The evolution of Feminism
The term feminism is used to describe a political, cultural or economic movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women. It also includes the political and sociological theories which are concerned with the issues of gender difference, movements that promote gender equality for women and campaigns for the rights and interests of women. Feminism has changed perspectives in several areas with our society, ranging from culture to law. Feminists activist around the world have fought and campaigned for the legal rights of women ( contract rights, property rights, voting rights), abortion rights, reproductive rights, from the protection of women and girls from domestic violence like sexual harassment, rape; workplace rights including maternity leave and equal pay; misogyny and various other gender-specific discrimination against women.
Although the terms “Feminism” and “Feminist” did not gain importance until the late ninety’s, they were already being used amongst the common people much earlier. The first instance of feminism can be drawn from 24 centuries back, when Plato argued for the political and social equality of women, advocating that they should also be the members of the highest class and should also be allowed to rule and fight for themselves. Another example dates back from the late 7th or 8th century when a female Tamil saint name Andal, who was well known for her writing, married Vishnu. This divine act of hers was regarded as a feminist act by some, as it allowed her to avoid the regular duties of a wife and gain self-government. During much of its history, most of these movements had leaders who were mostly middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America. However, after Sojourner’s Truth’s 1851 speech to American feminists, women of other races also joined in. This trend accelerated in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the downfall of the European colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean and other parts of Latin America and South-east Asia.
According to Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the history of feminism can be divided into three waves. The first wave refers to the movements during the late ’90s and the early 20th century, the second one lasting from 1960 to the late 1980s and finally, the third wave extends from 1990 to the present.
Feminists activity during the early 19th and the early 20th century sought to win women’s suffrage, female education rights, better working conditions and to put an end to gender double standards. Before fighting for their rights, feminist leaders also campaigned for the national abolition of slavery and temperance in the United States. However, this activism was not only limited to the United States. In the mid-nineteenth century in Persia, Tahirih, who was a poet and a religious reformer, proclaimed the equality of women at her execution. Activists were protesting for women’s rights in Germany, campaigning for suffrage rights in Japan, protests were also going on in other parts of the world like South Australia, New Zealand, but the majority of them focused on women’s suffrage. Finally, the first wave of feminism in the United States ended with the Nineteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which granted white women the right to vote.
Second-wave feminism marks a period of feminist activity from the early 1960s through the late 1980s that saw cultural and political issues closely linked. Where the first wave focused on suffrage, second-wave feminists focused on other cultural equality issues such as ending discrimination. It was during this time when women in Chicago, got disappointed by the New Left and published “Voice of Women’s Liberation Movement” in 1968 which further led to the formation of Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in 1969. Bra burning, although fictional, also got associated with this movement. The rise of the liberation movement led to increased female enrollment in higher education, the establishment of academic women’s studies course and departments and feminist ideologies in fields such as politics, sociology, history and literature. This educational shift in interests questioned the status quo, its standards and its authorities.
The last wave began in the late 1980s in response to what young women perceived as failures of the initiatives and movements of the second wave. It also challenged the definition of the second wave of feminism which overemphasized the role of upper-middle-class white women. This phase mainly focused on the structural interpretation of gender and sexuality. It resulted in debates between feminists and those who believed that there was no difference between the sexes and the gender roles are a result of the social development which we go through.
So do we have a fourth wave also? I’d say YES !! This is not something which has been officially said, but the recent development in the feminist movement can be termed as the fourth wave of feminism. It is a wave connected through technology which combines politics, psychology and spirituality perfectly. Now feminism talks about post-abortion events, plus-size fashion, transgender rights, male feminism, sex work acceptance and many more. Petitions across social media have become so common nowadays which are concerned about different aspects related to the male as well as female society. “To shave, or Not to shave” also shows how the new generation of women is embracing body hair. All these are acts of feminism.
Feminism isn’t something which has grown overnight; it is a gradual process. From the point where people were fighting for women suffrage to now, where people are raising voices against pity issues and filing petitions for them, feminism has evolved a lot. I wouldn’t say that this is something terrible, and we need to keep a check on it, but there’s a saying: “Too much of everything is bad for health.” Feminism is growing day by day, and some people started to portray it in the wrong way. These are the things on which we need to keep an eye on, or else this would lead us to something which can, later on, prove harmful for our society.
