and may even control thought”.
The goal of inoffensive language is multi-fold:
- The rights, opportunities, and freedoms of certain people are restricted because they are reduced to a stereotype.
- Stereotyping largely is implicit, unconscious, and facilitated by the availability of pejorative labels and terms.
- Rendering the labels and terms socially unacceptable, people then must consciously think about how they describe someone unlike themselves.
- When labeling is a conscious activity, the described person’s individual merits become apparent, rather than his or her stereotype.
One complication is that words and phrases that have been chosen by a group as acceptable descriptors of themselves eventually become commonly used. The people who use racist and sexist terms then begin to adopt the new terms in ways that make them offensive language again. The new terms are thus devalued, and another set of words must be coined, giving rise to lengthy progressions (for example: Negro, Coloured, Black, African-American , etc.)
Other cognitive psychology works show that word-choices have significant “framing effects” on the perceptions, memories, and attitudes of speakers (and listeners). The relevant empirical question is whether or not sexist language promotes sexism, i.e. sexist thought and action.
Spice Girls and “Buffy Studies”
The phrase “Girl Power,” as a term of empowerment, expressed a cultural phenomenon of the mid 1990s to the early 2000s.
The phrase entered the mainstream during the mid-1990s with the British singing group, The Spice Girls. In a 2002 book, Girl Heroes: the New Force in Popular Culture, the author suggested a connection between “Girl Power” and female action heroes at the end of the 20th century.
Others have also examined the phrase, “girl power,” often within the context of the academic field, Buffy Studies.
In 2001, the Oxford English Dictionary added the term “Girl Power”:
- Power exercised by girls; spec. a self-reliant attitude among girls and young women manifested in ambition, assertiveness, and individualism. Although also used more widely (esp. as a slogan), the term has been particularly and repeatedly associated with popular music; most notably in the early 1990s with the briefly prominent ‘riot girl’ movement in the United States (cf. RIOT GIRL n.); then, in the late 1990s, with the British all-female group The Spice Girls.
The 4th Wave of Feminism
Feminist activists have campaigned for women’s legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for rights to bodily integrity and autonomy, for abortion rights, and for reproductive rights (including access to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape; for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; and against other forms of discrimination.
We are eternally grateful for our foremothers efforts; we will take it from here.
