The Four Waves of Feminism

 

Feminism is a series of feminist movements, progressive movements and philosophies that seek to identify and construct gender equality in the political, economic, personal and social spheres.

Feminism takes the stance that cultures give priority to the male point of view and that women are treated unfairly within such societies. Efforts to reform, including the battle against gender roles and the establishment of educational, career and interpersonal opportunities and results for women similar to those for men.

Feminism's origins are buried in ancient Greece, most of which is remembered by the movement of the three waves of feminism.

The history of feminism can be divided into 4 waves. The first was the women's suffrage movements of the 19th and early 20th century, defending women's right to vote. The second wave, the women's rights movement, started in the 1960s and advocated for women's legal and social equality.

 A third wave, marked by an emphasis on individuality and plurality, was established in or around 1992. The fourth wave, from about 2012, used social media to tackle sexual abuse, discrimination against women and the stigma of rape; it is best remembered for the Me Too campaign. This new wave of feminism has started, full of zeal, social-influencing influence, and demanding reform.

First Wave of Feminism

First-wave feminism was a surge of activity in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the United Kingdom and the United States, the emphasis was on promoting equitable contract, sexuality, and parenting and property rights for women.

New laws includes the Custody of Infants Act 1839 in the United Kingdom, which adopted the Tender Years Doctrine for Child Care and for the first time granted women the right to custody of their children. 

Such laws, such as the Married Women's Property Act 1870 in the United Kingdom and expanded in the 1882 Act, became templates for comparable legislation in other British realms.

Victoria passed legislation in 1884 and New South Wales in 1889, while the other Australian colonies passed similar legislation between 1890 and 1897. With the turn of the 19th century, politics focused mainly on acquiring political influence, especially the right of women to vote, while some feminists were still involved in advocating for women's cultural, reproductive and economic rights.

Women's suffrage started in the British Australasian colonies at the end of the 19th century, with the self-governing New Zealand colonies giving women the freedom to vote in 1893; South Australia followed suit in 1895. This was followed by Australia, which granted female suffrage in 1902.

In Britain, the suffragettes and suffragists fought for women's votes, and in 1918 the Representation of the People's Act was passed extending the right to vote to women above the age of 30 who owned land. This was expanded to all women by more than 21 in 1928.

Second Wave of Feminism

Women also lacked significant rights by the mid-20th century. In Switzerland, women won the right to vote in federal elections in 1971, but in the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden.

Women won the right to vote on municipal matters only in 1991, after the canton was compelled to do so by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. In Liechtenstein, women were granted the freedom to vote by a women's referendum in 1984. Three previous referendums, held in 1968, 1971 and 1973, failed to protect women's freedom to vote.

Feminists began to advocate for the abolition of the family rules that give husbands power over their wives. While cover-up was eliminated in the United Kingdom and the United States by the 20th century, married women still had very little rights in many continental European countries.

For example, in France, married women were not granted the freedom to work without their husband's permission until 1965. Feminists had since sought to remove the "marital exemption" of the statute on sex, which precluded the punishment of husbands for the rape of their wives.

Earlier attempts by first-wave feminists such as Voltairine de Cleyre, Victoria Woodhull and Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy to criminalize marital violence have collapsed in the late 19th century; this was only accomplished a century later in most Western nations, but has not yet been achieved in many other parts of the world.

Third Wave of Feminism

The third wave traces the rise of the riot grrrl female punk subculture in Olympia, Washington, in the early 1990s, and Anita Hill's televised testimony in 1991—the all-male, all-white Senate Judiciary Committee—that Clarence Thomas, nominated for and ultimately appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, had sexually assaulted her. The word "third wave" is due to Rebecca Walker.

Born in the 1960s and 1970s as part of Generation X and rooted in the civil-rights developments of the Second Wave, the Third Wave feminism promoted individualism and plurality and tried to redefine what it meant to be a feminist.

The third wave saw the rise of emerging radical currents and philosophies such as intersectionality, gender positivity, vegetarian eco-feminism, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism.

Walker wanted to prove that Third-Wave Feminism was not only a backlash, but a revolution in itself, since the feminist cause had more work to do. The word intersectionality—to reflect the notion that women face "layers of oppression" induced, for example, by gender, race and class—was proposed by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989, and it was during the third wave that the concept flourished.

When feminists came online at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s and entered a worldwide audience with blogs and e-zines, they broadened their objectives, concentrating on eliminating gender-based stereotypes and widening feminism to encompass women of varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Fourth Wave of Feminism

The fourth wave of feminism emerged in 2012 with an emphasis on sexual violence, body shaming, and rape culture, and other topics. The use of social media to illustrate and answer these issues was a central factor. The latest wave emerged in the midst of a series of high-profile events.

In December 2012, a young woman was violently raped and killed in India, causing local demonstrations and international uproar. This was followed two years later by the Gamergate initiative, a manifestation of the so-called "men's rights movement" which originated on the 4chan website.

Gamer Gate allegedly aimed to uphold integrity in video-game media, but in fact it was a campaign of harassment against "social justice warriors." The above were mostly women who objected to female roles of video games and were then inundated with threats of death and rape.

The Me Too movement, launched in 2006 in the United States to help survivors of sexual violence, especially women of colour, was probably even more significant.

The campaign gained widespread attention from 2017, when it was revealed that film mogul Harvey Weinstein had sexually harassed and assaulted women in the industry with impunity for years to come.

Victims of sexual harassment or assault around the world—and all ethnic groups—began sharing their experiences on social media using the #MeToo hashtag. Over the coming months, the movement has grown to condemn dozens of powerful men in politics, business, entertainment, and news media.

Written by - Anushka Jain

Edited by - Adrija Saha