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CHAPTER 4
WAVES OF FEMINISM

This concept of wave originated with the Irish activist Frances Power Cobbe in 1884.
Marie Shear 1986 ‘women are people’

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

1) Introduction
a. Organized activity from 2nd half of 19th century
b. USA and Britain
c. Origin:
i. The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in N.Y 1848, when
300 men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton (d.1902) drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration outlining the
new movement's ideology and political strategies followed by the passage
of 12 resolutions relating to women’s rights. Advent of bloomers and dress
reforms.
ii. At that convention a Declaration of Sentiments was issued, objecting to
the following:**
  1. Women were not allowed to vote.
  2. Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation.
 3. Married women had no property rights (and 90% of women over 25
 were married at that time.)
 4. Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the
 extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity.
  5. Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women.
 6. Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation
 in the levying of these taxes.
 7. Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work
 they were paid only a fraction of what men earned.
  8. Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law.
 9. Women had no means to gain an education since no college or
 university would accept women students.
 10. With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in
 the affairs of the church.
 11. Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and
 were made totally dependent on men.
d. 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).
e. They realized that they must first gain political power (including the right to
vote) to bring about change.

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f. Many British feminists during this time were fighting against a specific ideal--
the angel in the house.
g. Their political agenda expanded to issues concerning sexual, reproductive and
economic matters, education and legal (marriage laws). Main issues were
property rights and suffrage.
h. H.Qr’s Langham Place, London
i. First Wave Feminists, largely upper middle class white women responded to
specific injustices they had themselves experienced.
2) Key project or argument:
i. Discriminatory laws and exclusionary social norms
ii. Rights and Representation of women as human beings not to be treated as the
property of men
3) Notable Feminists
i. Abigail Adam- the wife of President John Adams (second President), education
ii. Mary Wollstonecraft ‘A vindication of the rights of women’ (Gen. Disc., Aims-
citizenship, participation in public, liberties, divine rights of husband. Criticism-
Psyche, sexual equality, revolution.)
iii. Frances Right ‘views of society and manners in America’
iv. The Grimke Sister (Angelina Grimke-anti slavery & Sarah Grimke-equal liberties)
v. Mathew Carey ‘Rules of Husbands and Wives’
vi. Caroline Norton (Covertures, Infant Custody Act 1839, Matrimonial Causes Act
1857 +ve divorce, maintenance, Identity, recover property. –ve adultery, desertion,
cruelty, incest)
4) Major achievements:
i. The opening of higher education for women
ii. Reform of the girls' secondary-school system, including participation in formal
national examinations: the widening of access to the professions, especially
medicine
iii. Married women's property rights recognized in the Married Women's Property
Act of 1870- to keep earnings or property acquired after marriage,
iv. And some improvement in divorced and separated women's child custody rights.
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.

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
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.
 to women in 1920. This
The right to vote in America was finally granted
was 144 years after the Revolutionary War.
Suffrage movement
1) USA
a. Elizabeth Miller, Lil (1st women rights paper)
b. ‘National women suffrage association’ & ‘Revolution’ paper by Stanton (1872)
2) UK
a. Women Suffrage Society 1865 and WS committee 1866
b. Society for the promotion of the employment of the women
c. ‘The English Women’s Review’ paper
d. 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)
e. International council of women
3) AUSTRALIA
a. Catherine Helene Spence (educ. divorce, right to vote) Spence became a vice-
president of the Women's Suffrage League of South Australia.
b. Vida Goldstein (5 times 1910-1917, peace alliance, women peace army)
4) Franchise
NZ-1892, Aus-1902, Finland-1906, Britain 1918 & 1928, USA-1920, France-1944,
Japan-1946saa

THE SECOND WAVE (1960’S-1980’S):

1) Term coined by Marsha Lear—USA, Britain, Europe, occurred during the 1960’s to
1980’s.
2) Issues: gender violence, rape and sexual abuse, reproductive rights, workplace
sexuality
3) Purpose: The term commonly used to refer to the emergence in the late 1960s, and
early 1970s in Europe and North America of a “ new social movement ” dedicated to:
i. raising consciousness about sexism and patriarchy, legalizing abortion and
birth control,
ii. attaining equal rights in political and economic realms, and
iii. gaining sexual “ liberation” for equality.
iv. End discrimination
a. WLM-Women Liberation Movement (theoretical)
i. Seven Demands of WLM
b. WRM-Women’s Right Movement (practical)

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4) Reasons: Civil Right Activism & Anti-Vietnam Campaign (This wave unfolded in the
context of the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements and the growing self-
consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world).
5) Difference: The Second Wave differed from the FW in that it “drew in women of
color and developing nations.
6) Slogan: ‘The personal is political’ sums up the way in which Second Wave Feminism
did not just strive to extend the range of social opportunities open to women, but also,
through intervention within the spheres of reproduction, sexuality and cultural
representation, to change their domestic and private lives.
7) Focus: paid work, political power, right to abortion, divorce and singlehood, birth
control and no children, against sex violence.
8) Notable Feminists
i. Betty Friedan “Feminine Mystique” (Points & Criticism) – gender roles
ii. Germaine Greer ‘The Female Eunuch’ – heterosexuality
iii. Shulamith Firestone ‘The Dialectic of Sex’ – reproduction
iv. Kate Millet ‘Sexual Politics’ – patriarchal, sex is political, gender is cultural
v. Oakley ‘Subject Women’ – motherhood
9) Success
i. 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.
ii. 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,
iii. 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.
iv. 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.
v. Right to abortion: The famous abortion case, Roe v. Wade was in 1973.
10) The tactics employed by Second Wave Feminists varied from highly-published a
activism, such as the protest against the Miss America beauty contest in 1968 (Protest
and Revolt), to the establishment of small consciousness-raising groups. However, it
was obvious early on that the movement was not a unified one, with differences
emerging between black feminism, lesbian feminism, liberal feminism, and social
feminism.
Varieties of Feminism
i. Lesbian Feminists
ii. Political feminists
iii. Cultural Feminists

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iv. Socialist Feminists

v. Traditional Marxist Feminists
vi. Radical Feminists
vii. Female supremacists
viii. Humanist Feminists
ix. Eco Feminists
x. Psychoanalytical Feminists

11. 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.

12. Criticism on Second Wave:

i. Many women felt that second wave feminism did not meet the needs of a large body
of women.
ii. They resented the tendency to essentialize all women as having the same needs and
desires of white upper middle class women who largely led second wave feminism.
iii. Black, Hispanic, and third world feminist for example have emerged as a result with a
goal of speaking for those “ subaltern ” who have long been voiceless.
iv. In addition, as feminism moved into colleges and universities feminism became even
more splintered as different political, intellectual and pedagogical interests became
attached to it. Psychoanalytic feminism, Marxist feminism, etc. are all developments
within feminism. Feminism has become not just a political movement, but also an
ideology with unique distinctions possible. To make it even more complicated, it is
possible for one to be an ideological feminist, but not politically a feminist.

THE THIRD WAVE (1980’S – PRESENT):

In the 1980s and 1990s, third wave feminism was powered by middle-class women in their
twenties and thirties concerns expressed concerns with retaining second-wave feminist agendas
and tried to create new projects focusing on issues of race and sexuality and fighting the new
backlash against feminism

Diff names: Girl feminism (USA), New Feminism (Europe). Coined term: Yuval Davis in
‘Gender & Nation’ 1997 & Rebecca Walker’s article ‘Becoming Third Wave’

1) Associated with emergence with girly/lipstick feminism & rise of raunch culture
(American culture in which women are objectified). Though they may go to a
demonstration from time to time, third wavers are far more likely to be active in arenas
like queer theory, cultural studies, and critiques of popular culture. For example, they
wear make up and acknowledge their participation in beauty culture even as they
criticize it.

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2) Slogan: In essence, where second wavers argued personal is political while third wavers
are now arguing that ‘the pleasurable is political as well’.
3) Reasons: Against 2nd wave, challenged def. of femininity, things of male oppression,
subjective nature of beauty, abolishing gender construction, promoted transversal politics,
debate on inter differences
4) Purpose/Aims: sexual liberation, freedom of expression and resistance to objectification,
ending discriminatory words, changing connotation of words
5) 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)
6) Feminism and cycling 1990 - was the peak of the American bicycle craze symbol of
mobility.
7) One of the biggest problems facing third wave feminists (particularly from those who
want to revive the second wave) is the charge that third wavers ‘do nothing’ to change
things politically.