Feminism and Post-Feminism
In terms of the history of feminism, modern feminism can be split into three waves. First-wave feminism arose in the 19th - early 20th Century, with issues mainly focused on equal contract, parenting, marriage and property rights for women. By the end of the 19th Century, there were various pieces of legislation passed in both the UK and America, like the UK's Custody of Infants Act 1839, giving women the legal right to have custody over their children. One of the largest feminist movements during this first wave was the suffragette movement in the UK, fronted by figures like Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, and Emily Davison, most famous for throwing herself in front of King George V's horse at the Epsom Derby.
The second wave of feminism began in the 1960s and currently co-exists with the third wave of feminism, which I will go through later in this post. Second-wave feminism largely concerns itself with problems of gender discrimination and how to end that. The rise in usage of birth control and women's sexual rights was also a key factor of this second wave. In 1964, Betty Friedan released a book called "The Feminine Mystique", aiding in voicing the discontent American women felt as housewives. Within ten years of the book being published, women made up more than half of the total percentage of the First World workforce. Second-wave feminism also brought attention to the issues of marital rape and domestic violence, the latter of which still sadly sees cases to this day. In America, this area of the movement is seen to have ended during the 1980s through disputes over sexuality and pornography which formed part of the third wave of feminism.
Third-wave feminism, the most recent incarnation of the feminist movement, began in the 1990s and is still ongoing to this day. This part of the movement has been more concerned with issues of sexuality, celebrating it as a means of female empowerment and challenging female heterosexuality, as well as challenging the politics in general of the second wave and the movements involved behind those. Post-feminism also comes into this third wave, used to describe a range of viewpoints on feminism since the 1980s. Although these post-feminists are not "anti-feminist", they believe that women have achieved their second-wave goals, whilst being critical of the third-wave goals. An example of this movement in music is the "riot grrl movement", born in the 1990s through the grunge movement, with notable artists being Bikini Kill and Hole. Below is a video for Hole's 1998 single "Celebrity Skin", where lead singer Courtney Love talks about the stereotypes of how women are expected to act and look in showbusiness.