The history of feminism is divided into three waves: the first wave spanned from late nineteenth century to early twentieth century, the second was in the 60’s and 70’s, ant the third began in the 90’s and extends to the present day.
The first wave began in the nineteenth century. It was a time when a new ideology, based on the “rights of men” was developing. But as the white males were discovering their new rights, the women still lacked many: they did not have the right to vote, to own property, to attend colleges, or to make legal decisions. Women like Abigail Adams, Marry Wollstonecraft, began to advocate changing these conditions in the late 1700’s (Gianoulis, 84). An important milestone in the fist wave feminist movement was the granting of the right to vote for American women, in 1920.The 1950s was a “paradoxical decade, conventional and conformist on the exterior and seething underneath with repressed rebellion”. More and more women of the upper classes could attend college, where they “developed intellectual comradeship and learned to take themselves seriously before being isolated and often ignored raising families in suburban homes.” Women in the working class were stuck in dead-end jobs that were paying them half the pay of the men (Gianoulis, 86).
The second wave of American feminism began in 1963, with the publishing of the book “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friednan. Her hypothesis is that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find meaning in their lives through their husbands and children, and this causes them to lose their identity. An important milestone in the second wave feminism was the legalization of abortion in 1973, “ending decades of dangerous and traumatic illegal abortions and unwanted childbirths” (Gianoulis, 86). Other positive effects of this wave were the establishment of legal protection against discrimination in the workplace and educational institutions, and the possibility for women to occupy managerial positions. (Bose) In her book, “No turning back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women”, Estelle Freedman compares first and second wave feminism saying that the first wave focused on rights such as suffrage, and the second wave was concerned with issues as equality and ending discrimination.
The most recent wave of feminism, which began in the 90s, is sometimes considered post feminist. Although it continues the feminist movement, it also criticizes some of the points of view of the second wave.
Many sub-movements of feminist ideology have developed over the years: socialist feminism, radical feminism, liberal feminism, ecofeminism. Some of these sub-movements have ideologies that overlap, and some feminists consider themselves adhering to different types of feminism. Radical feminism can be considered the most aggressive form of its kind. Its ideology is that women are oppressed by men, who control capitalist hierarchy. Some radical feminists think that the only way to be free from this patriarchal system is to reconstruct the society. (Echols) There are some sub-types of radical feminism, that have emerged over time, such as separatist feminism, cultural feminism or anti-pornography feminism. Separatist feminists are extreme feminists who think that the sexual disparities between men and women are irresolvable.
This century of feminist movement improved considerably the life of the women in the Western society. Now, women have greater access to education, have the right to vote, to own property, to serve in the military, to have marital, parental and religious rights, have the right to make individual decisions regarding pregnancy, to have a career and be financially independent from men. However, some of the problems that the feminist movement tried to solve still exist: women are paid less comparable to men for the same work and advance less quickly in their careers, sexual harassment, domestic violence still exist, childcare is expensive. Causes that were once won, like abortion rights and welfare rights for single mothers have to be fought again (Gianoulis, 87).
Until a certain point, the effects of feminism on society are definitively positive. But, on the other hand, the feminist movement, especially the third wave feminism, had some unexpectedly negative effects on the life of women and on society. For example, Elizabeth Powers, in her article “A Farewell to Feminism”, writes about the effects of legalization of contraception and the invention of birth control pill on women.” The pill” seemed to have solved the problem for which the “movement for women emancipation” fought for so long: “freedom from constant reproduction” (24).But the negative effect of the pill was that men felt that they had no responsibility for their offspring: “With the pill, this responsibility was taken from them overnight” (25). Another unexpected effect is mentioned in the article “How the feminists saved marriage” by Sam Schulman. The feminism led to the sexual revolution, which determined “the spread of cohabitation, single motherhood, the gay-liberation movement” and “the effort to extend marriage rights to homosexual, and hence, inevitably, to absolutely anyone” (29). Schulman mentions that the last development, in particular, “marks a steep loss in the special protections that marriage has always offered to women.”(29) Because in the twentieth century women began to have an important role in the workplace, this affected the relationships with their partners or husbands, and the amount of work within household.
Women who want to have a family and children, and in the same time a career are the most affected by the feminist ideology. Most employers do not want to accommodate women who have a family. Women have to work long hours and are allowed to take only a short and unpaid leave in the event of childbirth. Often they have to choose between staying home to take care of children, or returning to work really soon and sacrificing family life. If they chose to stay home for a reasonable amount of time to take care of their children, this means that they will have a gap in their career, and this will lead to lower employability and lower wages. These women are torn in two between the desire to have a family and the ambition to have a career and to develop their potential. Some women are lucky enough to have a partner who can take care of the financial needs of the family and decide to stay home for an indefinite period of time and take care of the family, but then they start to feel like they do not mean anything to the society because they do not have a professional life. The feminist movement changed the mentality of society regarding the role of women in family. A while ago, a women’s role in the family was to keep peace and harmony. They prepared breakfast for their husband and children, took the children to school, and then returned home to prepare dinner and to take care of the other errands of the day .Nowadays, women have careers, go to work everyday, and have to juggle throughout the different aspects of their complex lives. They do not have enough time to take care of their family even if they wanted to. For the women who wanted to have a career feminism brought this opportunity, but it disadvantaged those women who wanted to be stay-at-home-moms. In the article “Feminism and freedom”, Christina Hoff Sommers writes about this aspect, that she calls “the central paradox of egalitarian feminism”: “When women are liberated from the domestic sphere and no longer forced into the role of nurturers… many, perhaps most, still give priority to the domestic sphere.”(62)
Women of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries needed the feminist movement. They needed the basic human rights like the right to vote, the right to an education, to work, to participate in the social and political life. Unfortunately, in many parts of the world women still live like centuries ago, when they basically had no rights: they can be sold and bought, have husbands who can divorce them with a simple word, are punished with death for adultery and so on. In the same time, the women from the Western society fought for the same role in the society as men, and won, but now they feel the constant pressure to have a career and some of them have to sacrifice the family life for that. What feminism really brought into the life of everyday woman must be reconsidered.
Works Cited
Bose, Purnima. “Feminism, the Global Struggle.” Against the Current 24.1 (2009): 14-14.
Echols, Alice. Daring to be Bad:Radical Feminism in America,1967-1975. Minneapolis: University of Minesotta Press, 1989. 416
“Feminism.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.
Freedman, Estelle B. No Turning Back:The History of Feminism and the Future of Women.: Ballantine Books, 2003. 464
Friedan, Betty. Feminine Mystique.: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001.
Gianoulis, Tina. “Feminism.” St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture vol.2. 2000 ed. p. 84-87
Hoff, Christina. “Feminism and Freedom.” American Spectator 41.6 (2008): 56-62.
Krolokke, Charlotte, and Anne Scott Sorensen. Gender communication theories & analyses : from silence to performance. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2006. 24
Powers, Elizabeth. “A Farewell to Feminism.” Commentary 103.1 (1997): 23.
Schulman, Sam. “How the Feminists Saved Marriage.” Commentary 118.1 (2004): 25-29.
