First Wave of Feminism – Suffrage

‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘(Michelene Wandor 1981:13

• The formation of the Suffragettes, a women’s rights activist group, in 1903 generated a huge positive impact on the role of women in society at the time. They campaigned for votes for middle-class, property-owning women, highlighting the lack of equality between men and women.
• Virginia Woolf’s publication of ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929) was a key pivotal moment in feminist history. Whilst the theory she fabricated seemed basic, is laid the foundations of what feminism has evolved into today.

Second Wave of Feminism – Reproductive Rights

• The Women’s Liberation Movement emerged in the late 1960s and proceeded into the late 1980s primarily in the western world.
• The movement was a political alignment of women and feminism intellectualism which touched upon the facilitation of of birth control and divorce, the acceptance of abortion and homosexuality, the abolition of hanging and theatre censorship, the Obscene Publications Act (1959) and exposed the corrupt mechanisms of the patriarchy.

Third Wave of Feminism – Identity & Magnitude

‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’Hendry & Stephenson (2018:50)

• Coined by Naomi Wolf in the 1990s, the third wave of feminism demonstrated a pluralism towards  race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism, rather than just the role of women in society.
• whilst there was still some aspects of politics, it mostly touched upon the representation and identity of women and was therefore It was a lot more broad than previous waves of feminism.
• The introduction of social media allowed ideas to be quickly widespread.
• Ariel Levy states, in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs (2005), that raunch cultures from one perspective is the idea of liberation involves new freedoms for sexual exhibition, experimentation and presentation, however from another perspective it may well encourage a hyper-sexualised climate that over-sexualises women whilst also encouraging women to over-sexualise other women and themselves.

Fourth Wave of Feminism – Empowerment

• Evolved from the third wave of feminism after the development of the technology era.
• the emancipatory tools of new social platforms to connect, share and develop new perspectives, experiences and responses to oppression, ‘tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online‘ (Cochrane 2013). As such, from the radical stance of #MeToo to the #FreeTheNimple campaign, which Miley Cyrus endorsed and supported the use of new media technologies has been a clear demarcation for broadening out the discussion and arguments that are played out in this line of critical thinking.