a. First Wave Feminism
The earlier period dating from at least the mid to late nineteenth century up until about the 1920s, became First Wave Feminism. The concern of The First
Wave Feminism is women’s attainment of equality with men. It struggles to gain the right of women in political aspects such as gaining political identity for
women, legal advance, and public emancipation. Therefore feminist analyses and campaigning centered on securing legislational change Philcher Whelehan,
2004: 52. It is supported by Maggie Humm in Feminism: A Reader who stated that
First Wave Feminism created a new political identity of women and won for women legal advances and public emancipation. The struggle for the vote, and the
later battles for family allowance, contraception, abortion and welfare rights, twists around several axes: women’s domestic labor, the endowment of
motherhood, protective legislation, and women’s legal status 1992: 14. James Philcher and Imelda Whelehan in Fifty Key Concepts of Gender
Studies also stated their point of view about First Wave of Feminism. According to them, the Fist Wave Feminist movement is also a means that brings change to
against Public Patriarchy via the struggle for the vote, access to education and the profession, right to own property, and the legal rights for women in marriage and
divorce 2004: 53.
b. Second Wave Feminism
Second wave feminism is a term used to describe a new period of feminist collective political activism and militancy which emerged in the late 1960s.
Whereas the first wave lobbied for women’s enfranchisement via the vote and access to the professions as well as the right to own property, the second wave
feminism talked in terms of ‘liberation’ from the oppressiveness of a patriarchal society. Second wave feminists were committed to building a body of knowledge
which specifically addressed the ways in which women have historically been marginalized, both culturally and socially Philcher Whelehan, 2004: 145.
In the first moment women are objects, sometime victims of mistaken social knowledge. In the second moment women are challenging that ‘knowledge’
from the strength of their own experience Humm, 1992:11. Yet what remains constant throughout both waves of feminism is the idea that women are unequal to
men because men create the meaning of equality. Humm, 1992: 13.
c. Third Wave Feminism
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