Three Waves of Feminism From Suffragettes to Grrls (original) (raw)
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W e now ask our readers to join us in an exploration of the history of feminism or, rather, feminisms: How have they evolved in time and space? How have they framed feminist communication scholarship in terms of what we see as a significant interplay between theory and politics? And how have they raised questions of gender, power, and communication? We shall focus our journey on the modern feminist waves from the 19th to the 21st century and underscore continuities as well as disruptions. Our starting point is what most feminist scholars consider the " first wave. " First-wave feminism arose in the context of industrial society and liberal politics but is connected to both the liberal women's rights movement and early socialist feminism in the late 19th and early 20th century in the United States and Europe. Concerned with access and equal opportunities for women, the first wave continued to influence feminism in both Western and Eastern societies throughout the 20th century. We then move on to the second wave of feminism, which emerged in the 1960s to 1970s in postwar Western welfare societies, when other " oppressed " groups such as Blacks and homosexuals were being defined and the New Left was on the rise. Second-wave feminism is closely linked to the radical voices of women's empowerment and differential rights and, during the 1980s to 1990s, also to a crucial differentiation of second-wave feminism itself, initiated by women of color and third-world women. We end our discussion with the third feminist wave, from the mid-1990s onward, springing from the 1
Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism
Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism, 2017
Challenges to the wave metaphor A central theme of this collection is the reimagination and re-periodization of the "second wave" of feminism, which in the past has been described as occurring between the early 1960s through the 1970s. 1 There has been much discussion about the usefulness of the "wave" metaphor first used by feminists active in women's movements in those decades. When American activists claimed they were a "second wave, " they used the term to distance themselves from a "first wave, " often perceived of as a narrow struggle for suffrage that began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and terminated in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. As Nancy Hewitt writes, "The decades excluded from the waves-before 1848 or from 1920 to 1960-are assumed to be feminist-free zones, an assumption belied by recent scholarship. " 2 In the United States, the period immediately after women won the vote until the 1960s was viewed as devoid of feminist activism and dominated by conservative beliefs steeped in rigidly dichotomous gender roles. This view of the "doldrums" has changed, 3 as have historical accounts of the period that followed the "second wave" (the 1980s and the era of Reagan), which had also been described as an era of conservative backlash against feminism and devoid of activism, which in turn gave rise in the 1990s to a self-described "third wave" of feminist activism. 4 As Hewitt remarks, each "wave" is presumably an improvement upon the last in a "script. .. that each wave overwhelms and exceeds its predecessor. " 5 The "third wave" was identified by younger feminists in the early 1990s who, in their criticism of their feminist forebears, attempted to go beyond "dichotomous notions of gender toward consideration of the multiple identities of age, class, race, and sexual preference, " 6 which many scholars now see as "third wave" feminists' adoption of intersectionality developed earlier by scholars and activists of color in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world. The wave metaphor, even one that includes a more expansive consideration of intersectional identities (i.e., intersectionality), suggests that women's activism occurs in discrete phases led by individuals who prioritize gender/ sex inequality. In the United States, this has generally produced a notion of the importance of activism led by middle-class white women. For most historians, this view has now become far too narrow. Although groundbreaking historical work focusing on the lives of women of color and working women emerged in the early 1980s, historians writing about feminist movements in the United States have, since the 1990s, turned their attention to the contributions of women of color and working-class women to those movements, demonstrating that feminist activists have not spoken with a singular voice or articulated a set of homogenous demands. 7 Nor did women of color and working-class women merely react to an already constituted set of white and middle-class feminist demands. Instead, scholars point out that women of color, working-class women, and middle-class white women have been in dialogue with each other, although they have not always articulated the same set of priorities, agreed with each other, or worked easily together. 8 Focusing on how the movement for sex equality intersected with demands for racial and economic justice in the post-Second World War period has 4 global "North" feminists (Mehta); struggled for recognition of female Indian informal sector workers who had suffered from a historical lack of labor organization (Boris); worked to bring recognition and justice to women oppressed by sexual violence in Japanese-occupied areas during the Second World War (Mackie and Kim and Lee); debated long-held values of secular feminism in France (Chetcuti-Osorovitz), and rejected a discourse of "global sisterhood" that rested on the supposed degradation of Indian women by Indian men (Jha). This expansion of the historical period of the "second wave" makes particular sense when we go beyond the borders of the United States; in addition, it does not exclude the white middle-class American women whose foregrounding of gendered inequality did play an important though not the only role in inspiring women in the United States and elsewhere. An additional way of embracing a broader view of women's activism is to think of it as "women in movement" rather than exclusively as "women's movements. " 12 The latter suggests that feminism prompted activism; the former allows for feminism to grow organically from activist responses to marginalizations and oppressions. As several of the chapters in this volume argue, women who were activists for antiracism, political freedom, community well-being, and nationalist justice developed a strong feminist consciousness while working for these other causes. Women did not cease to be "in movement" just because their initial focus was not women's rights. Even in the troughs between the "first" and "second waves" and after the "second wave" presumably ended, women were involved in community, politics, and other forms of activism, creating a more fluid trajectory of feminism than that suggested by more rigidly defined wave patterns. The articulation of transnational feminist studies as well as the historical study of transnational feminism has also prompted conversations and debates about the meaning of feminism and its relationship to women's activism that is not perceived as necessarily feminist. This volume addresses these conversations by including scholarship on both feminism and women's activism, at times in the same chapter. Amrita Basu, drawing on the formative work of Maxine Molyneaux, explains that one way to distinguish between feminism and women's activism has been to separate women's practical and strategic interests. "Strategic interests, which are commonly identified as feminist, emerge from and contest women's experiences of gender subordination. Practical interests, by contrast, emerge from women's immediate and perceived needs." 13 Because the latter (practical interests) often gives rise to the former (strategic interests), the concept of "women in movement" can help to recognize how these types of activisms can coexist at the local, national, and transnational levels and to underscore continuity (while also recognizing local specificities) among activist movements of various time periods, rather than occurring only in discrete waves. Rather than abandon the wave metaphor, this volume tries to fill in the troughs and find ways to better connect women in movement across time and place. As Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor point out, the wave metaphor may still be useful "as long as we understand that the lulls between the waves are still moving, that, from a transnational perspective, there may be choppy seas rather than even swells, and that waves do not rise and crash independently of each other. " 14 Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism 6 6 that feminism is necessarily a Western import: "feminist perspectives are not foreign to. .. Third World national contexts. " 24 At the same time, the chapters also recognize the effects of global economic and political forces on women's lives, which may necessitate transnational networked responses from feminists inhabiting different regions of the world. As opposed to internationalism focused on international alliances among already established nations, transnational feminist studies attend to "transnational circuits of information, capital, and labor, [to] critique a system founded on inequality and exploitation. " 25 The concept of intersectionality, first articulated by women of color in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s and coined as a theoretical term in 1991 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, 26 has been a powerful analytical tool in feminist and antiracist studies that allows for the theorization of "the dynamics of difference and sameness, " including along overlapping axes of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. An "intersectional frame of analysis" allows us to examine the historical "mutually constituting" operation of identity categories that have produced complex relationships of power that defy simple dichotomous statements, such as men oppress women. In addition, activists may undertake "political interventions employing an intersectional lens. " 27 All the essays in this volume consider their feminist subjects through an intersectional frame of analysis. Jennifer Nash asserts that although the contemporary academy conflates intersectionality and transnationalism with diversity and difference, respectively, as a way of addressing important contemporary issues, intersectionality and transnationalism are not inherently at odds. 28 Indeed, transnational feminist studies have deepened intersectional analysis by shifting the focus away from the United States and Europe. Instead, the focus of transnational feminist studies has been on how power moves across historically shifting borders that both separate and generate nations and political regions and how this movement of power operates to structure inequalities in relation to mutually constituting categories (such as gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality). Along these lines, Vrushali Patil argues that transnational feminists "encourage an examination of how categories of race, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, nation, and gender not only intersect but are mutually constituted, formed, and transformed within transnational power-laden processes." 29 Chandra Mohanty, another central theorist of the first articulations of transnational feminist studies, has written critically of US and European feminisms grounded in the notion of a monolithic patriarchy that oppressed an equally monolithic "third world woman." She explains, "An analysis of 'sexual difference' in the form of a cross-culturally singular,...
Feminism and the Radical Democratic Imaginary (Part I): Futures Past
The political history of Western feminism is typically described as encompassing various “waves” of theory and practice, with each wave building on, but also going beyond, an earlier wave. Thus, the second-wave (1968-1980s) is seen as taking up and radicalizing the first wave (1848-1920) struggle for political rights by expanding the concept of rights and of politics itself beyond the confines of the formal political sphere; the third wave (1991-?) is seen as taking up and radicalizing the second wave’s concept of “women” as the political subject of feminism; and so on. Handy though this periodization may be, it has left many feminists wondering which wave they are in anymore. Some feminists argue that the various waves have given way to “intersectional feminism,” but that description does not address the fundamental question of what kind of critical political work the concept of a “wave” was supposed to do in the first place. It was not until 1968 that people started talking about feminism in terms of different waves, and that feminism came to be understood as having a history in this sense at all. This shift allowed feminists to root their political demand for change in a historical democratic struggle for social justice, not least as a way of countering the popular view of the women’s liberation movement as an impossibly utopian project made up by a bunch of crazy man-hating misfits. But this shift also entailed fundamental problems of modern historiography that continue to haunt feminism today.
The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication , 2020
This entry outlines the waves of feminism to explain the modern history of the women's liberation movement and how it has been shaped by women's interactions with the media (and vice versa). The media context allows for a more situated analysis of "female troubles" as it unveils the role of media forms for shaping women's cultural circumstances. The entry explains the development of the feminist movement, focusing on the chronological evolution of the movement's assumptions. It describes the main events and activists of the women's liberation front, distinguishing between the targets and tools of individual waves. The relationship between the media and feminism has been of crucial importance for the progression of contemporary communication and its structures. The reinvention of one through another by means of mutual criticism and stimulation has helped reframe the social functions of the sexes as well as open the media for uses beyond their original design.
JMI, 2023
Abstract: Some of the probing questions that need to be raised by every well-meaning individual are: where are the feminists in the earliest years of the twenty-first century? What has become of feminism as it is practiced across the globe in the home, the workplace, the academy? Even if, in some Utopian future, the adjective “feminist” was finally to gain broad acceptance with larger implementation, one would necessarily need to refine and protect those accomplishments. Now more than ever feminist literary scholarship finds itself accountable to a range of women’s voices heard from a full array of geographical and cultural circumstances. The new millennium sees many women holding positions of international political influence and power. Representative names include Angela Merkel in Germany, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia, and Yuliya Tymoshenko in the Ukraine. The ongoing evolution of our full humanity is primarily pivoted around the fact of female political and cultural ascendancy in the twenty-first century taking the centre stage. Feminism refers to a constellation of social and political ideas, gender inequality being a pressing concern apart from class and race oppression “Feminism implies an intellectual commitment to achieving gender, class, and racial equality, in all aspects of culture.” Key words: Cultural ascendency, race oppression, feminist ideology, post-feminist
Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism: Six Global Issues
My mission is neither to reproduce the history of the feminist movement nor to pro- vide abbreviated and therefore inadequate accounts of its primary figures. Instead, I have chosen a sampling of fairly narrow subjects, each intended to embody an aspect of a contemporary feminist theory, critique, and practice. Each chapter is intended to be read as a thread included in a complex weave of ideas and thinkers, as a complemen- tary, mutually reinforcing part of an evolving project. My primary aims are threefold. First, I will demonstrate the relevance of feminist theorizing to issues that may seem less directly about the status and emancipation of women––for example, terrorism, species extinction, or climate change –– but which, especially in a globalized econ- omy, are more relevant now than ever. Second, I will show how feminist thinking can usefully illuminate the conceptual, political, economic, and morally relevant links between a range of pressing contemporary issues: for example, the connection between ongoing environmental deterioration and the role of human beings with respect to nonhuman nature, or our attitudes toward reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization with respect to who has access to them or what role sexual identity, economic class, and geo- graphic location play in determining this access. Lastly, I will argue that a feminist theorizing that is adequately equipped to confront the issues of a young but rapidly changing century offers real hope to a future that is challenging, but by no means hopeless. These are familiar issues, of course, but I plan to show how a feminist approach can elucidate some of the key relationships among seemingly disparate issues that are likely to define the twenty-first century, and to demonstrate that such an approach has the power to unite its sister movements into a coherent, ethically defensible, emancipatory “not-quite-whole” (McClure 1992: 342). The point of philosophy, Karl Marx argued, is not merely to under- stand the world, but to change it––for the better.Yet, while I still think this is true, I also know that the world imagined by Marx is very different from the world in which we live; and moreover I know that what is absent, elided, distorted via what it means to have access to the Internet is itself an essential part of what we must come to understand if this change is really to be possible.What I’m after is no less the continuing revolution imagined by my foremothers, yet one that includes many a subject matter beyond what my foremothers could have imagined. Sexual identity and politics, reproductive technology, economic inequality, the culture industry, religious fundamentalism, and the status of nonhuman others –– why these six issues? The ways in which each issue has an impact upon human and nonhuman life has under- gone significant transformation, particularly with respect to technology.The technologies, for example, of sex reassignment have changed immensely over the last quarter-century and have become fully com- modified in a globalized market largely devoted to the reproduction of Western conceptions of sexual identity, attraction, beauty, and cul- ture. Similarly, the technologies through which religious fundamen- talism has become an exportable good––including communications technology on the one hand, and weapons of mass destruction on the other––have changed the very ways in which we think about religion and the implications of religious conviction. How we define what counts as “fanaticism,” for instance, intersects with questions central to the feminist and anti-racist movements, particularly in terms of the conditions that may help to create soldiers for God, foster the misogyny of the Taliban, or engender backlash against what is perceived to be unrestrained Western materialism. Much the same, of course, might be said for other issues –– say the continuing exploita- tion of women, girls, and some men, in pornography. But while pornography has certainly seen an incalculable expansion of its range via the Internet and other forms of communications technology, it has not,I suggest,undergone as revolutionary a transformation as,say, our thinking about climate change in virtue of our access to information about melting ice caps or vanishing polar bears. Access to pornog- raphy has become easier, and the amount of pornography has grown –– this is nothing to be underestimated, and there are some serious social consequences. However, the amount of information on climate change isn’t just greater, or access to it easier; rather, we start to think about the world in ways we may have never considered before, especially with respect to how our vision of the “good life” intersects and affects the environment and its dependents on a global scale. Some of the thinkers appearing in the following pages claim feminism as a way of life; others don’t, but they have had or may yet have considerable influence on future theorizing and activism. Some are well known within feminism and/or within philosophy; others are less well known but, in my view, deserve greater attention. Several are voices from the sciences. This work, then, is not really about feminism, but aims instead –– following the example of Wittgenstein –– to exemplify feminism as the critical practice of a life worth living. I am an unapologetic, politically active, ecologically oriented feminist; the following interrogates what such a position might consist of, and in that sense it might offer an example––though surely not an uncontestable one –– for my reader. In the end, my project is as traditional as Socrates’ exhortation to the examination of conscience, and as radical as Wittgenstein’s insistence that we “go look and see.” But there’s one more thing. While it might be tempting to read the forthcoming discussions of sexuality, gender, race, and economic status as “old hat” for a feminism long engaged with these themes –– as if most readers had largely settled all the relevant issues of equality and identity –– I think that would be a mistake. Had we settled these issues, a political figure like Sarah Palin would not have gained the attention –– even devotion –– that she has from the “base” of her party. Indeed, she’s wildly popular where I live.“Out here,” in rural Pennsylvania, “feminism” is deployed as a term of derision; “not- Christian” is readily translated into “minion of Satan,”“pro-choice” means “baby-killer,” and “environmentalist” means “whacko-tree- hugger.”“Gun culture” isn’t merely alive and well in my town; it sig- nals an entire way of life that revolves around a very narrow conception of a Christian god who determines the “place” of each member of “his” creation –– and its adherents shop at Walmart for ammo. My point is that change can count as neither progressive nor enduring until it comes here, that is, to the countless “heres” that characterize the hearts and minds of millions of people who, mostly just trying to get by, don’t have a lot of time to think about what “equality” means for women, non-Caucasians, even poorer people –– let alone nonhuman animals and the environment itself.This book, then, is not a manifesto –– that would be addressed to folks already convinced that the revolution is worthwhile. No, this book is about a modest list of topics that I think matter in ways that touch almost all of us in one fashion or another; yet, understood in the light of a theory and practice devoted from its inception to emancipation–– namely, the feminist, gay, environmental, animal-welfare, and civil- right movements –– these topics reveal some new avenues of analysis, and thus some new ideas for forming workable coalitions in pursuit of a more just future.