essay on new waves of feminism and our culture

What are the four waves of feminism? And what comes next?

Professor, University of Wollongong

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Sharon Crozier-De Rosa receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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In Western countries, feminist history is generally packaged as a story of “waves”. The so-called first wave lasted from the mid-19th century to 1920. The second wave spanned the 1960s to the early 1980s. The third wave began in the mid-1990s and lasted until the 2010s. Finally, some say we are experiencing a fourth wave, which began in the mid-2010s and continues now.

The first person to use “waves” was journalist Martha Weinman Lear, in her 1968 New York Times article, The Second Feminist Wave , demonstrating that the women’s liberation movement was another “new chapter in a grand history of women fighting together for their rights”. She was responding to anti-feminists’ framing of the movement as a “ bizarre historical aberration ”.

Some feminists criticise the usefulness of the metaphor. Where do feminists who preceded the first wave sit? For instance, Middle Ages feminist writer Christine de Pizan , or philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft , author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

Does the metaphor of a single wave overshadow the complex variety of feminist concerns and demands? And does this language exclude the non-West , for whom the “waves” story is meaningless?

Despite these concerns, countless feminists continue to use “waves” to explain their position in relation to previous generations.

Read more: The Whitlam government gave us no-fault divorce, women's refuges and childcare. Australia needs another feminist revolution

The first wave: from 1848

The first wave of feminism refers to the campaign for the vote. It began in the United States in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention , where 300 gathered to debate Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments, outlining women’s inferior status and demanding suffrage – or, the right to vote.

It continued over a decade later, in 1866, in Britain, with the presentation of a suffrage petition to parliament.

This wave ended in 1920, when women were granted the right to vote in the US. (Limited women’s suffrage had been introduced in Britain two years earlier, in 1918.) First-wave activists believed once the vote had been won, women could use its power to enact other much-needed reforms, related to property ownership, education, employment and more.

White leaders dominated the movement. They included longtime president of the the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Carrie Chapman Catt in the US, leader of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union Emmeline Pankhurst in the UK, and Catherine Helen Spence and Vida Goldstein in Australia.

This has tended to obscure the histories of non-white feminists like evangelist and social reformer Sojourner Truth and journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells , who were fighting on multiple fronts – including anti-slavery and anti-lynching –  as well as feminism.

The second wave: from 1963

The second wave coincided with the publication of US feminist Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Friedan’s “ powerful treatise ” raised critical interest in issues that came to define the women’s liberation movement until the early 1980s, like workplace equality, birth control and abortion, and women’s education.

Women came together in “consciousness-raising” groups to share their individual experiences of oppression. These discussions informed and motivated public agitation for gender equality and social change . Sexuality and gender-based violence were other prominent second-wave concerns.

Australian feminist Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch , published in 1970, which urged women to “challenge the ties binding them to gender inequality and domestic servitude” – and to ignore repressive male authority by exploring their sexuality.

Read more: Friday essay: The Female Eunuch at 50, Germaine Greer's fearless, feminist masterpiece

Successful lobbying saw the establishment of refuges for women and children fleeing domestic violence and rape. In Australia, there were groundbreaking political appointments, including the world’s first Women’s Advisor to a national government ( Elizabeth Reid ). In 1977, a Royal Commission on Human Relationships examined families, gender and sexuality.

Amid these developments, in 1975, Anne Summers published Damned Whores and God’s Police , a scathing historical critique of women’s treatment in patriarchal Australia.

At the same time as they made advances, so-called women’s libbers managed to anger earlier feminists with their distinctive claims to radicalism. Tireless campaigner Ruby Rich , who was president of the Australian Federation of Women Voters from 1945 to 1948, responded by declaring the only difference was her generation had called their movement “ justice for women ”, not “liberation”.

Like the first wave, mainstream second-wave activism proved largely irrelevant to non-white women, who faced oppression on intersecting gendered and racialised grounds. African American feminists produced their own critical texts, including bell hooks’ Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism in 1981 and Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider in 1984.

Read more: bell hooks will never leave us – she lives on through the truth of her words

The third wave: from 1992

The third wave was announced in the 1990s. The term is popularly attributed to Rebecca Walker, daughter of African American feminist activist and writer Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple ).

Aged 22, Rebecca proclaimed in a 1992 Ms. magazine article : “I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.”

Third wavers didn’t think gender equality had been more or less achieved. But they did share post-feminists ’ belief that their foremothers’ concerns and demands were obsolete. They argued women’s experiences were now shaped by very different political, economic, technological and cultural conditions.

The third wave has been described as “an individualised feminism that can not exist without diversity, sex positivity and intersectionality”.

Intersectionality, coined in 1989 by African American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, recognises that people can experience intersecting layers of oppression due to race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and more. Crenshaw notes this was a “lived experience” before it was a term.

In 2000, Aileen Moreton Robinson’s Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism expressed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s frustration that white feminism did not adequately address the legacies of dispossession, violence, racism, and sexism.

Certainly, the third wave accommodated kaleidoscopic views . Some scholars claimed it “grappled with fragmented interests and objectives” – or micropolitics. These included ongoing issues such as sexual harassment in the workplace and a scarcity of women in positions of power.

The third wave also gave birth to the Riot Grrrl movement and “girl power”. Feminist punk bands like Bikini Kill in the US, Pussy Riot in Russia and Australia’s Little Ugly Girls sang about issues like homophobia, sexual harassment, misogyny, racism, and female empowerment.

Riot Grrrl’s manifesto states “we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak”. “Girl power” was epitomised by Britain’s more sugary, phenomenally popular Spice Girls, who were accused of peddling “ ‘diluted feminism’ to the masses ”.

The fourth wave: 2013 to now

The fourth wave is epitomised by “ digital or online feminism ” which gained currency in about 2013 . This era is marked by mass online mobilisation. The fourth wave generation is connected via new communication technologies in ways that were not previously possible.

Online mobilisation has led to spectacular street demonstrations, including the #metoo movement. #Metoo was first founded by Black activist Tarana Burke in 2006, to support survivors of sexual abuse. The hashtag #metoo then went viral during the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal . It was used at least 19 million times on Twitter (now X) alone.

In January 2017, the Women’s March protested the inauguration of the decidedly misogynistic Donald Trump as US president. Approximately 500,000 women marched in Washington DC, with demonstrations held simultaneously in 81 nations on all continents of the globe, even Antarctica.

In 2021, the Women’s March4Justice saw some 110,000 women rallying at more than 200 events across Australian cities and towns, protesting workplace sexual harassment and violence against women, following high-profile cases like that of Brittany Higgins, revealing sexual misconduct in the Australian houses of parliament.

Given the prevalence of online connection, it is not surprising fourth wave feminism has reached across geographic regions. The Global Fund for Women reports that #metoo transcends national borders. In China, it is, among other things, #米兔 (translated as “ rice bunny ”, pronounced as “mi tu”). In Nigeria, it’s #Sex4Grades . In Turkey, it’s # UykularınızKaçsın (“may you lose sleep”).

In an inversion of the traditional narrative of the Global North leading the Global South in terms of feminist “progress”, Argentina’s “ Green Wave ” has seen it decriminalise abortion, as has Colombia. Meanwhile, in 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned historic abortion legislation .

Whatever the nuances, the prevalence of such highly visible gender protests have led some feminists, like Red Chidgey , lecturer in Gender and Media at King’s College London, to declare that feminism has transformed from “a dirty word and publicly abandoned politics” to an ideology sporting “a new cool status”.

Read more: Friday essay: a sex-positive feminist takes up the 'unfinished revolution' her mother began – but it's complicated

Where to now?

How do we know when to pronounce the next “wave”? (Spoiler alert: I have no answer.) Should we even continue to use the term “waves”?

The “wave” framework was first used to demonstrate feminist continuity and solidarity. However, whether interpreted as disconnected chunks of feminist activity or connected periods of feminist activity and inactivity, represented by the crests and troughs of waves, some believe it encourages binary thinking that produces intergenerational antagonism .

Back in 1983, Australian writer and second-wave feminist Dale Spender, who died last year, confessed her fear that if each generation of women did not know they had robust histories of struggle and achievement behind them, they would labour under the illusion they’d have to develop feminism anew. Surely, this would be an overwhelming prospect.

What does this mean for “waves” in 2024 and beyond?

To build vigorous varieties of feminism going forward, we might reframe the “waves”. We need to let emerging generations of feminists know they are not living in an isolated moment, with the onerous job of starting afresh. Rather, they have the momentum created by generations upon generations of women to build on.

• Germaine Greer
• Women's suffrage
• Intersectionality
• Sojourner Truth
• Catherine Helen Spence
• Betty Friedan
• Vida Goldstein
• Alice Walker
• Kimberle Crenshaw
• Suffragists
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Emmeline Pankhurst
• Fourth-wave feminism

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New feminist activism, waves, and generations

Publication year: 2021.

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Over the last decade, young women have taken the lead in a new wave of feminist and democratic protests in a wide range of countries, North and South. These movements raise a range of political and analytic questions:

• To what extent is it useful to identify the recent wave of activism in terms of a new generation of activists?
• How different are these new feminist movements to earlier forms, and what differences and continuities divide and unite the generations?
• How useful is the idea of feminist “waves” as a way of periodizing the history of feminism?

These questions are explored first through examining the characteristics common to past and contemporary feminisms and dissecting the issues associated with periodizing feminism in terms of “waves”.

In the second part of the paper, the focus is on understanding the most recent wave of feminist activism by considering its antecedents and main characteristics.

Part three presents three case studies of movements in the Global South; the cases of Brazil, India, and Malawi illustrate some of the ideas, campaigns, and organizational forms of “new feminists”. They focus on three prominent themes in feminist activism:

• Campaigns to defend democratic rights (Brazil);
• Gender-based violence (India); and
• Sexual and identity rights (Malawi).

This paper is part of the  “UN Women discussion paper series” .

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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.”

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.

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.

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?

“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.)

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.

Further reading: first-wave feminism

A Vindication of the Rights of Women , Mary Wollstonecraft (1791)

Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions , Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848)

Ain’t I a Woman? Sojourner Truth (1851)

Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors: Is the Classification Sound? A Discussion on the Laws Concerning the Property of Married Women , Frances Power Cobbe (1868)

Remarks by Susan B. Anthony at her trial for illegal voting (1873)

A Room of One’s Own , Virginia Woolf (1929)

Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings , edited by Miriam Schneir (1994)

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.

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.

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 .)

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.

Further reading: second-wave feminism

The Second Sex , Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

The Feminine Mystique , B e tty Fried a n ( 1963)

Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape , Susan Brownmiller (1975)

Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination , Catharine A. MacKinnon (1979)

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination , Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979)

Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism , bell hooks (1981)

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose , Alice Walker (1983)

Sister Outsider , Audre Lorde (1984)

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Further reading: third-wave feminism

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , Judith Butler (1990)

The Beauty Myth , Naomi Woolf (1991)

“ Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color ,” Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991)

“ The Riot GRRRL Manifesto ,” Kathleen Hanna (1991)

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women , Susan Faludi (1991)

The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order , edited by Marcelle Karp and‎ Debbie Stoller (1999)

Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics , bell hooks (2000)

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture , Ariel Levy (2005)

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.

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.

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.

Further reading: fourth-wave feminism

The Purity Myth , Jessica Valenti (2009)

How to Be a Woman , Caitlin Moran (2012)

Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit (2014)

We Should All Be Feminists , Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014)

Bad Feminist , Roxane Gay (2014)

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).

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?

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Maxine Molyneux, Adrija Day, Malu A.C. Gatto, and Holly Rowden

New Feminist Activism, Waves and Generations UN Women Discussion Paper, 2021

Reviewed by Sarah Frankie Summers

Feminism has historically been conceptualized or at least narrativized in waves, with each wave of the movement ushering in fresh intentions for broader inclusion and greater equity. The authors of this discussion paper begin with questioning the usefulness and accuracy of this waves metaphor, for the feminist movement has never been a finite phenomenon in all places at all times. The waves metaphor has also been charged with obscuring the role of African American women in the suffrage movement. The contextual and changing nature of feminism around the globe, Molyneux argues, is better exemplified by the concept of ‘generations,’ while her use of ‘timescapes’ seeks to emphasize the temporal and spatial dimensions of the human experience. To avoid implications of singular, homogeneous movements, the authors conclude that the plurality of struggles against gender-based oppression can best be articulated as ‘feminisms.’ Without negating their differences, feminist streams through time have all struggled for redistributive justice, recognition, and political inclusion. Molyneux points out that “a wave signifies fluidity and motion and is made up of multiple currents, each with its own momentum” and notes that the waves metaphor thus still offers a helpful visualization for feminisms and their overlapping movements.

This document was composed as a background paper for the 25th Anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action and the 64th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. Background papers are commissioned by the Research and Data section of the UN Women group. A summary in English, followed by translations in French and Spanish, poses the other questions guiding the research detailed in the paper: is the new wave of activism a distinct generation from the movements that came before, and if so, what are its distinguishing characteristics, and what unites it to previous generations of feminist activism?

“Feminism is used in this paper as an overarching generic term for a diverse body of ideas and activism that share some common principles and perspectives and that aim to end the harms women suffer as a result of the social distribution of power in favour of men.” This footnoted definition of feminism provides a useful foothold for the position the authors ultimately take: the current iterations of feminism are situated within a wave of new activism by young people around the world. Four key features are identified to demarcate a ‘new feminism’—its global nature; its reliance on and empowerment by communications technology; its defensive stance; and its commitment to intersectionality.One of the most useful tools this document offers is a brief and approximate history of feminisms. The first timescape explored starts between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was largely centered around issues of suffrage. This generation also took on the fight for equal rights within the family, equal pay, access to higher education and professions, and workers’ rights. Some anarcho-feminists at this time began calling for the end of capitalism. The second wave, starting roughly in the late 1960s, early 1970s, sought autonomy. Consciousness-raising meetings focused on issues of prejudice, discrimination, abortions, and patriarchy. The movement emphasized sisterhood, although it had not confronted or resolved unequal power dynamics within it. Third wave feminism, in the 1980s and 1990s, emphasized policy-related activism, witnessed the strengthening feminist movements and rights advocacy in the Global South, and engendered the establishment of Women Studies as a discipline. The fourth wave, approximately starting with the new millennium, has pushed for “radical inclusion,” with intersectionality and use of technology at its core. This wave has identified the deepening gap between the expectations and accomplishments of feminist movements past as well as

the existential insecurity faced by new generations and the detachment from democracy.

The roots of the four key features of the fourth wave previously mentioned can be seen in the earlier waves, underscoring the difficulty or futility of differentiating between the waves to an extent. Over time, feminisms and some feminist principles have been absorbed by formal government, severing the grassroots connections that the movements relied on to understand gender issues faced by women “down here”—as opposed to women “up there” in the government. The case studies illustrate further difficulties with distinguishing between waves and the need to avoid overgeneralizing; however, the case studies also illuminate conflicts between generations of feminists which underscore the impact of real differences in values and approaches between the generations that shape new movements. 

The first case study explores the history of feminisms in Brazil, offering narratives and statistics that underscore the relationships between feminist generations and political progress and the fight to maintain that progress. The case study serves to demonstrate the experience of a generational lull as well as the defensive position new feminists have had to take. In this section, two Brazilian feminists offer potent perspectives on these changes. Sueli Carneiro noted, “Some 20 years ago, old feminists asked: ‘where are the girls, where are the girls? What happened? They didn’t show up.’ Now, I ask: ‘there are so many of you, where were you hiding that we didn’t see you?’ And they say: ‘we were growing up’.” And Cecília Sardenberg put it this way: “Back then, we fought to gain rights; now, we fight against them being taken away.” 

Efforts to eliminate violence against women (VAW) and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in India are detailed in the second case study, showing how recent legal reform movements have been led by a new generation of feminists, whose strategies for building awareness of VAW and SGBV have not always supported by older generations of feminists. New feminists in India have come up against the challenge of a lack of implementation for the legal changes fought for by earlier feminist movements. The third case study about the radical inclusion efforts of the new feminists in Malawi offers an example of the generational divides where older feminists’ essentialist definition of women conflicts with the more expansive position of younger intersectional LBGTQI+ feminists. This case study also highlights the importance of regionally-specific approaches in fourth wave feminist scholarship.

The three case studies show both the importance of framing feminist struggles in the context of rights as well as the use of social media for advancing the movements. In a gesture of reflexivity, this UN Women publication considers its own positionality in the new feminist movement, recognizing that ownership and authority belong to a new generation which exists outside international agencies for human rights. This new generation, this fourth wave, situates intersectional feminisms locally and is concerned with advancing and preserving women’s rights, which encompass issues of gender, race, sexuality, and environmental justice. This compact, accessible text is an invaluable tool for all who seek to understand some of the many nuances of the global feminist movement through history.

Feminism: The Fourth Wave

FEMINISM : The Fourth Wave

The Fourth Wave

For many scholars and historians, the feminist movement consists of three waves. These “waves” or surges of feminism are historical benchmarks that include large-scale women’s activism. Due to the complexity of this movement, it is impossible to accurately pinpoint specific dates that started or ended each wave. These dates become increasingly more difficult when trying to discuss the third and fourth waves. Although the third wave never truly had an official “end,” activists recognize that the 21st century has ushered in a new type of activism.

As feminists moved out of the third wave, they continued to advocate for their rights. One of the constant concerns across all of the waves was their access to reproductive healthcare. Many women in the movement believed that they should have reproductive freedom and the option to have an abortion if they chose to have one. However, various controversial legislation often prevented them from achieving full autonomy when it comes to their reproductive health. The National Organization for Women (NOW) organized several marches to fight against restrictive legislation and advocate for women’s reproductive rights, including three separate “March for Women’s Lives” in 1989, 1992, and 2004.

In addition to these marches, women continued to make great strides in the political realm. Several women made history by assuming political leadership in various state and national offices. In 1997, Madeleine Albright became the first woman to serve as the United States Secretary of State. She served until 2001 under President Bill Clinton. A decade after Albright’s appointment, another milestone was reached. Nancy Pelosi became the first and only woman to serve as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Since her election to the position in 2007, Pelosi has been the highest-ranking woman, and second after the vice president in the presidential line of succession.

Technological Advancements

While women progressed in politics, social networking and media platforms also began to grow exponentially. One of the earliest recognized social networks was a site called SixDegrees.com that launched in 1997. Unfortunately, their success was short lived, and the company closed in 2001. Following the closure of SixDegrees, social networking applications experienced the “golden age” of invention. The next successful network was a social and gaming platform called Friendster that launched in 2002. A year later, LinkedIn launched and expanded the opportunity to connect and communicate with people outside of your immediate area. New social media applications continued to emerge during this “golden age” including Myspace in 2003, Facebook in 2004, and Twitter in 2006.

During this period of technological growth and expansion, activists now had more tools at their disposal to promote their causes. Several advocacy groups developed campaigns using hashtags (#) to raise awareness and gain community support. These short phrases quickly became trending topics on social media websites and strategically spread the word about various issues. Popular hashtags like, #BringBackOurGirls, #BlackLivesMatter, and #YesAllWomen brought attention to pressing matters of social justice and reform. Even hashtags such as the #icebucketchallenge gained the attention of millions to raise awareness and money for research for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Another popular hashtag that emerged was #MeToo, a women’s advocacy campaign founded by Tarana Burke in 2007.

In 1996, Tarana Burke had an encounter with a young woman that she would never forget. While Burke was working as the director of a youth camp, a young lady privately disclosed that she was a victim of sexual abuse. Also a survivor of sexual abuse, Burke identified with her immediately, and all she wanted to say was ”me too.” Although Burke was unable to respond how she wanted to in the moment, this encounter would become the foundation for the ‘me too’ campaign she created a decade later. By 2007, Burke had launched ‘me too’ as a way for young women of color to share their stories. To start, she began using the phrase ‘me too’ specifically to promote the idea of “empowerment through empathy.” Her campaign was not only designed to facilitate healing, but she also wanted to train survivors to work in communities of color.

For the next ten years, Burke developed ‘me too’ while serving as the director of various art and cultural institutions across the country. However in 2017, Burke’s hashtag #metoo went viral on social media. In October of that year, a controversial sex scandal made headlines. Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was exposed for using his power to sexually harass and exploit women in the entertainment industry for over thirty years. In addition to the over ninety women that came forward against Weinstein, women around the world publicly shared their own experiences with sexual assault.

Shortly after the scandal broke, actress Alyssa Milano helped popularize the #metoo movement by tweeting: "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too.' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” In less than 24 hours, 4.7 million people engaged in the "Me too" conversation, with more than 12 million posts, comments or reactions on Facebook.

In 2017, TIME Magazine named Tarana Burke, Alyssa Milano, and many other “Silence Breakers” as their “Time Person of the Year.” The public outcry grew as women and men internationally translated ‘me too’ into their various languages and aligned with the movement. These allegations spurred a global "reckoning” against sexual assault and harassment that became known as the "Weinstein effect.”

A month after the scandal broke, a group of 700,000 Latina farmworkers from across the country wrote an open letter of support to the Silence Breakers in Hollywood that came forward against Harvey Weinstein. These women shared similar experiences and signed their message with: “We believe and stand with you.” These women were all members of a coalition of women farmworkers called Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance).

Two days after the letter was released, hundreds of women in Los Angeles marched to protest sexual harassment. The Me Too Survivors March took place on November 12th, 2017 in downtown Los Angeles to create a safe space for survivors and allies to rally against sexual misconduct. On that same day, the Take Back the Workplace March also met in downtown Los Angeles to take a stand against sexual harassment in the workplace. The two marches met in the same place and joined forces to advocate for social reform and legislation that would support survivors of these crimes.

During this time, another campaign prepared to launch in Hollywood to contribute to the widespread surge of women’s activism. In response to the letter of support from 700,000 women farmworkers, TIME’S UP publicly launched on January 1st, 2018 with their own open letter signed by over 300 women in the entertainment industry. Published in the New York Times, this letter thanked the farmworkers and announced that they would be using their network and platforms to advocate for survivors of harassment and injustice. TIME’S Up women said, “enough is enough,” and created a movement that “insists upon a world where work is safe, fair, and dignified for women of all kinds.”

TIME’S UP also launched several initiatives to ensure gender parity and workplace safety in various industries. The TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund™ was established to help survivors, especially women of color and low-income women, get connected to lawyers and resources. This network has over 800 lawyers working to fight for women’s causes. In addition, TIME’S UP Now was established to prevent future acts of harassment and discrimination. In an effort to raise awareness for the cause, many attendees of the 75th Golden Globe Awards wore black with #MeToo and TIME’S UP pins to support the movement. A few activists including Tarana Burke and Mónica Ramírez (Board President of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas) were invited as guests of various actresses. Many other award shows followed suit including the 2018 Grammys and the 2018 BAFTA Film Awards in London.

While fourth wave feminists were exploring new ways to promote women’s rights, they continued to organize in more “traditional” ways. Prior to the scandals of 2017, women were already actively marching against sexual assault across the country. In January of 2017, the Women’s March on Washington attracted an estimated 1,500,000 protesters after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. This march became the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, with Women’s Marches happening simultaneously across the country. In total there were between 3.3 and 4.6 million protesters advocating for women’s rights and various social justice issues including racial equity, immigration reform, reproductive rights, the environment, and LGBTQ rights. Second wave feminists Angela Davis and Gloria Steinem both gave speeches at the march.

Footage of the Women's March on Washington

In January of 2018, feminist activists drew from the momentum of the ‘me too’ and TIME’S UP movements to celebrate the anniversary of the 2017 Women’s March. Although the attendance was lower than the previous year, over 250 marches and rallies were held across the country to commemorate the first march and advocate for more change. Nancy Pelosi was one of the speakers at the Washington, D.C. march, while Whoopi Goldberg, Padma Lakshmi, Drew Barrymore, and Halsey were speakers at the New York City march.

The Supreme Court…Again

By the summer of 2018, another scandal made headlines that connected third wave feminists to the fourth wave. Similar to the Anita Hill case of 1991, Professor Christine Blasey Ford testified against a U.S. Supreme Court nominee for sexual misconduct. After writing a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Ford appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018 to testify against Brett Kavanaugh. Ford declared that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her at a house party when they were teenagers. Afraid and traumatized, Ford chose not to report the incident for decades and wanted to remain anonymous during the case. However, she ultimately chose to speak out. Two other women, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, also accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault in the past. Despite their testimonies, Kavanaugh was still confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.

Believe Women

A day after the court proceedings, women rallied around another feminist campaign slogan. The popular dating app “Bumble,” known for its women-centric approach to matching potential partners, decided to take out a full-page add in the New York Times with just two words printed: “Believe Women.” Their campaign phrase was a call to believe women such as Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnick, who decided to come forward about sexual assault. Designed as a sign of support and solidarity, Bumble also donated $25,000 to the Rape, Assault and Incest National Network (RAINN) to support of victims of sexual violence.

Amidst the controversies and assault accusations, fourth wave feminists have used their political voice to stand up against sexual misconduct and injustice. In addition, they have continued to reach higher levels of political leadership. In 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Democratic presidential nomination and became the first U.S. woman to lead a major party’s ticket. The following year, there were a record number of women in Congress, including 21 Senators, 104 House members, and the first Latina member to serve in the upper chamber. Unfortunately, the fight is far from over.

As various forms of activism emerge, fourth wave feminists continue to provide innovative ways to advocate for women’s rights. Although many of the same issues have plagued each wave of feminism across generations, fourth wave feminists are incorporating new methods of activism to address issues such as; reproductive rights, equal pay, and sexual assault to name a few. With every small step, these feminists continue to fight until full equality and participation is achieved for women everywhere.

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

Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Tarana Burke” National Women’s History Museum. 2020. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/tarana-burke.​

Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Tina Tchen.” National Women’s History Museum. 2020. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/tina-tchen.​

JOHN, Arit, and STEVEN T. DENNIS. “Blasey Ford Says Alleged Kavanaugh Attack 'Altered My Life'.” Time Magazine, September 27, 2018. https://time.com/5407627/christine-blasey-ford-senate-testimony-brett-kavanaugh/.​

“700,000 Female Farmworkers Stand Up Against Sexual Assault.” Time Magazine, November 10, 2017. https://time.com/5018813/farmworkers-solidarity-hollywood-sexual-assault/.​

Byrd, Ayana. “Q&A With Tina Tchen, The New President of Time's Up.” Colorlines, November 1, 2019. https://www.colorlines.com/articles/qa-tina-tchen-new-president-times.​

Edwards, Haley Sweetland. “How Christine Blasey Ford's Testimony Changed America.” Time Magazine, October 4, 2018. https://time.com/5415027/christine-blasey-ford-testimony/.​

“Our Staff: Tina Tchen, President and Chief Executive Officer.” TIME'S UP Now. Accessed May 15, 2020. https://timesupnow.org/about/our-staff/.​

“Take Back the Workplace March.” Take Back The Workplace March - November 12, 2017. Accessed May 16, 2020. http://www.takebacktheworkplacemarch.com/.​

Zraick, Karen. “Tina Tchen, Ex-Obama Aide, Will Take Over Time's Up.” The New York Times, October 7, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/arts/tina-tchen-times-up.html.

• Developing a Research Question
• Finding Sources
• Evaluating Sources
• Writing Tips
• Citing Sources
• Accessing Our Collections
• Foundational Texts
• Reference Sources
• Primary Sources and Archival Collections
• Journals and Newspapers
• Image, Stock Photo, & Audiovisual Resources
• Open Access, Professionalization, and Additional Resources
• Resources & Services for Scholars
• Instructional Support
• Asian American and Pacific Islander Philosophies
• Indigenous Philosophies
• Black Philosophy & Thought
• Feminism & Feminist Philosophies
• Introduction

Critique of the 'Waves' of Feminism

Feminist philosophies.

• Introduction to Queer Theory
• Environmental Ethics & Aesthetics
• Metaphysics of Gender
• Other Features
• Women Philosophers
• General Readings
• Scholarly Resources

Feminism is the belief in the social, economic, and political equality of all genders.  

This feature covers some of the history and individual movements within feminism. Scroll down to learn more about the waves of feminism and several different philosophical movements.

Image:  John Olson, The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images

As with many of these national commemorations, one month is never enough to fully honor and celebrate the history and culture of marginalized communities, let alone heal the legacies (and ongoing reality) of harm and systemic oppression they've experienced. We recognize that resisting and rejecting misogyny and cisheteropatriarchy cannot be manifested simply through resource lists and guides, however important and well-intentioned, and that justice and liberation for women, expansively defined, and all who challenge and live outside of binary gender is the work of generations. We are, nevertheless, committed to doing what we can to work towards a different, more equitable and caring future.

If you'd like to engage more deeply with Women's History Month, units across the Libraries have created a number of interrelated resources and features to provide more holistic coverage of this commemoration. You'll find those, below:

• Feminist Media Studies (Media Studies)
• The Sounds of Women's History Month   (Media Studies)
• Transfeminine Worlds: Works by Trans Women (Gender Studies)
• Spotlight on Sex Work (Gender Studies)
• In Memoriam: bell hooks   (Philosophy)
• Spotlight on Victorian Women Writers Project   (English & American Literature)
• Women-led Architecture Firms (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
• Art & Gender (Gender Studies + Art, Art History, & Architecture)
• Women of Ukraine (Area Studies)
• Women's History Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
• Primary Sources on Women in University Collections (Archives & Special Collections)
• Youth Materials on Women's History and Women’s Lives (Education Library)

Online Readings

• "Four Waves of Feminism"   (Martha Rampton,  Pacific Magazine )
• "Feminist Philosophy" ( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy )
• "Transnational Women's Movements"   (Leila J. Rupp, European History Online)
• "The Waves of Feminism, and Why People Keep Fighting Over Them, Explained"   (Constance Grady,  Vox )

Online Resources

• Women's Liberation Movement Print Culture (Duke University)
• American Women    A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States (LOC)
• Sisterhood and After   Oral history interviews featuring activists of the Women’s Liberation Movement (British Library)

Organizations

• Society for Women in Philosophy   The Society for Women in Philosophy was created in 1972 to support and promote women in philosophy. Since that time the Society for Women in Philosophy or "SWIP" has expanded to many branches around the world, including in the US, Canada, Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Flanders, and Germany.
• Society for Analytical Feminism   The Society for Analytical Feminism is an official society of the American Philosophical Association , and was founded at the Central Division APA meetings in 1991. The Society for Analytical Feminism provides a forum where issues concerning analytical feminism may be openly discussed and examined. Its purpose is to promote the study of issues in Feminism by methods broadly construed as analytic, to examine the use of analytic methods as applied to Feminist issues and to provide a means by which those interested in Analytical Feminism may meet and exchange ideas. The Society meets yearly at the Central Division meetings of the APA, and frequently organizes sessions for the Eastern Division and Pacific Division meetings.
• philoSOPHIA   philoSOPHIA exists to promote continental feminist scholarly and pedagogical development, and is committed to civic and community engagement.  Continental feminist philosophy is construed broadly to include feminist work on major figures and themes from the continental philosophical tradition, as well as feminist work inspired by continental philosophy more generally.
• Minorities and Philosophy   MAP’s mission is to address structural injustices in academic philosophy and to remove barriers that impede participation in academic philosophy for members of marginalized groups. Through our international organizing team and graduate student-led network of autonomous chapters around the world, we aim to examine and dismantle mechanisms that prevent students from marginalized groups from participating in academic philosophy, as well as to promote philosophical work done from marginalized perspectives, and help improve working conditions for scholars from marginalized backgrounds.
• International Association of Women Philosophers   The International Association of Women Philosophers is a professional association and network that provides a forum for discussion, interaction and cooperation among women engaged in teaching and research in all aspects of philosophy, with a particular emphasis on feminist philosophy. Founded in 1976 in Würzburg (Germany) as “Association of Women Philosophers” (APh), the IAPh has gradually grown into an international organization with members all over the world. Currently the IAPh has more than 380 members from more than 35 different countries.
• Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory   Feminist Ethics and Social Theory is a professional organization dedicated to promoting feminist ethical perspectives on philosophy, moral and political life, and public policy that centers decolonized, intersectional, and interdisciplinary approaches.  Our aim is to further the development and clarification of new understandings of ethical and political concepts and concerns, especially as they arise out of feminist concerns regarding underrepresented and marginalized women — including BIPOC, Third World, disabled, and LGBTQIA — as well as those arising from marginalized identities and marginalized issues. We will interrogate and address the philosophical and practical underpinnings of white privilege and racist violence in its many forms, including in feminist theory and practice.
• Second Wave
• Third and Fourth Waves
• Criticism of the Waves Metaphor

First Wave Feminism

Lasting from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the start of the feminist movement in the United States focused primarily on property rights and women's suffrage. Many feminists felt a connection between their cause and the abolitionist movement.

• 1848 - Seneca Falls Convention
• 1916 - Margaret Sanger opens America's first birth control clinic
• 1920 - 19th Amendment passed, granting women the right to vote

Influential Figures

• Susan B. Anthony
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Lucretia Mott
• Carrie Chapman Catt
• "Declaration of Sentiments and Revolutions"   by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Seneca Falls Convention, 1848)

Second Wave Feminism

Following a lull in feminist activism during the world wars, the second wave of feminism (1960s-90s) focused on gaining political equality and putting a stop to gender-based discrimination. Women began to seek greater participation in the workforce as well as equal pay. The movement also brought attention to issues of domestic violence and reproductive rights. Feminism was beginning to integrate itself with issues of patriarchy, capitalism, and class. 

• 1960 - The Food and Drug Administration approves the birth control pill
• 1963 - The Equal Pay Act is enacted
• 1966 - Founding of NOW (National Organization of Women)
• 1972 - Title IX is passed to protect people from sex discrimination in schools
• 1972 - Helen Reddy's song "I Am Woman" becomes an anthem of the movement
• 1972-79 - The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is approved by the U.S. Congress but fails to receive the required number of state ratifications
• 1973 - Roe v. Wade gives women the right to have an abortion
• Gloria Steinem
• Bella Abzug
• Judith Butler
• "The Second Feminist Wave"  by Martha Weinman Lear ( New York Times , 1968) [Requires IU login to view]

• "Prospects of Mankind with Eleanor Roosevelt: What Status for Women?" (1962) (GBH Archives)

Third and Fourth Wave Feminism

In the 1990s, a new wave of feminism emerged that challenged the perceived privileging of straight white women by the second wave movement. The movement also brought to the forefront sex positivity and issues of violence against women. The distinction between the third and fourth waves of feminism is unclear. While some believe we're still in the third wave, others argue that the newest fourth wave, starting in the 2010s, is defined by the fight against rape culture.

• 1991 - The riot grrrl punk subculture begins
• 1991 - Anita Hill accuses Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment
• 1992 - The "Year of the Woman" sees a significant number of women elected to U.S. Senate
• 2017-present - Me Too Movement
• 2017 - Women's March
• Audre Lorde
• Rebecca Walker

• "Feminism in 'Waves': Useful Metaphor or Not?"   (Linda Nicholson, New Politics)
• Laughlin, K. A., Gallagher, J., Cobble, D. S., Boris, E., Nadasen, P., Gilmore, S., & Zarnow, L. (2010). Is It Time to Jump Ship? Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor. Feminist Formations , 22 (1), 76–135.
• Postcolonial
• Environmental

Liberal feminism, a term that widely overlaps with "mainstream feminism," is the movement to gain gender equality through political and legal reform. The first and second waves of feminism were mostly led by proponents of this movement. Issues that liberal feminism focuses on include voting rights, equal pay, reproductive rights, and access to education.

• Judith Sargent Murray
• Frances Wright
• Betty Friedan
• Martha Nussbaum

Socialist feminism considers the interconnectivity of patriarchy, capitalism, and women's oppression. This movement applies Karl Marx's ideology to feminism and argues that class oppression and gender oppression are fundamentally tied together.

• 1972 - The Wages for Housework campaign begins
• Clara Zetkin
• Eleanor Marx
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Johanna Brenner
• Silvia Federici
• Selma James
• "Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women's Movement" (Chicago Women's Liberation Union, 1972)
• "Socialist Feminism: What Is It and How Can It Replace Corporate 'Girl Boss' Feminism?"   (Sarah Leonard, T een Vogue )
• "Aren't Socialism and Feminism Sometimes in Conflict?"   (Nicole Aschoff, The ABCs of Socialism )
• "Trickle-Down Feminism"  (Sarah Jaffe,  Dissent Magazine )

Radical feminism is a more militant form of feminism which seeks to dismantle the capitalist patriarchy. Radical feminists argue that we must completely restructure society in order to fulfill feminism's goals.

Emerging as a challenge to radical feminism, transfeminism argues that transgender women deserve to be represented in mainstream feminist movements. Transfeminists use the term "terf" (trans-exclusive radical feminist) to call out and hold accountable radical feminists who only fight for the rights of cisgender women.

• 1969 - Redstockings, a radical feminist group, is founded
• Shulamith Firestone
• Kathie Sarachild
• Ti-Grace Atkinson
• Carol Hanisch
• Ellen Willis

Also called anarcha-feminism, this movement believes that women's oppression is bound together with the "involuntary hierarchy" of government. The removal of this hierarchy through anarchy is called the "feminization of society."

• 1896-99 - The anarcha-feminist newpaper La Voz de la Mujer is published in Argentina
• 1936-39 - Mujeres Libres, an anarcha-feminist group in Spain, sought recognition in the Spanish anarchist movement
• Emma Goldman
• Federica Montseny
• Voltairine de Cleyre
• Maria Lacerda de Moura
• Lucy Parsons
• L. Susan Brown
• "Anarchism: The Feminist Connection"   (Peggy Kornegger, 1975)
• Anarcho-Feminism: Two Statements (1971) ["Who we are: an Anarcho-Feminist Manifesto" (Chicago Anarcho-Feminists) and "Blood of the Flower: An Anarchist Feminist Statement" (Black Rose Anarcho-Feminists)]
• Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader (AK Press, 2012)

Many Black women felt alienated by second wave feminism. Black feminists argued that sexism, classism, and racism are part of the same hierarchical system (the "imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy"), and that therefore Black women have a unique understanding of oppression.

• 1973 - National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) is founded
• 1974 - Barbara Smith founds the Combahee River Collective
• 2013-present - #BlackGirlMagic movement celebrates the accomplishments of Black women
• Alice Walker
• Patricia Hill Collins
• Kimberlé Crenshaw
• The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)
• "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color"   (Kimberlé Crenshaw, Stanford Law Review, 1991)

Emerging in the 1980s, postcolonial feminism moves the focus to nonwhite, nonwestern women and their experiences in the postcolonial world. This movement criticizes the ethnocentrism of mainstream feminism and sees parallels between colonization and women's oppression.

• Nawal el Saadawi
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• "Feminist Perspectives on Globalization" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• "Under Western Eyes" Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles   (Chandra Talpade Mohanty,  Signs , 2003)
• "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"  (Audre Lorde, 1984, printed in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (2007)
• "Femen's obsession with nudity feeds a racist colonial feminism" (Chitra Nagarajan,  The Guardian , 2013)

Like Black feminism, Indigenous feminism(s) is an intersectional perspective and movement that centers the rights, needs, and experiences of Indigenous people, with a particular focus on human and civil rights for Indigenous women, legal and land-based sovereignty for all tribes and communities, environmental justice, and decolonization.

• 2012 - Idle No More protest movement is founded
• 2016 - Canadian government establishes the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
• Myrna Cunningham
• Aileen Moreton-Robinson
• Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
• Haunani-Kay Trask
• Winona LaDuke
• Leslie Marmon Silko

Ecofeminism is a social movement and philosophy that looks at the connections between nature and women. As a social movement that centers on the protection of nature, it is a movement led by decolonial and indigenous movements, primarily by women of color activists ( Rai, 2022 ).

• 1973 - In India, in the state of Uttarakhand, women took part in the Chipko movement to protect forests from deforestation
• 1977 - In Kenya, the Green Belt Movement was initiated by environmental and political activist Professor Wangari Maathai
• 1978 - In New York, mother and environmentalist Lois Gibbs led her community in protest after discovering that their entire neighborhood, Love Canal, was built on the site of a toxic dump
• 1980-81 - Women like ecofeminist Ynestra King organized Women's Pentagon Actions
• 1985 - The Akwanese Mother's Milk Project was launched by Katsi Cook
• 1989 - Bernadette Cozart founded the Greening of Harlem Coalition 
• Françoise d'Eaubonne
• Greta Gaard
• Susan Griffin
• Carolyn Merchant
• Wangari Maathai
• Bernadette Cozart
• Vandana Shiva
• Feminist Environmental Philosophy ( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy )
• Ecofeminism: toward global justice and planetary health ( Society and Nature )

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New Waves of Feminism and Pakistan Nobody gives you power; you just take it

July 15, 2020 2020 , Archives , Exam Pack , July 2020 , Others Leave a comment

New Waves of Feminism and Pakistan

Nobody gives you power; you just take it.

Despite having been through a long quest of motley waves, has feminism compassed its purported mark of gender equality in Pakistan? Ever since its independence, this beloved country of ours has been toiling to meet women rights and to bring womenfolk to the fore—making them empowered. Knowingly, feminism now is in its course of new waves during which beaucoup achievements regarding women rights in the form of women-friendly legislation and policies have been accomplished. In spite of that, it still is battling in the face of multitudinous impediments to win the bout on behalf of women.

Feminism, to quote Merriam Webster, is the “belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.” It endeavours for social, political, economic and intellectual equality between the sexes. Bell hooks, a prominent American author and feminist, in her book “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center” calls feminism “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression.”

Knowingly, women have experienced subordination, discrimination and oppression over the years. Thus, feminists dare to challenge this status quo and want to change it in favour of women, equal to men. Consequently, feminism advocates for women’s legal rights (right to contract, to own property, to vote); right to bodily integrity and autonomy; reproductive rights (including access to contraception and prenatal care); protection of women and girls from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape; workplace rights (including maternity leave and equal pay); and many other such rights of the womankind.

Chronologically, the history of feminist movement is divided into four waves: first, second, third and fourth wave of feminism. These waves, although started in Europe and America, have impacted the status of women the world over.

To discuss new waves of feminism, the latest advancements in women rights—the third and fourth waves of feminism, in the context of Pakistan, it may be prudent to first have some prior knowledge about these waves. For an easy understanding the third and the fourth waves, first and second waves, though not in the realm of the topic in question, are also enumerated succinctly hereunder.

To start with, first-wave feminism initiated in 1848 and lasted till 1920 when women were granted suffrage. In the beginning, the first-wavers focused on women’s rights to vote, employment, education, contract and own property. However, they later primarily emphasized on women’s suffrage, for which they are also called suffragists, because they thought political representation would be a panacea for all the problems women face.

Though the first-wavers triumphed in gaining women suffrage, they could not mitigate the women’s sufferings at the hand of men, for which the second-wavers, after a short hiatus, came to the fore.

The second-wavers, to become equal like men, had worked to somehow reject things peculiar to the muliebrity, e.g. makeup, high heels and high girliness. The second wave accomplished many of its targets; however, this disregard and other related failures led to the third-wave feminism.

The third wave, which started in the 1990s and is believed to have lasted till 2012, was a continuation of, and a reaction to, the perceived failure of the second-wave feminism. The third-wavers sought to reclaim the ideas about sexuality, gender, beauty, femininity and masculinity, and fought for their rights maintaining their uniqueness of being femmes. They focused on issues like sexual harassment, sexual objectification, violence against women and reproductive rights, as well as on increasing the number of women in positions of power. Also, they included rights of all other marginalized communities that were previously left out by first and second waves, in their campaign.

Furthermore, the third-wavers emphasized on issues which appear to limit or oppress women; and demanded that free choice be given to women—whether she chooses homemaking or a professional career to be economically independent or both at same time, having or not having children, choice of fashion and personal expression.

Although feminism, during its first three waves, has made considerable achievements, it is still battling for, during its course of fourth wave, its unsolved issues such as sexual harassment, marital rape, reproductive rights; bodily autonomy; equal job opportunities; gender pay gap; equality in education; equal political representation, greater representation in business; and self-expression.

Fortunately, during this era of fourth wave, women are now more vocal for their due rights than ever before. Now they can independently raise voice for their rights by writing blogs and articles and using social media. Further, access to the internet has empowered women such that they can now buy things online, start online businesses and work from home, making it feasible for her to be a homemaker and a professional simultaneously.

After discussing feminism and its waves in general, let’s take an overview of feminism and the promises it made during its new waves in Pakistan.

Like all other countries, understanding of feminism has been low in Pakistan. It is completely a myth over here. Ever since the country’s independence, women in Pakistan have been battling exploitative treatment at the hands of their male counterparts. Moreover, the social, economic and political environment is making it difficult for them to progress and fight for their rights. There have almost always been some backlashes against women who wish to empower themselves be it by studying, working or even choosing a spouse for themselves. NGOs and other institutions that work to help oppressed women are accused of misleading and ‘brainwashing’ them. Most women internalize their sufferings either out of fear or lack of resources to resort to. Here, feminists are labelled as protagonists of Western culture.

Throughout its history, feminism has been enduring hard to gain women rights. Luckily, a number of advancements have been made during the course of new waves. Let’s analyze these advancements in third- and fourth-wave feminism, respectively, in the following section. 

Unsurprisingly, during the government of Benazir Bhutto, feminism gained momentum when NGOs and other women rights organizations were given considerable power. They urged the government to make certain amendments to laws regarding women. Unfortunately, this momentum waned during the governments of Mian Nawaz Sharif and, resultantly, women soon found themselves losing grounds to political conservatism and religious revivalism.

However, gratefully, some lost grounds were reclaimed when Musharraf government rallied for women rights and encouraged their involvement in media, sports and other socio-political activities. This struggle, albeit with lesser intensity than before, has continued to this day. Due to these and other such efforts, many women-friendly bills such as Criminal Law Amendment Act, the Anti-Sexual Harassment Bill, the Criminal Acid Act, Protection of Women Act, Status of Women Bill and other miscellaneous regulations condemning honor killing and other vices faced by Pakistani women were successfully passed.

Additionally, the government of Pakistan recently has passed the Maternity Leave Bill which makes it mandatory to grant paid leave up to six months (six months leave on first child, four months on second and three months on third child).

Though feminism in Pakistan has compassed landmark achievements during the third wave, many loopholes were also identified. For instance, the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill was passed unanimously by the National Assembly, but, due to apathy of the government towards women, the same lapsed after the Senate failed to pass it within the three-month period required under the constitution.

Moreover, feminism was labelled as a Western construct which deserves no place in the Islamic structure. Conservatives pretended that it is tantamount to exploiting women in the name of feminism and giving them more responsibilities would increase the burden on them.

Likewise, in Pakistani parliament, women are still considered ‘extra’ and dealt as ‘minority’. The disgusting incident, in which a PML-N lawmaker ridiculed his political rival Dr Shireen Mazari of PTI by calling her “tractor trolley,” paints a dismal picture in this regard. This sadistic attitude, indeed, exposes status of Pakistani women.

With the emerging power of the internet and social media, feminism in Pakistan has been moving fast toward its targets. Due to parda culture in Pakistan, most women cannot freely participate in public debates. Women have almost been excluded from the public arena. In such a scenario, access to the internet enables women to speak for their rights. After all, this is the peculiarity of the fourth-wave feminism.

Knowingly, the internet is changing the very social fabric of Pakistan. Women, nowadays, can access almost everything online. Additionally, through the internet and social media, incidents of sexual harassment and rape are exposed to the public using hashtags, and pressure is mounted on government to take stringent actions against the culprits. For instance, when Zainab Ansari, a six-year-old girl from Kasur district of Punjab, was raped and ruthlessly killed and her body was found dumped in litter, the feminists took to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram clamouring for justice for the victim. Such agitation compelled the government to the extent that the culprit was soon arrested, sentenced and hanged to death in record time.

Moreover, the recent agitation and exposing incidences of killing after rape of minor girls have compelled the parliament to pass Zainab Alert Law, a law regarding protection and rescuing of minor girls. Initially, this law was restricted to Islamabad Capital Territory, but due to pressure from the public on social media, the same was then extended to the whole country.

Likewise, recently, Zainab Alert App’s reporting system has been launched to help recovering missing children—another step toward child protection using the internet.

Similarly, campaigns on social media and mainstream media against honour killing and acid throwing are also powerful tools to seek justice for the victims. For instance, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, in her documentary “A Girl in The River: The Price of Forgiveness” of a 19-year-old honour killing survivor girl, sensitized to the menace in Pakistan. This documentary has had such impact that after meeting with Chinoy, Nawaz Sharif, the then prime minister of Pakistan, promised to legislate on honour killing to prevent it.

Furthermore, Chinoy also sensitized to incidents of acid attacks on Pakistani women through her Oscar-winning movie “Saving Face”. Predictably, the impact of this movie was such that Punjab government immediately categorized acid throwing as a terrorist activity rather than an ordinary offence.

Knowingly, social media has empowered women by giving them access to information and providing platforms to fearlessly demand their rights and ask for justice. In this regard, the launch of Prime Minister Citizen Portal, an internet-based application, is a landmark step. On this portal, everyone, including women, can complain and record their grievances which are then addressed on urgent footings.

Though the internet has sped up the feminist movement during its fourth wave, still there are hurdles in digital pathways to women empowerment in Pakistan. For instance, women face cyber bullying, blackmailing, leak of personal information, cyber attacks, threatening messages and backlashes from the misogynist lobby. A survey conducted by Digital Rights Foundation of Pakistan recently found that 70 percent women fear of posting their pictures online because of potential misuse, while 40 percent have experienced threatening and harassment via messaging apps.

Similarly, Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media star, was assassinated by her brother for posting ‘objectionable’ pictures on social media.

To cut long story short, feminism in Pakistan has been striving for equal rights and opportunities of women as well as other marginalized communities. Undoubtedly, major achievements and legislation have taken, and are taking, place throughout the new waves of feminism. It still faces challenges from chauvinists and misogynists, however. For now, the immediate priority for Pakistani women is to put on the government whatever pressure they can muster to persuade it to grant equal opportunities to women. That will be the route to women’s self-realization in an environment of love, tolerance and peace.

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