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What was the Third Wave Feminist Movement

Previous DailyHistory articles have discussed the First and Second Wave Feminist Movements. Like Second Wave feminism, Third Wave feminism emerged from some of the failures and conversations left behind from the wave before.

While there were many successes of the first two waves, including voting rights and greater access to reproductive control, Third Wave feminists have argued that these successes primarily benefited white middle-class women. The Third Wave feminists have actively sought to expand the rights of LBTQ and minority women. Mainly, they have been interested in trying to achieve parity with white women.

As is common with any large coalition, group goals need to be broad enough to encompass the desires of the majority of those involved. White, educated women with clout during the First Wave often advanced the need for white women's rights by suggesting they were better educated and equipped to exercise those rights than non-white men and women.

During the Second Wave, the general discussions about reproductive choice were often framed in terms of access to birth control and the right to an abortion for white women. While non-white women were fighting for the right to control reproduction on their own terms, and not to be forcibly sterilized. These rifts were not crippling, but often benefited one faction of a coalition more than the other.

For many non-white feminists during the Second Wave, their experiences as women were inseparable from their experiences as people of color. They could not compartmentalize their lives or experiences. A new wave of feminism needed to address all parts of their identity adequately.

Third Wave Feminism

Leaders of the third wave feminist movement were daughters of the second wave--often literally. They were born in the 1960s and 1970s and came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. They came of age after the Civil Rights movement and benefited from that in many ways--growing up in diverse neighborhoods, attending integrated schools, and seeing representations and contributions of people of color in media and society. Furthermore, these leaders were often the daughters of those who saw society transform because of Second Wave actions and expected their daughters to take advantage of those opportunities.

Third Wave Feminism differed from the first two waves not just goals, but in substance. While the first two waves generally accepted traditional gender identities and norms, the third wave challenged ideas about what was traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine. Not only did Third Wave feminists reject this strict separation and polarity between male and female, but they embraced a more complex and nuanced understanding of opportunities for gender and sexual expression, including identity.

Third Wave feminists took Second Wave feminism's "sexual liberation" one step further by also calling for the exploration and acceptance of a variety of sexual identities. Furthermore, Third Wave Feminists believe it is in their right to seek sexual pleasure on their own terms as well as a sex-positive movement.

Feminism in the Third Wave appropriated previously-insulting and derogatory terms. Third Wave Feminists unapologetically reclaimed words like "bitch" and spoke openly about themselves, their bodies, and their experiences. Third Wave Feminists, whose lives have been saturated with popular culture, are quick to challenge portrayals of women in beauty and in art. Third Wave Feminists see men as their equals and challenge institutions and conventions that dictate otherwise. [1]

Some have argued that Third Wave Feminism is--in part--a rejection of Second Wave Feminism or at least a strong critique against it. If Second Wave Feminism bolstered heterosexual privilege, Third Wave Feminism combats that by supporting the extension of civil rights to LGBT individuals. If Second Wave Feminism was empowering by rejecting conventional beauty ideals, Third Wave Feminism calls for an inclusive definition of beauty that includes a more diverse set of criteria. [2]

At its core, Third Wave Feminism argues that it is more inclusive and accepting of a variety of identities. Third Wave Feminism attempts to wrestle more fully with intersectionality, that is: that race and gender are not "mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis... Those who are multiply-burdened... cannot be understood" through a single lens or source of discrimination. [3] .

Third Wave Feminism does try to check its privilege at the door, it, like its predecessors, still does tend to have a white-middle class leaning. While this has been more openly discussed, it still also remains a point of contention for some feminists in the Third Wave with some feminists calling for toleration and others for more ardent antiracism.

Third Wave Feminism, like its predecessors, embodies a variety of opinions and beliefs and is not limited to just "women's issues;" nevertheless, these issues remained at the core of Third Wave Feminism's discussions.

Fourth Wave Feminism?

What was the First Wave Feminist Movement?
What was the Second Wave Feminist Movement?
When did abortion become legal in the United States?

Some have argued that #MeToo movement, the 2016 Presidential Election, the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and the revelations about how common the sexual assault of women is may have ushered in a Fourth Wave of Feminism. Both sexual assault and harassment have become central issues within the existing movement. Only time will tell if this is an entirely new movement, or if this is simply a continuation of the Third Wave after a dormant period. If this is a new Fourth Wave, it is clearly building on some of the Third Wave but is unique in its focus on sexual harassment and rape culture.

Feminism: The Third Wave

FEMINISM : The Third Wave

The Third Wave

Much like the first and second waves, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the third wave of the feminist movement began. However, this resurgence of women’s rights activism is traditionally seen as a response to mainstream second wave feminism. As the third wave started in the 1990s, women’s rights activists longed for a movement that continued the work of their predecessors while addressing their current struggles. In addition, these women wanted to create a mainstream movement that was inclusive of the various challenges women from different races, classes, and gender identities were facing. Image: (L-R) Second Wave feminist Bella Abzug with law professor Anita Hill.

Although it is difficult to isolate the single incident that started the third wave, there are two events that are traditionally credited with inspiring a new generation of women’s rights activists. The first one was the 1991 Anita Hill hearings that sparked national feminist support when Hill testified against a Supreme Court nominee for sexual harassment. While watching the hearings, Rebecca Walker, daughter of second wave icon Alice Walker, began describing the political climate as ”The Third Wave.” In addition, beginning in the 1990s, underground feminist punk rock bands surfaced in “Riot Grrrl” groups. These “girrl” groups combined punk culture with politics, feminism, and style. Both of these occurrences helped to usher the feminist movement into a new era of women’s activism.

Third Wave Literature

Right at the beginning of the third wave, feminist scholars started to publish new literature that helped readers better understand feminist theory. In 1989, lawyer and theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw developed “intersectionality” to show how someone’s various identities (race, class, gender, etc.) overlap to influence how they are treated. This theory led to “intersectional feminism,” that formed as a response to the multiple ways women are oppressed. In 1990, two other revolutionary scholars incorporated the idea of intersectionality into their work. Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity” and Patricia Hill Collins’ “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment” both approach feminist theory by studying women’s social and political identities.

The Anita Hill Hearings

On October 11, 1991, the world watched as attorney Anita Hill testified against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas for sexual harassment. In the televised hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hill declared that Thomas had repeatedly harassed her while she was his employee at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. According to Hill, when she worked as his aide, Thomas frequently pressured her to go on dates and often made sexually inappropriate comments during their work conversations. Despite Hill’s testimony, Thomas was still confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice after the three-day hearings.

Although both Thomas and Hill were African American, Thomas believed that the hearing against him was equivalent to a “high tech lynching.” This metaphor suggested that he was being persecuted because of his race. As they both testified before an all-white, all male committee, the history of African American women also being lynched and persecuted was not discussed. Lawyer and author of the ”intersectionality” theory Kimberlé Crenshaw was a member of Hill’s legal team. She later wrote that the belief that lynching was the ultimate symbol of racist terror “erased black women from the picture.” In addition, one of the most prominent historical figures against the lynching of African Americans was a black woman.

National Women's History Museum Women's History Minute: “Ida B. Wells”

After the hearings, African American feminists and historians across the United States came together and collectively raised $50,000 to purchase a full-page ad in the New York Times. Their manifesto entitled, “African American Women in Defense of Ourselves,” was signed by 1,600 women including black feminist historians Barbara Ransby, Deborah King and Elsa Barkley Brown. These women fought against the treatment of Hill during the hearings and stated; “We are particularly outraged by the racist and sexist treatment of Professor Anita Hill, an African American woman who was maligned and castigated for daring to speak publicly of her own experience of sexual abuse.” Following Hill’s story, many other women had the courage to speak out against their own experiences with sexual misconduct.

The Year of the Woman

For many mainstream feminists, the Hill case marked a turning point in women’s activism. Not only were women speaking publicly about sexual assault, but the visibility of the case also caused women to question the male-dominated leadership in Congress. Before the hearings, seven democratic women from the House of Representatives marched over to the Senate to demand a further investigation of the accusations against Thomas. Although he was still confirmed as a justice, feminists began to push for a more active role in political leadership. The very next year, more women were elected to Congress on voting day than in any previous decade. That year became known as “The Year of the Woman,” and 27 women were elected to Congress.

One of the early women’s groups that contributed to the success of The Year of the Woman was “EMILY's List.” This women’s political network provided the fundraising and resources necessary for an endorsed candidate to successfully run for political office. These women used the strategy of raising money early in a candidate’s campaign so it would attract more donors. This principle was the foundation of the organization’s name “EMILY's List” that is an acronym for "Early Money Is Like Yeast,” because yeast “makes the dough rise.” EMILY's List continues to endorse pro-choice Democratic women running for office to this day.

Riot Grrrrl Movement

In addition to political affinity groups, punk rock musicians also began to emerge with distinctly feminist agendas. Responding to various forms of sexism, feminist musicians decided to organize a “girl riot” through their activism. These women started their own bands and created their own publications dedicated to women’s empowerment. Much of their content addressed issues including; sexism, patriarchy, abuse, racism, sexuality and rape. Popular bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy, all lead this trend of activism.

Guerilla Girls

Prior to the evolution of the Riot Grrrl Movement, the Guerrilla Girls set the foundation for radical feminist revolt. They formed in 1985 in response to sexism and racism in the art world. This anonymous group of feminist artists from New York City decided to take the feminist art movement one step further by intentionally disrupting the status quo. These women created posters, billboards, and made public appearances in gorilla masks to reveal the sexist and racist practices in the creation and study of visual art. One of their most famous posters was an image of a naked woman in a gorilla mask next to the phrase “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” The poster also provides the statistics that show the low number of women featured in the Modern Art sections, compared to the high percentage of nude art that features women.

Starting in the early 1990s, radical feminist art seeped into the music world as women affiliated with the Riot Grrrl feminist movement emerged in Olympia, Washington. One of the frontrunners of this movement was Kathleen Hanna, the lead singer of the feminist band Bikini Kill. After collaborating with other Riot Grrrl artists on a small magazine called “Riot Grrrl,” The Bikini Kill Zine (fanzine) was created. These “zines” used punk rock culture to address feminist issues. By 1991, the Bikini Kill Zine published the Riot Grrrl Manifesto that clearly outlined the reasons for this recent surge of feminist activism through music.

Statements from The Riot Grrrl Manifesto, published in 1991 in the Bikini Kill Zine 2:

BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.

BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other's work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.

BECAUSE we don't wanna assimilate to someone else's (boy) standards of what is or isn’t.

BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.

Many women flocked to these punk rock groups that valued self expression and collective revolt. Kathleen Hanna was known for empowering women at her concerts by shouting “Revolution Girl Style Now!” or “Girls to the front!” to encourage her female attendees to come to the front of the audience. Not only did this provide a safe space for women at rock concerts, but this practice also became a symbol of the call for women to be brought to the forefront in all areas of life. As the movement grew, other Riot Grrrl bands developed across the country and established nationwide chapters. Many of these feminists played their music during pro-choice rallies and advocated for the reproductive rights of women.

By the mid-1990s, Riot Grrrl bands became so well-known that pop culture started to incorporate some of the movement’s terminology. The phrase “Girl Power,” was often used by Bikini Kill and could be found throughout the pages of Riot Grrrl zines. However, this phrase quickly became a pop culture slogan after girl groups like The Spice Girls started promoting a “girl power” theme. Due to the mixed messaging, mainstream media began to attach the political Riot Grrrl groups to pop culture bands that were not associated with the movement. Many Riot Grrrl groups spoke out against this media misrepresentation, but unfortunately it had already become a pop culture phenomenon. In response, several Riot Grrrl groups dissolved. However, many former participants continued to make political music. Even though Bikini Kill released their last album in 1996, lead singer Kathleen Hanna has continued to merge music and activism.

Although the prominence of Riot Grrrl groups was short lived, their specific brand of feminism resonated with many women that may not have identified with the concerns or practices of mainstream “cookie-cutter” feminism. These Riot Grrrl groups inspired radical global activism for decades to come, with Riot Grrrl bands and chapters forming in Asia, Europe, Australia, and Latin America well into the 2000s.

The End of the Third Wave?

As third wave feminists transitioned into the 21st century, it was clear that there were several individualized goals of the movement. Women spoke out in various interest groups about everything including abortion, eating disorders, and sexual assault. However, the Anita Hill hearings and Riot Grrrl groups of the early 1990s were central to the development of this third wave. In 2003, Robin Morgan edited an updated version of her original feminist anthology written in 1970. Her new edition called, “Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium,” featured pieces by both Anita Hill (“The Nature of the Beast: Sexual Harassment”) and Kathleen Hanna of the Riot Grrrl movement (“Gen X Survivor: From Riot Grrrl Rock Star to Feminist Artist”). Some scholars believe that the third wave never came to an end and it continues on to this day. However for others, new technology and social campaigns have marked the beginning of a fourth wave of feminism.

Exhibit written and curated by Kerri Lee Alexander, NWHM Fellow 2018-2020

Adewunmi, Bim. “Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality: ‘I Wanted to Come up with an Everyday Metaphor That Anyone Could Use.’” NewStatesman, April 4, 2014. https://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/04/kimberl-crenshaw-intersectionality-i-wanted-come-everyday-metaphor-anyone-could.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. “Black Women Still in Defense of Ourselves.” The Nation, October 5, 2011. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/black-women-still-defense-ourselves/.

Feliciano, Stevie. “The Riot Grrrl Movement.” The New York Public Library, June 19, 2013. https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/06/19/riot-grrrl-movement.

“Guerrilla Girls: 'You Have to Question What You See' .” Tate Modern, October 5, 2018. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/guerrilla-girls-6858/guerrilla-girls-interview-tateshots.

Harris-Perry, Melissa. “Where Are All the Black Feminists in Confirmation?” ELLE, April 18, 2016. https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a35699/hbo-confirmation-black-feminists/.

Ryzik, Melena. “A Feminist Riot That Still Inspires.” The New York Times, June 3, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/arts/music/the-riot-grrrl-movement-still-inspires.html.

“The Year of the Woman, 1992.” US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives. Accessed May 10, 2020. https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/Assembling-Amplifying-Ascending/Women-Decade/.

Walker, Rebecca, Gloria Steinem, and Angela Yvonne Davis. To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. New York: Anchor Books, 1995. Pp.250

An Overview of Third-Wave Feminism

History Of Feminism
Important Figures
Women's Suffrage
Women & War
Laws & Womens Rights
Feminist Texts
American History
African American History
African History
Ancient History and Culture
Asian History
European History
Latin American History
Medieval & Renaissance History
Military History
The 20th Century
Ph.D., Religion and Society, Edith Cowan University
M.A., Humanities, California State University - Dominguez Hills
B.A., Liberal Arts, Excelsior College

What historians refer to as "first-wave feminism" arguably began in the late 18th century with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and ended with the ratification of the Twentieth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protected a woman's right to vote. First-wave feminism was concerned primarily with establishing, as a point of policy, that women are human beings and should not be treated like property.

The Second Wave

The second wave of feminism emerged in the wake of World War II , during which many women entered the workforce, and would have arguably ended with the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), had it been ratified. The central focus of the second wave was on total gender equality — women as a group having the same social, political, legal, and economic rights that men have.

Rebecca Walker and the Origins of Third-Wave Feminism

Rebecca Walker, a 23-year-old, Black bisexual woman born in Jackson, Mississippi, coined the term "third-wave feminism" in a 1992 essay. Walker is in many ways a living symbol of the way that second-wave feminism has historically failed to incorporate the voices of many young women, lesbians, bisexual women, and women of color.

Women of Color

Both first-wave and second-wave feminism represented movements that existed alongside, and at times in tension with, civil rights movements for people of color — a slight majority of whom happen to be women. But the struggle always seemed to be for the rights of white women, as represented by the women's liberation movement , and Black men, as represented by the civil rights movement . Both movements, at times, could have been legitimately accused of relegating women of color to asterisk status.

Lesbians and Bisexual Women

For many second-wave feminists, same gender attracted women were seen as an embarrassment to the movement. The great feminist activist Betty Friedan , for example, coined the term " lavender menace " in 1969 to refer to what she considered the harmful perception that feminists are lesbians. She later apologized for the remark, but it accurately reflected the insecurities of a movement that was still very heteronormative in many ways.

Low-Income Women

First- and second-wave feminism also tended to emphasize the rights and opportunities of middle-class women over poor and working-class women. The debate over abortion rights, for example, centers on laws that affect a woman's right to choose an abortion — but economic circumstances, which generally play a more significant role in such decisions today, are not necessarily taken into account. If a woman has the legal right to terminate her pregnancy, but "chooses" to exercise that right because she can't afford to carry a pregnancy to term, is this really a scenario that protects reproductive rights ?

Women in the Global South

First- and second-wave feminism, as movements, were largely confined to industrialized, Western nations. But third-wave feminism takes a different perspective by giving more platforms to feminist movements all over the world in an effort to show support and international solidarity. It also attempts to attribute knowledge to its original sources by uplifting the voices of women in the Global South, instead of overlooking them or empowering white feminists to steal credit.

A Generational Movement

Some second-wave feminist activists have questioned the need for a third wave. Others, both inside and outside of the movement, disagree with respect to what the third wave represents. Even the general definition provided above may not accurately describe the objectives of all third-wave feminists. But it's important to realize that third-wave feminism is a generational term — it refers to how the feminist struggle manifests itself in the world today. Just as second-wave feminism represented the diverse and sometimes competing for interests of feminists who struggled together under the banner of women's liberation, third-wave feminism represents a generation that has begun with the achievements of the second wave. We can only hope that the third wave will be so successful as to necessitate the fourth wave — and we can only imagine what that fourth wave might look like.

Feminism in the United States
Womanist: Definition and Examples
Goals of the Feminist Movement
1970s Feminist Activities
The Women's Liberation Movement
Simone de Beauvoir and Second-Wave Feminism
10 Important Feminist Beliefs
The Core Ideas and Beliefs of Feminism
Feminist Organizations of the 1970s
Biography of Betty Friedan, Feminist, Writer, Activist
Top 20 Influential Modern Feminist Theorists
Lavender Menace: the Phrase, the Group, the Controversy
Combahee River Collective in the 1970s
What Is Radical Feminism?
Abortion on Demand: A Second Wave Feminist Demand
The Women's Movement and Feminist Activism in the 1960s

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Gender Studies › Third Wave Feminism

Third Wave Feminism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 29, 2017 • ( 2 )

Third wave feminism has numerous definitions, but perhaps is best described in the most general terms as the feminism of a younger generation of women who acknowledge the legacy of second wave feminism , but also identify what they see as its limitations. These perceived limitations would include their sense that it remained too exclusively white and middle class, that it became a prescriptive movement which alienated ordinary women by making them feel guilty about enjoying aspects of individual self-expression such as cosmetics and fashion, but also sexuality – especially heterosexuality and its trappings, such as pornography. Moreover, most third wavers would assert that the historical and political conditions in which second wave feminism emerged no longer exist and therefore it does not chime with the experiences of today’s women. Third wave feminists seem to largely be women who have grown up massively influenced by feminism, possibly with feminist mothers and relations, and accustomed to the existence of women’s studies courses as the norm as well as academic interrogations of ‘race’ and class. These young, mainly university-educated women may well also have encountered post-structuralist and postmodernist theories, so that their approach to staple feminist concepts such as identity and sisterhood will be sceptical and challenging.

According to the conservative critic Rene Denfeld , the third wave was conceived by Rebecca Walker (daughter of the writer Alice Walker) and Shannon Liss in the early 1990s ( Denfeld 1995 : 263), but it seems likely that the term was applied across a number of sources synchronically and, like the second wave, its history is dispersed and caught up with the political tendencies of the age. It is interesting to point out, though, that much of its impetus derives from the writings of women of colour. Most third wave feminists seem to separate their perspectives from so-called ‘ post-feminism ’; as Lesley Heywood and Jennifer Drake assert, ‘Let us be clear: “post-feminist” characterizes a group of young, conservative feminists who explicitly define themselves against and criticize feminists of the second wave’ (1997: 1). They, conversely, seem very conscious of the second wave’s recent history and may well see their work as part of a continuum of feminist radical thought and theorising. This is in opposition to some contemporary commentators on feminism such as Katie Roiphe , whose The Morning After (1994) portrayed US campuses as overrun with misguided feminist radicals exaggerating the dangers of date rape and sexual harassment to the detriment of relationships between men and women – clearly part of the conservative tendency rejected by third wavers.

Naomi Wolf , however, gets a more mixed reception, but her Fire with Fire (1993) in many ways fits the third wave mould, particularly in her dismissal of what she calls ‘victim feminism’ – where women are supposedly encouraged to see themselves rendered passive by oppression within a second wave formulation. Wolf articulates her perspective as part of a generational shift in common with practically all third wave feminism whose genesis is based on a resistance to the ‘old guard’or framed in terms of the need for the ‘daughter’ to break away from her feminist ‘mother’ in order to define her own agenda.

Third wave feminism seems to have emerged from the academy in the loosest sense – that its key spokespeople developed these ideas as a response to their own feminist education – but is equally present in popular cultural forms, as these feminists see their lives as just as powerfully shaped by popular culture, particularly music, television, film and literature. Media figures such as the rock star Courtney Love represent third wave icons in their tendency to refuse to adhere to a feminist party line, but also in their resistance to comply with the types of ‘feminine’ behaviour deemed compatible with media and mainstream success. The Riot Grrrl movement which began around 1991, has close links with the emergence of third wave feminism and illustrates their claim that popular culture can be the site of activism, and that media such as music can be used to communicate political messages. The musical style of Riot Grrrls was heavily influenced by 1970s’ punk and it embraced punk’s inclusivity – the idea that anyone with a passion for music, but perhaps without formal training, could be involved in performance. Their influence soon went beyond the music scene to a broader-based movement – the 1992 Riot Grrrl convention in Washington, DC, for example, had workshops on sexuality, rape, racism and domestic violence (Klein in Heywood and Drake 1997: 214). Examples of Riot Grrl and subsequent third wave activism include making music (not an inconsiderable ambition in an industry famously dominated by men), running record labels, publishing fanzines and setting up cultural events. As all this suggests, being part of feminism’s third wave means realising one’s own politics through the mass media and popular culture – this is diametrically opposed to the ambitions of second wave feminism to keep its ‘authenticity’ by generally shunning the blandishments of the media for fear of being absorbed by patriarchal power structures. Despite the marginal and maverick status of Riot Grrrl performers, there is more generally an investment in women who have made success in a man’s world, using all the usual ‘patriarchal’ indicators of success, such as money, fame, media savvy. The sources for third wave inspiration reflect this cultural multi-lingualism, so that a third wave feminist is as likely to read Mary Wollstonecraft as she is to pick up Elizabeth Wurtzel ’s Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (1999) or settle down to watch the latest episode of Buffy .

Beyond their cultural tastes, third wavers pride themselves on their global perspective and there is a commitment to look at the material conditions of people’s lives while embracing some of the key tenets of second wave feminism . Men and heterosexuality have a less problematic place in third wave feminism – and their analysis tends to take into account the dispossession of young males as well as females. In the USA in particular, its focus on a certain generation acts as a counterpoise to the characterisation of American generation-Xers as whining and idle.

It is certain that third wave activism is still in its relative infancy and that more academic commentaries will gradually emerge, which will themselves broaden its scope at the same time that they attempt to account for its particular philosophy. Very much at the heart of feminism’s third wave is the sense of generational conflict – one generation claiming its own space and fashioning the movement in its own image – in fact ‘generation X feminism’ is defined by age more than anything else. This marks a very different transition from the first to second waves of feminism, where the shape of political action and feminist purpose was transformed from a discourse of rights to that of liberation. There are hints of good old second wave collective activity in the websites, the zines and the concerts such as Ladyfest (which began in 2000 and are happening across the USA and Europe), but it has a more individualist edge, reflecting among other things a radical suspicion of the politics of identity, and a marked shift to ‘lifestyle’ politics (the idea that your politics said something about your individual taste in the same way that your clothes, furniture and car did – and was in fact part of the ‘package’) evident since the mid-1980s. Of course second wave feminism was itself largely a ‘young’ movement, comprised mainly of women who were in their twenties and thirties during its height, but they have grown old with it and presumably never imagined that its essential message couldn’t be conveyed to a new generation. Catherine Redfern , editor of the web-based The F-Word declares that ‘Second wavers often misunderstand young women’s enthusiasm for the term “third wave”. They think it’s because we don’t respect their achievements or want to disassociate ourselves from them. In actual fact I think it simply demonstrates a desire to feel part of a movement with relevance to our own lives and to claim it for ourselves, to stress that feminism is active today, right now . . . a lot has changed between Gen X and the baby boomers, partly because of the achievements of 70s feminism. Having said that, feminism still has unfinished business’ (Redfern 2002).

Source: Fifty Key Concepts in Gender Studies Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan Sage Publications, 2004.

FURTHER READING Lesley Haywood and Jennifer Drake (1997) offer a lively account of the meanings of third wave feminism to date; Naomi Wolf (1993) is one of the most influential books for this generation of feminists. Because this is a movement that generates intense debate on the web, it is worth looking at some of the sites available, such as ‘The third wave – Feminism for the new millennium’ ( http://www.io.com/~wwwave/ ) or the UK’s ‘The FWord’ ( http://www.thefword.org.uk ).

Third Wave Feminism

A Critical Exploration

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Rebecca Munford (Lecturer in English Literature) 2

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Table of contents (23 chapters)

Front matter, generations and genealogies, ‘feminists love a utopia’.

Lise Shapiro Sanders

On the Genealogy of Women

Alison Stone

Kristeva and the Trans-Missions of the Intertext

Feminist dissonance.

Gillian Howie, Ashley Tauchert

Transgender Feminism

Susan Stryker

Theorising the Intermezzo

Amanda D. Lotz

‘You’re Not One of Those Boring Masculinists, Are You?’

Andrew Shail

Locales and Locations

Wa(i)ving it all away.

Mridula Nath Chakraborty

‘It’s All About the Benjamins’

Leslie Heywood, Jennifer Drake

Imagining Feminist Futures

Niamh Moore

A Different Chronology

Agnieszka Graff

Global Feminisms, Transnational Political Economies, Third World Cultural Production

Winifred Woodhull

Neither Cyborg Nor Goddess

Stacy Gillis

Politics and Popular Culture

Contests for the meaning of third wave feminism.

Ednie Kaeh Garrison

‘Also I Wanted So Much To Leave For the West’

Anastasia Valassopoulos

(Un)fashionable Feminists

Kristyn Gorton

About this book

'This expanded second edition of 'Third Wave Feminism' is an unexpected pleasure. While much work on 'the third wave' is ahistorical, nationally-bounded and analytically bankrupt, here the editors bring together an impressive range of articles living up to the volume's subtitle of 'critical exploration'. The anthology provides a historically and conceptually grounded background to the area, highlights the limits as well as possibilities of generational approaches, and constitutes a politically diverse, international set of reflections on the terrain. Essential reading.' - Clare Hemmings, Gender Institute, London School of Economics

'This is an excellent and important book that left me, as Imelda Whelehan puts it at the end of her foreword, "once again caring that I am a feminist, whatever the era.'' - Alice Ridout, Contemporary Women's Writing

Editors and Affiliations

Gillian Howie

Rebecca Munford

About the editors

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : Third Wave Feminism

Book Subtitle : A Critical Exploration

Editors : Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie, Rebecca Munford

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593664

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan London

eBook Packages : Palgrave Religion & Philosophy Collection , Philosophy and Religion (R0)

Softcover ISBN : 978-0-230-52174-2 Published: 17 April 2007

eBook ISBN : 978-0-230-59366-4 Published: 17 April 2007

Edition Number : 2

Number of Pages : XXXIV, 310

Topics : Political Philosophy , Social Philosophy , Gender Studies , Feminism

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Women's liberation movement in Washington, DC, August 26, 1970.

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The waves of feminism, and why people keep fighting over them, explained

If you have no idea which wave of feminism we’re in right now, read this.

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If one thing’s for sure, it’s that the second-wave feminists are at war with the third-wave feminists.

No, wait, the second-wavers are at war with the fourth-wave feminists.

No, it’s not the second-wavers, it’s the Gen X-ers.

Are we still cool with the first-wavers? Are they all racists now?

Is there actually intergenerational fighting about feminist waves? Is that a real thing?

Do we even use the wave metaphor anymore?

As the #MeToo movement barrels forward, as record numbers of women seek office, and as the Women’s March drives the resistance against the Trump administration, feminism is reaching a level of cultural relevance it hasn’t enjoyed in years. It’s now a major object of cultural discourse — which has led to some very confusing conversations because not everyone is familiar with or agrees on the basic terminology of feminism. And one of the most basic and most confusing terms has to do with waves of feminism.

People began talking about feminism as a series of waves in 1968 when a New York Times article by Martha Weinman Lear ran under the headline “ The Second Feminist Wave .” “Feminism, which one might have supposed as dead as a Polish question, is again an issue,” Lear wrote. “Proponents call it the Second Feminist Wave, the first having ebbed after the glorious victory of suffrage and disappeared, finally, into the sandbar of Togetherness.”

Machinists working for Ford Motors attending a Women's Conference on equal rights on June 28, 1968.

The wave metaphor caught on: It became a useful way of linking the women’s movement of the ’60s and ’70s to the women’s movement of the suffragettes, and to suggest that the women’s libbers weren’t a bizarre historical aberration, as their detractors sneered, but a new chapter in a grand history of women fighting together for their rights. Over time, the wave metaphor became a way to describe and distinguish between different eras and generations of feminism.

It’s not a perfect metaphor. “The wave metaphor tends to have built into it an important metaphorical implication that is historically misleading and not helpful politically,” argued feminist historian Linda Nicholson in 2010 . “That implication is that underlying certain historical differences, there is one phenomenon, feminism, that unites gender activism in the history of the United States, and that like a wave, peaks at certain times and recedes at others. In sum, the wave metaphor suggests the idea that gender activism in the history of the United States has been for the most part unified around one set of ideas, and that set of ideas can be called feminism.”

The wave metaphor can be reductive. It can suggest that each wave of feminism is a monolith with a single unified agenda, when in fact the history of feminism is a history of different ideas in wild conflict.

It can reduce each wave to a stereotype and suggest that there’s a sharp division between generations of feminism, when in fact there’s a fairly strong continuity between each wave — and since no wave is a monolith, the theories that are fashionable in one wave are often grounded in the work that someone was doing on the sidelines of a previous wave. And the wave metaphor can suggest that mainstream feminism is the only kind of feminism there is, when feminism is full of splinter movements.

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And as waves pile upon waves in feminist discourse, it’s become unclear that the wave metaphor is useful for understanding where we are right now. “I don’t think we are in a wave right now,” gender studies scholar April Sizemore-Barber told Vox in January. “I think that now feminism is inherently intersectional feminism — we are in a place of multiple feminisms.”

But the wave metaphor is also probably the best tool we have for understanding the history of feminism in the US, where it came from and how it developed. And it’s become a fundamental part of how we talk about feminism — so even if we end up deciding to discard it, it’s worth understanding exactly what we’re discarding.

Here is an overview of the waves of feminism in the US, from the suffragettes to #MeToo. This is a broad overview, and it won’t capture every nuance of the movement in each era. Think of it as a Feminism 101 explainer, here to give you a framework to understand the feminist conversation that’s happening right now, how we got here, and where we go next.

The first wave: 1848 to 1920

People have been suggesting things along the line of “Hmmm, are women maybe human beings?” for all of history, so first-wave feminism doesn’t refer to the first feminist thinkers in history. It refers to the West’s first sustained political movement dedicated to achieving political equality for women: the suffragettes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Woman’s suffrage march in New York City circa 1900.

For 70 years, the first-wavers would march, lecture, and protest, and face arrest, ridicule, and violence as they fought tooth and nail for the right to vote. As Susan B. Anthony’s biographer Ida Husted Harper would put it , suffrage was the right that, once a woman had won it, “would secure to her all others.”

The first wave basically begins with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 . There, almost 200 women met in a church in upstate New York to discuss “the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.” Attendees discussed their grievances and passed a list of 12 resolutions calling for specific equal rights — including, after much debate, the right to vote.

Cartoon representing feminist speaker denouncing men at the first Women's Rights Convention in July 1848, in Seneca Falls, NY, where the American feminist movement was launched.

The whole thing was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were both active abolitionists. (They met when they were both barred from the floor of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London; no women were allowed.)

At the time, the nascent women’s movement was firmly integrated with the abolitionist movement: The leaders were all abolitionists, and Frederick Douglass spoke at the Seneca Falls Convention, arguing for women’s suffrage. Women of color like Sojourner Truth , Maria Stewart , and Frances E.W. Harper were major forces in the movement, working not just for women’s suffrage but for universal suffrage.

But despite the immense work of women of color for the women’s movement, the movement of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony eventually established itself as a movement specifically for white women, one that used racial animus as fuel for its work.

The 15th Amendment’s passage in 1870 , granting black men the right to vote, became a spur that politicized white women and turned them into suffragettes. Were they truly not going to be granted the vote before former slaves were?

Susan B. Anthony sitting at her desk, circa 1868.

“If educated women are not as fit to decide who shall be the rulers of this country, as ‘field hands,’ then where’s the use of culture, or any brain at all?” demanded one white woman who wrote in to Stanton and Anthony’s newspaper, the Revolution. “One might as well have been ‘born on the plantation.’” Black women were barred from some demonstrations or forced to walk behind white women in others.

Despite its racism, the women’s movement developed radical goals for its members. First-wavers fought not only for white women’s suffrage but also for equal opportunities to education and employment, and for the right to own property.

And as the movement developed, it began to turn to the question of reproductive rights. In 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US, in defiance of a New York state law that forbade the distribution of contraception. She would later go on to establish the clinic that became Planned Parenthood.

In 1920, Congress passed the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. (In theory, it granted the right to women of all races, but in practice, it remained difficult for black women to vote , especially in the South.)

Suffragettes hold a jubilee celebrating their victory on August 31, 1920.

The 19th Amendment was the grand legislative achievement of the first wave. Although individual groups continued to work — for reproductive freedom, for equality in education and employment, for voting rights for black women — the movement as a whole began to splinter. It no longer had a unified goal with strong cultural momentum behind it, and it would not find another until the second wave began to take off in the 1960s.

The second wave: 1963 to the 1980s

The second wave of feminism begins with Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique , which came out in 1963. There were prominent feminist thinkers before Friedan who would come to be associated with the second wave — most importantly Simone de Beauvoir, whose Second Sex came out in France in 1949 and in the US in 1953 — but The Feminine Mystique was a phenomenon. It sold 3 million copies in three years .

The Feminine Mystique rails against “the problem that has no name”: the systemic sexism that taught women that their place was in the home and that if they were unhappy as housewives, it was only because they were broken and perverse. “I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have an orgasm waxing the kitchen floor,” Friedan later quipped .

But, she argued, the fault didn’t truly lie with women, but rather with the world that refused to allow them to exercise their creative and intellectual faculties. Women were right to be unhappy; they were being ripped off.

Betty Friedan (top row, fourth from left) with feminists at her home in June 7, 1973. The gathering was described as a session of the International Feminist Conference and included Yoko Ono (second row, center).

The Feminine Mystique was not revolutionary in its thinking, as many of Friedan’s ideas were already being discussed by academics and feminist intellectuals. Instead, it was revolutionary in its reach . It made its way into the hands of housewives, who gave it to their friends, who passed it along through a whole chain of well-educated middle-class white women with beautiful homes and families. And it gave them permission to be angry.

And once those 3 million readers realized that they were angry, feminism once again had cultural momentum behind it. It had a unifying goal, too: not just political equality, which the first-wavers had fought for, but social equality.

“The personal is political,” said the second-wavers. (The phrase cannot be traced back to any individual woman but was popularized by Carol Hanisch .) They would go on to argue that problems that seemed to be individual and petty — about sex, and relationships, and access to abortions, and domestic labor — were in fact systemic and political, and fundamental to the fight for women’s equality.

So the movement won some major legislative and legal victories: The Equal Pay Act of 1963 theoretically outlawed the gender pay gap; a series of landmark Supreme Court cases through the ’60s and ’70s gave married and unmarried women the right to use birth control; Title IX gave women the right to educational equality; and in 1973, Roe v. Wade guaranteed women reproductive freedom.

Nurse showing a diaphragm to birth control patients, in 1967.

The second wave worked on getting women the right to hold credit cards under their own names and to apply for mortgages. It worked to outlaw marital rape, to raise awareness about domestic violence and build shelters for women fleeing rape and domestic violence. It worked to name and legislate against sexual harassment in the workplace.

But perhaps just as central was the second wave’s focus on changing the way society thought about women. The second wave cared deeply about the casual, systemic sexism ingrained into society — the belief that women’s highest purposes were domestic and decorative, and the social standards that reinforced that belief — and in naming that sexism and ripping it apart.

The second wave cared about racism too, but it could be clumsy in working with people of color. As the women’s movement developed, it was rooted in the anti-capitalist and anti-racist civil rights movements, but black women increasingly found themselves alienated from the central platforms of the mainstream women’s movement.

The Feminine Mystique and its “problem that has no name” was specifically for white middle-class women: Women who had to work to support themselves experienced their oppression very differently from women who were socially discouraged from working.

Earning the right to work outside the home was not a major concern for black women, many of whom had to work outside the home anyway. And while black women and white women both advocated for reproductive freedom, black women wanted to fight not just for the right to contraception and abortions but also to stop the forced sterilization of people of color and people with disabilities , which was not a priority for the mainstream women’s movement. In response, some black feminists decamped from feminism to create womanism. (“Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender,” Alice Walker wrote in 1983 .)

Women’s Liberation march at Copley Square plaza in Boston on April 17, 1971.

Even with its limited scope, second-wave feminism at its height was plenty radical enough to scare people — hence the myth of the bra burners. Despite the popular story, there was no mass burning of bras among second-wave feminists .

But women did gather together in 1968 to protest the Miss America pageant and its demeaning, patriarchal treatment of women. And as part of the protest, participants ceremoniously threw away objects that they considered to be symbols of women’s objectification, including bras and copies of Playboy.

That the Miss America protest has long lingered in the popular imagination as a bra-burning, and that bra-burning has become a metonym for postwar American feminism, says a lot about the backlash to the second wave that would soon ensue.

In the 1980s, the comfortable conservatism of the Reagan era managed to successfully position second-wave feminists as humorless, hairy-legged shrews who cared only about petty bullshit like bras instead of real problems, probably to distract themselves from the loneliness of their lives, since no man would ever want a ( shudder ) feminist.

“I don’t think of myself as a feminist,” a young woman told Susan Bolotin in 1982 for the New York Times Magazine. “Not for me, but for the guy next door that would mean that I’m a lesbian and I hate men.”

Another young woman chimed in, agreeing. “Look around and you’ll see some happy women, and then you’ll see all these bitter, bitter women,” she said. “The unhappy women are all feminists. You’ll find very few happy, enthusiastic, relaxed people who are ardent supporters of feminism.”

That image of feminists as angry and man-hating and lonely would become canonical as the second wave began to lose its momentum, and it continues to haunt the way we talk about feminism today. It would also become foundational to the way the third wave would position itself as it emerged.

The third wave: 1991(?) to ????

It is almost impossible to talk with any clarity about the third wave because few people agree on exactly what the third wave is, when it started, or if it’s still going on. “The confusion surrounding what constitutes third wave feminism,” writes feminist scholar Elizabeth Evans , “is in some respects its defining feature.”

But generally, the beginning of the third wave is pegged to two things: the Anita Hill case in 1991, and the emergence of the riot grrrl groups in the music scene of the early 1990s.

In 1991, Anita Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her at work. Thomas made his way to the Supreme Court anyway, but Hill’s testimony sparked an avalanche of sexual harassment complaints , in much the same way that last fall’s Harvey Weinstein accusations were followed by a litany of sexual misconduct accusations against other powerful men.

Anita Hill testified in the Caucus room of the Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on October 11, 1991.

And Congress’s decision to send Thomas to the Supreme Court despite Hill’s testimony led to a national conversation about the overrepresentation of men in national leadership roles. The following year, 1992, would be dubbed “ the Year of the Woman ” after 24 women won seats in the House of Representatives and three more won seats in the Senate.

And for the young women watching the Anita Hill case in real time, it would become an awakening. “I am not a postfeminism feminist,” declared Rebecca Walker (Alice Walker’s daughter) for Ms. after watching Thomas get sworn into the Supreme Court. “I am the Third Wave.”

Thousands of demonstrators gathered for the March for Women’s Lives, sponsored by the National Organization for Women (NOW), in Washington DC, on April 5, 1992.

Early third-wave activism tended to involve fighting against workplace sexual harassment and working to increase the number of women in positions of power. Intellectually, it was rooted in the work of theorists of the ’80s: Kimberlé Crenshaw , a scholar of gender and critical race theory who coined the term intersectionality to describe the ways in which different forms of oppression intersect; and Judith Butler , who argued that gender and sex are separate and that gender is performative. Crenshaw and Butler’s combined influence would become foundational to the third wave’s embrace of the fight for trans rights as a fundamental part of intersectional feminism.

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw speaks onstage at 2018 Women's March Los Angeles, California, on January 20, 2018.

Aesthetically, the third wave is deeply influenced by the rise of the riot grrrls, the girl groups who stomped their Doc Martens onto the music scene in the 1990s.

“BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives,” wrote Bikini Kill lead singer Kathleen Hanna in the Riot Grrrl Manifesto in 1991. “BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.”

The word girl here points to one of the major differences between second- and third-wave feminism. Second-wavers fought to be called women rather than girls : They weren’t children, they were fully grown adults, and they demanded to be treated with according dignity. There should be no more college girls or coeds: only college women, learning alongside college men.

But third-wavers liked being girls. They embraced the word; they wanted to make it empowering, even threatening — hence grrrl . And as it developed, that trend would continue: The third wave would go on to embrace all kinds of ideas and language and aesthetics that the second wave had worked to reject: makeup and high heels and high-femme girliness.

Bikini Kill and Joan Jett (center), 1994.

In part, the third-wave embrace of girliness was a response to the anti-feminist backlash of the 1980s, the one that said the second-wavers were shrill, hairy, and unfeminine and that no man would ever want them. And in part, it was born out of a belief that the rejection of girliness was in itself misogynistic: girliness, third-wavers argued, was not inherently less valuable than masculinity or androgyny.

And it was rooted in a growing belief that effective feminism had to recognize both the dangers and the pleasures of the patriarchal structures that create the beauty standard and that it was pointless to punish and censure individual women for doing things that brought them pleasure.

Third-wave feminism had an entirely different way of talking and thinking than the second wave did — but it also lacked the strong cultural momentum that was behind the grand achievements of the second wave. (Even the Year of Women turned out to be a blip, as the number of women entering national politics plateaued rapidly after 1992.)

The third wave was a diffuse movement without a central goal, and as such, there’s no single piece of legislation or major social change that belongs to the third wave the way the 19th Amendment belongs to the first wave or Roe v. Wade belongs to the second.

Depending on how you count the waves, that might be changing now, as the #MeToo moment develops with no signs of stopping — or we might be kicking off an entirely new wave.

The present day: a fourth wave?

Feminists have been anticipating the arrival of a fourth wave since at least 1986, when a letter writer to the Wilson Quarterly opined that the fourth wave was already building. Internet trolls actually tried to launch their own fourth wave in 2014 , planning to create a “pro-sexualization, pro-skinny, anti-fat” feminist movement that the third wave would revile, ultimately miring the entire feminist community in bloody civil war. (It didn’t work out.)

But over the past few years, as #MeToo and Time’s Up pick up momentum, the Women’s March floods Washington with pussy hats every year, and a record number of women prepare to run for office , it’s beginning to seem that the long-heralded fourth wave might actually be here.

Woman’s March in Washington DC, on January 21, 2017.

While a lot of media coverage of #MeToo describes it as a movement dominated by third-wave feminism, it actually seems to be centered in a movement that lacks the characteristic diffusion of the third wave. It feels different.

“Maybe the fourth wave is online,” said feminist Jessica Valenti in 2009 , and that’s come to be one of the major ideas of fourth-wave feminism. Online is where activists meet and plan their activism, and it’s where feminist discourse and debate takes place. Sometimes fourth-wave activism can even take place on the internet (the “#MeToo” tweets), and sometimes it takes place on the streets (the Women’s March), but it’s conceived and propagated online.

As such, the fourth wave’s beginnings are often loosely pegged to around 2008, when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were firmly entrenched in the cultural fabric and feminist blogs like Jezebel and Feministing were spreading across the web. By 2013, the idea that we had entered a fourth wave was widespread enough that it was getting written up in the Guardian . “What’s happening now feels like something new again,” wrote Kira Cochrane.

Currently, the fourth-wavers are driving the movement behind #MeToo and Time’s Up, but in previous years they were responsible for the cultural impact of projects like Emma Sulkowicz’s Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) , in which a rape victim at Columbia University committed to carrying their mattress around campus until the university expelled their rapist.

The trending hashtag #YesAllWomen after the UC Santa Barbara shooting was a fourth-wave campaign, and so was the trending hashtag #StandWithWendy when Wendy Davis filibustered a Texas abortion law. Arguably, the SlutWalks that began in 2011 — in protest of the idea that the way to prevent rape is for women to “stop dressing like sluts” — are fourth-wave campaigns.

Beyoncé in front of a sign that says FEMINIST

Like all of feminism, the fourth wave is not a monolith. It means different things to different people. But these tentpole positions that Bustle identified as belonging to fourth-wave feminism in 2015 do tend to hold true for a lot of fourth-wavers; namely, that fourth-wave feminism is queer, sex-positive, trans-inclusive, body-positive, and digitally driven. (Bustle also claims that fourth-wave feminism is anti-misandry, but given the glee with which fourth-wavers across the internet riff on ironic misandry , that may be more prescriptivist than descriptivist on their part.)

And now the fourth wave has begun to hold our culture’s most powerful men accountable for their behavior. It has begun a radical critique of the systems of power that allow predators to target women with impunity.

So is there a generational war between feminists?

As the fourth wave begins to establish itself, and as #MeToo goes on, we’ve begun to develop a narrative that says the fourth wave’s biggest obstacles are its predecessors — the feminists of the second wave.

“The backlash to #MeToo is indeed here,” wrote Jezebel’s Stassa Edwards in January , “and it’s liberal second-wave feminism.”

Writing with a lot less nuance, Katie Way, the reporter who broke the Aziz Ansari story , smeared one of her critics as a “burgundy-lipstick, bad-highlights, second-wave-feminist has-been.”

And there certainly are second-wave feminists pushing a #MeToo backlash. “If you spread your legs because he said ‘be nice to me and I’ll give you a job in a movie’ then I’m afraid that’s tantamount to consent,” second-wave feminist icon Germaine Greer remarked as the accusations about Weinstein mounted, “and it’s too late now to start whingeing about that.” (Greer, who has also said on the record that she doesn’t believe trans women are “real women,” has become something of a poster child for the worst impulses of the second wave. Die a hero or live long enough to become a villain, etc.)

But some of the most prominent voices speaking out against #MeToo, like Katie Roiphe and Bari Weiss , are too young to have been part of the second wave. Roiphe is a Gen X-er who was pushing back against both the second and the third waves in the 1990s and has managed to stick around long enough to push back against the fourth wave today. Weiss, 33, is a millennial. Other prominent #MeToo critics, like Caitlin Flanagan and Daphne Merkin , are old enough to have been around for the second wave but have always been on the conservative end of the spectrum.

“In the 1990s and 2000s, second-wavers were cast as the shrill, militant, man-hating mothers and grandmothers who got in the way of their daughters’ sexual liberation. Now they’re the dull, hidebound relics who are too timid to push for the real revolution,” writes Sady Doyle at Elle . “And of course, while young women have been telling their forebears to shut up and fade into the sunset, older women have been stereotyping and slamming younger activists as feather-headed, boy-crazy pseudo-feminists who squander their mothers’ feminist gains by taking them for granted.”

It is not particularly useful to think of the #MeToo debates as a war between generations of feminists — or, more creepily, as some sort of Freudian Electra complex in action. And the data from our polling shows that these supposed generational gaps largely don’t exist . It is perhaps more useful to think of it as part of what has always been the history of feminism: passionate disagreement between different schools of thought, which history will later smooth out into a single overarching “wave” of discourse (if the wave metaphor holds on that long).

Women’s March in Washington, DC on Saturday January 21, 2017.

The history of feminism is filled with radicals and progressives and liberals and centrists. It’s filled with splinter movements and reactionary counter-movements. That’s part of what it means to be both an intellectual tradition and a social movement, and right now feminism is functioning as both with a gorgeous and monumental vitality. Rather than devouring their own, feminists should recognize the enormous work that each wave has done for the movement, and get ready to keep doing more work.

After all, the past is past. We’re in the middle of the third wave now.

Or is it the fourth?

Women's March in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2018.

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Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Motherhood

At the time when I wrote “Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Motherhood,” I lacked a critical frame for understanding neoliberalism. Instead, my concerns over the ideological reshaping of twenty-first century reproductive lives gravitated towards my dissatisfaction with so-called third wave feminism and its practitioners’ uncritical celebration of “choice.”

My frustration may not have been wholly misplaced. Events of the early twenty-first century reveal that the concept of a third wave may not stand the test of time and, in fact, despite the efforts of stalwart defenders such as Alison Piepmeier, only “dramatizes differences” that do not exist between feminists. Indeed, the Trump administration has re-ignited feminist activism and, in this moment of solidarity against a common foe, current feminist resistance draws on the experience and involvement of feminists of all ages, as seen in The Women’s March, the Indivisible Movement, the SisterSong Collective, and smaller grassroots groups such as GRR! Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights. The conflicts within feminist movement are apparent but do not clearly reflect generational lines. Third wave defenders did not resolve the challenges of intersectional politics nor did they contribute more than other feminists to the ongoing struggle to understand, expose, and dismantle oppression as it is reinvented and reified. It remains to be seen if the wave metaphor is jettisoned or merely replaced by a new wave defined by nostalgia for earlier feminist movement.

In proclaiming a third wave of feminism that was not to be confused with postfeminsm, Rebecca Walker missed the real problem: what bell hooks terms lifestyle feminism. In addition to perpetuating a false drama of intergenerational conflict (that was ageist and played into patriarchal fantasies of cat-fights), those like Walker who espoused the idea of a third wave demonstrated a lack of critical distance on the lifestyle culture they believed they alone were capable of critiquing. Instead, they fed a media and consumer culture-fueled version of women’s empowerment, now reflected in the rise of femvertising ads, rather than offering analysis of structural inequality. Lifestyle feminism has been promoted through the apolitical mantras of “choice” and love for women, affirmations that do not require identification with feminist movement or materialist feminist consciousness.

As I noted above, my essay’s discussion of twenty-first century biopolitics lacked the critical term for neoliberalism; however, in third wave defenders’ celebration of choice I now see a troublesome alignment with its values. During and following the publication of my essay, work by Lisa Duggan, Wendy Brown, and Nancy Fraser contributed to feminist understandings of this economic and political moment. Their work points to how the state privileges the market, and, according to Wendy Brown, citizens are accordingly “interpellated as entrepreneurial actors” practicing agency through self-care. Thus a new morality of what Rickie Solinger calls “good and bad choice-makers” arises in reproductive practices, behaviors, and judgments, simultaneously reflecting and contributing to the biopolitics of neoliberal hegemony. The deceptive promise of empowerment through “choice” replaces meaningful rights-based organizing and coalitions. Angela McRobbie’s analysis of “top girls,” in particular, reveals how those young women whose access to choices (reproductive and otherwise) serve the modern state’s identity (as progressive, permissive, unrepressed) come forward into “luminosity” and cultural approbation, while other women are pushed further into the background. Even without this critical framework my essay “smelled a rat” and anticipated McRobbie’s observation that “Choice is surely, within lifestyle culture, a modality of constraint. The individual is compelled to be the kind of subject who can make the right choices” (19).

Two other critical developments since the publication of my essay require acknowledgment: the academic field of motherhood studies and the reproductive justice movement.

Motherhood Studies responds in part to the new momism described by Douglas and Michaels, whose work informed my essay. Since Adrienne Rich made a distinction between motherhood as a patriarchal institution and mothering as a woman’s potential relationship to her powers of reproduction and children, a wealth of feminist research and theorizing on motherhood has developed. Drawing on social construction theory, motherhood studies has examined motherhood as a political, social, philosophical, economic, and biological phenomenon that is mythologized through hegemonic constructions of natural mothers, maternal instincts, and biological clocks. This is the work now being defined, expanded, and refined by Andrea O’Reilly, who coined the term motherhood studies in 2006 and who founded the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), which she developed from the former Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) at York University in Canada. MIRCI houses the Journal of Motherhood Initiative ( JMI ) and is partnered with Demeter Press, an independent press dedicated to publishing peer-reviewed scholarship on motherhood, mothering, and reproduction. Scholars in motherhood studies have explored more fully some of the concerns I struggled to identify in my essay: attachment parenting that disproportionately relies on maternal labor; myths of natural mothers and problematic, bioessentialized instinct; and unchallenged pronatalism.

Most importantly, my essay was an early attempt at applying the concepts and tools of the reproductive justice movement to cultural texts. Reproductive justice, an activist movement interested in “moving beyond the singular focus on abortion” in pro-choice movement, is perhaps best theorized by Loretta Ross (co-founder of the SisterSong collective and co-organizer for the 2004 March for Women’s Lives) and effectively mapped by scholar Kimala Price. Historian Rickie Solinger, who edits a new series at University of California Press, Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the Twenty-First Century , has for many years employed this critical framework in her writings, as have scholars such as Laura Briggs and Dorothy Roberts. This movement has transformed how feminists think about reproductive freedom and rights through the lenses of race, class, and history. It takes into consideration histories of enslavement and rape, forced sterilization and coerced birth control, eugenics, and the ways in which women who lack resources have been compelled to put their reproductive capacities into the service of their wealthier sisters. Reproductive justice draws on a human rights paradigm to defend not only the right to abortion but also the right to have children and to mother in safety and with dignity. Concern for these rights (not choices) characterized my reading of early twenty-first century texts about motherhood.

My interest in mothers like the fictional Precious in Sapphire’s PUSH and real mothers, such as those who make up the Black Lives Matter movement, is ongoing. How well do the current feminist understandings of neoliberal agency and choice account for (young) women who lack access to reproductive health services, freedom from violence, and the option to raise their children in safety and dignity? And, as feminism demystifies reproduction as simultaneously private but also a matter of intense state regulation, socially constructed desires, and relationships of power and domination, other questions to ponder include: how can feminism address the myriad challenges of globalized reproductive stratification? and has feminism lost the ability to question pronatalism?

Works Cited

Briggs, Laura. How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017.
Brown, Wendy. Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Carpenter, Zoe. “How Racism Puts Black Mothers and Their Infants at Risk” The Nation March 6, 2017. P.12
Douglas, Susan and Meredith Michaels. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women . New York: Free Press, 2004.
Duggan, Lisa. The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy . Boston: Beacon Press, 2003.
Fraser, Nancy. Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis . New York: Verso, 2013.
Giles, Melinda Vandenbeld, Ed. Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism . Toronto: Demeter Press, 2014.
hooks, bell. Feminist Politics: Where We Stand. Feminism is for Everybody .
McClain, Dani. “The Fight for a Health Black Baby” The Nation March 6, 2017 p.17
McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change . Los Angeles: Sage, 2009.
OReilly, Andrea. Twenty-first-Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency . NY: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Piepmeier, Allison. Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism . NY: New York University Press, 2009.
Price, Kimala. “What is Reproductive Justice?: How Women of Color Activists Are Redefining the Pro-Choice Paradigm” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 10.2 (2010): 42-65.
Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution . NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1986, 1976.
Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty . NY: Pantheon Books, 1997.
Ross, Loretta. “Trust Black Women: Stand with Us for Reproductive Justice” Trustblackwomen.org November 2006. Accessed 1 March 2017.
Silliman, Jael and Gerber Fried, Ross, and Gutierrez, eds. Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice . South End Press, 2004.
Solinger, Rickie. Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare. Hill and Wang, 2001.
Walker, Rebecca. “Becoming the Third Wave” Ms. (Jan. 1992), 39-41.

Note: originally published June 1, 2006.

The publication of Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers (2001), co-edited by Ariel Gore and Bee Lavender, marks a shift in the attention of third wave feminists away from the role of rebellious daughters to the role of motherhood. This essay investigates the politics of motherhood inBreeder by extension the third wave’s thinking on reproductive rights and motherhood. While Breederrecounts the experiences of young women carrying on the feminist struggle for reproductive rights and childcare, it also reveals the third wave’s problematic celebration of “choice.” Breeder’s mission falters when compared with Sapphire’s novel PUSH (1996), a feminist work of fiction about an African American teenage mother with two children living in Harlem. Sapphire’s novel conjures the genealogy of the term “breeder” as a racist label for black mothers from slavery through welfare reform. My comparison of Breeder andPUSHshifts the term “breeder” out of Gore and Lavender’s counterculture space by invoking this older, racialized use of the term. The haunting of the term “breeder” by this older use is emblematic of how Gore and Lavender’s collection is haunted for me, as I will explain, by Sapphire’s novel.

While the explicit message of Breeder is a feminist celebration of reproductive choices, the text also asserts that young (counterculture) women, typically assumed too financially unstable to parent, participate in what Douglas and Michaels term “the new Momism,” and, as choice-making consumers, are thus culturally acceptable mothers. By performing their legitimate claim to motherhood through their consumer choices, the young authors in Breeder mask how class-based and race-based privileges “trump” the disadvantages of youth in the cultural struggle to define “good mothers.” From my use of these two texts in the classroom, I came to realize that the legitimization of the mothers in Gore and Lavender’s text is based upon an invisible, cultural de-legitimization of other “breeders.” Based on student response to Sapphire’s novel and to Gore and Lavender’s text, I argue that Breeder’s celebration of the choice to follow unconventional paths to motherhood celebrates the privilege to make reproductive choices and, as Ricki Solinger argues, does the ideological work of distinguishing legitimate choice-making mothers from “bad” choice-making mothers.

Counterculture Breeders

While third wave feminist writings have never lacked discussions of motherhood, the majority of voices in the early collections speak from the subject position of the young 20- or 30-something feminist talking back to her feminist mother(s) (Findlen; Walker; Edut; Zahava) (notable exceptions include essays by Laurel Gilbert and the late Allison Crews in Findlen). Indeed, third wave feminist identity defines itself against real and metaphorical feminist mothers, even as the metaphor of mothers/daughters is interrogated (Henry). This preponderance of daughter voices in third wave writings is understandable considering that many third wave feminists have yet to become parents. Recently though, young feminists have shown an increased awareness of and interest in their own subject position as mothers, as can been seen in the collectionBreeder.

This intensified interest in the role and politics of motherhood raises interesting questions about the third wave of feminists. As Dicker and Piepmeier have observed in their work, the third wave suffers from allegations of frivolity, of creating straw-man definitions of second wave feminists against which to self-identify, and of being in danger of “reinventing the wheel” of feminist thought and action, but according to Heywood and Drake, this new generation can also be identified as particularly media savvy and uniquely well-informed by anti-racist, third-world feminisms. What do these alleged characteristics signify for the maternal politics of this generation? Rejected and celebrated, problematized by the politics of race, class, and sexuality, motherhood is arguably the defining issue of feminist theory and activism over several previous generations—what new insights are offered by these new writings?

In the introduction to Breeder, Ariel Gore recounts how as a younger person, she and fellow punks harassed pregnant women at the grocery store by yelling “breeder” at them, cynically questioning the wisdom of “[b]ringing children in to this world,” and sneering, “[h]ow deluded is that?”(xiii). Now a mother herself, Gore’s perspective has changed. In an interview in Clamor, Gore describes the collection’s themes as “love and death and surviving and mothering soulfully in this world—the one we swore we’d never bring children into, the one that spawned our cynicism and the one that, ultimately, nurtures our hope” (Adney 67). Gore, who co-edits with Lavender the zine and website Hip Mama, sees their work as filling the need for alternative and empowering representations of motherhood. Gore states, “As the daughters of the 1970s feminist movement, we cherish our reproductive freedom. And as willing breeders, we refuse to be oppressed by the institution of motherhood” (Gore and Lavender, xiii). Resisting what she calls the “diaper commercial” version of carefully planned and timed motherhood, Gore boasts, “In a culture where women often delay childbearing as long as nature and science will allow, we chose to have our kids while, notinstead of, following our dreams” (xiii).

In the fall semester of 2001, I incorporated Gore and Lavender’s collection into a content-based, first year writing course. The course serves as a writing-intensive introduction to women’s studies, and I wanted a text that would enable a discussion of the family and motherhood as sites of patriarchal control, as well as feminist resistance. Norms of maternal self-sacrifice and self-effacement, the public surveillance of the pregnant body and mother, as well as the simultaneous social romanticization and discounting of mothers were some themes I sought to address. In particular, I was interested in having students think critically about the recent explosion of media fascination with motherhood as a potential backlash against feminist gains. Breeder served this purpose by addressing the following issues, which I will expand upon: family structure, family planning, cultural narratives of pregnancy, and motherhood.

Recurrently throughout the collection, family structure is questioned and redefined. One narrative on lesbian parenting humorously tells the story of a couple’s not so humorous, unsuccessful struggles to conceive through artificial insemination and later to adopt, while in “Becoming His Mother” another woman reflects on establishing a sense of connection with the child birthed by her partner and to whom she is not “biologically” related. In another thoughtful story, two single mothers, whose children’s fathers are absent, cohabitate and collaborate on raising their daughters. The author reflects, “While the four of us dance around the living room in circles, our tiaras bouncing, skirts flying and bracelets jangling, the neighbor downstairs knocking on the ceiling and screaming for us to please stop stomping, I think to myself, we are re-creating family” (100). The collection also includes “imperfect” families, whose structures are disrupted by suicide, manic-depression, bulimia, autism, and infertility. These stories affirm alternative family structures and question the assumed normalcy of the hetero-normative, two parent family.

Several of the narratives deviate from the social script for timing and size of families. “When I was Garbage,” (a favorite story with my students) is the narrative of Allison Crews (one of the authors in Findlen’s collection and founding editor of the mothering zinegirlmom.com, who sadly died this year). As a pregnant tenth grader, Crews ignores pressure from her family and friends to either have an abortion or put her child up for adoption and decides to keep the baby. Another narrative, “Progress” recounts the pressure the author felt from peers to return to college after her second child was born. She tells her friends, “the thing is, I think I want to have more children,” (84) a choice that shocks and offends them.

The narratives about family planning often reflect the role of technology in alternative motherhood. The author of “Real Moms,” who investigates artificial insemination with her lesbian partner, reflects on how the promotional materials for sperm donor clinics and fertility treatments presume their readers to be married heterosexual couples. Birth control pills, pregnancy tests, neo-natal care units for premature babies, and breast pumps that allow new mothers to work nine-to-five jobs also reveal the technologizing of motherhood in the stories. However, some stories challenge technologized and medicalized motherhood. In defiance of medical authority, several mothers in the collection give birth at home or unassisted.

In other stories, powerful cultural narratives of pregnancy are shown to de-legitimize some women’s experiences. For example, the narrative of pregnancy as a “happy time,” marginalizes and condemns some women’s feelings of ambivalence. In “Will,” after conceiving a planned pregnancy, the narrator reflects on her own overly self-sacrificing and unsatisfied mother, prompting her realization that she is not prepared to have a child. When the author later miscarries, she struggles with the guilty belief that her lack of joyful anticipation caused her miscarriage.

Several stories offer alternatives to the image of mothers as a-sexual and passive. For example, in “Baby Vibes” a mother is dismayed to find that her infant son has been chewing on her brand-new vibrator. Humorously, she realizes she will never feel comfortable using it after this episode: “Perhaps I could exchange it for a new one. But how would I explain the teeth marks?” (174) Another story recounts a single mother’s efforts at dating and the tension between her desire for exploration and concern for her son’s attachments to her ephemeral partners. In addition to sexualized mothers, the collection contains stories about empowered mothers. In “My Secret Weapon,” the author discusses teaching her daughter to fly an airplane, arguing, “a girl who grows up powerful, intelligent, skilled, a girl who knows her value — won’t that girl be less likely to be victimized?”(64) In another story that seems equally appropriate forinclusion in The Vagina Monologues, a mother casts about for a word for “down there” to give to her young daughter, musing “pussy sounds a bit too submissive, cunt is too powerful a word for a toddler, vagina is fine for when you’re discussing yeast infections, which brings me to the term yoni, the gateway to nirvana or sacred place” (185-6). Like this mother, several of the authors see feminism as the legacy they pass along to their children.

After selecting Breeder to use in my class, I was immediately concerned that I had picked something a little too alternative for my freshman composition course. How, I wondered, would the uninitiated handle stories about lesbian parenting, vibrator-wielding single mothers, and a mother who works as a stripper? My students, however, almost unanimously reacted with enjoyment to readingBreeder. Many of the stories shocked them, but to my surprise, they were less unsettled by alternative family structures than by home births and breast pumps. Curious to understand their enjoyment and for their thoughts about the authors, I asked them to reflect in their journals on the characteristics of a “good” mother, then to use these characteristics to discuss the mothers in Breeder. My intention was to have each student clarify her/his definition of motherhood and then gauge how the various authors matched or deviated from her/his definition. Looking back over their journals and reflecting on the class discussion, I notice that, despite the alternative choices made by these counterculture mothers, the way most students connected with the stories was through very traditional understandings of motherhood. The favorable response of my almost entirely female and almost entirely white class of first year students (all non-mothers) arose from their conventional understanding of motherhood, which the text surprisingly did not ultimately challenge. I would like to discuss these responses more specifically, but first I want to establish what I think is the reason for how Breeder can be read so conventionally, which is the text’s participation in what Douglas and Michaels have termed “the new momism.”

“New Momism” and Consumerism

In The Mommy Myth, Douglas and Michaels analyze the phenomenon they dub the new momism, an ideological backlash against feminist gains in the arenas of childcare and the family. Douglas and Michaels trace the intensification of media coverage of motherhood over the last three decades, from the “internal threat” displayed by mothers who kill their own children, to the alleged national threat of so-called welfare queens, to the praise bestowed upon celebrity moms for their superior mothering style (albeit without mention of their legions of invisible, well-paid staff). Douglas and Michaels identify the process by which mothers (including those stay at home, those who work outside the home, those with special needs children, those who buy only organic foods, and many others) became markets, gaining the media’s attention, and thereby burdening women with the media’s obsession with hypernatalism, maternal vigilance and self-surveillance.

Today’s woman, according to the ideology of the new momism, is not complete without a child, she must be the primary care-giver of that child, and she must devote herself utterly to her children (4). While seemingly a celebration of motherhood, this message reflects profound patriarchal surveillance and constraints placed upon and internalized by women. Douglas and Michaels’ work, in addition to critiquing the new ideology of motherhood as neither new nor progressive, offers an astute, documented analysis of the media’s role in this surveillance of motherhood and dissemination of the new discourse of motherhood.

While the authors in Breeder reject certain media images of motherhood and materialism, the underlying tenet of the new momism—consumerism—remains unchallenged in their stories and becomes the basis for their assertion of themselves as “good choice makers” and entitled mothers. Gore and Lavender describe their audience as women who, because of their young age, are ignored equally by mainstream and feminist publications. In an interview with Clamor, Gore explains she created HipMamabecause “neither the parenting magazines nor the feminist press magazines nor any of the zines I could get my hand on covered single parenting or urban parenting or young-mama issues in any way—let alone in a way that felt real and empowering” (Adney 68). Gore furthers her description of her authors and intended readers in her introduction:

Women of my generation grew up in a blur of ERA demonstrations and disco dancing. We were commune babies, latchkey kids, the daughters of women who changed what it meant to be female in America…. We became riot grrls, sometime slackers, student-loan queens. We published zines, pioneered the new high-tech economy, revitalized the American tradition of political protest. (xii)

This brief description reveals that Gore and Lavender’s authors and intended audience are a fairly specific group. The “hippies and punks” included in the pages of Breeder represent an ideological counterculture to middleclass American values, and as riot grrls, college students, and technology pioneers, they are also clearly marked as counterculture consumers (of music, media, education, technology, etc). HipMama andBreeder are products marketed for a particular consumer group. The brief essay by Kimberly Bright at the beginning of the collection works well to illustrate the shared consumer characteristics of the authors and intended readers. Bright’s “Breeder Rites of Passage” lists a series of “firsts” presumably shared by the authors, including “college: obscure liberal arts school on scholarship,” “trip to Europe (Montmartre, Soho, Prague),” “psychotherapy; detox center or Prozac prescription,” “motherhood,” “Volvo purchase” and “mortgage (funky cottage, townhouse or bungalow in artsy neighborhood” (2).

The fact that counterculture mothers constitute a niche market is probably unavoidable and is not a problem per se. But, as Douglas and Michaels argue, increased mediation of motherhood has rendered parenting increasingly commercial and has placed mothers under intensified surveillance:

The new momism gained momentum in the 1980s because of media panics about endangered kids, the lack of institutional supports for families, and because of right-wing attacks against working mothers. But let’s not also forget that a key tenet of the new momism—that it was crucial to invest in as many goods and services for your child as possible—was very, very profitable. The spread of cable TV, which brought distant UHF stations and kid-specific channels like Nickelodeon, Disney, The Cartoon Network, Fox Family, and MTV into the home, made targeting mothers and kids much easier, and more incessant. The ever-ballooning standards of good motherhood were inflated even further by the simultaneous exhortations to buy more, buy better, buy sooner. (269)

Being a counterculture mom (even a particularly media-hip one) does not make one immune to the forces of the new momism and its dissemination by the media. My point is that while seeking to promote a media alternative to the “diaper commercial version of mamahood” the text of Breeder participates in the same mechanism and some of the same messages that the new momism does. Although young consumers, the authors validate themselves as politically correct, thoughtful consumers, who make politically superior choices about in vitro fertilization, adoption, home births, and parenthood, education, and careers etc.. In short they participate in the reification (thing-ification) of pregnancy and motherhood.

Douglas and Michaels reveal that analysis of the particular psychological power of the new momism to control women through alternating threats of failed parenting and promises of good parenting cannot be accomplished with a shallow feminist critique that might locate the source of women’s domestic oppression in the figure of the father/husband/patriarch:

[T]he new momism is not about subservience to men. It is about subservience to children. And there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. On the surface, the call to motherhood seems more liberated, if you will, than the stifling housewifery of the 1950s. And in a way it is. But beware what lurks beneath. Whether you are a married religious fundamentalist, a partnered lesbian, a divorced secular humanist with a Ph.D., or a single twenty-year-old trying to make it in the big city, if you are a female human, the new momism has circled the wagons around you. This is not to say that young mothers today are any less savvy than their predecessors in seeing through media hype. They are simply surrounded, in a way their mother were not, by efforts to commercialize virtually every step of pregnancy and childrearing. (299).

“Circling the wagons,” a protective gesture normally, in this case aptly describes the way in which the new momism promises false protection to mothers all the while suffocating them with products and foreclosing avenues of escape from a relentless message to define successful womanhood in terms of ceaseless self-surveillance, motherhood, and consumption.

It is against a limiting message of motherhood that Gore and Lavender propose to position their book. In the introduction toBreeder, Gore describes the authors as resisting “the institution of motherhood” and the social script telling women that they must first complete their higher educations, begin a career, get married, achieve financial stability, and that only then will they be deemed “good choice makers” and entitled to legitimate motherhood status. However, Gore’s claim that the authors chose to follow their dreamswhilehaving children, taken in another light, replicates (seemingly without irony) the social directive that women be superwomen, striving to “have it all,” a problematic message due to its impossibility and anti-feminist narrowness (“having it all,” in a feminist sense would presumably include equal pay, freedom from sexual violence, and reproductive rights—to name a few unmet desires). Both Douglas/Meredith and Gore/Lavender critique the media, but their texts differ in their assessment of what is actually oppressive about contemporary constructions of motherhood. While Gore argues that the current media construction of motherhood leaves out young mothers (they simply are not represented or shown adeptly parenting), Douglas/Meredith argue that the new momism oppresses all women by reducing their worth to childbearing and rearing, by setting impossible ideals of mothering, and by normalizing this overachieving superwoman myth.

Sacrifice and Maternal Privilege

Breeder appealed to many of my students by reaffirming the highly conventional gendered belief in women’s natural primacy in childcare, which is central to the new momism ideology describe by Douglas and Michaels. Despite alternative lifestyles, these mothers still enjoy, uphold, and celebrate maternal privilege, and it is this privilege, I believe, to which most of my students responded positively. For example, while the text does the important work of affirming mothers and the work they do (especially as single moms), the very premise of the text put forward by its subtitle (“Stories from the New Generation of Mothers”) focuses exclusively on parenting asmothering and thereby re-inscribes the “natural” primacy of women in childcare and locates their power in this role. In Breeder, there are some fathers who appear in these stories, sharing duties and responsibilities; however, except for Dan Savage, who wrote the collection’s forward, the only father who is the primary caregiver to his child is the father in Alisa Gordaneer’s story “The Pump and I.” In the other thirty-four stories in the collection, the women are the primary (or only) parent, suggesting that mothering is synonymous with being the primary caregiver. Their position as mothers legitimates the authors, as in the case of teenage mother Allison Crews, who defies popular perception by declaring, “I am not garbage. I am a mother” (37). Similarly, being a mother elevates Firefox’s social status in her story, as she observes at a family dinner, “I am seven months pregnant. I am the matriarch in the family house. This causes some tension with my mother” (230). In “God the Mother,” Mossbridge elevates maternal power even further when she compares Moses’ prayers to god as being like the demands of a child to a mother; she goes on to observe:

By being moms, we can do God’s work—God’s actual daily work of loving and bringing forth souls—and we can get credit for it. Is this the secret? Have mothers always privately seen themselves in God in order to save their own lives and their children’s? Maybe. For me, this is the secret. This is how it all turns out fine. God is my mother, and with her I am well pleased. (260)

I do not have any problem with Mossbridge and other authors legitimating women’s labor as mothers, but when the collection is taken as a whole with its absence of fathers as caregivers and troubling abundance of mothers undertaking attachment parenting, the overall thrust of the text reinscribes mothers as the natural primary parents.

bell hooks has suggested that one goal of feminist movement should be progress toward feminist parenting. Feminist parenting would involve equalizing the duties and work of parenting as well as its privileges. This diminishment of gendered labor within family partnerships, she argues, is key to achieving gender equality. A stumbling-block to this renovation has come from women themselves: “To a grave extent women, who on one hand critiqued motherhood but on the other hand also enjoyed the special status and privileges it gave them, especially when it came to parent-child bonding, were not willing to relinquish pride of place in parenting to men…. Individual feminist thinkers who critiqued biological determinism in every other area often embraced it when it came to the issue of mothering” (83). The danger in the premise of Breeder is that, while it importantly re-legitimizes the work of mothers in response to attacks on them (in particular single mothers), it does so by reifying the powerful chimera of maternal primacy.

In addition to asserting maternal primacy, Breeder also follows the new momism dictum that idealizes maternal self-sacrifice. My students’ were quick to notice this element in the stories in the collection. Despite expressing some uncertainty over the life-style choices made by the authors, many students praised them for exhibiting unconditional love, a quality they identified as being important to being a good mother. Several students, as the following journal excerpts reveal, could not point to specific maternal actions that clearly exemplified unconditional love, but they nevertheless attested to its existence in the stories:

“People might look at the non-hegemonic lifestyles as being wrong and traumatizing for the children. However, the book does not portray them as being that way. They stress the fact that they love their children unconditionally, so raising them in a non-hegemonic environment doesn’t seem to have an affect on the child.” [student 1] “Another very important quality of a mother is unconditional love. This is seen in some of the stories by the struggle that some of these women went through to have a baby.” [student 2]

Almost unanimously, the students applauded what they called “mother love.” I suspect that, at least in part, these reactions, with their vague grounding in the text and recourse to idealized notions of motherhood, arise from the fact that none of my students were parents themselves, and so the only way into discussing motherhood for some of them was through these ideals or through (wishful?) reference to their own mothers.

Additionally, students identified selflessness and sacrifice as being important traits for a mother. While many were quick to point out in their journal responses that extreme maternal self-sacrifice can also be a negative trait, many saw it as a defining quality. As the following journal excerpts show, other students went on to argue that this trait manifests itself in narratives in Breeder:

“When I think about what a mother should be, many characteristics come to mind. One is to be unselfish and to put the needs of the child’s before the needs of the mother. I saw this in many of the stories I read inBreeder . ” [student 2] “All of the stories involved the mother sacrificing something in her life such as a job or time in order to be a better mother.” [student 3] “Good mothers are willing to make sacrifices for their children.” [student 4] “I think of my own personal ideas on motherhood: Not for me! Any way you cut it, parenthood is about sacrifice. Of course for some the gains are worth the losses but the losses are profound nonetheless.” [student 5] “I think the number one characteristic for a good mother is sacrifice, which all of the mothers inBreeder did.” [student 6]

Sacrifice strikes me as a strange quality for my students to appreciate in a collection of stories that the editor claims is about women who chose “to have our kids while, not instead of, following our dreams.”

However, some students observed that some of the authors do in fact give up careers and educations or switch careers and educational plans, as a result of having children. The following journal excerpt summarizes two such examples:

“Another story that showed this motherly quality [being unselfish] was ‘The Piano Tuner.’ This story talked about a woman who had studied music all her life. She had worked very hard at it and had a true passion for it. She then got pregnant and had a little girl. Because she had a child, she put her dreams on the back burner. Another story this characteristic is found in is the story about the mother who was a poet. Once she had children, raising them became a priority. Even though she would have loved to have time to write, that time was very limited once she started a family.” [student 2]

Gore’s point that these mothers are challenging the socially scripted time-line for when women should have children (after education, career, and marriage have been achieved) seems lost in my students’ assertion that these mothers follow the conventional social script of women sacrificing their careers for their families, which the students saw as desirable if not unavoidable. My students’ observations suggest that despite subverting culturally scripted time-line for motherhood, Breeder can be read as upholding the anti-feminist romanticization of maternal sacrifice.

My point is not to chastise the writers or Gore for any of their choices. However, I believe that there are several ways by whichBreeder encourages traditional understandings of motherhood. One of these ways, as I’ve argued above, is by reifying motherhood and giving it primacy over non-gendered parenting; another is by tacitly affirming reproductive choice as the privilege of the educated, predominantly white, middleclass.

In her recent work, Beggars and Choosers, Solinger argues that in the struggle against women’s oppression, the discourse of rights has been supplanted by the discourse of choice, which raises several alarming concerns for feminists, foremost of which is the relationship of this language to the marketplace. As Solinger asks, “How can users of such a term avoid distinguishing, in consumer-culture fashion, between a woman who can and a woman who can’t afford to make a choice?” (6), suggesting the discourse of choice’s power to efface the real material differences between mothers. As a result, we lose sight of how one woman’s access to choices depends upon another woman’s being denied choice. She uses the example of how foreign adoption by U.S. parents depends upon the effacement of the biological mothers in poor countries whose parenting “choices” are profoundly limited. Additionally, the discourse of choice establishes categories of “good choice makers” and “bad choice makers” that reinforce the belief that motherhood is the earned privilege of the middleclass. Here Solinger points to recent punitive public policy and welfare reform that judge women of color (predominantly) as bad choice makers who are not entitled to their children or to making decisions about them because they are too poor and/or got pregnant too young or too often. While the discourse of rights has certainly been problematic for feminists as Conservatives and the Religious Right use it to position the rights of the fetus against those of the mother in abortion debates, the notion of “rights” would still appear more useful than the discourse of choice in defending all women’s access to reproductive control and self-determination. Arguments for reproductive freedoms based in rights discourse assert the full humanity of all women regardless of their consumer power in a way that the discourse of choice fails to do.

Gore and Lavender’s text is saturated with the discourse of choice as the authors celebrate hard-won access to reproductive options. Breeder’s challenges to hegemonic cultural narratives of family structure, family planning, pregnancy, birth, and parenting reflect the editors’ intention to celebrate a continuum of women’s reproductive choices and experiences. However, Solinger’s reminder that access to choice only reflects consumer power helps to contextualize this celebration: “’Choice’ degrades a woman’s decision about whether to become a mother by tightly associating that decision with the most essential consumerist concept of our time: choice” (Solinger 224). Solinger uses as example the funding cases that followed the legalization of abortion; in the debate leading up to the Hyde Amendment, Solinger describes how abortion was framed as a consumer service that the government could not prevent a woman from getting but one that it also would not help to fund. Thus, abortion became a consumer choice but not a guaranteed right for all women. Taken in the context of Solinger’s work, many of the stories in Breederseem less alternative and more an assertion of relative class privilege. Regular access to birth control, artificial insemination, abortion and adoption all require a certain level of means that not all mothers share.

Re-imagining Democracy and PUSH

Breeder’s affirmation of reproductive choice and motherhood as a middleclass (white) privilege came into relief for me when my class read the novel PUSH by Sapphire. I chose this text because of Sapphire’s condemnation of welfare/workfare reform and for how her novel challenges preconceived notions about “rightful” (white, privileged) and “illegitimate” (black, underprivileged) mothers (Miller). Precious Jones, the African American protagonist of PUSH, is a sixteen year old, illiterate, incest-survivor, living in Harlem on welfare with two children by her father. Precious has her first child when she is twelve years old, prior to the novel’s action, which begins with her expulsion from junior high school due to her second pregnancy and her discovery that she has contracted HIV from her father. In addition to seeking the reality behind the stereotype of the “welfare mother,” Sapphire’s novel reveals how social institutions, such as education, law enforcement, the medical establishment, the welfare state and the “family,” reflect and work to protect (white) racial privilege through the exclusion and neglect of women of color. I chose this novel for my students to read because it foregrounds the racial dimension of motherhood, and enables readers to see what Zillah Eisenstein has argued is the need for feminists to re-imagine the fight for rights using a model that “specifies diversity” (199).

The narrative of PUSH is a meta-fictional journal written by Precious through which readers witness not only her coming to terms with her abuse and HIV, but also her progress into literacy. The unconventional form of the novel (the journal becomes more epistolary in form when Precious’ teacher, Miz Rain, reads it and writes responses to Precious’ direct appeals) is complicated by Precious’ challenging narration; as an abuse survivor who suffers from post-traumatic stress flashbacks, Precious, as a narrator, struggles to order events that she is only beginning to put into language. For example, one central moment in the text is Precious’ realization, “I think I was rape” [sic] (68), when she discovers the word for her father’s abuse. Storytelling, which she masters progressively, gives her control over ordering events and thus over her experience. The themes of incest, forced motherhood, and the role of acquiring language as a means for women to voice their oppression create an intertextual dialogue with Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, which is directly referenced when Precious and her peers read Walker’s novel in their class. One can read Sapphire’s work as retelling Walker’s narrative from a contemporary, urban perspective that forgoes the romantic ending of The Color Purple and denies readers a comfortable historical distance on issues of racism and sexism. Significantly, Precious wonders, “Where my Color Purple?” [sic] (87) at the point when she realizes her life will not turn out like the ending of Walker’s story.

Readers witness Precious’ growing awareness of how her compromised literacy is part of her social voiceless-ness and disenfranchisement. She observes at one point that her existence is like that of the otherworldly vampires she sees on television, whose presence is not recorded by mirrors and photographs:

I big, I talk, I eats, I cooks, I laugh, watch TV, do what my muver say. But I can see when the picture come back I don’t exist. Don’t nobody want me. Don’t nobody need me. I know who I am. I know who they say I am—vampire sucking the system’s blood. Ugly black grease to be wipe away, punish, kilt, changed, finded a job for. (31)

Sapphire’s use of black vernacular and phonetic spelling engages readers’ stereotypes of young, black, single mothers, but as this passage shows, the narrative challenges any readerly assumptions that Precious is deficient in self-knowledge and broader cultural wisdom. Sapphire pointedly reveals Precious’ recognition that she is victimized not only by her father and mother but also by the application of this “vampire” stereotype to her by medical providers, educators, and the police. Moreover, each subsequent abuse leads to her further marginalization. Precious’ observation in this passage that she and her children are at best invisible to society and at worst are seen as parasites who require the disciplining of workfare forces readers to consider how the de-legitimization of some women’s claim to motherhood is directly related to racist and class-based stereotypes.

The issue of who has a legitimate claim to motherhood is central to PUSH. Understanding Precious’ situation as fundamentally a feminist issue requires readers first to recognize and critique “the whiteness of feminism” (Eisenstein 200) or the way in which feminist agendas have failed to take up the issues faced by non-white women. This focus has often left women of color, whose experiences because of racism have been different from white women’s, on the margins of feminist thought and action or inadequately lumped into the white feminist worldview. For example, the white, middleclass feminist struggle to gain access to the labor market failed to speak to the needs of many women of color, who of necessity have always worked outside the home. In the case of PUSH, access to the labor market is not a primary concern for Precious, who will be forced into low-wage, workfare jobs that more problematically will take her away from her children.

Furthermore, understanding Precious’ situation as a feminist issue also means seeing her struggles to legitimize herself as a fight against an exclusive definition of womanhood that reflects what Zillah Eisenstein refers to as “racialized gender.” In her chapter, “Imagining Feminism: Women of Color Specifying Democracy,” Eisenstein argues that “Racism is used in the articulation of gender discrimination, and there are particularly racist ways of depicting women of color as women” (201). Eisenstein observes that, “Women of color and white women are defined as women in relation to each other, through a racial privileging of white women” (214). Eisenstein argues that dominant definitions of femininity (including the traits of beauty and sexuality) depend upon the positioning of one racial group over another. For example, Precious initially compares herself unfavorably to white girls, whom she sees as beautiful and assumes are never raped by their fathers. Fighting against internalized racism means that Precious must recognize that she is not ugly and that her abuse is not something that happens because she is black.

Precious’ situation is emblematic of the need to rethink feminist discourses of choice and rights. Eisenstein seeks to re-imagine democracy by re-thinking the rights-based discourse characteristic of liberal humanism. Her project arises from the recognition of liberal humanism’s unspoken reliance upon a normalized male subject, which much feminist scholarship has worked to expose as inadequate for explaining and defending the experience of women. As feminist critics have shown, the state of pregnancy, for example, confounds the logic of the male humanist subject. Eisenstein proposes for her re-imagined democracy a new subject, one that specifies diversity: the pregnant woman of color. This subject, she argues, “pushes feminist discourse to a more inclusive moment” because “pregnancy is a reminder of bodily diversity and of the need for reproductive rights,” while women of color “remind white women of racial diversity” (218). Eisenstein’s model takes into account the gaps in feminist discussions of choice pointed out by Solinger. By taking a non-white, pregnant woman as its subject, feminism is better positioned to see the ways in which the range of reproductive choices available to white (privileged) women is denied to and dependent upon the exclusion of other women from these choices.

Like this new subject that Eisenstein imagines, Precious “pushes” from the margins and demands that feminist readers centralize her in our theory and activism in order to achieve revolution and democracy. Forced to see the world from the margins through the eyes of Precious, my students expressed feelings of alienation, frustration and disgust. Their outrage, however, was more directed at Precious than at the interlocking systems of oppression that constrain her. They disliked Precious’ lack of options and control (why doesn’t she leave? they asked) and support (why don’t the teachers/police officers/social workers/nurses help her?), her lack of self-knowledge (how can she not know she’s pregnant?), her lack of control over her body’s reactions (why does she respond sexually to being raped by her father?), and her lack of control over the future (if she knows she is being tracked by social workers towards a GED and dead-end job, why doesn’t she resist?). Most shocking to them, however, was the realization that those who are most marginalized in society are often not even aware of the choices from which they are being excluded. Early in the novel, when she arrives at the alternative school, Precious asks a staffer, “What alternative is?” [sic] (26), an emblematic question that aptly expresses the extent of limitations on her options.

During class discussion, I learned that while my students pitied Precious and admired how her abuse did not prevent her from loving her children, they were very skeptical of her ability to be a “good mother,” as they had defined it: how would she get an education, a job, and break the cycle of welfare? how would she survive AIDS? they wondered. While their concerns were expressed in terms of class and economic issues, the unspoken issue of race is clearly interwoven. My students were evasive in placing blame for Precious’ situation. They did not fault Precious, and instead saw her as a caring mother, but one who faces the insurmountable “obstacles” of being black, poor, young, under-educated, and having HIV, which in their assessment prevent her from being an adequate mother.

I pointed out to my students that Allison Crews (the author of “When I Was Garbage,” the favorite story in Breeder for many of them) had many similar “strikes” against her, in that she was young, single, and dependent upon family and the state. Crews, however, was white. Why, I asked the class, did they favor Crews’ ability to parent over Precious’ ability? There was a significant, uncomfortable silence in class, which no one could or would break by answering my question. My sense is that juxtaposing Crews and Precious, despite being a comparison of a real person to a fictional character, required students to recognize how Crews’ motherhood is legitimized in part due to racial privilege.

Breeders and Choices

In the eyes of most of my students, the counter-cultural mothers in Breeder, despite their alternative lifestyles, have a more legitimate claim to motherhood than the women whom mainstream America more readily and scornfully identify as “breeders”: urban-dwelling, resource-less, African American, teenage mothers on welfare. As Solinger has observed, the increasing commodification of pregnancy and motherhood has resulted in some women coming to be defined as having “more legitimate relationships to babies and motherhood status” while other women are defined as “illegitimate consumers” (7). While age can be one factor in determining a woman’s legitimate claim to motherhood and reproductive rights, the combined factors of race and class standing hold greater sway.

It is in this sense that I find the title of Gore and Lavender’s collection most problematic. The editors appear to take the term “breeder” from both punk and gay counter-culture lexicons. The collection is introduced by gay author/columnist Dan Savage, who jokingly recalls the comment made to him by a lover, “Breeders make babies…they breed. We don’t. Gay people don’t have to worry about birth control or children or expectations” (ix). This breezy, rebellious invocation of the term “breeder,” however, eclipses the older, racist genealogy of the term, during which it was used by white society to hyper-sexualize and dehumanize black women, reducing them and their children to the status of animals. Angela Davis describes the condition of African-American mothers under slavery in the following terms:

When the abolition of the international slave trade began to threaten the expansion of the young cotton-growing industry, the slaveholding class was forced to rely on natural reproduction as the surest method of replenishing and increasing the domestic slave population. Thus a premium was placed on the slave woman’s reproductive capacity. During the decades preceding the Civil War, Black women came to be increasingly appraised for their fertility (or for the lack of it): she who was potentially the mother of ten, twelve, fourteen or more became a coveted treasure indeed. This did not mean, however, that as mothers Black women enjoyed a more respected status than they enjoyed as workers. Ideological exaltation of motherhood—as popular as it was during the nineteenth century—did not extend to slaves. In fact, in the eyes of slaveholders, slave women were not mothers at all; they were simply instruments of guaranteeing the growth of the labor force. They were “breeders”—animals, whose monetary value could be precisely calculated in terms of their ability to multiply their numbers. Since slave women were classified as “breeders” as opposed to “mothers,” their infant children could be sold away from them like calves from cows. (6-7)

Patricia Hill-Collins connects the historical figure of the breeder to contemporary stereotypes about African American women in her discussion of the 1980s mythology of the welfare mother:

Essentially an updated version of the Breeder woman image created during slavery, this image provides and ideological justification for the efforts to harness Black women’s fertility to the needs of a changing political economy. During slavery the Breeder woman image portrayed Black women as more suitable for having children than White women. By claiming that Black women were able to produce children as easily as animals, this image provided justification for interference in enslaved Africans’ reproductive lives. (78)

Shifting to the changing economy of the 1980s and the issue of the perceived threat of welfare dependents, Hill-Collins argues, “[c]ontrolling Black women’s fertility in this political and economic context became important to elite groups. The image of the welfare mother fulfills this function by labeling as unnecessary and even dangerous to the values of the country the fertility of women who are not White and middle-class” (79). Gore and Lavender’s text’s celebration of the choice to become breeders, rather than challenging dominant power arrangements, performs what Susan Bordo (1993) calls a postmodern effacement, a moment when “the rhetoric of choice and self-determination…efface […] the inequalities of privilege, money, and time” (247).

My argument is that my students’ enjoyment of Breeder and tolerance for the mothers’ alternative choices was prompted by the recognition of the authors’ class-based and race-based claim to these choices. While some of the authors identify themselves as non-white, they are not the economically disadvantaged authors. And while a few of the authors in Breeder (five out of thirty-six) discuss being on welfare, and an additional few discuss struggling financially, this condition appears related to educational expenses and seems fleeting, as well as on par with other challenges (such as when to discretely pump one’s breasts). Poverty for some of the authors appears to be a choice related to their art, education and/or politics but is not inescapable in the way that it is for many women. None of the authors’ situations explicitly reflect the intersecting constraints of racism and class oppression. Overall, the text is a celebration of the relative freedom to choose when to go to college, when to have careers, and when to have children—choices that reveal the class and race privilege of most of the authors, to which many of my students strongly related.

Despite its popular success in my classroom, I came to realize that Breeder did more to idealize and mystify motherhood than it did to disrupt it. Arguably, more rigorous close-readings could have enhanced student appreciation for how the narratives challenge conventional understandings of motherhood; however, I also believe that certain structural premises of the text work to confound its feminist messages. Race-based and class-based privilege remain relatively untroubled in these accounts of motherhood, while parenting remains the domain of women and the source of their power, to the exclusion of fathers. The problem, I believe, when young feminists (I’m thinking here of some of my students, many of the authors inBreeder, and many third wave writers) accept the idea of having choices as being synonymous with having rights, it is difficult to see the fact that systems of oppression can come together in such a way that women such as Precious are prevented from exercising basic rights, and it can then appear that these women are simply being bad choice-makers (hence my students’ urge to question and second-guess their actions).

While it would be dangerous for me to generalize broadly about the politics of motherhood in the third wave of feminism based only on my experience reading and teaching this text, it is fair to consider some questions raised by Breeder. Has the discourse of choicecompromised the ability of third wave feminists to talk meaningfully about reproductive rights? Does the third wave of feminism recognize its “possessive investment” in whiteness? How does this generation contribute to feminist imaginings for how we could parent in new and progressive ways that equalize the burdens and privileges of childcare? I believe that the answers to these questions are fundamental to the third wave’s self-definition. Family and children have been the bedrock concern of the first and second waves of feminism. Rather than being resolved, the issues pertaining to motherhood faced by previous generations have transformed in response to consumer culture, to advances made by feminists, and to conservative backlashes. More than a lifestyle or commodity, feminism must remain a sharp analytic tool that allows us to examine motherhood as a highly contested cultural site. These concerns must be taken up meaningfully by young feminists in order to counter the accusations that their generation is academic, self-absorbed, preoccupied with style, and inefficiently reinventing the wheel.

Adney, Kaile. Interview with Ariel Gore and Bee Lavendar. Clamor . July/August, 2001. 67-8.
Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Davis, Angela. Women, Race, and Class . New York: Random House, 1981.
Dicker, Rory and Alison Piepmeier, eds. Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21 st Century . Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003.
Douglas, Susan and Meredith Michaels. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women . NY: Free Press, 2004.
Edut, Ophira Ed. Adios Barbie: Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity . Seattle: Seal Press, 1998.
Eisenstein, Zillah. The Color of Gender: Reimaging Democracy . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Findlen, Barbara Ed. Listen Up: voices from the next feminist generation . Seattle: Seal Press, 1995.
Gore, Ariel and Bee Lavender, eds. Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers . Toronto: SEAL Press, 2001.
Henry, Astrid. No My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Heywood, Leslie and Jennifer Drake, eds. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism . Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Hill-Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciouness and the Politics of Empowerment . 2 nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 2000.
hooks, bell. Feminism is for Everybody . Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2001.
Miller, Lisa. Interview with Sapphire. http://desire2.desire/2.4/Word/Reviews/sapphire
Sapphire. PUSH . NY: Vintage, 1996.
Solinger, Rickie. Beggars and Choosers: how the politics of choice shapes adoption, abortion, and welfare in the United States . NY: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Walker, Rebecca Ed. To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism . NY: Anchor Books, 1995.
Zahava, Irene. Feminism3: The Third Generation in Fiction . Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1993.
Issue 1:2 Fall 2016
1:2 Back to the Future
Gender and Identities
Mary Thompson

Four Waves of Feminism Explained

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

Feminism generally means the belief in the social, economic, and political equality of the sexes.

Feminists share a common goal of supporting equality for men and women. Although all feminists strive for gender equality, there are various ways to approach this theory.

The history of modern feminism can be divided into four parts which are termed ‘waves.’ Each wave marks a specific cultural period in which specific feminist issues are brought to light.

This article will look into the waves of feminism throughout history until the present.

First Wave OF Feminism

British women demanding the vote in 1907

How did the first wave start?

The first wave of feminism is believed to have started around 1848, often tied to the first formal Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention was notably run by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were among the other 300 in attendance.

Stanton declared that all men and women were created equal, and thus, she advocated for women’s education, their right to own property, and organizational leadership. Many of the activists believed that their goals would be hard to accomplish without women’s right to vote. Thus, for the following 70 years, this was the main goal.

Early feminists are thought to have been inspired by feminist writings such as those by Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Vindication of the Right of Women (1792) and John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869). Those in the first wave were also thought to have been influenced by the collective activism of women in other reform movements such as drawing tactical insight from women participating in the French Revolution and the Abolitionist Movement.

First wave activism

Despite its international range, the first wave of feminism was most active in the United States and Western Europe.

Activists engaged in social campaigns that expressed dissatisfaction with women’s limited rights for work, education, property, reproduction, marital status, and social agency (Malinowska, 2010).

They protested in the form of public gatherings, speeches, and writings.

The women’s suffrage movement campaigned for the right for women to vote. Their activism revolved around the press, which was the major source of information communication at the time. Early coverage of the movement was unfavorable and biased, often portraying the women as bad-looking, unfeminine, and haters of men.

In the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, suffrage was associated with a particularly prominent and militant campaign, often involving violence.

One of the most notable ‘militant’ feminists was suffragette Emily Davidson who was sent to prison several times for her activism. In 1913, she tragically died as she threw herself onto the racetrack at the Epsom Derby, causing her to be trampled by a horse. The word ‘militant’ from then on became symbolic for media depictions of suffragists’ actions.

As the movement developed, it began to turn to the question of reproductive rights for women. In 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, defying the New York state law that forbade the distribution of contraception. Sanger would later go on to establish the clinic that became Planned Parenthood.

First wave feminists had to wait until August of 1920 to be granted the right to vote. After 1920, the momentum of the movement began to dwindle after this massive success. However, other activists continued to advocate for their rights within local organizations and special interest groups.

The issue with first wave feminism

The activism of first wave feminism is often criticized for being a feminism for exclusively white women. Although the vote was granted to white women in 1920, it would take much longer for women of color to be able to exercise their right to vote.

As the suffrage movement progressed, the concerns of women of color were often overlooked by first wave feminists. For groups of women who did not fit the white, upper-class mold, the right to vote was not only tied to their gender, but also to their race and social class.

Women of color often spoke out about facing not only sexism but also racism and classism. Despite this, groups of women were often uninvited or excluded from fully participating in feminist organizations. They would often have to join segregated suffrage associations if they were included at all.

In her famous 1851 speech, ‘Ain’t I am Woman’, abolitionist Sojourner Truth described the oppression against women of color in terms of ideological inconsistency. She pointed out the exclusion of women of color from the feminist movement’s agenda.

Despite the immense work of women of color in the women’s movement, the suffrage movement eventually became one specifically for white women, often of a higher social class.

Many of the women in the movement would use racial prejudice as fuel for their work, many arguing that men of color should not be allowed to vote before white women (Davis, 1980).

Second Wave Of Feminism

Background with three raised women s fist in pop art comic style - symbol unity or solidarity, with oppressed people and women s rights. Plackard with feminism concept, protest, rebel, revolution.

How did the second wave start?

The second wave of feminism is believed to have taken place between the early 1960s to the late 1980s. This wave commenced after the postwar chaos, and it was thought to be inspired by the civil rights movement in the United States and the labor rights movement in the United Kingdom.

After achieving the vote for women, the feminist movement gradually turned its attention to women’s inequality in wider society. Many women began questioning their social roles in the workplace and in the family environment.

A noteworthy writing prior to the second wave, which may have been influential to the movement, is Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book titled The Second Sex . In this book, she understands women’s oppression by analyzing the particular institutions which define women’s lives, such as marriage, family, and motherhood.

Betty Friedan is thought to be one of the most famous second wave feminists. She wrote the book The Feminine Mystique in 1963 and is widely credited with kick-starting the second wave. Friedan’s book highlighted the increasing alienation and unhappiness felt by American housewives in the post-war boom years.

What are the ideas of second wave feminism?

A common principle of the second wave of feminism was women’s autonomy: an insistence on women’s right to determine what they want to do with their lives and their body. Their goals were to legalize abortions, promote easier and safer contraception, and fight racist and classist birth-control programs.

Other major issues at the time were sexual discrimination and sexual harassment, especially in the workplace and other institutional settings. Second wave feminists aimed to highlight these issues and put legislature in place to prevent this.

The second wave asked questions about the concept of gender roles and women’s sexuality. They coined the phrase ‘the personal is political’ as a means of highlighting the impact of sexism and patriarchy on every aspect of women’s private lives (Munro, 2013).

Second wave feminists were concerned with women’s lived experiences but also in media representation. As television became the main medium at this time, it was observed that women struggled for televisual presence. Data from the BBC in the late 1980s showed a disproportionate balance of 5 women to every 150 men in television-related jobs (Casey et al., 2007).

Second wave activism

Many of the second wave feminists were radical and critical in their approach. They were impatient for social and political change and brought international issues into their politics (Molyneux et al., 2021).

Many activists agreed with socialist ideas, while others were active in peace movements, revolutionary workers’ rights, and anti-racist struggles.

The practice of ‘consciousness raising’ was a popular form of activism at the time. This is where women met to discuss their experiences of sexism, discrimination, abortions, and patriarchy. This helped to create political awareness and solidarity expressed through the term ‘sisterhood’.

A significant radical feminist group during this time was the ‘New York Radical Women’ group, founded by Shulamith Firestone and Pam Allen. They wanted to spread the message that ‘sisterhood is powerful’ through their protests.

A well-known protest occurred during the Miss America Pageant in 1968. Hundreds of women marched the streets outside the event and displayed banners during the live broadcast of the event which read ‘Women’s Liberation’, which brought a great deal of public awareness to the movement.

During the second wave, the work of Black feminist groups brought the different experiences and priorities of Black feminists into focus. Writers such as bell hooks, Angela Davis, and Audre Lord paved the way for greater appreciation of the unequal power dynamics woven into early second wave feminism.

Achievements of the second wave

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was enforced which makes it illegal for employers to have different rates of pay for women and men doing the same job. It was also the first federal law to address sex discrimination.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was enforced in the United States in 1974, banning discrimination in access to credit based on sex or marital status. Before then, many women could not get credit in their own name or would need to have a man’s permission to get loans or credit cards.

The Roe v. Wade case was pivotal in the legalization of abortion. In 1973, this right was granted by the United States Supreme Court meaning that women had the choice of terminating their pregnancy in the first trimester.

In addition to achieving abortion rights, second wave feminism accomplished other things such as opening up avenues for women to engage in ‘non-traditional’ educational options and jobs that would have been traditionally dominated by men.

Third Wave Of Feminism

Feminist and body positive vector stickers set. Female movements cartoon badges with inspirational quotes. Women empowerment, self acceptance and gender equality trendy letterings pack.

How did the third wave start?

The third wave is thought to have spanned from the late 1980s until the 1990s. There are some overlaps and continuations from second wave feminism, but many third wave feminists simply sought to rid the perceived rigid ideology of second wave feminists.

The young feminists of this era were often the children of second wave feminists. They were growing up in a world of mass media and technology, and they saw themselves as more media savvy than the feminists from their mothers’ generation.

Feminist writer Rebecca Walker explained that it seemed that to be a feminist before this time, was to conform to an identity and way of living that does not allow for individuality. That can lead people to pit against each other; female against male, black against white, etc. (Snyder, 2008).

Third wave feminists are believed to be less rigid and judgmental compared to second wavers who are suggested to be sexually judgmental, anti-sexual, and see having too much fun as a threat to the revolution (Wolf, 2006).

Third wave feminism is believed to be shaped by postmodern theory . Feminists of the time sought to challenge, reclaim, and redefine ideas of the self, the fluidity of gender, sexual identity, and what it means to be a woman.

One of the defining moments of the third wave was when allegations were made against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill, who was a co-worker claimed that Thomas had sexually harassed her years prior. This led to a widely publicized case against Thomas which gained huge media attention.

The ideas of third wave feminism

Third wave feminists depict their feminism as more inclusive and racially diverse than previous waves.

Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality to describe how everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression. For instance, a black woman can be oppressed on the basis of being a woman, but also for being black.

The introduction of intersectionality by Crenshaw in 1989 may have helped shape third wave feminists’ perception of how each woman has a different identity.

Not only differences based on race, ethnicity, or social class, but also for identities such as women who partake in sport, beauty, music, and religion – those which may have clashed with previous ideas about feminism in the past.

Since third wavers question the gender binary male/female and have a generally non-essentialist approach to considering gender, transgender individuals fit better into this wave than in second wave thinking (Snyder, 2008).

Third wave feminism ideals are focused on choice. Whatever a woman chooses to do, it is feminist as long as she made that choice. They claim that using makeup is not a sign that a woman is adhering to the ‘male gaze’, instead, a woman can use makeup for themselves without any loaded issues.

Third wavers feel entitled to interact with men as equals and actively play with femininity. The concept of ‘girl power’ also came about at this time.

Third wave feminism is often pro-sex, defending pornography, sex work, intercourse, and marriage, and reducing the stigma surrounding sexual pleasure in feminism. This contrasts with a lot of the radical feminists of the second wave who would often reject femininity and disengage from heterosexual intercourse with men.

Many third wave literature emphasizes the importance of cultural production, focusing on female pop icons, hip-hop music, and beauty culture, rather than on traditional politics.

Riot Grrrl was regarded both as a movement and a music genre in the early 1990s. It began in Olympia, Washington where a group of women met to discuss the sexism in the punk scene.

Being enraged by this, they sought to establish their own space to produce punk music that stood for female empowerment and created an environment where women could exist without the male gaze.

Third wavers faced a lot of criticism. The sexualized behavior of feminists was questioned as to whether this truly represented sexual liberation and gender equality or whether it was old oppressions in disguise.

Likewise, many claimed the movement lived past its usefulness and that the wave did not contribute to anything of substance. There was nothing revolutionary that happened during this wave like there was with the right to vote being granted to women in the first wave, and legislative changes made during the second wave.

Nevertheless, it can be argued that the third wave encouraged a new generation of feminists, and it was a step that paved the way for future waves to come.

Fourth Wave Of Feminism

How did the fourth wave start?

While there is some disagreement, it is generally accepted that there is a fourth wave of feminism which may have started anywhere from 2007 to 2012 (Sternadori, 2019) and continues to the present day.

Prudence Chamberlain (2017) defines the fourth wave by its focus on justice for women, particularly those who have experienced sexual violence. The current wave combines aspects of the previous waves though with an increased focus on intersectionality and sub-narratives such as transgender activism.

Many claim that the internet itself and increased social media usage has enabled a shift from third wave to fourth wave feminism (Munro, 2013). Chamberlain notes that ‘feminists who identify as second or third wave are still participating in and driving activism’.

She claims generations have joined forces as ‘social media is providing a platform to a wide range of women who are able to use the connectivity and immediacy’.

The internet has become a platform for feminists from around the world to come together to ‘call out’ cultures in which sexism and misogyny can be challenged and exposed. This is continuing the influence of the third wave, with a focus on micropolitics, challenging sexism in adverts, film, literature, and the media, among others.

Facebook was forced to confront the issue of hate speech on its website after initially suggesting that images of women being abused did not violate its terms of service (Munro, 2013).

In the United Kingdom, campaigns such as ‘No More Page 3’ (a reference to The Sun’s page 3, which from 1970 to 2015 featured a topless model) and The Everyday Sexism Project were some of the earlier online campaigns in the fourth wave.

After the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2017, a Women’s March was held which captured the international spotlight as arguably the largest and most peaceful single-day protest in US history.

In the same year, the #MeToo movement hit social media in over 85 countries, where individuals shared their experiences of sexual abuse and harassment to demonstrate the widespread number of cases of sexual violence and to create solidarity among victims.

This allowed people to see that sexual violence is not a personal problem but a structural issue (Sternadori, 2019).

The fourth wave encourages women to be politically active and passionate about the previous wave’s issues, such as the wage gap and ending sexual violence.

The main goals of the fourth wave are thought to call out social injustices and those responsible for them, as well as to educate others on feminist issues and to be inclusive to all groups of women.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is a wave metaphor used to describe the feminist movement.

The wave metaphor of feminism is believed to have been coined in 1968 when Martha Weinman Lear published an article in the New York Times called ‘The Second Wave Feminist Wave’.

The article connected the suffrage movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries with the women’s movements during the 1960s. This new terminology quickly spread and became the popular way to define feminism.

The wave metaphor suggests that feminist activism is unified around one set of ideas that comes and goes like waves hitting the shore. This idea suggests that activism peaks at certain times and recedes at others (Nicholson, 2010).

What is a criticism of the wave metaphor?

The wave metaphor is thought to be reductive since it suggests that each wave of feminism peaks with a single unified agenda, when in fact the feminist movement has a history of different ideas, goals, and activism.

With a wave metaphor, there is also the general understanding that waves crash after one another – the newest wave is thought to replace or in some way, obliterate the previous waves. However, this diminishes the achievements of previous feminist movements.

Are the waves of feminism universal?

A key thing to point out when considering the waves of feminism is that they mostly only apply to Western countries.

The activism of the suffragettes and of those in second wave feminism especially was focused primarily on the United States and Western Europe. As such, the waves of feminism cannot be applied universally.

Calvert, B., Casey, N., Casey, B., French, L., & Lewis, J. (2007). Television studies: The key concepts . Routledge.

Chamberlain, P. (2017). The feminist fourth wave: Affective temporality . Springer.

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. In Feminist Legal Theories (pp. 23-51). Routledge.

Ford, D. R. (2021). Review of Prudence Chamberlain (2017). The Feminist Fourth Wave: Affective Temporality. Postdigital Science and Education, 3 (2), 631-633.

Malinowska, A. (2020). Waves of Feminism. The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, 1, 1-7.

Molyneux, M., Dey, A., Gatto, M. A., & Rowden, H. (2021). New Feminist Activism, Waves and Generations (No. 40). UN Women Discussion Paper.

Munro, E. (2013). Feminism: A fourth wave?. Political insight, 4 (2), 22-25.

Nicholson, L. (2010). Feminism in ‘Waves’: Useful Metaphor or Not?. New Politics, 12 (4), 34-39.

Snyder, R. C. (2008). What is third-wave feminism? A new directions essay. Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 34 (1), 175-196.

Sternadori, M. (2019). Situating the Fourth Wave of feminism in popular media discourses . Misogyny and Media in the Age of Trump, 31-55.

Wolf, N. (2006). ‘Two Traditions,’from Fire with Fire. The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave Feminism (2006), 13-19.

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Third Wave Of Feminism

Sometime in the early 1990s, a movement called Riot grrrl emerged from Washington, DC. It aimed to give women a voice, one that that can use with artistic expression. Just a year later, in response to the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas controversy, Rebecca Walker published the article “Becoming The Third Wave” in Ms. Magazine. She spoke about how women were being limited by men in terms of power (Walker, 1992). The case was very significant for the movement because it showed how Thomas’ position in the Senate played a role in how the case went. In her piece, she wrote how she was not part of post-feminism, she defined the third-wave. Third-Wave Feminism is a term that was coined in response to the Second-Wave of Feminism (Dicker, 2008). Instead of being a vacuum that was created because of someone, it is actually a response, or an answer to the short-comings or the gap found in the Second-Wave. This particular wave is said to be founded around the 1990s, however the exact date is not yet certain. The movement really arose because of the backlash received by the previous movement. This wave challenges or avoids the initial definition of femininity which was often defined by middle-class white women (Dicker, 2008). This wave claims that women can incorporate their own identities into the system, as defined by Manifesta, written by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards. This type of thinking is unlike any other feminist movement which allows every generation and each individual to change according to themselves. There are also some third-wave feminists that prefer not to be called feminists at all. This is due to the misinterpreted term or misconception that comes along with the name (Baumgardner & Richards, 2000). This can be seen in the introduction of their text, Manifesta where they defined liberalism. The prominent issues that this wave defines are gender violence, reproductive rights, reclaiming derogatory terms, rape and other issues. These are the challenges that help define this particular wave. Gender violence is one of the central issues of third-wave feminists. There are a lot of efforts to try to end this issue. Things such as V-Day and The Vagina Monologues are efforts in order to create awareness about this problem in society (Dicker, 2008). The goal of third-wave feminists is to change the traditional notions of sexuality. They want to uncover the true feelings of women about sexuality which includes vagina-centered topics including those about orgasms and other concerns that were once considered taboo. These issues also involved domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women. Also recently, reproductive rights including contraception and abortion were an issue. This wave of feminists believe that only the woman herself has the right to control her own body. The ban on abortion or the attempt to uphold partial abortion is seen as a restriction in the rights of women. Besides these issues, another important part of defining this wave is how feminists want to reclaim derogatory terms. Also part of the reclamation strategy is the advent of SlutWalks. This is to fight the thinking that women should not dress provocatively so that they will not get raped. There are a lot of ideas created by other groups that this wave challenges. Other than the issue on rape and the traditional thinking that women only get raped because of their outward appearance, issues on race, social class and even sexuality are those that also define this third-wave of feminists (Dicker, 2008). There were a number of controversies plaguing the third-wave feminist movement. There were of course a lot of controversies, especially with early writers claiming that feminism has gone beyond its usefulness. There were also those who think that post-feminism is something that should be aimed for since feminism was a thing of the past. However, these were all outward controversies that were aimed at the wave, and not those from inside the movement itself. The first is the issue on self-expression. Since it does focus on individuality and supporting what certain groups, races, cultures and individuals want for themselves, of course there are issues on the clash of ideas. For example, there are those who choose to dress in a way that is considered Westernized, however other cultures, especially those from the Islam faith wear things that cover their bodies head to toe. There is no one definition of how women should dress, and even within the third-wave, there are people who want to define what is considered right and what is considered society’s narrow view on female sexuality. This controversy is found within the group and is not any form of resistance. The only way that his issue can be overcome is if everyone within the group or anyone who considers themselves as third-wave feminists can accept both types of outfit choices as forms of self-expression. Since the idea of this wave of feminism was to initial change along with any individual, and any generation, it is only right to respect the each choice of the women. This can be done by looking at them as an individual instead of trying to put standards which is much like what the societal view of females are. Those who are within the group need to understand that there is no one look or one trademark that can define third-wave feminists. This is also why many third-wavers would rather not be called feminists because of the prejudice which plagues the term. As part of this particular wave, there are a lot of roles that one can play. Since this wave is very complex and it is created as a response or criticism of the second-wave, it can be said that a role to be played, as student is to raise awareness about the rights of women. Participating in school activities and letting other women know that they do not have to be defined by their gender nor do they have to be limited by the image other people want them to fit into. Campaign material that can allow people to know more about their choices, their freedom and their individuality can be handed out. Petitions on pro-choice and other things that can support like-issues can be handed-out. Although the SlutWalks idea is a bit too extreme maybe for a school setting, a like-campaign promoting awareness and shedding light on the topic can be done. There is no doubt that a number of people within the school or the neighborhood have experienced rape in many forms. A campaign that can help them find their voice and help them know that it was not their fault would be a good start. Third-wave feminism is about individuality, this means that you don’t need one look or one image to become part of the wave. Those from different cultures and backgrounds should be encouraged to take part in the movement.

Baumgardner, Jennifer; Richards, Amy (2000). Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-52622-1. OCLC 43607358 Dicker, R. (2008). A history of US feminisms. Seal Press. Rebecca, Walker (1992). "Becoming the Third Wave". Ms. (New York: Liberty Media for Women): 39–41.

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Building Alliances: The Role Of Men In Achieving Gender Equality

Gender equality has been discussed for a long time, and no matter what people from all over the world say, “ Why do we still need to discuss or talk about gender equality? ” the ironic fact is that if there is still a need to question or discuss the concept, it proves that we are still a long way from achieving gender equality, particularly in the world’s largest democracy. While the fight for gender equality is typically portrayed as a women’s problem, men’s contributions are just as vital. In the framework of Indian democracy, creating coalitions between men and women is crucial to establishing a society based on equality and fairness.

India has a diverse history of social movements that revolve around combating gender inequality. From the women’s suffering movement to fight for equal rights in education and employment, or equal voting rights, Indian women have long led the charge for gender equality. However, development has been uneven, and deeply embedded patriarchal standards continue to influence social attitudes and behaviours.

Progress in female literacy

Only 6 per cent of Indian women were literate at the time of independence in 1947. According to a nationwide census survey performed by the Census Organisation of India , female literacy rates in India have reached about 65 per cent by 2011. Literacy is essential for women’s empowerment since it enables them to become economically self-sufficient, gain access to education, jobs, and healthcare, and question gender norms. Furthermore, women’s literacy has a beneficial spillover effect on the literacy of children, families, and communities.

However, the quest for complete female literacy continues. Regional differences persist, with some states having high literacy rates while others fall behind. Socioeconomic constraints such as poverty, child marriage, and a lack of quality education continue to impede growth, particularly in rural areas. Furthermore, deep-rooted gender prejudices that prioritise schooling for boys remain a challenge.

Despite these limitations, India’s increase in female literacy is a positive indicator. By focusing on strengthening educational infrastructure, tackling gender stereotypes within communities, and empowering female instructors, India can ensure that all women have the opportunity to be literate and make meaningful contributions to society.

Why women-centric approaches are not enough

While the continuous efforts of women’s rights movements have undoubtedly resulted in progress, a completely female-centric approach has limitations. Focusing solely on women’s mobilisation can promote an “us vs. them ” mentality, alienating potential male allies. This can inhibit further socioeconomic progress.

Women bear the whole burden of fighting for their rights, which ignores the power dynamics inherent in a patriarchal system. Sustainability requires a shift in societal norms and ideas. Women campaigning alone may struggle to accomplish this without the assistance of men as allies in positions of power and influence.

The role of men

First, we must seek to improve gender norms in India’s society. The issue is not with the idea of equality. A new Pew Research Centre survey found that most Indians support gender equality. However, Pew discovered that traditional gender norms retain sway over many people, including women, who want men to play a larger role in many aspects of home and public life.

Men can be supporters and campaigners for women’s rights, use their privilege to amplify women’s voices and support their leadership.

Men must actively participate in the drive for gender equality. Men hold positions of power and influence in many areas of society, including politics, business, and the media. As a result, we have a unique chance to question current gender conventions and promote more inclusive and fair policies. Men can be supporters and campaigners for women’s rights, use their privilege to amplify women’s voices and support their leadership.

One of the most important ways men can help achieve gender equality is to challenge traditional conceptions of masculinity. Many countries, including India, identify masculinity with dominance, aggressiveness, and emotional suppression. Men can redefine masculinity to include characteristics like empathy, compassion, and respect for women’s autonomy.

Moving towards a gender-equal society is thus a difficult endeavour that requires both major institutional change and attention to the smallest details of daily life. Gender systems cannot be moved much closer to equality unless there is a broad social consensus in favour of gender equality, which must include both men and boys.

Men and boys are consequently, in some respects, gatekeepers to gender equality. Whether they are willing gatekeepers who will support practical improvements is a critical matter. The answer varies depending on the situation, and it is related to how the gender system shapes men’s views and practices. To create a gender-equal society, men and boys must challenge traditional masculine roles and rethink their interactions with women and girls. Changes of this kind are already occurring in many regions of the world, but not in all situations.

Men and boys are more likely to favour gender equality when they see the benefits for themselves and those around them. Men and boys have a responsibility in this area, even if they do not see any personal rewards. If gender inequities continue to favour men and boys, it is the obligation of the privileged to use their resources to change the system.

Building alliances

Gender equality needs the combined efforts of all segments of society. Men and women must collaborate to remove the structural impediments that sustain gender inequality. Building coalitions between men and women can generate a sense of solidarity and shared purpose in the battle for gender equality.

Men in politics can support gender equality policies and efforts, such as quota systems for women’s representation in elected authorities. Men who advocate for increased gender diversity in decision-making processes can assist ensure that women’s opinions and goals are effectively represented in public policy.

In the workplace, men can campaign for equal compensation for equal labour and support measures to combat gender bias and discrimination. Men may help to increase gender parity in the labour market by promoting inclusive work cultures in which all employees are valued and respected. In addition, men can confront detrimental preconceptions and attitudes towards women in the media and popular culture. Men may contribute to a more inclusive and varied media landscape by encouraging positive portrayals of women and opposing storylines that reinforce gender stereotypes.

Furthermore, men can combat negative stereotypes and attitudes towards women in the media and popular culture. Men may contribute to a more inclusive and varied media landscape by promoting positive female portrayal and opposing storylines that promote gender stereotypes.

Websites online provide males with ideas and resources for actively challenging gender conventions and supporting gender equality in a variety of societal contexts, including media portrayal. Men may help to dismantle institutional barriers to gender equality and create a more equitable world for all individuals by utilising their influence and privilege.

The democratic imperative for gender equality

In a democracy, proper representation necessitates the participation and viewpoints of all citizens, regardless of gender. A society that denies women equal participation undermines the fundamental principles of democracy. Greater female engagement in politics results in policies that better reflect the demands of the entire population.

Studies suggest that gender equality leads to higher GDPs. Empowering women to fully engage in the workforce increases economic output. Gender equality guarantees that all citizens have the same rights and opportunities, resulting in a more just and equitable society.

Achieving gender equality in India is a difficult but vital task. While women have made great progress, breaking deeply ingrained patriarchal norms takes a multifaceted approach. Men have a significant role in this journey. Men can become strong allies by challenging traditional ideals of masculinity, fighting for gender-equitable policies, and promoting inclusive workplaces and media portrayals.

Forming alliances between men and women is critical to creating a truly democratic and fair India. When men and women collaborate, they can build a society in which everyone has the opportunity to prosper, regardless of gender. This united effort would not only empower women but also improve India’s democracy, resulting in a more prosperous and equitable future for everybody.

With a passion for storytelling and a keen interest in human behavior, Iti Dewangan is currently honing her skills in journalism, psychology, and English Literature. Having contributed to esteemed organizations like The Wire, Iti is dedicated to amplifying voices, uncovering truths, and making a positive impact through her writing. With a vision to become a respected journalist, she endeavors to navigate the ever-evolving media landscape with integrity, empathy, and a commitment to truth.

Guardians Of Democracy: Understanding The Role Of Election Commission Of India

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Third Wave Feminism

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Table of contents (23 chapters)

On the Genealogy of Women

Kristeva and the Trans-Missions of the Intertext

Transgender Feminism

Theorising the Intermezzo

‘You’re Not One of Those Boring Masculinists, Are You?’

Locales and Locations

‘It’s All About the Benjamins’

Imagining Feminist Futures

A Different Chronology

Global Feminisms, Transnational Political Economies, Third World Cultural Production

Neither Cyborg Nor Goddess

Politics and Popular Culture

‘Also I Wanted So Much To Leave For the West’

(Un)fashionable Feminists

About this book

Editors and Affiliations

About the editors

The waves of feminism, and why people keep fighting over them, explained

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The first wave: 1848 to 1920

Further reading: first-wave feminism

The second wave: 1963 to the 1980s

Further reading: second-wave feminism

The third wave: 1991(?) to ????

Further reading: third-wave feminism

The present day: a fourth wave?

Further reading: fourth-wave feminism

So is there a generational war between feminists?

So, what was the point of John Mulaney’s live Netflix talk show?

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Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Motherhood

Works Cited

Counterculture Breeders

“New Momism” and Consumerism

Sacrifice and Maternal Privilege

Re-imagining Democracy and PUSH

Breeders and Choices

Four Waves of Feminism Explained

First Wave OF Feminism

How did the first wave start?

First wave activism

The issue with first wave feminism

Second Wave Of Feminism

How did the second wave start?

What are the ideas of second wave feminism?