This page is newly designed and expanding. If you would like further discussion about any identified topic here, or have questions, resources, or other agenda items you would like to see on this resource page about Feminism please direct all inquires and suggestions to Taylor Harmon, AASECT Certified Sex Educator at Taylor@darlingmentalhealth.com
First Wave (late 19th-early 20th century):
- Focus: Legal rights, specifically women’s suffrage.
- Key Achievements: Securing voting rights (e.g., 19th Amendment in the U.S.), property rights, and some access to higher education.
- Big Thinkers: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Wollstonecraft, Emmeline Pankhurst
- Limitations: Benefited white women and overlooked issues of racial inequality. Suffragettes had initially team up with slave abolitionists under the guise of mutual support, but separated themselves from the abolition movement once the right to vote was gained (for white women).
Second Wave (1960s-1980s):
- Focus: Broader equality in society, workplace, and family. Slogan: “The personal is political.”; Reproductive rights; workplace equality; challenging traditional gender roles; addressing domestic violence.
- Key Achievements: Legal reforms in employment and education, increased access to reproductive healthcare, and the rise of feminist literature and organizations.
- Big Thinkers: Angela Davis, bell hooks, Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Anzaldúa
- Limitations: While Black feminism and critiques of the movement’s initial focus on middle-class white women emerges, it still lacked an intersectional approach to feminism and focused on a universal woman experience (white, middle class, straight, cisgender, Western woman archetype). The feminist sex wars (anti-sex and anti-sex work) also became prominent.
Third Wave (1990s-2000s):
- Focus: Intersectionality; Workplace harassment; pay disparities; media representation (feminist sex wars); reclaiming femininity and sexuality.
- Other Notable Characteristics: Emphasis on individual identity, diversity, and inclusion of LGBTQ+ issues. Critique of earlier waves for being too narrow in focus.
- Big Thinkers: Kimberlé Crenshaw, Judith Butler, Rebecca Walker, Patricia Hill Collins, Lila Abu-Lughod
- Limitations: Lacked a clear, unified agenda, as well as placed importance on individualism and identity politics- All of which were very polarizing. Fell victim to anti-Muslim sentiments of the early 2000s as well. (See: “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”, Abu-Lughod)
Fourth Wave (2010s- now):
- Focus: Digital activism and social media campaigns for gender equality; Sexual harassment (#MeToo & Time’s Up); workplace safety; body positivity; inclusivity (for some); and trans rights.
- Characteristics: Emphasis on intersectionality, global reach, and rapid mobilization through technology.
- Big Thinkers: Tarana Burke (founder of #MeToo), Sara Ahmed, Amia Srinivasan, many names from the past and many new names becoming big through social media
- Limitations: Reliance on digital activism (“slacktivism”; “performative activism”); Online spaces can amplify harassment, exclusion, and infighting, sometimes replicating the very inequalities the movement seeks to address; ongoing inclusivity challenges
