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It’s been five years since Beyoncé first sang to us about who runs the world. Now, in 2016 – 241 years after our Declaration of Independence was signed – Hillary Clinton made history as first female presidential nominee.
The glass ceiling that has kept women silent, in line and subdued is cracking. Like a frozen lake thawing for spring, Hillz, Queen Bey and an army of other female leaders are pounding on the icy surface.
As we celebrate this great moment in history, we also need to look backwards to completely understand its significance. The strides we are making for women everywhere are a tradition passed down to us through a lineage of mothers, sisters, aunts and women before us.
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We are the #WomenThatDo. So celebrate with us here at ENTITY as we look back at a history of the women’s liberation movement in the U.S. Here are seven facts every woman should know about the fight from her sister suffragettes.
The term “women’s liberation” was first used by Simone de Beauvoir in her 1949 book “The Second Sex,” which is considered one of the most influential pieces of feminist writing in the world. To understand the history of women in America, we first must recognize that women’s liberation is the umbrella title used to talk about the rise of feminism throughout the U.S. and the world. The term “women’s liberation” is complex and possesses a long history.
Typically women’s lib and feminism are broken up into three categories or “waves.” The first wave of feminism refers to 1830 to early 1900s, the second refers to 1960s to 1980s and the third refers to the 1990s to present day. Each wave of the movement focused on different issues facing women in America and each wave has successes and failures that contributed to the story of the female struggle for equality in America.
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First-wave feminism is also known as the Suffragette Movement. The first movements made towards equality in the 1800s and early 1900s were made to establish equal political power for women. Women during these time also sought to be acknowledged as independent beings from their husbands. The key arguments of the first wave of feminism were to fight the denial of wages, money and property to married women, to fight the lack of access to education and professional careers and to fight the lesser status assigned to women in almost every arena of public and private life.
Additionally, our first wave foremothers also fought for a woman’s right to vote, which was guaranteed by the 19th amendment in 1920.
The Seneca Falls Convention began on July 19, 1848 in New York, making history as the first women’s right convention ever held. The two-day convention saw the creation of the Declaration of Sentiments, which was styled after the Declaration of Independence. This women’s declaration outlined the grievances of women across the country and declared that all men and women are created equal, a novel idea at the time.
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Following the Seneca Falls Convention, other conventions began springing up in major cities around the U.S. as women fought for sexual, reproductive, political and economic equality. These women fought with the impassioned belief that women had something important to contribute to society besides being wives, mothers and homemakers.
Second-wave feminism is also known as the Women’s Liberation Movement. The second wave made strides towards equality in the 1960s to 1980s. It fought for female equality in the professional and domestic spheres, family and reproductive rights and for freedom of female sexual expression. Women during this time disagreed with the “nuclear family” as the ideal situation for women. They also fought to banish the unjust treatment of women in the workplace, in school and in their personal lives. Additionally, women tried to secure divorce rights and legalize abortion.
It is during the second wave that the feminist movement first splintered into two different “political parties.” Liberals and conservatives found themselves united in the fight for women, but divided on different social issues.
Also, the second wave of feminism argued that sex and gender were independent of each other. Sex, to them, was biologically defined while gender was socially defined.
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The second wave of feminism saw legalizations and court cases that would change the trajectory of women’s lives forever. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 saw the “end” of discrimination in the work place based on sex. The Supreme Court ruling of Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 saw the legalization of birth control for married couples while the 1972 Supreme Court case Eisenstadt v. Baird saw the legalization of birth control for the unmarried. The 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States and ended up being one of the greatest victories for women during this time.
Third-wave feminism is also known as the movement for Global Feminism. Starting in the 1990s and continuing to present-day, the third wave has pushed the boundaries on what it means to fight for the rights and equality of the sexes around the world. It has also taken a front seat in forming pop culture and ideology over the last 20 years. Laura Brunell for Encyclopedia Britannica explains, “Third-wave feminists sought to question, reclaim, and redefine the ideas, words, and media that have transmitted ideas about womanhood, gender, beauty, sexuality, femininity and masculinity, among other things.”
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Third-wave feminism fought to end the marginalization of women, the systemic violence, oppression and sexual abuse of women and men around the world. It also sought to bring unity to divided feminist “parties.” Celebrating women in history and the acknowledgement of the body of work of women in academia, music, cultural movements and history were also major focuses of the third wave.
Third-wave feminism is a unifying and inclusive movement that champions individuality. The third wave is about finding an individual place in a larger crusade.
Women and men are now free to identify themselves as feminists on their own terms and in their own way. No two people’s feminisms mean the same thing, and the range of opinions and issues is as diverse as the women around the world who are fighting for it.
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