Third Wave Feminism Essay

Doctor Robert Parker of Yale University identifies three major waves of feminism. First wave feminism was driven by a goal of establishing women’s rights. I like to think of this wave as our Humanization wave. Women were fighting for the right for basic human rights such as the right to vote, opportunities for education, and entitlement to property. The driving factor of this wave was to look to women as a human being not anything less. Women that are embedded in this wave were confined to the rules of their husbands thus being docile bodies of the home. They cooked, cleaned, did their husbands dirty laundry, and made babies. De Beauvoir would consider these women under the unessential “other” the women who have very little voice and say in

Women embedded with the Sisterhood wave revolted against their once confined roles to embrace themselves as intelligent, sexual, and powerful creatures of God. These were the warriors of femininity: the ones willing to lay it all on the line to feel a sense of liberation as a female community. Theses women become so frustrating with the conditioning of their bodies to be docile they ended up dooming themselves to their own inwardness. Third wave feminism is rooted in the variety of women as equals to all genders. I identify this as the Coequal wave. Woman are not placing themselves on a higher elevated scale than men but to simply be accepted as equals no matter what race, nationality, or gender differences (149-150). These three waves are still alive and thriving in our world today, however, they are far from working in a cohesive manner in a patriarchal society. Theorist Simone De Beauvoir writes in her manifesto “The Second Sex”, “Men need not bother themselves with alleviating the pains and the burdens that physiologically are women’s lot, since these are “intended by Nature”

Red is the prison’s head chef and Norma is her sidekick. Both women are in prison due to the pressures of their husbands to maintain a certain role. Red’s husband was involved in the Russian Mafia thus making her conform to the roles of a “mafia wife” that is to be quite, be helpful, and above all be respectful. Red eventually is forced to be a drug mule for the mafia landing here in jail for life. Norma on the other hand was involved with a cult leader who forced woman to marry him to make the cult larger. Norma is a mute character due to the continuous oppression by this man leading her to a complete psychotic breakdown and pushing her husband off a cliff to his death landing Norma in jail for life. Both women were once fighting for basic human rights within their own lives. Both were never looked to as an influence in a highly oppressed patriarchal society. They were women who were forced to play the historical roles of the “lady of the house.” De Beauvoir writes, “We can see now that the myth [of woman] is in large part explained by its usefulness to man. The myth of woman is a luxury. It can appear only if man escapes from the urgent demands of his needs; the more relationships are concretely lived, the less they are idealized” (1271). Simply, these women were oppressed to play the historical role in their home life in order for their husbands to feed his needs. They are just a pawn in the