Feminism

Thanks to stereotypes, many people see feminism as something that angry women like to scream about. While there are certainly plenty of extreme feminists, the idea behind the feminist movement is simply that the female are not inferior to the male. Feminism is not about keeping men down, it is about promoting women and their right to equality. In history, feminism had went through three periods.

The first wave refers to the feminist movements of the 18th through early 20th century, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. The first-wave feminism sought equality in property rights, changes in the marriage relationship, and, eventually, in women's suffrage, or women's right to vote. In Britain, the first-wave ended when suffrage was granted to some women in 1918 and to all in 1928. In the United States, first-wave feminism was considered to have ended with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1919) granting women the right to vote.

The second wave of feminist activity began in the early 1960s and lasted through the late 1980s. The second-wave feminism, also sometimes called women's liberation, focused on discrimination and on cultural, social, and political issues and was built on what had been achieved in the first wave. Simone de Beauvoir, the author of The Second Sex was always associated with this wave because of her idea of women as "the other". This idea was adapted to apply not only to the gender roles of women in the household or at work, but also their sexuality. It is Beauvoir who set the tone for later feminist theory.

In the early 1990s, a movement, now termed as the third wave of feminism, arose in response to the perceived failures of the second wave. It addresses feminism across class and race lines. The third wave was criticized as less reactive due its less concentration on particular issues. Rather, it had a greater focus on developing the different achievements of women in America. The feminist movements as such boomed during the third wave, which incorporated a greater number of women who may not have previously identified with the dynamics and goals that were established at the start of the movement. Though criticized as merely a continuation of the second wave, the third wave made its own many unique contributions.

As a movement, feminisms produced a deep transformation in American society and enlisted a large number of participants. Underlying the specific conflicts in political economy and culture, feminisms made gender issues matter like never before to activists on all sides of the issue and to millions of other ordinary citizens. In the years of the movement women accomplished many of the goals they set out to do. They won protection from employment discrimination, inclusion in affirmative action, abortion law reform, greater representation in media, and equal access to school athletics, congressional passage of an equal rights movement, and so on.

The idea that women are grounded in culture rather than biology is also agreed by many males. Some of them even out spoke support for women's issues and feminist causes. One of these men is Barack Obama. As a senator from Illinois, he helped pass numerous bills for women's rights, including laws combating violence against women and the expansion of the equal pay legislation to include over 330,000 women at work. The other is John Lennon, who made women's rights a top concern after meeting his wife Yoko Ono. They collaborated on many songs about feminist issues, including "Woman" and the "grown-up version".

Now our society is undergoing great reform including the gender roles. Househusband or female CEO are not something rare any more. Owing to feminists great efforts, the social status of women has been largely improved. Will there be an era when women rule the world? No one knows.