Feminism and the Third Wave
Jennifer Robinson, 2007
Today we are in what is known as the Third Wave of American feminism. American women have come through the first wave of feminism, whereby we won the right to vote through the long battles of the suffrage movement, and the second wave of feminism, which took place during the 1970’s and involved recognition of sexual assault, domestic violence, reproductive choice and equal pay for equal work. In the third wave, the feminism of the 21st century forges ahead. In conjunction with other movements for social justice, the feminism of this millennium works to improve the lives of women in every aspect. Third wave feminism has important bonds with other movements for social reform. Scholars in women’s studies and those involved in the feminist movement continue to write about the correlations between various forms of oppression, including sexism, classism, racism, homophobia, war, and globalization.
While some people may think that women achieved equality or overcame the most important hurdles long ago, contemporary feminists know there are still many battles yet to be won. Robin Morgan states in the introduction to Sisterhood is Forever: The Women’s Anthology for a New Millenium, “here is some evidence for why we’ll be ‘post-feminist’ only when we’re ‘post-patriarchy’.”(Morgan, xx). This is an excellent opening to a book that could serve as a great caffeine pill for many Americans. This anthology is one of several excellent recent collections of essays on contemporary feminism and its relevance to our present state of affairs.
One of the eye-opening essays in Sisterhood is Forever, is “Poverty Wears a Female Face”, by Theresa Funiciello, who discusses her involvement with welfare-rights activism with the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). Groups like NWRO, and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) with its “Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign” started by Cheri Honkala, have been fighting for the human rights of poor women with children who depend on the government for some of their livelihood. These groups have done ground-breaking work, including building tent cities, in order to raise attention about their situation and what government agencies can and should do to help them.
This link between femaleness and poverty has been well-established by feminists in the past and is still a daily part of women’s lives. Even today women make about seventy-five cents for every dollar men earn (Mitchell, 409). According to Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards in Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, “Women make on average 35% less than men. So far we have been unable to raise women’s wages because women are clustered in the kind of jobs that don’t pay much.”(Baumgardner, 305).
Third wave feminists also understand the links that classism and sexism have with racism in our culture. In Women, Race, and Class, Angela Y. Davis wrote, “Proportionately, more Black women have always worked outside their homes than have their white sisters. The enormous space that work occupies in Black women’s lives today follows the very earliest days of slavery”(Davis, 5). The overlapping struggles against these various, intertwined forms of oppression are challenging, and can be, at times, overwhelming. As contemporary feminist Beverly Guy Sheftall points out in her essay, “African American Women: The Legacy of Black Feminism”, “challenges in the twenty-first century are enormous: improving the lives of black people, especially women and children in poor and working-class communities; convincing young women and men – particularly the thousands who’ve had no exposure to progressive gender politics – that feminism is useful in struggles for the liberation of black America; making more effective connections between feminist theory and activism or transformative social change around the world; forging linkages with feminists (including gender-progressive men wherever they live) especially feminist activists in Africa and the African Diaspora”(Morgan, 185).
Just as abolitionists and suffragists once worked together to abolish slavery and win the right to vote for women, today activists and others combating racism and feminists and others working to eliminate sexism in society have common goals and reasons to work together. Though these common goals may not always be obvious, the ties do exist, and with some thoughtful consideration and creativity methods for fighting against sexism and racism at the same time can be found. In her moving poem, “Poem About My Rights” from the book, Passion: New Poems 1977-1980 activist poet June Jordan wrote, “I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I the wrong/ sex the wrong age the wrong skin”(Jordan). She went on to describe her situation in comparison to a colonized African country that has been “raped”. She wrote, “I am the history of rape/ I am the history of the rejection of who I am/ I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of my self”(Jordan). These powerful words bring to mind the connections between racism and sexism as well as classism, globalization and genocide.
On March 8th, 2003, author Alice Walker was arrested along with journalist Amy Goodman, activist Medea Benjamin, sociologist Susan Griffin and other women for participating in civil disobedience as part of a planned protest against the United States’ war on Iraq. This protest was organized by women members of a women’s peace organization called Code Pink which was organized in 2002 to protest Bush’s war on Iraq. Like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) before them, and the Women in Black who stand in silent vigils dressed in the same color to protest the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the women of Code Pink join together as feminists against war. Started by activist Medea Benjamin, Code Pink got its name from the color-coded terror threat alerts that the U.S. government began using in 2002. A group of women sat around at a picnic table, came up with this name, and started a new movement that has spread around the world. This group, like some other women’s peace groups before it, exhibits the strong ties between antiwar activism and feminist activism. In a reference to the “Other” of Simone de Beauvoir’s, The Second Sex, from the second wave of feminism, Walker says in, “To Be Led By Happiness” the foreward to, Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism, “we understood that whatever we did to stop war, we did it not for the “other” but for a collective us”(Benjamin, xiii).Through their books, protests, marches, and organizations women are making their voices heard in the third wave of feminism. One way in which this wave differs from other time periods of the feminist movement is that we now have the usage of the internet as well. The internet allows groups organizing for social change to reach activists instantaneously around the globe, and allows citizens to make their voices heard quickly and easily to government officials, representatives of the media, and others in positions of power. The Feminist Majority Foundation, for one, has organized young women through its website for several years. It has a special website specifically geared towards young women in their college years. NARAL: Pro-Choice America, The National Organization for Women, Code Pink, and other large women’s rights groups also organize online to create social changes that benefit women.
Though different forms of oppression may at times seem disparate, they are, in fact, interrelated, and the same tools of protest can be used to combat them. In fact, if we ignore the insidious ways in which various forms of oppression work together, we are not able to properly fight any of these forms as they are each worsened by the other and are dependent upon each other. Over the years since the suffragists began the original feminist movement in the West, women have fought against sexism, classism, racism, war, and other forms of social injustice in various ways. With the evolution of the third wave of feminism, women and others have banded together to work in tandem against these forms of oppression, and have used modern technology to wage peace and justice in new ways never dreamed of by activists in earlier years. Though we still have a long way to go before the elimination of sexism is reached, feminism has, throughout its three waves, continued to create progress in society and destroy socially constructed gender constraints.Works Cited
Baumgardner, Jennifer and Richards, Amy. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and
the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Benjamin, Medea and Evans, Jodie. Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses
to Violence and Terrorism. Maui: Inner Ocean Publishing, Inc., 2005.
Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1981.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Jordan, June. Passion: New Poems 1977-1980. New York: Beacon Press, 1980.
Mitchell, Helen Buss. Roots of Wisdom: Fourth Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Thomas Learning, 2005.
Morgan, Robin. Sisterhood is Forever: The Women’s Anthology for a New
Millenium. New York: Washington Square Press, 2003.Jordan, June. “Poem About My Rights”. Feminist Resources for Women and Girls. July
10, 2007. <http://womensstudies.homestead.com/poemaboutmyrights.html>.The Third Wave Foundation. 2006. July 9, 2007. <http://thirdwavefoundation.org/>.
