HEGEMONIC FEMINISM WITH CONSIDERATION OF THE HISTORICAL WAVES

THAT DROVE THE PHENOMENON AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO

INTERSECTIONALITY
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
Thesis statement...............................................................................................................................3
Definitions and Brief History...........................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION

Thesis statement

There is certain stereotype classification of the word feminism/feminist and the image created
especially in the minds of men is that of ‘a women with aggression towards men’ or someone
out to destroy masculinity (Friedman, Metelerkamp and Posel, 1987). However, Nina Gibson
(2019) suggests otherwise that, feminism is not about fighting for superiority of women but it
is about everyone being equal irrespective of their race, gender and sexual identity. (Gillis,
Howie and Munford, 2004) supports the view that, “feminists concerned themselves with
broader social relations”. The paper will discuss the concept of hegemonic feminism with
consideration of the different historical waves that drove the phenomenon and how it relates
to the concept of intersectionality using the non-imperical information gathered from different
scholarly articles, books and other ‘reliable’ website.

Definitions and Brief History

For the purposes of this essay, a definition is borrowed from Ngwainmbi (2004) that,
feminism is “variety of interrelated frameworks used to observe, analyse, and interpret the
complex ways in which the social reality of gender inequality is constructed, enforced, and
manifested from the largest institutional settings to the details of people's daily lives”.
Furthermore, Intersectionality is defined as, a theory used to analyse and understand the
complexity in the world and people especially the many dynamics that work together and
influence their social inequality experiences (Collins and Bilge, 2016).

The first two waves of feminism occurred in the two centuries of 19th and 20th (i.e. 1830 –
1990s) with the initial wave being characterised by the civil rights and women’s rights to vote
(Kemp and Squires, 1997) and