● Summarize the theoretical foundation of gender.

● Discover how feminism started and its contribution in the attainment of gender and
development goals.

● Define feminism and identify its theoretical foundation.

● Explain the contributions of feminists during the first wave of feminism.
● Highlight the challenges and achievements of the second wave feminists.
● Determine the contributions of the third wave feminists.
● Outline the significant events happened during the fourth wave feminism.
● Present the events, dates and people who contributed to the introduction and development
of feminism in the Philippines.

Listed below are names/ concepts related to feminism. Identify and write under the column on the
table those which you think belong to each of the four waves of feminism.
1. Martha Lear 6. Radical Feminism 11. Diana Diamond 16. Post-colonial feminism
2. Ecofeminism 7. Online Feminism 12. Socialist Feminism 17. Gender and Development
3. Marxist Feminism 8. Black Feminism 13. Clara Zetkin 18. Alice Walker
4. Liberal Feminism 9. Ecofeminism 14. Mary Wollstonecraft 19. Francois di Eaubonne
5. Jennifer Baumgardner 10. Woman Question 15. Patriarchy 20. Indigenous Experiences
First Wave Second Wave Third Wave Fourth Wave
 D. Key Concept

I. Definition of Feminism
Feminism
⮚ an awareness of women’s oppression and exploitation in society, at work and within the
family, and conscious action by women and men to change the situation.
⮚ means agitation on women’s issues and rights.
⮚ “women’s movement” of various groups working for the advancement of women’s position,
mainly in the form of campaigns for equal rights and legal reforms.
⮚ the changing situation of women in society.
⮚ originated from the French word “femme”, meaning woman.
⮚ it became a common usage in Europe and United States from the 18th century to the present.
Feminist Principles
1. Women as agents and creator of knowledge.
2. Perspectives of women on a wide range of topics and issues that affect women’s lives.
3. Emphasis on social action – toward change that benefit and empower women.
4. Analysis, examination and questioning of given and mainstream discourses from women’s
perspectives.
II. Feminist Theories

⮚ born out of the women’s movements during the French and Industrial revolutions.
FIRST WAVE (1830-early 1900)
⮚ the term first-wave was coined in March 1968 by Martha Lear writing in The New York
Times Magazine.
⮚ focused very little on the subjects of abortion, birth control and overall reproductive rights of
women.
⮚ there was a notable connection between the slavery abolition movement and the women’s
rights movement.
1. Liberal Feminism
⮚ it builds on a Western liberal political and philosophical framework that idealizes a society in
which autonomous individuals are provided maximal freedom to pursue their own interests.
⮚ human beings are basically good within themselves.
⮚ human goodness comes from the use of reason, knowledge and free will.
Liberal philosophy coming from:
a. Rene Descartes who believed that all women had the ability to be educated.
b. John Locke who wrote that women are equal with men in state of nature.
c. Marquis de Condorcet who proclaimed women’s equal right to citizenship and education
 Early advocates of Liberal Feminism
a. Mary Wollstonecraft - equality of the sexes, education as key to equality and independence
b. Olympe de Gouge - women’s ability to reason and make moral decisions, women not the
same as men but equal, women have the right to speak
Two main gender implications:
1. Women have reason, knowledge and free will.
2. Provide the conditions for women’s rights and participation in all levels of society,
reproductive rights, choices, education, work and legal protection.
Gains from Liberal Feminism
1. The concept of women’s rights to higher education, suffrage, employment protection and
safety.
2. Awareness of the woman question- Violence against Women (VAW), discrimination, and
unequal status.
Critique against Liberal Feminism
1. Still largely a middle class perspective.
2. Does not give attention to patriarchy and capitalism and their complicity in the woman
question (political/economic blindness).
3. Still uses the male standards to which women measure themselves (being equal to men).
2. Marxist Feminism
⮚ builds its analysis of the woman question on the reality of social classes because of unjust
distribution of resources and opportunities like education and employment.
⮚ women’s oppression is equated with that of the oppression of the masses like the workers and
peasants.
⮚ women’s participation in the struggle against class oppression will bring about their own
liberation.
Gains from Marxist Feminism
⮚ sees women as a work force (human resource) both in employed work and house work.
⮚ places importance in incorporating women in an organized workers’ movement.
⮚ gives importance to the social/material roots of women’s oppression-socio economic
inequalities and political discrimination of women.

Critique of Marxist Feminism

⮚ instrumentalizes women – women as work force not women as persons.
⮚ despite recognition of the value of housework, it still takes secondary importance to
employed work.
⮚ simplistic equation of workers’ liberation with women’s liberation.
⮚ still male-oriented in its perspectives.

Early Marxist Feminists

1. Clara Zetkin
2. Rosa Luxemburg
3. Alexandra Kollantai
 SECOND WAVE FEMINISM (1960s-1970s)
⮚ focused on the issue of idealization of domesticity and motherhood and liberation through
socialist struggle.
⮚ the movement used class action lawsuits, formal complaints, protests, and hearings to create
legal change.
⮚ the outlawing of gender discrimination in education, college sports, and obtaining financial
credit.
⮚ the banning of employment discrimination against pregnant women.
⮚ the legalization of abortion and birth control.
⮚ and the establishment of "irreconcilable differences" as grounds for divorce and equalization
of property division during divorce.
1. Radical Feminism
⮚ by defining women as beings whose primary functions are either to bear and raise children or to
satisfy male sexual desires (biological determinism).
⮚ the liberation of women requires the dismantling of patriarchy, particularly male control of women's
bodies.
⮚ sees patriarchy (i.e., the systemic oppression of women by men) as the root of women’s
subordination in sex- specific ways.

Critique of Radical Feminism

1. Tendency to be a-historical – there has been no moment in history that women and men were not
together.
2. Tendency to be amoral – setting aside the moral sensibility of culture and society.

Gains from Radical Feminism

1. Courage to deviate from norms that expand social and ethical parameters.
2. Support of research and reproductive technologies to free women.
3. Support for other sexualities and gender preferences.

Radical Feminists
1. Audre Lorde
2. Alice Walker
3. Adrienne Rich
4. Mary Daly

2. Socialist Feminism

⮚ integrates women’s issues with economic and political concerns of the lower classes – workers,
peasants and the poor.
⮚ places importance in an independent women’s movement.
⮚ gives social value and importance to women’s work – social support for women at home.

Critique of Socialist Feminism

a. Problem of prioritizing – which comes first woman question or social issues.
b. Strong ties to its Marxist beginnings – still very male oriented.
Socialist Feminists
a.Voltairine de Cleyre
b. Emma Goldman
c.. Zillah Eisenstein

3. Ecofeminism

⮚ a term coined by François d’Eaubonne in 1974.

⮚ reaction to the Bacon and Newton’s scientific revolution that views nature as feminine – mysterious,
beautiful, bountiful, and dangerous, thus in need of control, taming and submission to reason
(exemplified by male).
⮚ combines the goals of ecology and feminism.
⮚ it sees women’s oppression as connected to man’s irresponsible and uncaring exploitation of nature.
⮚ woman is associated with nature for nature’s (moon) cycle plays out in her body.
⮚ its alternative to the woman question is to link women’s struggle for liberation with taking care of
and restoring nature.
⮚ it affirms ecological principles as supportive of women:
a. interconnectedness of all life,
b. all life forms have equal value;
c. death of one specie endangers the other;
d. diversity and difference guarantees life.

Gains from Ecofeminism

a. Recognition of patriarchy as a state of mind and behavior that subordinates not only women but
also the natural environment.
b. Expands women’s struggles beyond personal individual to a cosmic-ecological dimension.
c. Values women’s socio-cultural role in conserving and protecting nature.

Critique of Ecofeminism
a. Actual practice of ecofeminism tends toward esoteric, middle-class and romantic notions.
b. Its strong tendency to become apolitical and retreat to new age ‘spiritualism’, back-to-nature
practice.
c. Difficult balancing between human needs and ecological needs, between development and
ecology.

4. Intersectionality
⮚ the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they
apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent
systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
⮚ illustrates the interplay between any kinds of discrimination, whether it’s based on gender,
race, age, class, socioeconomic status, physical or mental ability, gender or sexual identity,
religion, or ethnicity.
⮚ the complex, cumulative manner in which the effects of different forms of discrimination
combine, overlap, or intersect.
⮚ discrimination doesn’t exist in a bubble.
⮚ different kinds of prejudice can be amplified in different ways when put together.
 THIRD WAVE FEMINISM
⮚ refers to several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the
history of feminism are a subject of debate, but are generally marked as beginning in the
early 1990s and continuing to the present.
⮚ the movement arose partially as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against
initiatives and movements created by second-wave feminism during the 1960s, '70s, and '80s,
and the perception that women are of "many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and
cultural backgrounds.
⮚ the shift from second wave feminism came about with many of the legal and institutional
rights that were extended to women.
⮚ in addition to these institutional gains, third-wave feminists believed there needed to be
further changes in stereotypes, media portrayals, and language to define women.
⮚ third-wave ideology focuses on a more post-structuralist interpretation of gender and
sexuality.
⮚ based on the critical evaluation of texts, otherwise known as deconstructive theory, to expose
cultural biases in the structure of language.
⮚ more associated with art and literature.
⮚ regards race, social class, transgender rights, and sexual liberation as central issues.

1. Post-Colonial/Third World Feminism

⮚ is a form of feminism that developed as a response to feminism focusing solely on the
experiences of women in Western cultures.
⮚ originated in the 1980s as a critique of feminist theorists in developed countries pointing out the
universalizing tendencies of mainstream feminist ideas and argues that women living in
non-Western countries are misrepresented.

2. GENDER and DEVELOPMENT (GAD)

⮚ focuses on the development of “the capacity to do” and “the capacity to be” of individuals.
⮚ focuses on women’s practical and strategic gender needs.

3. Black Feminism
⮚ holds that the experience of black women give rise to a particular understanding of their position
in relation to sexism, class oppression, and racism.
⮚ incorporated and made sense of how white supremacy and patriarchy interacted to inform the
particular experiences of enslaved black women.
Gains
a. Incorporation of indigenous experiences.
b. Critique how the West controlled, exploited and used women’s experience in their colonial agenda.
c. Highlights not just patriarchy and sexism but also how race, ethnicity, religion among others
oppress women.

Critique
a. It divides the feminist movement and women.

FOURTH WAVE FEMINISM

⮚ Jennifer Baumgardner dentifies fourth wave feminism as starting in 2008 and continuing into the
present day.
⮚ iIn her view fourth wave feminism was inspired partly by Take Our Daughters to Work Days,
incorporates online resources such as social media.
⮚ FOCUS: services and inspired after-abortion talk lines, pursuit of reproductive justice, plus-size
fashion support, transgenderism support, male feminism, and sex work acceptance; and led to
developing media including Feministing, Racialicious, blogs, and Twitter campaigns.
⮚ Diana Diamond defines fourth wave feminism as a movement that combines technology, politics,
psychology and spirituality.

1. On Line Feminism
⮚ using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and other forms of social media to
discuss, uplift, and activate gender equality and social justice.
⮚ According to NOW Toronto, the internet has created a "call-out" culture, in which sexism or
misogyny can be called out and challenged immediately with relative ease.
⮚ This culture is indicative of the continuing influence of the third wave, with its focus on
micro-politics and challenging sexism and misogyny insofar as they appear in everyday
rhetoric, advertising, film, television and literature, the media, and so on.
⮚ This has impacted how companies market to women so that they are not "called out" for
sexism in their marketing strategies.
Characteristic
a. the increased focus on intersectionality, including the repudiation of trans-exclusionary
radical feminism and a focus on solidarity with other social justice movements.
b. include individuals who are uncomfortable with the word feminism, because of
"assumptions of a gender binary and exclusionary subtext.
c. pro-sex

Feminism in the Philippines

⮚ The first women’s movement, Feminista Filipina was established in 1905 with the aims of
proposing prison reforms particularly on behalf of minors and women, visiting factories and
shops that employ women and men with the view of recommending reforms to labor and
work for reforms in the education sector.
⮚ The period of the 60s was a time of social and political upheaval. The worsening conditions
of poverty and economic injustice, and after the declaration of Martial Law in 1972, of
political repression, awakened an unprecedented social awareness and social involvement.
⮚ The First Quarter Storm gave a rich harvest of political activists. It was during this period that
women’s organizations with a feminist perspective began to appear.
1. Malayang Kilusan ng Makabagong Kababaihan (MAKIBAKA)-founded in 1970 but had
to go underground when Martial Law was declared.
2. Kilusan ng Kababaihang Pilipino (PILIPINA)
3. Center for Women’s Resources (CWR)
4. Katipunan ng Bagong Pilipina (KABAPA)
5. Samahan ng Makabagong Kababaihang Nagkakaisa (SAMAKANA)
⮚ After the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, more groups came up such as:
1. Women’s Alliance for True Change (WATCH)
2. Women for the Ouster of Marcos and Boycott (WOMB)
⮚ In 1984, the Concerned Women of the Philippines (CWP) called for a consultation of the
existing women’s groups to work out a common orientation of a Third World Women’s
movement. In this consultation, a federation of women’s organizations called General
Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Liberty and Action
(GABRIELA) was formed.
⮚ The women’s movement has continued to grow. Many more women’s organizations of
different ideological orientation and political lines have sprung up.
⮚ Service offices such as crisis centers, legal bureaus, migrant women centers, women’s health
services, etc. have been established.
⮚ Women’s Studies have been introduced in colleges and universities.
References
Philippine Commission on Women. Articles on Feminism. https://library.pcw.gov.ph
Institute of Women’s Studies (IWS) training materials
Women and Gender Institute (WAGI) training materials
Institute of Women’s Studies, St. Scholastica’s College. 2004.Ecofeminism Reader. ProQuest Publishing Inc.
Bhasin, Kamla and Khan Nighat Said.2003. Some questions on Feminism and Its Relevance in South Asia.Philippine
Edition.ProQuest Publishing Inc.
Mananzan, Sr. Mary John, OSB. 2006.The Woman Question in the Philippines. Institute of Women’s Studies, Manila.Philippines.
Rampton, Martha.2015. Four Waves of Feminism. Pacific University Oregon.https://www.pacificu.edu.

Activities and Assessment

A. Task at Hand: Short Film Review

Watch in the Youtube the following short film, analyze and make a critique on the issues presented.

1. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911

2. 1912 Bread and Roses Strike

3. The Roaring Twenties

B. Make a concept map on the theories of feminism and discuss in your own point of view how did they contribute to
the attainment of GAD goals.

Reflection

❖ Answer this question comprehensively.

Post – Test
Listed below are names/ concepts related to feminism. Identify and write under the column on the
table those which you think belong to each of the four waves of feminism.
1. Martha Lear 6. Radical Feminism 11. Diana Diamond 16. Post-colonial feminism
2. Ecofeminism 7. Online Feminism 12. Socialist Feminism 17. Gender and Development
3. Marxist Feminism 8. Black Feminism 13. Clara Zetkin 18. Alice Walker
4. Liberal Feminism 9. Ecofeminism 14. Mary Wollstonecraft 19. Francois di Eaubonne
5. Jennifer Baumgardner 10. Woman Question 15. Patriarchy 20. Indigenous Experiences

First Wave Second Wave Third Wave Fourth Wave