In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women across the U.S. were fighting for the right to vote. This era of time was also known as the suffrage movement. High school history classes in our time briefly touched on this movement and what it meant for women to fight for the right to vote, but that’s about all you learn about feminism and the different eras that came after the first movement. The correct terminology when learning about the history of feminism is that they came in “waves” instead of eras.
Lysa Salsbury, the director of the Women’s Center on campus states the term, waves, is to “symbolize that feminism doesn’t ever go away after each era, it comes back. It has a certain flow to it.”
Salsbury also breaks down each wave of feminism movements to help separate the different parts of history. The first wave included the suffrage movement, depicting women fighting for the right to vote and to have active participation in political and civic life.
“A lot of the movers and shakers that were active in the suffrage movement had come out of the abolitionist movement, and so they were really expanding their fight for civil rights,” Salsbury said. “The start of the first wave of feminism is widely credited to be the Seneca Falls convention that was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They organized this convention where they wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, saying that women have the right to full personhood and agency; in order to do that, you have to give them the right to vote. That convention was attended, not just by women, but also by quite a few men who were supportive of women.”
The second wave of feminism follows the late 60s and early 70s addressing gender-based discrimination in the workplace, inheritance laws and women’s ability to be financially independent.
There was also the debate at the time about protecting women against harassment and discrimination in the workplace, especially. It was during this wave of feminism the Equal Pay Act was passed so that women were being paid equally to men in the workforce.
The third wave of feminism continued until the early 80s and wasn’t fully recognized until the early 90s. This wave was characterized by a growing awareness the mainstream feminist movement had been primarily for white, middle-class women.
This movement was also representing other cultures to see how women in other countries were being treated, not just in the Western culture.
“It showed how white women actually had contributed to the oppression of women of color in different dimensions,” Salsbury said. “I think, in this fourth wave, we have become much more attuned to the fact that some of the early characterizations around the identification of women has really oppressed individuals who don’t identify within the gender binary. And so where is there a place in this movement?” Salsbury said, referring to the fourth wave.
There has also been some debate among scholars and women, some believe society hasn’t been introduced to a new wave yet and we are all still in the third wave. There are others, including Salsbury, who say society has moved on to the next big movement in feminism.
This fourth wave is is drastically different than the past three waves. There’s less protesting on the streets and instead, seems to have moved indoors.
“There’s less protesting in the streets, gathering and marches and citizens, which were very characteristic of the second and third wave, but there’s much more online organizing and using technology to reach out to different communities and more feminists of color, voicing how feminism impact them and how white feminism has hurt them, too,” Salsbury said .
Dr. Katie Blevins, the co-director of Women’s, Gender and Sexualities Studies, says she also thinks the fourth wave of feminism is growing to include everyone and change the way we have been standing up for one another.
“We have been seeing a lot of things like call out culture, and we think about that like a negative thing, but the idea of holding people accountable is something new that we haven’t seen a lot of before,” Blevins said. “So, the ability to actually stop someone and say, no you’re being sexist, or racist is pretty big. Women have been hobbled by trying to be polite or socialized into politeness for generations. The fact that a 20-year-old is willing to say, no that’s wrong, that is a really big fundamental shift.”
Blevins also goes on to say she is in huge support of the online movements for feminism. There are so many online support groups to seek advice or to get help on self-esteem.
“In this fourth wave, everyone’s identity is valid and instead of men being allies, men are becoming feminists as well,” Blevins said. “This wave is more about bringing people into the movement as full members in a way that we saw less of in the second and third wave.”