A Primer on Women's Rights

Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign broke new ground for women hoping to crash the ultimate glass ceiling - securing the office of the President of the United States. While Clinton's campaign showed that a woman could run for President (and be taken seriously), the race also highlighted the continued struggles within a women's movement that began over 200 years ago with the work and activism of proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. From Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman published in 1792, to the passage of the 19th Amendment, to the January 20, 2007 announcement of Clinton's bid for the Presidency - there exists a deep historical struggle for women trying to voice their concerns for equality and be considered more than "second-class citizens."

Historically, women's rights can be defined as legal equality for women in the realms of voting, property, relationship and economic status, education and employment opportunities, reproductive rights and access to political positions. Most women's rights activists would agree that, despite significant gains throughout the 20th century, women have yet to achieve full parity with men in all of these arenas.

The First Wave: Seeking Legal Equality

The history and growth of the women's movement in the United States is best viewed through the lens of what are termed the first, second and third waves of the feminist movement. The first wave is identified mostly by the women's suffrage movement, starting with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and ending with the passage of the 19th Amendment - which granted women the right to vote - in 1920. In addition to suffrage, the major issues of this era included other forms of legal recognition, including access to higher education and employment and equal property rights.

The Second Wave: Domestic and Personal Rights

The second wave began with protests against the 1968 Miss America Contest, when feminists staged demonstrations to bring national attention to the emerging Women's Liberation Movement, and continued into the late 1970's with the Take Back the Night candle light street vigils protesting violence against women. Second-wave feminists expanded the concepts of feminism into factions of radical, socialist, and cultural feminists' movements, most of which still exist today. With a legal right to vote already achieved by the suffragists, this generation focused on obtaining affordable childcare for working women, financial independence within marriage, combating domestic violence, challenging patriarchal beauty standards, and earning the right to a safe and legal abortion. Two major legislative moments from this period were the Equal Rights Amendment legislation and perhaps the signature legal achievement of the time - the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling - that overturned all state and federal laws outlawing or restricting abortion.

The Third Wave: A World Already Changed

A new generation of feminists known as the third wave of the women's movement emerged in the early 1990's. After battles with conservatives in the early 1980's, some of the gains made by second wave feminists were overturned, and feminist activists faced an increasingly hostile environment. The creation of groups like the political action group EMILY's List, which supported pro-choice Democratic women running for office, and the Guerilla Girls, which worked to expose sexism and racism in popular culture, fueled the rise of third-wave activism. Perhaps the event that sparked it all, however was the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas in the late 1980s, during which Anita Hill became a feminist cause célèbre.

Answering to criticism that the second wave was overly focused on the concerns of well-off heterosexual white women, third wavers added racial and social inequality and sexual identity to the mix. Groups such as the Third Wave Foundation, which works toward gender, racial, economic, and social justice and the underground feminist punk movement launched by Riot Grrls, and the concept of girlie feminism as seen in action by the Spice Girls all contributed to the broad definition of the third-wave feminism seen at work today.

Identity Crisis?

The expansive list of issues housed under the umbrella of feminism in recent decades has made it difficult for women's organizations and feminists to call upon a unified agenda. Compounding this problem of expansion is that many modern-day women do not self-identify as feminists, even if they espouse some of the beliefs of the movement.

Archetypal issues, however, remain at the crux of the women's rights movement, such as the protection of reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, the lack of female elected officials, challenging harmful beauty stereotypes, and challenging societal roles of men as breadwinners and women as homemakers.