Riding the waves
"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute."
Feminism has a tendency to be sliced and diced. We have slices like radical feminism, liberal feminism and eco feminism; we have Black feminism, cultural feminism, socialist feminism, Marxist feminism and even post modern feminism. Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to explore some of the reasons why the movement has splintered, what the benefits are - and why it’s a problem. To do this, we need to start with the way feminism has developed over the last couple of centuries, and it’s convenient to do that by looking at the waves of feminism.
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What we now refer to as “first wave feminism” wasn’t called that at the time, because, of course, those who engaged in it thought that it would get the job done. It refers to the fight principally for suffrage and opportunity for women, running from the early nineteenth century to the 1930s, or so, at least in the UK & USA.
The period from 1914-1945 saw much of the world at war, and the treatment of women - particularly in the workplace - was affected by this, and other external events. Liberal values, for example, resulted in movements to end slavery, improve the lives of children and factory safety, and extend the voting franchise more widely. There is certainly an argument, however, that despite the efforts of the suffragettes, women’s emancipation (as voters, employees and in such things as more practical clothing and hairstyles) was as much a result of the ways individual working class women contributed during the First World War, and the work of (often lesbian) feminists to explore women’s oppression.
Another significant impact on working class women’s lives - and as we saw previously, a driver for liberal values - was the rise of the middle classes, and the relative impoverishment of the wealthiest families as a result of death duties. In 1890 around a million women were in domestic service. Although the numbers remained high after the end of the First World War, conditions changed. Previously, servants had lived-in in large houses, but as bigger houses downsized, opportunities arose to work in middle class households, often to support a woman who worked, and living-in became less common. A live-in servant had very few opportunities to develop an independent life; however ‘daily’ maids, cooks and nannies, while still performing stereotypically women’s roles, lived in their own homes and experienced the world in a less dependent and constrained way.
It wasn’t just domestic service that changed. Factories for consumer goods and fashionable clothes (and, during both wars, materiel) needed workers; mechanisation reduced the importance of male bodied strength, and women filled the production lines. Educated women also found employment in secretarial roles - prior to 1914 these roles had been traditionally male - and in other professions, such as nursing, now professionalised, and in previously male preserves such as teaching, social work, journalism and the law.
Having the means to escape (if only temporarily) the patriarchal conveyor belt from dependent daughter to dependent wife led to a form of consciousness raising, as women met one another socially. Socialising outside the home needed venues. The birth of the Lyon’s tea room in the UK gave single women places they could meet without scandal, and provision of women’s lavatories ended the urinary leash for many. On top of this, a golden age of cinema going not only entertained women but raised expectations and spread modern fashion and dance.
In the global north, almost all (white) women were given at least a basic education. Women’s magazines took off, and feminist texts, such as ‘A Room of One’s Own’, were written and read. These educated, economically and socially emancipated women also gained more control of their fertility. Marie Stopes published the first book about contraception, “Married Love” in 1918; many servicemen had learned about condoms (known as ‘French letters’ until the 70s) while on service in Europe. It wasn’t ideal, but there were at least possibilities for some women to limit their baby-making.
So, by 1945, most women in the global north had achieved access to paid employment, some right to their own property, and choices beyond domestic servitude, married or not. They had less restrictive clothing, friends, places to go and, of course, the vote. A majority of voters were now women: with all that political power, no one would blame them for thinking they were home and dry.
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So where did it go awry? The backlash came at the end of the Second World War. Some theorise that Western men, either emboldened by their success in the war or goaded by failure, sought to reassert their dominance, especially over semi-professional careers. Others suggest that a pent up lust for family making was the cause. Still others point to the consumer boom and consequent idyllic suburban dream. It was probably an emergent combination of all of these; but whatever the cause, the years from 1945 to 1964 saw a boom in baby making and the re-emergence of demanding feminine stereotypes.
You could look at other symptoms, but fashion is an interesting illustration. The 1920s saw the rise of the ‘flapper’ - a misogynist term, yes, but descriptive of a style of dress far removed from the corsets and hobble skirts of 1914. Women cut their hair in short bobs, or even the androgynous Eton crop. Shoes were low heeled, manly brogues were worn, and the fashion was for a flat chest and slender hips. Women in Western Europe wore trousers and some even smoked. They were practically theybies.
Contrast this with Dior’s ‘New Look’ and the fashions that followed in the fifties. Skirts got longer and fuller. Women were encouraged to cinch in their waists with corsets, wear voluminous petticoats, and totter in high heels.
Bras emphasised an hourglass silhouette, some even having strategically placed buttons to show a faux pert nipple to a prudish but salacious world.
Hair was elaborately coiffured, often bleached baby blonde, and makeup emphasised femininity with plump red lips, pale, powdered skin and exaggerated cat-eyes. The icon of the age was Marilyn Monroe - ironically a troubled, sensitive and intelligent woman forced into the mould of a wide-eyed, open mouthed, empty headed sex kitten.
The metaphor is clear. Yes, women had the vote. Yes, men knew what a woman was. She was the one they’d look after, and keep at home, trussed up, to look decorative, fulfil their sexual needs, and make homes and babies.
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The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. This concept is key to understanding second wave feminism, and its distinction from the first wave. First wave feminism focused on public rights - giving women the right to vote, property ownership rights, education and employment. Second wave feminism recognised that these rights had not delivered fairness, equality of outcome or fulfilment for women.
Feminists began to unpick the reasons as early as the 1940s, with Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex leading the way. She observed that men were seen as the default human, while women were ‘other’, strange. Women’s lives are seen in terms of men, with heterosexuality the norm and women’s biology seen as revolting and inferior, which, of course, she refutes. There are many criticisms to be made of de Beauvoir’s work, not least that (ironically) she writes about women almost as if they were another species, and one she doesn’t like. But her work was groundbreaking in unravelling that women are not inferior as a result of their biology, but rather unable to be anything but inferior because of the way they are treated on account of that biology.
While we are on the subject of criticism, by the way, her enigmatic, famous, opener, ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ was destined to cause a world of trouble. Thanks, Judith Butler.
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Second wave feminism drew on de Beauvoir’s work, but it built on the first wave’s achievements and, like first wave feminism, it was shaped by events. Significant events at the time included the Cold War and later Vietnam, contributing to a reinvigorated left wing university based political movement, the Civil Rights movement, the consumer boom which opened up opportunities for women in the workplace, and two pharmaceutical developments - antidepressants and the contraceptive pill.
The second wave focused not on broad public rights, but on how women could liberate themselves from the prison of the expectations and limitations of femininity. Betty Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique’ (1963) is widely credited as sparking the movement. She observed, quite accidentally in the course of another project, that many of her classmates from college were now leading what they felt to be quite unhappy, often medicated, lives as housewives. Her exploration of the reasons laid bare much of the backlash we’ve observed: fewer women in careers, those careers less well paid, more women as full time housewives, and women becoming gradually less broadly educated. Many women were existing on the lower rungs of Maslow, with few opportunities for self actualisation. She tore apart Freud, women’s magazines created by men, and the idea that women were on a preordained track to motherhood while men had a choice. Friedan was followed by feminists like Gloria Steinem, who founded Ms magazine.
Alongside this, other, slightly younger, mainly university based women were working with the New Left, engaged in anti imperialist protest, opposition to American interventions in other nations and the civil rights movement. Authors such as Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millet, Germaine Greer and Anne Koedt were all published in 1970, for instance. But all was not well on the left, where misogyny reached shocking heights. Millet, tired of being asked to stuff envelopes and campaign on the promise of rights jam tomorrow, took her chance. Speaking at a meeting of the New Left in 1971 she raised women’s rights. She faced a barrage of sexual abuse, with yells of ‘take her off stage and fuck her’. No wonder that this group broke away to become the radical feminists. Distrust of the men on the left has never gone away.
Second wave feminism collectively made considerable gains for women of the global north. Most countries introduced equal pay and equal opportunity legislation. Women-run organisations and rap groups helped to raise women’s consciousness of their common plight, and to recognise that frustrations they experienced might not be as a result of their personal choices but the constraints of the political framework in which they lived. Women-run magazines and publishers catered to feminism and to women’s desire for fulfilled lives. The sexual revolution allowed women to control their fertility but also to express their sexual needs, whether heterosexual or lesbian. Premarital sex and unmarried relationships became more accepted. Abortion was made more available in many countries. Divorce became simpler, less stigmatised and less financially destructive for women.
All this was sorely needed. It is hard to believe that the very first women’s refuge in the UK was set up by radical feminists, and not until the 1970s.
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The roots of the discord that prevails among feminists today can be traced, in part, back to those which ground the second wave to a halt in the 1980s. Three particular strands of disagreement emerge.
One, is a criticism made of the first group of second wave feminists, often called Conservative feminists. Their work was mostly applied in America and tended to work most for career women; it broadly accepted the structures within which women lived but sought a fairer deal for women (and despite the name ‘conservative’, you might recognise this as liberal feminism). As such, it was seen as feminism that favoured white, middle class, able bodied women. It failed to take into account the standpoints of working class women, lesbian women and especially women of colour, whose experiences were not simply of a superadded axis of oppression but wholly different. Intersectionality will crop up again in third wave feminism.
Second, the radical feminists in particular sought an end to pornography and prostitution - and came perilously close to success. Many women on the left, where radfems were situated, resented this. They saw it as curtailing their own freedoms to enjoy particular sex acts, making or watching pornography and indulging, if they wished, in prostitution or sex work. They also wanted to be free to support those who were prostituted to continue safely. This ‘sex positive’ or ‘choice’ feminism will also crop up again.
Finally, second wave feminists identified that the means of their oppression was the set of societal expectations placed on them by the stereotypical demands of ‘gender’. Radical feminists sought to unpack and remove these demands, including by separatist movements. But to what extent is experience of this oppression formative of being a woman? Can a woman even be, if she escapes them, when one is not born, but becomes, a woman? Does anyone else who experiences these stereotypes thereby become a woman? I think you know where this schism is heading.
As someone who never studied feminism, I am really learning a lot from your posts. Thank you.
Very informative post. As a man and not a fan of feminism it went a long way in softening my views. I was surprised that the pill and tampons were more prominent in the freedoms gained by women. This was just a comment, I don’t wish to debate a post that I found very helpful.