1st Wave Feminism

‘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)

Barry makes the point that although the women’s movement was not the start of feminism. In other words, the issue of women’s inequality has a history that pre-dates the 1960’s, see for examples: Mary Wollstonecraft, (1792) A Vindication of the Rights of Women; Virginia Woolf(1929) A room of one’s own; Simone de Beauvoir(1949) The Second Sex.

2nd Wave Feminism

‘the feminist literary criticism of today is the product of the women’s movement of the 1960’s’

(Barry 2017:123)

Indeed feminist critical thought became much more prominent and pronounced during the counter cultural movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which heralded, among other changes: the facilitation of of birth control and divorce, the acceptance of abortion and homosexuality, the abolition of hanging and theatre censorship, and the Obscene Publications Act (1959) – which led to the Chatterly trial. Nevertheless,

‘all this should not be seen as a straightforward displacement of dominant conservative attitudes‘ .

(Johnathon Dollimore 1983:59)

This period is often termed second wave feminism – after the first wave of feminism, which was galvanised by organisations such as, the British Women’s Suffrage Committee (1867), the International Council of Women (1888), the The International Alliance of Women (1904), and so on who, in early part of the 20th Century, worked to get women the right to vote.

In contrast, ‘at the beginning of the 1970’s the Women’s Liberation Movement set great store by the process of consciousness raising’ (Wandor, 1981:13), ‘influencing everyday conduct and attitudes.’ (Barry, 2017:124) and ‘exposing the mechanisms of patriarchy, that is, the cultural ‘mind-set’ in men and women which perpetuated sexual inequality’ (123).