Third Wave Feminism And Gender Equality

Throughout the years, the feminist movement has ebbed and flowed. It typically flows with a specific goal in mind, such as women’s right to vote, or official legal inequalities. Third-wave feminism is ignored because many people are under the impression that first- and second-wave feminism accomplished all there was to accomplish, and that men and women now stand on equal footing across the board. Unfortunately, quite often the only people aware that we still lack inequality are those who are treated unequally. Because of this, third-wave feminism is often assumed to be fighting for women to be raised above men, or it is viewed as unnecessary. One of the largest misconceptions among feminism is that it is no longer necessary because we have …show more content…
This is unfortunately not true, as many people experience different prejudices that are all interconnected. From this, we have created the study of intersectionality, which explores these intersections between systems of discrimination. As Patricia Hill-Collins points out, people cannot analyze oppressions in categories, that this event is because one is black, but that this oppression is only because one is a women.[CITATION] The oppression one experiences is because they are a black woman, or a homosexual woman, or a poor disabled white …show more content…
For a long time, I was under the impression that while yes, women don’t earn as much as men, and yes, men still attempt to control our bodies, we were making our way to change, and that given a little more time things would even themselves out. The millennials are after all, pushing for progressive change very loudly, which led to me naively assuming that given a few more elections and some time, we could have accomplished really all that needed to be accomplished in the United States. I also assumed that feminism wasn’t needed so much here as it was in the other countries. This class has made me realize that I was thinking this way because I personally have so much privilege compared to many other people. I am white, abled, and my parents are well off. I had a good childhood, being told all the while that of course I would go to college, I could be anything and do anything I wanted. Of course I could be a scientist. Of course I could be president. I was not so naive to not realize that I was lucky, but I did not realize how lucky I