Women in lit paper - waves of feminism

First wave - dates

roughly 1848-1920

First wave - defining characteristics

• focussed primarily on legal and political rights, overturning legal obstacles to women’s suffrage or legal doctrines that were inherently sexist (eg coverture), property rights and reproductive autonomy

First wave - what kicked it off

• in the US - Seneca Falls Convention (1848) - activists drafted the ‘Declaration of Sentiments’ - demanding equal citizenchip

First wave - major achievement

• ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, granting women the right to vote in the US (though women of colour still faced severe voter suppression)

• 1918 Representation of the People Act - only women over 30 who owned property could vote → 1928 all over 21 could vote

‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ - date, author, argument

• 1792

• Mary Wollstonecraft

• women are not naturally inferior to men, but only appear to be because they are denied a proper education

• demanded for equal access to education and educational development

• product of the Enlightenment period

‘A Room of One’s Own’ - date, author, key arguments

• 1929

• Virginia Woolf

• demanded for intellectual independence and privacy for women - the need for ‘a room of one’s own’ in order to develop fully intellectually

Second wave - date

roughly 1963-late 1980s

Second wave - defining characteristics

• shifted focus from purely legal rights to broader cultural and social inequalities

• aimed to dismantle systemic sexism in family dynamics, the workplace, s/xuality and reproductive rights

• slogan - ‘the personal is political’

Second wave - key event

• Miss America protest in 1968 where activists gathered in Atlantic City to toss symbols of oppressive beauty expectations (bras, corsets, makeup) into a ‘Freedom Trash Can’

Legal journey of the pill in the UK

• introduced in UK on NHS in December 1961

• initially only for married women

• unmarried women could not access it until the NHS Family Planning Act was passed in 1967

‘The Feminine Mystique’ - date, author, key arguments

• 1963

• Betty Friedan

• investigated systemic unhappiness of suburban housewives and is widely credited with sparking the second wave

Third wave - dates

early 1990s - around 2012

Third wave - defining characteristics

• embraced individualism, diversity and intersectionality

• acknowledging how race, class and sexuality overlap with gender oppression

• sought to break down the rigid, predominantly white, middle-class stereotypes of the second wave and reclaimed stereotypically feminine aesthetics

Proto-third wave texts examples - names, authors, dates

• The Colour Purple, Alice Walker (1982) - term ‘womanism’ - intersectional feminism