In both the past and the present, feminists have often been involved with other movements advocating social change, such as abolitionism, anticolonialism, or the civil rights movement, and have developed very diverse ideas about the intersection among their various aims. (For more on modern women’s rights movements, and women’s actions in reform and revolutionary movements, see Chapter 8.) The variety within both historical and contemporary feminism makes it a difficult word to define to everyone’s satisfaction, with the ideas of some types of feminists regarded by others as not especially positive for women. Some ecofeminists, for example, view women as more caring and environmentally conscious because they have the possibility of motherhood, while others see such ideas as dangerously close to the old notion that “biology is destiny,” which has often been harmful to women. The diversity within feminism has allowed its opponents to highlight the ideas and activities of more flamboyant groups, such as those women who allegedly burned their bras at a Miss America competition, in their criticisms. (This story was, in fact, invented by a reporter, but it has had a very long life.) Such characterizations have led some who oppose gender inequity to reject the label feminist while still advocating women’s rights, a position expressed in the phrase “I’m not a feminist, but . . .”
Feminism has also continued to change. The 1990s brought “third-wave” feminism, a word coined by the American writer Rebecca Walker (1969–) to describe the feminism of her own generation, which incorporated new currents. As part of their emphasis on women’s power to shape their own lives and the culture around them, third-wave feminists have reclaimed derogatory words for women. Riot grrrl punk bands and grrlzines, important parts of third-wave feminism, supported women’s music, art, and sexual expression. The editors of Bitch magazine, which began publication in 1996, provided (and continue to provide) feminist analysis of pop culture. At the time, some feminists wondered whether “girl” and “bitch” were not best left unreclaimed, but 20 years later in the 2017 Women’s March over seven million women around the world donned pink “pussy” hats, the name taken from the resemblance of the top corners of the hats to cat ears, and in reference to recently-elected US president Donald Trump’s widely reported 2005 remarks that because he was a “star,” women would let him “grab’em by the pussy.” It was the largest single-day protest in the history of the United States and perhaps the world. Third-wave feminism has emphasized intersectionality and diversity, with calls to “decolonize feminism,” and increasing attention to the ideas and actions of African, Asian, Latin American, Caribbean, and Indigenous feminists, as well as those of nonwhite populations within North America, Australia, and Europe.
Some analysts see a fourth wave of activism starting in the 2010s, again with a wide variety of concerns: sexual harassment, gender violence, reproductive rights, workplace discrimination, rape culture. The #MeToo movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment, begun by activist Tarana Burke, has sought to empower women to come forward by demonstrating just how widespread the problem was; it spread internationally, prompting survivors to share their stories and in some cases leading to high-profile firings of abusive men or those who enabled a hostile work environment. In Latin America, highly visible movements emerged from Mexico to Argentina raising awareness about gender violence; spreading access to social media mobilized regionwide support for the anti-feminicidio campaign and protests such as the #NiUnaMenos women’s strikes and demonstrations (Figure 2.2). Much of this activism was intersectional, such as the March for Black Trans Lives in Brooklyn in June 2020, which drew 15,000 people, all wearing white, to protest violence and harassment of transgender people. Around the world, feminists now use digital and social media to organize, share ideas, and accomplish their aims (sometimes derisively termed “hashtag feminism”), but also protest the widespread misogyny of online culture.
Figure 2.2 #NiUnaMenos March in Lima, Peru, 2016.
This march in Lima, reportedly the largest protest in Peruvian history, was one of many demonstrations organized as part of #NiUnaMenos (not one less), a Latin American feminist campaign against gender-based violence. Wikimedia Commons. Source, Lorena Flores Agüero.
However they have chosen to label their ideas, and whatever wave they happen to be in, over the past century and a half many people have worked to transform ideals of greater gender equity into laws. These have allowed women to keep their wages and own property, vote and hold office, obtain divorce on an equal basis with men, and receive equal pay for equal work. Laws have allowed gay and trans people to marry and adopt children, join the military, and not lose their jobs because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Such laws sometimes resulted from changes in widely held attitudes, but sometimes they anticipated widespread social change and were the result of changes in ideas among elites or conquerors. Laws were passed against veiling in Turkey in the 1920s and Iran and Uzbekistan in the 1930s, for example, because the leadership of these countries came to view unveiled women as a symbol of modernity, not because of popular pressure. The Soviets forced through laws against veiling and polygamy when they took over Islamic areas in Central Asia.
When the impetus for legal change came from outside an area or from an elite group, laws were often difficult to enforce. The 1931 Civil Code in China, for example, outlawed arranged marriages and concubinage, but it was not followed in rural areas for decades. Though such lack of compliance comes in some instances from entrenched norms of gender hierarchy, in other places laws were (and are) ignored because women did not view them as beneficial. The 1956 Hindu Succession Act in India, for example, theoretically gave women equal rights to the inheritance of any property their parents themselves had acquired. Its provisions have been scarcely followed, and women have not taken cases to court to assert their rights to property. This is not because they do not know about the law, are too passive, or are too guided by older notions of propriety, but because they seek to optimize their own economic and emotional needs and promote family stability and affections. When they do seek their rights in the courts, the decisions follow the law, but are often expressed in terms of older customary provisions regarding the protection of women and not the newer language of rights.
Sometimes the introduction of new norms can have contradictory results. In post-Soviet Russia, increased interaction with the West has led to greater awareness of egalitarian ideals and practices, but also greater sexism, especially in terms of pornography and the exploitation of the female body in advertising and popular culture that had been forbidden in restrictive and puritanical Soviet culture.
In many parts of the world, the emphasis on the individual in Anglo-American feminism is seen as misguided or even destructive; advocates for women, such as the scholar Ifi Amadiume in Nigeria, point to high levels of poverty and isolation among Western women, especially after divorce. Activists for women’s causes in these areas express their goals in terms of the needs of women and men rather than their rights, and stress the benefits gained by the family and community when women are given greater opportunities.
Because of these differences in emphasis, international measures promoting greater gender equality are always worded very carefully. The 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) did describe discrimination against women as a violation of “the principles of equality of rights and respect for human dignity,” but it was also careful to stress the effects of such discrimination on families, society, women’s countries, and all humanity, and not simply on the women as individuals. As of 2021, CEDAW has been ratified by 189 countries, though not Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga, and the United States; some of those that have ratified it have exempted customary, family, and religious law, however, which lessens its impact considerably.
In the first part of the new millennium, ideas, norms, and laws regarding gender appear by some measures to be very resistant to change: a majority of people in India approve parent-controlled marriages; a majority of people in South America have negative views of women