WAVES OF FEMINISM

THE FIRST WAVE (1830’S – EARLY 1900’S)

Introduction
• This concept of wave originated with the Irish activist Frances Power Cobbe
in 1884. Marie Shear 1986 ‘women are people’. Although individual
feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft had already argued against the
injustices suffered by women. Women realized that they must first gain
political power (including the right to vote) to bring about change.
Ethnicity, as defined in the public domain, is "the cultural characteristics
that connect a particular group or groups of people to each other“.
 Period and Scope

• The first wave of feminism took place in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, emerging out of an environment of urban
industrialism and liberal, socialist politics. USA and Britain
• They were not primarily concerned with the problems of working-class
women, nor did they necessarily see themselves as feminists in the modern
sense (the term was not coined until 1895). First Wave Feminists, largely
upper middle class white women responded to specific injustices they had
themselves experienced.
 Origin

• The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in N.Y, 1848 when three hundred men
and women (almost 200 women) met in a church rallied to discuss “the social, civil, and
religious condition and rights of women.” The goal of this wave was to open up opportunities
for women, with a focus on suffrage. Not just for women’s suffrage but for universal suffrage
• Passage of 12 resolutions relating to women’s rights. Advent of bloomers and dress reforms.
• The whole thing was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were both
active abolitionists. (They met when they were both barred from the floor of the 1840 World
Anti-Slavery Convention in London; no women were allowed.)
• The 15th Amendment’s passage in 1870, granting black men the right to vote, became a spur
that politicized white women and turned them into suffragettes.
 Key project or argument/Purpose

1. Discriminatory laws and exclusionary social norms

2. Rights and Representation of women as human beings not to be treated as
the property of men
The key concerns of First Wave Feminists were education, employment, the
marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent middle-class single women.
Their political agenda expanded to issues concerning sexual, reproductive
and economic matters, education and legal (marriage laws).
 Demands

At that convention a Declaration of Sentiments was issued, objecting to the following

Women were not allowed to vote.

Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation.
Married women had no property rights (and 90% of women over 25 were married at that
time.)
Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they
could imprison or beat them with impunity.
Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women
Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in
the levying of these taxes.
Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they
were paid only a fraction of what men earned.
Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law
Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university
would accept women students.
With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the
affairs of the church.
Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were
made totally dependent on men.
 Notable Feminists

1. Abigail Adam- the wife of President John Adams (second President), education.
2. Mary Wollstonecraft ‘A vindication of the rights of women’ (Gen. Disc., Aimscitizenship,
participation in public, liberties, divine rights of husband. CriticismPsyche, sexual equality,
revolution.)
3. Frances Right ‘views of society and manners in America’.
4. The Grimke Sister (Angelina Grimke-anti slavery & Sarah Grimke-equal liberties).
5. Mathew Carey ‘Rules of Husbands and Wives’ .
6. Caroline Norton (Covertures, Infant Custody Act 1839, Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 +ve
divorce, maintenance, Identity, recover property. –ve adultery, desertion, cruelty, incest)
 Major achievements

• The opening of higher education for women

• Reform of the girls' secondary-school system, including participation in formal national
examinations
• The widening of access to the professions, especially medicine
• Married women's property rights recognized in the Married Women's Property Act of 1870 -
to keep earnings or property acquired after marriage,
• Some improvement in divorced and separated women's child custody rights
• bicycle was used as a tool which motivated women to gain strength and take on increased
roles in society
 Feminism and cycling 1890s -

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that the bicycle was a tool which motivated women
to gain strength and take on increased roles in society.
• Susan B. Anthony stated in 1896: "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think
it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand
and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.“
• Beatrice Grimshaw bought a bicycle, with difficulty. I rode it unchaperoned, mile
and miles beyond the limits possible to the soberly trotting horses. The world
opened before me. And as soon as my twenty-first birthday dawned, I went away
from home, to see what the world might to give to daughters who revolted."
 Major Weaknesses
• Black women were barred from some demonstrations or forced to walk behind white women in
others. Racism was existing.
• Although First-wavers fought for equal opportunities to education and employment, and for the
right to own property yet fought for white women’s suffrage only.
• Although individual groups continued to work — for reproductive freedom, for equality in
education and employment, for voting rights for black women — the movement as a whole
began to splinter. It no longer had a unified goal with strong cultural momentum behind it, and it
would not find another until the second wave began to take off in the 1960s
• Active until the First World War, First Wave Feminists failed, however, to secure the women's
vote.
 On January 9, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the amendment. The next day,
the House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment, but the Senate refused to debate it until
October. When the Senate voted on the Amendment in October, it failed by three votes.
 In response, the National Woman's Party urged citizens to vote against anti-suffrage Senators up for
reelection in the 1918 midterm elections. Following those elections, most members of Congress were pro-
suffrage. On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89 and
the Senate followed suit on June 4, by a vote of 56 to 25.
 On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee General Assembly, by a one-vote margin became the thirty-sixth state
legislature to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, making it a part of the U.S. Constitution. On August 26,
1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the amendment's adoption. The right to vote in America
was finally granted to women in 1920. This was 144 years after the Revolutionary War
 Suffrage movement

• USA:
1. Elizabeth Miller, Lil (1st women rights paper)
2.‘National women suffrage association’ & ‘Revolution’ paper by Stanton (1872)
• UK:
1. Women Suffrage Society 1865 and WS committee 1866
2. Society for the promotion of the employment of the women
3. ‘The English Women’s Review’ paper
4. International council of women
5. Women's Social and Political Union by Emmeline Pankhurst (whose members—
known as suffragettes used militant tactics to agitate for women's suffrage. Pankhurst
was imprisoned many times, but supported the war effort after World War I broke out)
• AUSTRALIA:
1. Catherine Helene Spence (educ. divorce, right to vote) Spence became
a vice-president of the Women's Suffrage League of South Australia
2. Vida Goldstein (5 times 1910-1917, peace alliance, women peace army)
• Franchise:
• NZ-1892, Aus-1902, Finland-1906, Britain 1918 & 1928, USA-1920, France-1944,
Japan-1946saa
 THE SECOND WAVE (1960’S-1980’S)

Introduction:
Term coined by Marsha Lear—USA, Britain, Europe, occurred during the 1960’s
to 1980’s. The second wave of feminism begins with Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which
came out in 1963. There were prominent feminist thinkers before Friedan who would come to be
associated with the second wave — most importantly Simone de Beauvoir, whose Second Sex
came out in France in 1949 and in the US in 1953 — but The Feminine Mystique was a phenomenon.
1. Launched movement for ending discrimination
2. WLM-Women Liberation Movement (theoretical)
3. WRM-Women’s Right Movement (practical)
 Reasons: Difference/Scope

• Civil Right Activism & Anti-Vietnam Campaign • The Second Wave differed from the FW in that
(This wave unfolded in the context of the anti- it “drew in women of color and developing
Vietnam War and civil rights movements and nations.
the growing self-consciousness of a variety of
minority groups around the world).
 Origin Slogan

• This phase began with protests against the • it coined phrases such as "the personal is
Miss America pageant in Atlantic City in 1968 political" and "identity politics“
and 1969. Feminists parodied what they held
to be a degrading "cattle parade" that reduced • They would go on to argue that problems that
women to objects of beauty dominated by a seemed to be individual and petty — about
patriarchy that sought to keep them in the sex, and relationships, and access to abortions,
home or in dull, low-paying jobs. The radical and domestic labor — were in fact systemic
New York group called the Redstockings and political, and fundamental to the fight for
staged a counter pageant in which they women’s equality. ‘The personal is political’
crowned a sheep as Miss America and threw sums up the way in which Second Wave
"oppressive" feminine artifacts such as bras, Feminism did not just strive to extend the
girdles, high-heels, makeup and false range of social opportunities open to women,
eyelashes into the trashcan but also, through intervention within the
spheres of reproduction, sexuality and cultural
representation, to change their domestic and
private lives
 Purpose Demands

• It began to associate the subjugation of • Equal treatment towards women in the

women with broader critiques of patriarchy, workplace
capitalism, normative heterosexuality, and the
woman's role as wife and mother.
• Right to hold credit cards under their own
names and to apply for mortgages
• It was seeking sisterhood and solidarity,
• Same career perspectives with men
claiming "Women's struggle is class struggle."
Feminists spoke of women as a social class. • Paid work & Equal pay,
• Sex and gender were differentiated—the • Right to birth control and no children
former being biological, and the later a social
construct that varies culture-to-culture and • Consciousness raising" groups about sexism
over time and patriarchy
• Outlaw marital rape
• Raising awareness about domestic violence
and build shelters for women fleeing rape and
domestic violence
 Notable Feminists
• Betty Friedan “Feminine Mystique” (Points & Criticism) – gender roles It sold 3 million
copies in three years. It had a unifying goal, too: not just political equality, which the first-
wavers had fought for, but social equality.
• Germaine Greer ‘The Female Eunuch’ – heterosexuality
• Shulamith Firestone ‘The Dialectic of Sex’ – reproduction
• Kate Millet ‘Sexual Politics’ – patriarchal, sex is political, gender is cultural
• Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex
• The French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote novels; The Second Sex, a
detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary
feminism. Written in 1949, its English translation was published in 1953. It sets out a
feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. As an existentialist, she
accepted Jean-Paul Sartre's precept The French author and philosopher Simone de
Beauvoir wrote novels; The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a
foundational tract of contemporary feminism. Written in 1949, its English translation was
published in 1953. It sets out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution.
As an existentialist, she accepted Jean-Paul Sartre's precept
 Successes
• The Commission on the Status of Women was created by the Kennedy administration,
with Eleanor Roosevelt as its chair. The report issued by that commission in 1963 that
documented discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life
• The Equal Pay Act of 1963 theoretically outlawed the gender pay gap.
• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a federal law that prohibits employers from
discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and
religion,
• It was not until 1965 that married couples in all states could obtain contraceptives legally.
Do not confuse the right to birth control with the right to abortion. Until 1936 distributing
birth control information/material was a crime under the same classification as we now
rank the distribution of child pornography.
• Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX is a comprehensive federal law that prohibits
discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity
• Supreme Court cases through the ’60s and ’70s gave married and unmarried women the
right to use birth control;
 Major Weaknesses
Varieties of Feminism Black feminism

• Lesbian Feminists • Faced with the sexism of black men and the
racism of white, black women in their
• Political feminists
respective movements had two choices: they
• Cultural Feminists could remain in the movements and try to
• Socialist Feminists
educate non-black or non-female comrades
about their needs, or they could form a
• Traditional Marxist Feminists movement of their own
• Radical Feminists • Many women felt that second wave feminism
• Female supremacists did not meet the needs of a large body of
women. Despite the popular story, there was
• Humanist Feminists no mass burning of bras among second-wave
• Psychoanalytical Feminists feminists.
 Third Wave versus Post Feminists

• Please note that both believe EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE THINGS. Third wave
feminism doesn't argue, as post feminists do, that the time has come to be
done with post feminism. Indeed, third wave feminism isn't a retraction but
rather an expansion of second wave work, with a focus in new directions.
 THE THIRD WAVE (1980’S/1990s –
PRESENT)

Introduction Diff names

• Coined term: Yuval Davis in ‘Gender & Nation’ • Grrl feminism (USA)
1997 & Rebecca Walker’s article ‘Becoming Third
Wave’. The third wave of feminism began in • New Feminism (Europe)
1980s and 1990s and was informed by post- • Lipstick feminism
colonial and post-modern thinking
• Girlie feminism
• Ariel Levy, an American feminist who wrote the
novel ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the • Riot grrl feminism
Rise of Raunch Culture’ talks of this shift in
society as she realized in college that her friends
• Cybergrrl feminism
were beginning to wear revealing clothes and act • Transfeminism
provocatively.
 Scope Slogan

• Third wave feminism was powered by middle- • In essence, where second wavers argued personal
class women in their twenties and thirties is political while third wavers are now arguing
concerns expressed concerns with retaining that ‘the pleasurable is political as well’.
second-wave feminist agendas and tried to
create new projects focusing on issues of race
and sexuality and fighting the new backlash
against feminism.
• Third-wave feminism is tied up with the effects of
globalization and the complex redistribution of
power, which challenge feminist theory and
politics. It also mirrors the diversification of
women’s interests and perspectives and the
breakdown of master stories of oppression and
liberation. For example, postcolonial, third-wave
feminism is concerned with establishing a new
critical global perspective and creating alliances
between Black, diasporic, and subaltern
feminisms, whereas queer theory and politics
create a platform for what has now split into the
lesbian, gay, bi-, and transsexual and transgender
movements
 Background

• However, the "Angry Women In Rock" in 1995 phenomenon appears to be only a

commercial version of an earlier group of female musicians associated with ‘Riot Grrrl’,
looking back to 1991. Differed in musical style, this group of musicians embodied what it
meant to be a woman expressing anger through rock music, according to the music press.
“BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.”
• (Riot Grrrl began in 1991, when a group of women from Washington, D.C., and Olympia,
Washington, held a meeting to discuss how to address sexism in the punk scene. Inspired
by recent antiracist riots in D.C., the women decided they wanted to start a "girl riot"
against a society they felt offered no validation of women's experiences).
• The name "Riot Grrrl" emerged. The word girl here points to one of the major
differences between second- and third-wave feminism. Second-wavers fought to
be called women rather than girls: Theyweren’t children, they were fully grown
adults, and they demanded to be treated with according dignity.
• The rewriting of the word as "grrrl" represented the anger behind the movement; it
sounded like a growl. But third-wavers liked being girls. The founding women of
third wave had ties to punk, a genre known for using performance and shock value
as tools of protest.
• Reclaimed the term “girl” in a bid to attract another generation while engaging in a
new, more self-assertive—even aggressive—but also more playful and less
pompous kind of feminism.
• Riot Grrrl had a more radical orientation than other feminist organizations such as
the National Organization for Women-NOW, an American feminist organization
founded on June 30, 1966, Washington, D.C., United States).
 Purpose Demands/Objects

• The third wave stepped onto the stage as strong • Freedom of expression
and empowered, eschewing victimization and
defining feminine beauty for themselves as • Sexual liberation
subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy. • Fighting against workplace sexual harassment
• An aspect of third wave feminism that mystified and working to increase the number of women in
positions of power
the mothers of the earlier feminist movement
was the re-adoption by young feminists of the • Resistance to objectification
very lip-stick, high-heels, and cleavage proudly
exposed by low cut necklines that the first two • Ending discriminatory words
phases of the movement identified with male • Abolishing gender construction
oppression. Pink floor expressed this new
position when she said that it's possible to have a • Changing connotation of words
push-up bra and a brain at the same time. For • Challenging def. of femininity & things of male
example, they wear make up and acknowledge oppression
their participation in beauty culture even as
they criticize it. • Promoted transversal politics
 Notable Feminists

• Rebecca Walker ‘To be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism’ (Race and class
exploitation, violence against women, reproductive freedom, sexual freedom, labor issues, death
penalty, welfare rights)
• Judith Butler, Gender theorist, who argued that gender and sex are separate and that gender is
performative. She signaled this paradigmatic feminist shift in her books Gender Trouble (1990) and
Bodies That Matter (1993). She fueled new emergent movements such as queer and transgender
politics which take an interest in the intersections of gender and sexuality and helped articulate
“performance third-wave feminism” as a theoretical framework of the politics of transgression. Central
to this perspective is the understanding of gender as a discursive practice that is both a hegemonic,
social matrix and a “performative gesture” with the power to disturb the chain of social repetition and
open up new realities
• Crenshaw and Butler’s combined influence would become foundational to the third wave’s embrace of
the fight for trans rights as a fundamental part of intersectional feminism.
 Major Weaknesses

• This is not to say that third wavers are apolitical, but that the political struggles that interest
them are not always directly tied to traditional concern within the American feminist movement.
The split is even further complicated by a division between “academic ” and “ mainstream ”.
Third wavers ‘do nothing’ to change things politically.
• The fact that many third wavers are well aware of the important criticisms launched at the
second wave for being too closely allied with white women's politics complicates matters
further
• In addition, many third wavers describe themselves as pro pornography and/or in favor of
women's rights as sex workers, concerns that weren't addressed by second wave feminism in
anything but a pejorative way
• They also mistakenly assume that feminism is un-feminine or borderline lesbian or somehow
irreconcilable with a desire for marriage, family and traditional values. It should be noted that
Ms. Magazine founder Gloria Steinem, along with many other leaders of the feminist movement
then and now, is happily married.
• The third wave was a diffuse movement without a central goal, and as such, there’s no single
piece of legislation or major social change that belongs to the third wave the way the 19th
Amendment belongs to the first wave or Roe v. Wade belongs to the second.
 THE PRESENT DAY: A FOURTH WAVE?

• And now the fourth wave has begun to hold our culture’s most powerful men accountable for their
behavior. It has begun a radical critique of the systems of power that allow predators to target women with
impunity.
• Belonging to fourth-wave feminism in 2015 do tend to hold true for a lot of fourthwavers; namely, that
fourth-wave feminism is queer, sex-positive, trans-inclusive, body-positive, and digitally driven. (Bustle also
claims that fourth-wave feminism is anti-misandry, but given the glee with which fourth-wavers across the
internet riff on ironic misandry, that may be more prescriptivist than descriptivist on their part.)
• Over the past few years, as #MeToo and Time’s Up pick up momentum, the Women’s March floods
Washington with pussy hats every year, and a record number of women prepare to run for office, it’s
beginning to seem that the long-heralded fourth wave might actually be here.
• By 2013, the idea that we had entered a fourth wave was widespread enough that it was getting written up
in the Guardian. “What’s happening now feels like something new again,” wrote Kira Cochrane.
• As such, the fourth wave’s beginnings are often loosely pegged to around 2008, when Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube were firmly entrenched in the cultural fabric and feminist blogs like Jezebel and Feministing
were spreading across the web.