Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
FIRST WAVE FEMINISM [late 18th early 20th cc.] = womens organized
social & political movements militating for emancipation:
primary demand: women should be recognized as equal with men in every
respect (sociopolitical & economic) so as to stop womens (political)
oppression the right to SUFFRAGE;
expansion of womens religious activities, opening up new religious roles.
SECOND WAVE FEMINISM [the 1960s-1970s]:
context: the legal & civil equalities previously granted to women had not
been enough to eliminate the oppression of women reorientation of
liberal feminism towards economic equality for women;
it took a strongly self-reflexive, theoretical & critical turn, expressing
itself in militant feminist theory & politics;
primary concern: consciousness raising so as to make women demand
that they be recognized as different from men in order to stop womens
oppression theoretical diversification of feminism (e.g. Black
feminism, lesbian feminism, etc.);
internationalization of feminism; (First World feminists) issue: global
sisterhood;
institutionalization of feminism in the academy & other fora (e.g. the 1st
U.N. Decade of Women: 1975-85).
FEMINIST WAVES
FIRST WAVE FEMINISM [late 18th early 20th cc.]
SECOND WAVE FEMINISM [the 1960s-1970s]
THIRD WAVE FEMINISM, POWER FEMINISM, POSTFEMINISM (
the end of feminism), etc. [from the mid-1980s onward] = feminist forms that
have emerged from the ongoing contest over the meaning of feminism:
a more self-critical theorizing than second-wave feminism, fuelled by
contemporary theory (psychoanalysis, poststructuralism [generally
postmodernism] & postcolonialism), which also affected the development
of gender studies that, in turn, had evolved out of womens & feminist
studies;
context: the challenge by black feminist theorists to mainstream,
predominantly white feminism;
concern: sexual oppression cannot be eliminated without also addressing
racial & economic oppressions
accepting a multiplicity of feminisms, linked to theoretical reflections on
femininities as well as masculinities;
Africana womanism & Third World feminism: critique of the universalizing
claims of white First World feminism;
some forms of third wave feminism are a conservative reaction to second
wave feminism.
FEMINIST THOUGHT: thematic classification
liberal
radical (libertarian & cultural)
Marxist-socialist
psychoanalytic & gender/cultural
existentialist
postmodern
multicultural & global
ecological
2. to serve as useful teaching tools: they help mark the range of different
approaches, perspectives & frameworks a variety of feminists have used
to shape both their explanations for womens oppression & their
proposed solutions for its elimination.
Most schools of feminist thought favour a relational view of the
self. In their respective explanations of womens oppression
feminists focus on:
womans otherness enables individual women to stand back & criticize the
norms, values & practices that patriarchy seeks to impose on everyone,
particularly those who live on its periphery