Feminism is a collection of ideologies that form a socio-political movement with a common objective to fight for women's rights and achieve equality in social, political, economic and personal issues vis-a-vis men (Hawkesworth, 2006). The movement has
fought and continues to fight for women’s right to work, to earn equal salary with men, to vote, own property and hold high leadership positions, to name a few. They also work to enhance the bodily integrity and independence of women, seeking protection from sexual harassment, rape, and domestic and gender violence (Echols, 1989). Feminism campaigns are forces for societal change in western cultures where many women have almost but not equal rights with men. Although the initial focus of feminism was to empower women, modern concepts on the same model now include male liberation with regard to traditional gender roles (Hooks, 2000). The Feminist movement has its roots in traditional Greece and has developed in three stages, leading up to modern day feminism. Although, there is agreement on the three waves that explain feminism, there is no consensus in the literature on explaining the nature of the waves in relation to the era before the late nineteenth century.
The first wave occurred in the late 19th and early 20th century in the US and UK and had a focus on equal rights for women in owning property, parenting, marriage and the workplace. Later, the feminist movement fought for political involvement over issues of reproductive, economic and sexual rights, which became key concerns (Freedmand, 2003). The era was characterized by efforts to achieve women’s suffrage in Britain, New Zealand, South Australia and Australia in 1918, 1893, 1895 and 1902, respectively (Phillips, 2004). In terms of suffrage, the focus was on liberating women from traditional roles often associated with household chores. The first wave was eventually superseded by the second wave of feminism, which came into being to describe a newer and expanded movement focusing on socio-cultural and political inequities on a wider scale (Flexner, 1996). This second wave of feminists proscribed the marginalization of women, which they declared to be retrogressive in nature and discouraged those practicing it.
The second wave began in the 1960s and endured into the 1990s. This new phase unfolded during a period of anti-war and civil rights agitation, coinciding with a growing self-consciousness within a number of disparate minority groups around the world. The New Left was in the ascendancy, as the voice of the second wave grew increasingly radical. During this time, the issues of sexuality and human rights came to the fore in many countries, as activists devoted all their energies to lobbying for change in legislation concerning equal rights for citizens, gaining social equality for all.
The launching of this (second) phase is often associated with the protests against the Miss America beauty contests held in Atlantic City in the late sixties. Feminists accused the organisers of holding a degrading "cattle parade", reducing women to sexual objects as viewed by a patriarchy that insisted on confining them to domesticity or to dull, low-paying jobs. A radical movement founded in New York known as the Redstockings put on an alternative pageant, crowning a sheep as Miss America and throwing what they labelled as typical articles of female oppression such as underwear, high-heels, makeup and false eyelashes into a dustbin.
The second wave of feminism was, in some ways, unfortunate to emerge at the same time as a number of other significant social movements, resulting in its being marginalized and perceived as less of a priority than, for example, Black Power or efforts to end the war in Vietnam. Feminists confronted this situation by forming women-only and "consciousness raising" groups. They adopted an increasingly more complex and theoretical dialectic, based on neo-Marxism and psycho-analytical theory in order to ascribe the subjugation of women to traditional and dated notions of patriarchy, capitalism, normative heterosexuality and women’s roles in society. In so doing they redefined the terms sex and gender, denoting the former as biological in nature, and the latter as a social construct that may vary from culture to culture and over time.
This second wave of feminists were quite different from their first wave counterparts of who tended to be almost exclusively white, middle-class women from the developed world. The second wavers comprised women from different ethnic backgrounds, some of whom came from the third world, seeking to join forces with their western sisters, claiming "Women's struggle is class struggle." They purported to identify women as a social class in its own right in order to proclaim that notions of race, class, and gender were all inter-related. They placed great emphasis on ridding society of rampant sexism, which could be found in such innocent places as children's cartoons as well as in the highest levels of government.
One of the consequences of the rise to prominence of this second wave was the concept of women-only spaces in women worked together to create a superior dynamic that was not deemed possible when working with men.. They promoted themselves as women who were more humane, collaborative and inclusive than men.
They also felt that they were more peaceful, nurturing, democratic, and holistic when dealing with issues due to their long "subjugation" and their biological nature. They popularized the expression “eco-feminism” to highlight their claim to have a biological connection with the Earth and the lunar cycles, and to postulate that they were natural advocates of environmentalism.
The third wave of feminism rose to prominence during the 1990s, influenced by post- colonial and post-modern ideas, which inspired the new woman to revisit long- established feminist views on universal womanhood, body identity, gender, sexuality and heteronormativity. Veterans of the first two waves were shocked to see their younger counterparts reassert their femininity by wearing lipstick, high-heel shoes and low-cut necklines exposing their cleavage, which they had always associated with male oppression. Pinkfloor expressed this new stance by proclaiming that sexuality and intelligence were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
The so-called "grrls" of the third wave promoted themselves as strong and empowered, rejecting victimization and redefining women as participants in a sexual revolution rather than as objects of a sexist patriarchy. They mimicked the language of sexism, appropriating derogatory terms such as "slut" and "bitch" in an effort to subvert sexist culture and emasculate its verbal barbs. They used the Internet as an important tool of "girlie feminism." They used E-zines to create a new form of women-only space, crossing gender boundaries and encouraging experimentation and creative thought. The third wave adopted a more ambiguous persona refusing to think solely in terms of "us-them." Most contemporary third-wavers refuse to call themselves "feminists" adjudging the term limiting and exclusionary. The new feminism is more global and multi-cultural in outlook, and rejects earlier feminist constructs of identity, gender, and sexuality. Its contrarian dialectic leads it to celebrate diversity in terms of ethnicity, class, sexual orientation which are celebrated and recognized as dynamic, situational, and provisional. In sum, third wave feminists believe in breaking boundaries (Rampton, 2015)
Today's views on the achievements of feminist movements show significant progress in realizing the second wave goals but still far from meeting the third wave feminist goals. Although women are not anti-feminism, they appear to challenge the ideologies of the second and third wave terming them as unrealistic and in some cases
impractical in today's society and this heralds the post-feminism period (Wright, 2000). Post feminism grew out of the 1980s and 90s from publications labelling second wave feminism as a gigantic entity (Amelia, 1994). Modern day notions point to a blaming narrative where women are maligned for fighting to achieve gender equality and the very rights they were fighting for have turned against them (Chunn, 2007). Although these views are evident in developed countries, many developing countries, particularly in the Arab world, still crave for female empowerment to the level of the westerners, at least at the third wave level.