ABSTRACT
Women’s activism is often characterized as occur-ring in “waves”; that is, it seems very strong at times, and then it seems to fizzle out, much like the crashing of waves in the ocean. The use of the waves metaphor is controversial because some historians see continuity between different periods of activism by women. However, many scholars use the wave concept because it is a useful way to describe women’s activism throughout U.S. history. The period characterized as the first wave of women’s activism began in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention and ended in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The major focus of the first wave was to expand not only women’s rights, most notably that of suffrage, but also other legal rights, such as the right of married women to own and inherit property and the right to divorce. The period encompassed by the second wave of women’s activism is far shorter, running from the 1960s to the early 1980s. The second wave also made legal gains for women, such as legalized abortion and federal legislation banning sexual discrimination, but it also sought equality for women in everything from a shared division of child care and household labor to equal pay for equal work. Finally, the third wave of women’s activism is still occurring. While the first two waves of women’s activism took a similar shape with large public demonstrations, the founding of national organizations, and a relatively focused agenda, the third wave is less direct, and for a good reason. Participants in the third wave see women’s issues as only part of their social activism and are as likely to focus on cultural methods of change as they are on the political process.
