LibGuides: Women's Equality ~ Women's History: Feminism

The Three Waves of Feminism

Feminist history can be divided into three waves. The first wave, occurring in the 19th and early 20th century, was mainly concerned with women’s right to vote. The second wave, at its height in the 1960s and 1970s, refers to the women’s liberation movement for equal legal and social rights. The third wave, beginning in the 1990s, refers to a continuation of, and a reaction to, second-wave feminism....and sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating how race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, and nationality are all significant factors when discussing feminism.
See Betty Friedan: The Three Waves of Feminism By Ohio Humanities • April 27, 2018

A Few Leaders of the First Wave of Feminism 1850 - 1940

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Author, lecturer, and chief philosopher of the woman’s rights and suffrage movements, Elizabeth Cady Stanton formulated the agenda for woman’s rights that guided the struggle well into the 20th century.
Fannie Barrier Williams
Civil rights activist Fannie Barrier Williams helped found the National League of Colored Women in 1893, which became the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She was later involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Although Williams faced racial prejudice, she participated in National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) conventions and was friends with Susan B. Anthony.
Hallie Quinn Brown (1850 - 1949)
Brown’s involvement in the women’s suffrage campaign led her to help organize the Colored Women’s League in Washington, D.C., one of the organizations that allied in 1896 to become the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Brown also served as Dean of Women at Tuskegee Institute during the 1892-1893 school year.
Lucy Stone
A leading suffragist and abolitionist, Lucy Stone dedicated her life to battling inequality on all fronts. She was the first Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree and she defied gender norms when she famously wrote marriage vows to reflect her egalitarian beliefs and refused to take her husband’s last name.
Martha Wright
Martha Coffin Wright (1806-75) was the youngest of eight children and the sister of Lucretia Coffin Mott. Wright is described by Ann D. Gordon, editor of the Stanton and Anthony papers, as "a stalwart of the state antislavery society and ...one of the inner circle of woman's rights leaders until the end of her life. An avid letter writer and wit, she left a valuable archives of correspondence on woman's rights and woman suffrage." (Stanton and Anthony Papers, Vol 1, 75)
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Martha C. Wright was also an ardent abolitionist and ran her home in Auburn as a station on the Underground Railroad, frequently allowing fugitive slaves to sleep in the kitchen.

A Few Leaders of the Second Wave of Feminism 1960s - 1980s

Audre Lorde
Lorde (1934-1992) was a native New Yorker and daughter of immigrants. Both her activism and her published work speak to the importance of struggle for liberation among oppressed peoples and of organizing in coalition across differences of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, age and ability. An internationally recognized activist and artist, Audre Lorde was the recipient of many honors and awards, including the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit, which conferred the mantle of New York State poet for 1991-93.
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was a key player in second-wave feminism. In 1963, her book The Feminine Mystique criticized the idea that women could find fulfillment only through childrearing and homemaking. According to Friedan’s New York Times obituary, her book “ignited the contemporary women’s movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world” and “is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.” --Sally Ann Drucker, Ohio Humanities, April 27, 2018
Gloria Steinem
Steinem’s life has been dedicated to the cause of women’s rights, as she led marches and toured the country as an in-demand speaker. In 1972, Steinem and feminists such as Congresswoman Bella Abzug, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, and feminist Betty Friedan formed the National Women’s Political Caucus. It continues to support gender equality and to ensure the election of more pro-equality women to public office. Other organizations Steinem has co-founded in her vast career include the Women’s Action Alliance (1971), which promotes non-sexist, multi-racial children’s education; the Women’s Media Center (2004) to promote positive images of women in media; Voters for Choice (1977), a prochoice political action committee; and the Ms. Foundation for Women. In the 1990s, she helped establish Take Our Daughters to Work Day, the first national effort to empower young girls to learn about career opportunities.
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--Michals, Debra. “Gloria Steinem.” National Women’s History Museum, 2017. (July 2020)

Third Wave & Fourth Wave of Feminism ~ 1990s to present

Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, responding to perceived failures of the second wave and to the backlash against second-wave initiatives. This ideology seeks to challenge the definitions of femininity that grew out of the ideas of the second-wave, arguing that the second-wave over-emphasized experiences of upper middle-class white women. The third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating how race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, and nationality are all significant factors when discussing feminism. It examines issues related to women’s lives on an international basis. --Sally Ann Drucker, Ohio Humanities, April 2018

Also see "Third-wave feminism" on Wikipedia for various definitions and interpretations.

Fourth-wave feminism is a phase of feminism that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women^[1] and the use of internet tools,^[2] and is centered on intersectionality.^[3] The fourth wave continues the push against problematic gendered norms that cause the oppression and marginalization of women in society, the intersectionality^[3] of these and other interlocking systems of power, and how these contribute to the stratification of traditionally marginalized groups like women of color and trans women. Fourth-wave feminists advocate (like earlier feminists) for greater representation of these groups in politics and business, and argue that society would be more equitable if policies and practices incorporated the perspectives of all people.^[3]^{--Wikipedia "Fourth-wave feminism}