Waves of Feminism

Introduction

• Feminism is a movement “of women, by women, and for women” to achieve women’s rights.
• Feminism stands for:
  1. Gender Equality
  2. Independence of Women
  3. Empowerment of Women
• Feminism combined “femme”, French for woman, with the suffix “ism” meaning woman’s political position.
• Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen are foremothers of the modern women’s movement.
• Organized women movements started in the late 19th century and are categorized in three time periods:
  1. First Wave of Feminism
  2. Second Wave of Feminism
  3. Third Wave of Feminism
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)” highlights the depression women experience when they are relegated to the home. The wallpaper in the house becomes a metaphor for the way the home stifles women’s creativity and actualization. Betty Friedan, an American feminist writer, called it “the problem with no name”.

First Wave of Feminism (1848-1920)

• Journalist Marsha Lear of the New York Times coined the term “first wave of feminism” retroactively in 1968 along with the term “second wave of feminism”.

• The first wave of feminism started around 1848.
• This wave was mainly focused on:
  1. The right to vote
  2. Education
  3. Employment
  4. Marriage laws (divorce and child custody)
  5. Property rights
  6. Healthcare
• The primary gains of this were:
  1. The right to vote
  2. Right to practice birth control
• Feminists state that the first wave started with Mary Wollstonecraft’s book, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)” which advocated women education. Wollstonecraft has been called the first feminist because of this.
• The first wave of feminism sprouted up alongside the abolition and temperance movements during a time of great social change.
• White women who opposed the institution of slavery soon realized they were facing the same inequalities under the racist, sexist and classist system of government in the United States.
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott travelled to the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 but the organizers refused to allow them to participate being women.
• This led to them organizing their own convention which was the Seneca Falls Convention 1848.

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

• Elizabeth Cady and Mott were Quakers, a Christian group which advocated against slavery and gender equality. In Quaker sermons, even women were allowed to preach.
• They organized the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in July 1848.
• The convention demanded equal rights for men and women.
• Elizabeth Cady read the Declaration of Sentiments modeled after the Declaration of Independence: “All men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
• The Declaration of Sentiments objected to the following:
  • Women were not allowed to vote.
  • Married women had no property rights.
  • Husbands had legal power over their wives; they could even beat them with impunity.
  • Divorce and child custody favored men.
  • Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine and law.
• Over 200 people signed the document including some infamous names like Frederick Douglass, a former slave turned into a prominent figure of the abolitionist movement.

Birth Control Movement (1919)

• The birth control movement was started by a public health nurse, Margaret Sanger.
• In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, which led to her arrest.
• Her subsequent trial and appeal generated controversy. Sanger felt that in order for women to have a more equal footing in society and to lead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine when to bear children.
• In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
• It was not until 1965 that women could obtain contraceptives legally.
• Roe v. Wade (1973) was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.

The 19th Amendment (1920)

• First wave of feminists were led by suffragists such as:
  1. Susan B. Anthony
  2. Margaret Sanger
  3. Anna Shaw
  4. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• These women succeeded in 1920 with the passage of the 19th amendment of the US Constitution.
• In 1893, New Zealand had granted the right to vote to women but they could not become members of the parliament.
• In 1902, Australia was the first country in the world where all women got the vote and could become members of the parliament.

Second Wave of Feminism (1960-1988)

• The second wave, also called Women’s Liberation Movement, focused on women’s legal equality, social equality and called for the end of sexism and misogyny.

• During this era of the 1960s, women were:

  • restricted financially.
  • not allowed in the military except for nurses.
  • not given equal education and professional status.

Prominent Feminists

• Virginia Woolf wrote a letter called the Three Guineas (1938) which advocated for women’s entry into the public sphere.
• Simone De Beauvoir wrote the Second Sex in 1949 which was translated to English in 1952. The book described:
  • women’s inferior status in society.
  • the problem of patriarchy.
  • her most famous quote: “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman”.
  • the gendered world of the home cripples women’s ability to engage in the world.
  • the monotony experienced by the “others” (housewives).
• Betty Friedan was a liberal feminist who wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963). It set off the second wave of feminist that lasted until the late 1980s and radically altered society’s treatment of women.
• Germaine Greer stated in her book The Female Eunuch (1970) that men hate women and women also suffer from internalized misogyny and hate themselves too.
• Judith Little wrote a book called Feminist Philosophy and Science Fiction which addressed the hypocrisies of the American society that exploited women. She wrote, “people deserve to be treated as beings who can reason, make choices, and determine their own plans of life.”

Civil Rights Movement and Feminism

• The second wave of feminism also grew with the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr.
• Once again, women in this movement found that they themselves didn’t have the rights of black people that they were advocating for.
• The Women Liberation Movement was created and it demanded equality with men in the social, political, economic and sexual spheres of life.
• Second wave feminists focused on the goals of equal rights and opportunities for women and men.
• Many of these feminists were inspired by the Marxist intellectual movement called The New Left; women started seeing themselves as the oppressed class.
• Second wave feminists also highlighted the glass ceiling and the wage gap women face in business and employment. During the WWII, women were given record jobs (500% increase in employment of women) but these jobs were taken back when the war ended and men arrived home.

Radical Groups

• The second wave also had some radical groups that aimed to eradicate patriarchy and sexism.
• Some of these groups were:
  1. New York Radical Women (NYRW)
  2. Redstockings
  3. Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH)
• They practiced zap actions and dramatic public demonstrations to catch the eye of the media.
• The 1968 Miss America Pageant Protest by NYRW is a famous one. They crowned a sheep as Miss America in protest of women objectification.
• The Redstockings encouraged groups of women to gather for consciousness-raising discussions which involved sharing of personal experiences in the feminist struggle. Due to these gatherings, feminism grew into a mass movement where the slogan came forward - “The Personal is Political”.

The Personal is Political

• Despite getting the right to vote, the position of women in society was largely unchanged.
• “The personal is political”, first coined by the feminist writer Carol Hanisch, became a rallying cry of the second wave of feminism.
• Feminists made the oppression in their private lives a matter of public concern:
  • Access to healthcare.
  • Being domestically abused.
  • Responsible for household chores.
  • Pregnancy.
  • Childbirth.
  • Rape.
  • Sexual harassment.
• This was meant to:
  1. Inspire women to be politically active.
  2. Make sure politicians paid attention to women’s lives at home.
  3. Politicize these issues
• Women’s bodies and homes, not just the women’s social and political existence, were recognized as the sites of oppression. Thus, feminists blew apart the oft-used distinction between the public and the private life.
• **Second wave feminists specifies that what is at issue is that women are largely excluded from the public sphere where decisions that affect their lives are made. Personal problems are political problems. Issues considered previously as women’s individual or private problems - abortion, reproductive rights, violence against women, sexual harassment, child care, housework - became a political issue.
• The slogan argues 4 separate claims:
  1. Private sphere is also a sphere of power where women are abused by men.
  2. Political sphere defines and infiltrates the personal sphere (state laws define how family, marriage, child custody laws are made).
  3. Personal affects political (family is a key agent of socialization that is carried in the public sphere).
  4. Division of public sphere and private sphere exists to create barriers for women.

Achievements

• Some important legal battles won for women’s equality were:
  1. Roe v. Wade (women decide whether they want abortion or not).
  2. Taylor v. Louisiana (women could not be excluded from a jury pool).
  3. Griswold v. Connecticut (married couples could buy and use contraceptives without government restriction).
  4. Eisenstadt v. Baird (right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples).
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created. It defined sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual advances or sexual conduct, verbal or physical, that interferes with a person’s performance or creates a hostile working environment.
• The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was passed that aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex. It was signed into law by John F. Kennedy.

Failures

• The Equal Rights Amendment could not pass.
• There was a division between the second wave feminists on the issue of pornography. Some feminists believed that pornography should be a choice for women to participate in whereas one group wanted to censor it completely.
• The second wave was not an inclusive movement of feminism. Women in developing countries and black people were largely excluded.

Third Wave of Feminism

Anita Hill Case (1991)

• The third wave began with the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
• Clarence Thomas was made the judge of the Supreme Court but he faced sexual harassment accusations from Anita Hill, a law professor.
• This reignited the feminist cause:
  1. A record number of women won seats in the Congress and Senate.
  2. Media called it the “Year of the Woman”.
• Rebecca Walker wrote an essay in 1992, “Becoming the Third Wave”. She states in the essay that she is not a post-modern feminist, but rather part of the third wave. Thus, the roots of the third wave can be traced back to her writings.
• SlutWalks are protests that take place to raise awareness about rape and to counter popular response to rape: that women should dress more modestly. Instead, SlutWalks stated that men should be taught not to rape. The first SlutWalk took place in Toronto, Canada in 2011.
• Power feminism was a concept that became popular in the third wave. It stated that women need to empower themselves and not wait for men. The only thing holding women back from equality is their own belief that they are victims.

The Objectives

1. No stereotyping against women in the media.
2. Correction of gendered language.
3. Mainstreaming Queer Theory.
4. Anti-racism.
5. Eco-feminism.
6. Proliferation of cyber-feminism.
7. Transgender politics.
8. Defending sex-work and pornography.

Six Features of Third Wave Feminism (Generation X Feminism)

1. Recognizing Differences Among Women: Transversal Politics

• Third wave feminists believed that women are not the only ones who are oppressed, it the same with other segments of society e.g. the poor class or a minority race.
• Thus, they believed to achieve gender equality without achieving race and class equality is to achieve very little for those women whose class or ethnicity or race is the primary source of their oppression.
• This form of feminism involves a fusion of feminist theory and critical race theory.
• According to these feminists, they believed that second wave feminism only focused on “white and middle class”. This had to change for the third wave.
• Hence, third wave can be called an inclusive movement for feminism.

2. Building Coalitions

• Third wave feminists also wanted to build alliances with men and other groups that work against various kinds of oppression.
• Third wave feminists want to build a movement that not only accepts but celebrates diversity.

3. Engaging in Everyday Resistance

• Third wave feminists believe that the reforms introduced by second wave feminists are not completely implemented.
• Women and minorities still experience injustices so they must be confronted in day-to-day lives. They believe that racist comments, homophobic attitudes must be confronted and rejected publicly.

4. Being Media Savvy

• Third wavers are media savvy. They grew up in a media-saturated world so engaging media is part of how they define their identities.
• They have YouTube channels, Twitter accounts, blogs, etc.
• Some examples are:
  1. MomsRising (online movement dedicated to mothers in US)
  2. RAINN (Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network - a national hotline in case of an emergency)
  3. Riot grrl (a feminist punk movement that produces music, art, etc.)
  4. Cyber grrls and Net grrls (feminism and internet)

5. Embracing Aesthetics and Consumerism

• Third wave feminists believe in spending money to belong to or be seen at the “right” restaurant, spas, stores, etc. They want to acquire status symbols including designer clothes and branded products.
• These women are strong and empowered, eschewing victimization and defining feminine beauty themselves, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy.

6. Individualism

• Third wave feminists emphasized individualism - individual identities, goals and strategies.
• Women come in all shapes, sizes, colors, etc. They are individual beings with individual problems. No one theory or law can apply to all of them.
• One such example of individualism is autobiographical essays on blogs or social network pages.
• “Personal empowerment as a starting point for societal change”
• In sum, third wave feminists use media, particularly, social media, to build on and go beyond the ideas and accomplishments of prior feminist movements in an effort to make feminism more inclusive, engaged with everyday life, and more individualistic.

The Suffragette Movement in Britain

• Suffragettes is used in Britain whereas suffragists is used in USA.
• Suffragettes in Britain often used militant and violent tactics. -The Representation of the People Act of 1918 granted the right to vote to women over the age of 30 and extended male voting rights as well.
• The Representation of the People Act of 1928 extended this to all women over the age of 21.