Abstract
Feminisms are often described as having different phases, or waves, although it is important to note that these waves are not completely distinct from one another. While categorising feminisms into different waves may be a stereotypical approach, it serves as a useful framework for understanding the nuances and differences among various viewpoints. This article examines four distinct waves of feminisms, offering a novel perspective on gender normativity through the lens of the media used by thinkers to address the ‘woman question’ over time. The literature can be categorised into distinct waves: these include the literature produced during the first liberal wave of feminism, such as Wollstonecraft’s work, followed by the existential ideals expressed in radical feminist writings from the second wave, notably by thinkers like de Beauvoir. These ideas exploded under the postmodernist influence of the third wave, which sought to decolonise the movement’s concepts, as epitomised by the works of Moller Okin and Vergés. It is interesting to consider the emergence of a fourth wave of feminisms, particularly in light of the changing media landscape that encompasses both traditional and social forms. This evolution has allowed feminist issues to reach a broader audience. Ultimately, the article raises the question of whether it is time, as Halley suggests, to take a break from feminisms and contemplate what lies beyond the movement.
Contribution: This article presents original and novel insights into the relationship between media and women’s rights, particularly in the context of the emergence of the fourth wave of feminisms, and explores potential pathways forward.
Keywords: media; gender; feminisms; normativity; rights.
Introduction
The difficulty in defining ‘feminism’ lies in the fact that it is not ‘only a philosophical, political and a legal theory, but also a form of activism’ (Codling 2025:76).1 Accordingly, in agreement with Davies (2008), the present article refers to ‘feminisms’ in the plural:
[B]ecause the word ‘feminism’, in the singular, tends to suggest that there is a common theoretical approach shared by those who believe that women are marginalised and devalued in society. (p. 220)
A pluralistic notion of feminisms has long been encapsulated in the work of ‘intersectional’ thought, a term first coined in the late 1980s by Crenshaw (1989). In her book Feminist Theory: from margin to centre (1982), the late, great bell hooks proposed a definition that fought to end female oppression and that was inclusive of other categories such as racism, classism, imperialism, etc. Moreover, in Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides, Rivers (2017) affirms that ‘feminism(s) have always been characterised by a degree of internal disagreement and critique’ (p. 2). Due to the internal disagreement and critique within the movement itself, the term ‘feminisms’, in the plural, is used throughout the present article as it adequately signifies the ‘range of philosophical, political [and] social … projects [of feminist endeavour’s]’ (Harris 2000:1923).
Despite the pluralistic range of feminist endeavours, a common theme is that they all ask the ‘woman question’: a question that aims to reveal ‘disadvantage based upon gender’ (Selim Alkan 2012:167). In terms of a person’s gender, ‘we cannot think of womanhood or manhood as fixed by nature’, because ‘[p]eople construct themselves as masculine or feminine’ and, therefore, ‘[w]e claim a place in the gender order – or respond to the place we have been given – by the way we conduct our-selves in everyday life’ (Connell 2002:4). For example, in Gender Trouble (1990), Bulter affirms that ‘gender is the effect of our performances as female or male’ (Davies 2008:217). This is because, as with ‘other rituals and social dramas, the action of gender requires a performance that is repeated’ (Butler 1990:140). Butler, interestingly, asserts that the western belief in ‘opposite sexes’ is merely a projection of the modern cultural pattern of heterosexual couples onto the world (Connell 2002:33).
In terms of the disadvantages because of their sex experienced by women, historically, in the Old Testament of the Bible (1979) it was a woman, Eve, who was said to have been created from Adam (the first man’s rib), who ‘brought sin into the world by eating the forbidden apple’ (Walters 2005:18) which led to the fall and their exodus from the Garden of Eden. Families disposed of ‘unnecessary’ or ‘unmarriageable’ daughters by sending them away to convents (Walters 2005:6) or later had them ‘tried for witchcraft’ (ibid: 2005:13). Within society, women tend to assume the caring role for children and the elderly, a responsibility that typically occurs within the private sphere (Gilligan 1982). Even today women generally remain ‘lower paid; or, in the case of housework, not paid at all’ (Walters 2005:2) and in many social situations, including cheerleaders at an American football game, women are treated as marginal to the main action, or as just the objects of men’s desire (Connell 2002:6). The Bechdel test (1983–2008) in films and television, for example, measures whether at least two female characters have a conversation about something other than a man (see Selisker 2015). These points aside, some argue that today, feminisms are either dead or a dirty word. If indeed feminisms are still alive, the argument tends to go that they are outdated, retired or on their way out. Whether alive or dead, or on their way out, what are ‘feminisms’ and why are they still important?
To make sense of the movement, feminisms are frequently presented as having different phases, or waves, although none of these are totally distinct or isolated from the others. Indeed, as Watz asserts, ‘[t]he feminist wave metaphor implies, even if indirectly, that the most recent wave is an improvement upon the last one’ (2020:312). Stating that there are different waves of feminisms, while being a stereotypical approach, is a useful way to start to appreciate the nuances and differences between the various viewpoints. Generally, ‘[a] taxonomy of schools of feminist thought, such as the liberal, radical, cultural and postmodern is often identified’ (Sandberg 2021:87). The four waves of feminisms considered in the present article are: first wave, liberal feminisms; second wave, radical feminisms; third wave, postmodern feminisms and finally, the fourth wave, which I call ‘subjective feminisms’ because, today, it seems that almost every self-identifying woman has some sort of story of injustice to tell. These four waves of feminisms are considered within the present article, in turn, by first contemplating (in the form of providing a historical overview) the types of media in which these ideas played out: firstly, within literary classics; secondly, in the existential ideals which followed; thirdly, inspired by the postmodern explosion of ideas in books, films and television shows to, finally, the second part of the article which analyses todays influences from traditional broadcast and social media platforms and concludes by setting out some new trajectories for future academic feminist endeavours.
Part I: Historical overview
First wave: Liberal feminisms – Literary classics
First-wave feminisms primarily span from mid-Victorian times to the present, with the most vocal period occurring from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. These movements focus on exposing the barriers that exclude women from public life, epitomised by the quest for equality in employment, politics and the roles women play in society. During ‘the course of the 19th century, the vote gradually became central to feminist demands’ (Walters 2005:68). In agreement with Sandberg, a ‘[g]rasp of history allows us to know where we are going by showing us where we have come from’ (2021:12). In terms of the first wave of liberal feminisms, the female suffrage movement is an important part of the story in the fight for the equal treatment of women in society. In terms of considering women’s legal history, Rackley and Auchmuty assert that ‘the stories and narratives of women… are the building blocks of feminist legal history’ (2020b:889). It requires asking, ‘where are the women in this account?’, although Auchmuty and Rackley warn against unnecessarily ‘creating heroines’ (2020a:204). A feminist legal historical perspective, therefore, ‘requires including women’s stories, experiences, and voices [often hidden, ignored and silenced in dominant narratives]’ (Sandberg 2023:30). This is because unlike men, women could not own their own homes or be in control of their own money (until 1870 as established by the enactment of the Married Women’s Property Acts 1870, 1882 and 1893), nor vote in England until 1918 (as enacted in the Representation of the People Act).2
One of the key influences on the suffragette movement was Wollstonecraft who, in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women, famously wrote that ‘I do not wish them [women] to have power over men, but over themselves’ (1792:20). In her book, Wollstonecraft takes the crucial step of extending the rights afforded to ‘man’ to women. Essentially self-educated, Wollstonecraft, like so many inadequately educated girls of her time, found it hard to earn a living. This was predominantly because in her era women were decidedly ‘inferior to men, oppressed from birth, uneducated, and insulated from the real world’ (Walters 2005:33). At the time of her writing, other women – even some highly literate ones – were Wollstonecraft’s sharpest critics. Moore, for example, refused to even read her book because its very title was ‘absurd’ (Walters 2005:35). These criticisms aside, A Vindication of the Rights of Women ‘remains one of the foundation stones of contemporary feminism’ (Walters 2005). Wollstonecraft died in childbirth while giving birth to her second child, another Mary, who would grow up to write the gothic novel Frankenstein (Shelley 1818). A novel which tells the story of a monster that kills his creator and master, a narrative that some feminist readers interpret as reminiscent of a baby killing its mother during childbirth (Walters 2005:34).
During the first wave of feminisms, women in literature either published their work anonymously (Jane Austen 1811, 1813, 1814, 1816, 1818a, 1818b) or under pseudonyms, like the Brönte sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne as Currer (Brontë 1847), Ellis (Brontë 1847) and Acton Bell (Brontë 1849), respectively.3 In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, Woolf incisively questioned whether Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) could have been written even better had she not have had to hide her manuscript from visitors and servants, by covering it with blotting paper as, at the time, it was unbecoming for a women to be writing – in other words, to be thinking for herself (1929:80). This is why Woolf asserts that if women are to be writers of fiction, they need money and a room or space (whether physical or metaphysical) of their own. Woolf’s assertion reflects one of the most crucial aspects of liberal feminism, the interesting (and often contested) concept of the ‘public/private divide’. The public sphere, denoting the space engulfed with the political realm, where people deliberate and persuade public opinion(s), is largely seen as the realm of the male; in contrast to the private sphere, which is the realm of women and children (or the home world) (Codling 2025:79). However, in reality, our ‘lives are not splintered between private or public, personal or professional’ (Sandberg 2021:92). Both the qualities of time and money were epitomised by the ability of Helen Beatrix Potter to write over 60 books over the course of her lifetime, starting with The Tale of Peter Rabit (1902), leaving most of the property that she acquired in the Lake District to the National Trust for all to enjoy.4 Potter described herself as ‘anti-feminist’; however, she felt that she had not suffered from the assumed disadvantages associated with her gender (Walters 2005:71). More recently, Rottenberg (2018) coined the term ‘neoliberal feminism’, which potentially portrays feminism as ‘achieved’ when, in reality, aspirational women are expected to achieve an unrealistic equilibrium between their child-rearing responsibilities and their professional goals. This echoes the work of Freidan (1963), who famously stated that women ‘can have it all, just not at the same time’. Overall, what is fascinating about the literary works of women from the liberal wave is that they have endured the test of time (Worsley 2018), although the main criticism vested upon the liberal feminist endeavour is that its proponents ostensibly work within the existing system to remove its inequalities without necessarily questioning and ultimately changing the system itself.
Second wave: Radical feminisms – Existential crises
Although first-wave feminists made many remarkable advances for female equality, women still suffered discrimination. Second-wave feminists (who dominated discussions around the late 1970s and 1980s), called ‘radical’ feminists, attempted to address the societal structure in which inequality is perpetuated because they saw opposition on the basis of sex as the original form of oppression.5 Whether a society espouses liberal or socialist principles, the experience of women is one of relative economic deprivation, sexual objectification and personal violence by men. Interestingly, the term ‘radical’ does not refer to the ‘far-reaching’ or ‘extreme’ nature of this theory of feminisms, rather it stands for ‘going to the root or origin’ of the issue (see Davies 2008:240).
During the radical second wave of feminisms, rather than women simply having a physical or metaphysical space in the form of a room to conduct her writing as well as her thinking (as Woolf envisaged, above), psychoanalyst Milner envisioned that a woman could have a whole ‘life’ of her own. Milner was influenced by the work of Jung (who developed cornerstone psychological concepts, such as the ‘collective unconscious’ [1912], ‘archetypes’ [1902] and the process of ‘individualisation’ [1992]). Through the practice of writing, Milner found that she was able to access and finesse her own internal world. Milner was on a (mental, rather than physical) quest to find her own happiness. At the opening of her book, A Life of One’s Own, Milner states that she went through a period when it was gradually dawning on her that her life was not as she would like it and that it might be in her power to make it different. Milner wrote that she had assumed that the only desirable way to live was a male way, of objective understanding and achievement. Milner concluded her book with a ‘theory of bisexuality’. The theory that Milner proposed is mental or psychological, rather than about sexuality. She argued that there is no hierarchy between male and female sides of the brain, because both can co-exist, affirming that ‘every human personality is two-sided, that every man or woman is potentially both male and female’ (1934:16) and that there are ‘mentally opposite and yet complementary tendencies in each of us’ (1934). Milner discovered for herself that there is all the difference in the world between knowing something intellectually and knowing it as a ‘lived’ experience.
Furthermore, in her book, The Second Sex, de Beauvior (whose ideas were influenced by those of her lover, the existentialist Satre [1938], who was preoccupied with inner conflict and questions about the meaning of life) asserted that women are the ‘other’ sex, arguing that our construction of society, language and family all rests upon the assumption that the world is male and that women are excluded from these constructions. She famously wrote, ‘one is not born, but rather becomes a woman’ (1949:293). The structure of considering the various stages of girl to womanhood was later written about by Greer in her book, The Female Enuch (1970). The existential crisis of this wave of the feminist movement is accurately depicted in Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), for example, about living a life of false illusions either in the fantasy realm or examination of the self.
Later, influential radical feminist MacKinnon went on to argue that we can characterise the state itself as ‘male’. For MacKinnon, the primary methodology of feminisms should be ‘consciousness raising’, wherein women share their experiences and thus reveal or construct a specifically feminine point of view (1989:244). Mackinnon conceived of the term ‘sexual harassment’ (1978) in the workplace as sex discrimination. Her work is important because, under the radical perspective, women are said to be trapped in the ‘patriarchal system’ (Beechey 1979), unable to imagine another, different structure. For example, Davies asserts that ‘[t]he paradigm of heterosexuality in Western culture assumes a strong dominating man, and a weak submissive woman’ (2008:245). On the one hand, many writers (feminist or not) agree with MacKinnon and adopt ‘politically correct’ terminology to overcome the male preoccupation with ‘he’ in their writing by using the plural, stating ‘he or she’, ‘he/she’ or by redefining the concepts like the ‘reasonable person’, for example. On the other hand, some feminists disagree with Mackinnon’s grand-scale theorising: persons with African ancestry or those with disabilities also suffer at the hands of white or able-bodied people. Moreover, radical feminists are criticised for presupposing that there is one single ‘woman’s view’ of female oppression: the thought that all women are assumed to have the same experiences simply because they menstruate and have babies. The approach is additionally problematic strategically as it requires revolutionary change of the current system.
Third wave: Postmodern feminisms – Explosion of ideas
Third-wave feminisms are said to have begun in the 1990s and are currently ongoing. Proponents of the third wave of postmodern feminisms attempt to respond to the perceived failures of the movement and recognise that women belong to many ethnicities, classes, religions and cultural backgrounds. Arising out of the late 1980s and continuing through the 1990s, some feminists adopted a postmodernist philosophy that questions all ‘meta-narratives’ (see Lyotard 1984). Postmodern feminists accordingly affirm the idea that no one person can speak for all women. Consequently, concepts such as ‘equality’, ‘gender’ and even ‘women’ are treated with profound scepticism and essentialism, and the movement has exploded in the following three main ways.
Firstly, difference feminists argue that women should be treated differently from their male counterparts and therefore our societies should be transformed to incorporate a feminine way of thinking. As previously mentioned, in her book, In a Different Voice (1982), Gilligan showed how women’s moral values tend to stress responsibility, whereas men emphasise rights. She argued that women endorse an ‘ethic of care’ which asserts the morality of caring and nurturing. Gilligan’s theory has been criticised, however, for its essentialism: for treating certain human characteristics as natural. These criticisms aside, feminist legal theorists, for example, have used Gilligan’s insights to strengthen their argument that the law tends to reflect masculine values. In a similar vein, on the topic of ‘gender performativity’, Butler questioned ‘[i]n what senses, then, is gender an act? As in other ritual social dramas, the action of gender requires a performance that is repeated’ (1990:140). Butler transformed the study of gender by using poststructuralist concepts devised by Foucault (1966). Accordingly, a person’s ‘gender’ can be held to be ‘the effect of our performances as female or male’ (Davies 2008:217).
The most controversial site of difference feminisms today relates to a person’s sexuality. Historically, there have been points of tension between feminisms and theories concerning sexuality. The experiences of gay men and lesbians were marginalised by mainstream feminisms in the 1970s and 1980s. For example, although lesbianism has never been explicitly illegal in England and Wales, the relationship between law and lesbianism is a complex one (and is explored by the work of Hoagland 1988). In an attempt to overcome this, queer theories incorporate a range of approaches to critique liberal assumptions, such as the presumed normality of heterosexual family forms (see eds. Stychin & Herman 2000). Some thinkers now speak of the move from plural societies to the notion of plural identities (such as Davies 2008). Singers such as Sam Smith and Kae Tempest, for example, use the gender-neutral term ‘they’ to describe their identity, rather than the ‘he’ or ‘she’ terms used by those who conform to the cisgender community (see further the work of Faye 2021).
Secondly, another criticism directed at early second-wave feminisms is that they assume that there is a single feminine experience that predominately takes the position of white, heterosexual and privileged women to be the standard case. Not only do white feminisms ignore the issues of race, but they also ignore their own racial positioning, and their ideas are based upon a universalist approach to knowledge. Whereas Black feminisms assert that the experiences of black women, who were enslaved, differ from the experiences of their male and white counterparts. American law professor Williams (1993), for example, affirmed the advantage of using rights because of social positioning impacting the way people relate in the legal system. Williams combined legal analysis with personal narrative to criticise legal subjectivity. In line with this thinking, the work of Moller Okin et al. (1999) discussed the tenuous relationship between multicultural and feminist theories. In her response to Kymlicka’s (1995) liberal theory of minority rights, Moller Okin claims that women from cultural and religious minority communities, living in Western countries, do not have an adequate ‘choice’ (Satre 1938) and ‘autonomy’ (Kant 1797). However, since Moller Okin’s famous contribution to the literature on liberal multiculturalism, a great deal of nuanced and critical work has been written by postcolonial and multiculturalist feminists (e.g. see the work of Phillips 2007). French and Algerian feminist, Vergés, for example, criticises liberal feminisms for being intertwined with the white bourgeoisie. In her book, A Decolonial Feminism (2019), Vergés calls white bourgeois feminists ‘civilisational feminists’ because they ‘have inherited a lot from colonialism’ which ‘cemented the patriarchy’ (Bechiche 2021). She observes that civilisation feminists purport the ‘need to save these people from oppression … [turning] women’s rights into trump cards of neo-colonialism … [leading to] white saviourism’ (Bechiche 2021).6 Tinted with ‘orientalism’ (Said 1978), Vergés, for example, argues that civilisational feminists ‘confuse women’s liberation with unveiling’ Muslim women, as they have ‘turned Islam, into their new enemy, the main pillar of the patriarchy’ (Bechiche 2021). However, life is not as simple as a binary approach suggests; some women find themselves in an impossible position, having to choose between cultural, religious or gender equality.
In the alternative, proponents of the intersectional movement focus upon the experiences of Black women, combining several factors such as ‘gender’, ‘race’ and ‘class’ that cause injustices, all of which must be considered simultaneously (Crenshaw 1989, 1991)7 bell hooks (1982, 1984, 1989, 2015, 2016), for example, proposed a definition of feminisms that fought to end female oppression by being inclusive of categories such as racism, classism, imperialism, as well as others. However, Cho (2013), an American law professor who fought for the rights of Korean women in the 1990s, contends that the perspective must include broader voices of marginalised women in the ongoing process of development. Perhaps focusing on Ecofeminism is one way to achieve this goal, as it is a pivotal women’s movement that combines feminist ideals with environmentalism. Due to patriarchal oppression, the climate crisis is said to have the most impact on women and children, particularly those living in indigenous communities around the globe (Watt-Cloutier 2018).
Finally, building upon the call for an intersectional feminist approach to be undertaken, Bartlett’s (1990) notion of ‘positionality’ provides a useful tool, affirming that:
[T]ruth is situated in that it emerges from particular involvements and relationships. These relationships…define the individual’s perspective and provide the location for meaning, identity and political commitment. (p. 880)
Essentially, as truth is situated in our relationships with others, the notion of positionality requires researchers to seek perspectives other than their own and to think about them critically. Positionality is therefore a useful notion to consider in relation to feminist endeavours because a researcher following the stance acknowledges that they are unable to transcend their own perspective, but that they can improve upon it by stretching their imagination to identify and seek to understand the perspectives of others. For example, Tuhiwai Smith (1999) asks us to think about ‘shifting power’ in our research and reflective process. That researchers, or knowledge makers, continually become uncomfortable, not just through empathetic engagement with their subject(s), but by asking essential questions, such as who talks and who asks in the process? Whose knowledge dominates the process? Whose language is used as the medium of the process? Finally, how is the knowledge produced? The fundamental consideration is to be aware of spaces that can enable the research process – and that through this process, researchers’ own identities also become reshaped or transformed.
The explosion of postmodern ideas can also be seen as having played out on our screens. Growing up as a child, I remember watching Disney fairy-tale princesses receiving their ‘happily ever after’, with characters like Nala in The Lion King (1994), until the story in Frozen (2013) expanded the category so that a ‘sister’s love could be seen as the saviour of the day. Later, as an adolescent, I remember watching a powerful troupe of films in the late 1990s, including Clueless (1995), about the need for a girl to have a makeover, to straighten her hair, remove her glasses and wear the right dress to attract a boy. Notably, these films were directed by males. I remember, during my time at Sixth Form College, staying up late to watch American television shows such as Sex and the City (1998–2004), which was essentially about how professionally successful women living in New York city wanted and had sex lives just the same as men, which later turned into watching The L Word (2004–2009), about how women in Los Angeles wanted and could have sex lives even without a man being involved, followed by Girls (2012–2017), which was more like the ‘real world’ or ‘gritty’ version of Sex and the City. Then, Waller-Bridge’s introspective English television show, fearlessly played this out in Fleabag (2016–2019). I vividly remember one key line from the Winona Ryder version of the film Little Women (1994), the first time Louise Alcott May’s book was directed by a woman (Gillian Armstrong). Her character, Jo March, was working as a governess in New York at the time, in a scene where she is among a group of men, responds to the statement that she would have made a great lawyer or politician by saying: ‘Yes, I could have been a great many things [had I been a man]’; the implication being that she would have received an adequate education. Some years later, the importance of educating women was heartbreakingly explored in another film, actually entitled An Education (2009), starring British actress Carey Mulligan. The story centred around a Secondary School girl growing up in the early 1960s and getting involved with an older man. In the film, Mulligan’s character, Jenny Mellor, says to her Headteacher (played by Emma Thompson): ‘It’s not enough just to educate us, you have to tell us why you’re doing it’. Jenny’s statement emphasises the old African proverb that ‘if you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family’. Accordingly, the diverse approaches of postmodern feminisms, whether in terms of its ideas and influences or choice of media in books, films and television shows, should be seen as its strength because ‘the disagreements between feminists and apparent inconsistencies between feminism(s) can be seen as offering the opportunity to expand feminist debates’ (Rivers 2017:3). Overall, the historical overview provided in this part of the article solidifies the importance us being able to access a varied range of women’s voices and experiences that exist for different self-identifying women living within a multitude of societies.
Part II: The current position and future trajectories
Fourth wave: Subjective feminisms – The social media age
Even if a third wave of feminisms is contested, some argue that we are now living in the age of a fourth wave. That a renewed interest in feminisms has arisen out the ‘ashes’ of ‘postfememisims’ (Rivers 2017:1). The term ‘post’ feminisms denotes that there has been either an actual or structural shift towards the accomplishment of feminist goals and the work of postfeminists has been influential in the study of literature, popular culture, philosophy and law (see eds. Gozdecka & Macduff 2019). If a fourth wave indeed exists, the question is, ‘what is it about the fourth wave that’s new?’ (Rivers 2017:1). I contend that there are two significant aspects that the fourth wave brings to feminisms, these are: firstly, subjectivism and secondly, the use of social media. This is because the movement is epitomised by the rise of the #MeTooMovement and the use of social media platforms by its proponents.
Firstly, I term the current feminist wave ‘subjective’ feminisms because it seems that almost every self-identifying woman has some sort of story of injustice to tell. The fourth wave of feminisms is said to have begun around the 2000s and is characterised by the empowerment of women stemming from the #MeTooMovement that began in America, in roughly 2017 (sparked by the accusations of sexual abuse made by numerous women against public figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein),8 including the horrifying rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a London Metropolitan (met) police officer in March 2021. Injustice against women was further solidified by the Supreme Court of the United States of American decision of Dobbs v Jackson in 2021, overturning the constitutional right for women to have an abortion (previously established in the case of Roe v Wade in 1973) as well as the For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers case, decided by the Supreme Court of England and Wales, in April 2025, that the term ‘woman’ exposed in the Equality Act 2010 only refers to the biological sex of a person and not the gender that a person self-identifies as being.
Although the rights afforded to women appear to be disappearing, during this time, the telling of women’s stories has grown ever popular, and there is a growing market for women’s autobiographies or memoirs. For example, the success of numerous books from Moran’s book How to be a Woman (2011) to British chef, Hussain’s memoir entitled Finding My Voice (2019) and English comedian, Webb’s, male perspective in How Not to Be a Boy (2017). Combined with the recent box office success of the film Barbie (2023), Greta Gerwig became the first female to make over one billion dollars at the box office. In line with these developments, Academy Award-winning actress Reese Witherspoon established her production company, Hello Sunshine, in 2016, with the mission to produce television shows and films that created more opportunities for women within the entertainment industry, as well as telling the complex stories of women. Witherspoon’s production company has gone on to create hit films, like Where the Crawdads Sing (2022), as well as television shows, such as Big Little Lies (2017–2025). There has also begun an emphasis on capturing and showcasing the experiences of female indigenous documentary filmmakers, for example, the work of the Katahirine Network in Brazil, who provide women with training and equipment to capture and tell their stories.9
Secondly, in addition to the traditional forms of media that I grew up with, such as books, films and television shows, today’s feminists utilise social media platforms to raise awareness of gender inequality and advocate for change. The fourth wave is said to be predominantly ‘primarily online-based’ (Watz 2020:312) and utilises ‘social media based feminist activism’ (Rivers 2017:4) on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For example, Laura Bates’ Everyday Sexism encourages women to catalogue instances of sexism or discrimination they face in everyday life and has well over 230 000 followers on Twitter alone (Rivers 2017:7), as well as a growing array of influencers on Instagram, such as Florence Given (2024), who continue to advocate for women’s rights.
The rise of the celebrity feminist is also encapsulated in the emerging fourth wave; for example, Meghan Markle and Beyoncé publicly embrace the label ‘feminist’, although there have been some well-publicised ‘generation(tional) wars’ between female celebrities, such as Miley Cyrus and Sinead O’Connor (Rivers 2017:5). Notably, the actress Emma Watson acted as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations, in 2014, and launched an initiative called ‘HeForShe’ which affirmed that ‘[g]ender equality is [a man’s] issue too, because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mothers’. However, only men can sign up for the initiative via the website.10 Surely, women should be encouraged to support other women too, and the initiative could be renamed: ‘AllForShe’? Watson, interestingly, is said to currently be pursuing a doctorate in creative writing. On the topic of women in higher education, in Sweden today, women are more likely to attain a university degree than men. For example, in the academic year 2022–2023, women completed approximately 48 000 out of the total 72 481 degrees in higher education (statista.com). This has an effect upon the sharing of parental leave, as more women become the higher earner within heterosexual relationships.
Nowadays, there is a need to highlight the importance of the distinction between something being a ‘feminine’ issue and one that is ‘feminist’. Self-identifying as female, giving birth, having periods and wearing a hijab, for example, are ‘feminine’ issues because they are all limited to forming part of the female experience. Whereas the amount of maternity leave granted, the price of sanitary towels and tampons and whether wearing a hijab is prohibited from being worn are ‘feminist’ issues because these relate to the terms of legal or economic policies and power (more precisely, to the social structure of our society). Historically, anyone can be a philosopher (see Gramsci 1929). Today, everyone can be a feminist (epitomised in the book, Feminism is for Everybody, by hooks, 2015). This is because anyone can create a social media account, providing new territory open to almost every self-identifying feminist. The question is, what power will you give to your online voice? As eloquently depicted in the lyrics of the song by Palmer (2011), today: ‘[t]hey don’t know that we are the media’.
Conclusion: Future trajectories of feminisms
To gain an understanding of the future prospects of feminist endeavours, part one of the article provided a historical overview of the first three waves of feminisms, which is important because, as emphasised by Sandberg (2021), it is necessary to have an appreciation of where we have come from to know where we are headed. Feminisms are undeniably an essential part of the social history of women. In the fight for gender equality, we must appreciate the plurality of ideas and of feminisms as well as the different medium or media employed in the various waves. During the first liberal wave of feminisms, women (such as Wollstonecraft 1792) were fighting for equality between the sexes inside and outside of the public and private realms of society. From receiving an education to voting and workers’ rights to being able to articulate, express and share their hopes, dreams, desires and ideas (as Austen and the Brönte sisters importantly displayed in their literacy classics) required them to have a physical and metaphysical space our their own (Woolf 1929), perhaps even to making a living to support themselves, like Potter (1902) was able to do. Through advancements in the opportunities afforded to women during the first wave of feminisms we gained some of the greatest literary works produced in the English language. Following the second, more radical wave, feminists importantly attempted to make space for the historically underrepresented voices of women. I have termed the influence of this wave as an ‘existential crisis’ in the present article because of the introspection and search for meaning leading its proponents, such as Milner (1934) and de Beauvoir (1949) being influenced by the works of Jung (1912) and Satre (1938), respectively, to radically argue that our present patriarchal structures need to be torn down, renormalised and restructured (Mackinnon 1989). An explosion of influences and ideas can be shown in the third, postmodern perspective, of feminisms as more women received higher education, drew upon the works of contemporary thinkers such as Foucault (1966) and then entered into the workforce to inspire the following generation of feminists to engage with a diverse range of approaches, moving from capitalist (Rottenberg 2018) to de-colonial (Vergés 2019) and transgendered perspectives (Faye 2021), even expanding into environmentalist concerns (Watt-Cloutier 2018). Optimistically speaking, ‘the disagreements between feminists and apparent inconsistencies … can be seen as offering the opportunity to expand feminist debates’ (Rivers 2017:3).
The second part of the article went on to analyse the current position of the movement. I term the fourth wave ‘subjective feminisms’ because it is epitomised by the #MeTooMovement, which affirms that almost every self-identifying woman has some sort of story of injustice to tell. Rather than the importance and role of feminisms diminishing, because of more instances of structural injustice, the sharing and telling of women’s stories has become more crucial and popular than ever before. The number of women receiving higher education is starting to surpass that of men, and there is a growth of females in leadership roles (such as moving from being Academy Award-winning actresses to economically successful directors or producers). However, there needs to be greater awareness of the difference between feminine and feminist issues. Although there is an interest and appreciation in the importance of sharing a multitude of women’s voices and experiences online like never before, illustrating that, today, we are the media.
Overall, feminisms ensure that the experiences and voices of women are captured and heard. As an ideology, movement and form of activism the aim of this article has been to highlight how, throughout history and continuing to today, feminisms have been influenced by (as well as have influenced) the use of different forms of media ranging from literature, to music, theatre, films and television shows and now social media, as shown by the array of references included in the present article. Moreover, this novel analysis on the different forms of traditional and contemporary media provides a clear illustration of the ways that the voices and depictions of the female experience has been historically silenced because of women’s lack of access to education (experienced by women living in Wollstonecraft’s era), ability to have their writing published in their own name (experienced by Austen and the Brönte sisters). Over time, women were able to gain an education and enter the workforce, leading to the emergence of a broader range of voices being heard. More roles became available for women in films and television shows as well as being directed and produced by them. Today, anyone who is privileged enough to have access to the internet can share their thoughts and ideas on feminisms with other people in the world.
Although in the age of the fourth wave, women’s thoughts and views are accessible in a way like never before, several pertinent questions concerning feminist endeavours remain. For example, is there a right way to be a feminist? Feminisms are critiqued for essentialising the experience(s) of one type of woman who is white, middle-class, educated, etc., which seems elitist and at times voyeuristic towards the perspectives of others. Have feminisms, been replaced by an intersectional perspective? If so, have white feminists culturally appropriated the experiences of African-American women? Should the work of feminist scholars be incorporated into mainstream academia? If so, has the feminist goal been realised, and is it time to move on? Perhaps it is adequate to state that we are entering a ‘postfeminist’ period? However, do we mean ‘post’ as in the end, the death of feminisms? Or post as in being at a ‘post’-modern or ‘post’-structural point? All the inconsistencies and critiques of feminisms lead to the question of whether it is time we take a break from feminisms (as suggested by Halley 2008)? If so, how long do we take a break for? Instead, should we now speak in terms of the overarching role of ‘gender normativity’ in society? If so, would this adequately incorporate the range of feminine experiences and voices into the social structure of our society? The key question inspired by the themes of the present article for future researchers is: how can we best capture issues of gender normativity that affect everyone living within the modern technological age of our society?
Acknowledgements
Competing interests
The author declares that no financial or personal relationships inappropriately influenced the writing of this article.
Author’s contributions
A.R.C. is the sole author of this research article.
Ethical considerations
This article followed all ethical standards for research and does not contain any studies involving human participants performed by the author.
Funding information
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data availability
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings and content.
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Footnotes
1. The present article builds upon ideas featured in the ‘Feminisms’ section of the latest edition of the author’s book (2025) Thinking Critically About Law: A Student’s Guide. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Chapter 3: What is ‘law’: Thinking critically about legal perspectives, pp. 76-89.
2. It is interesting to note that New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote in parliamentary elections, under the Electoral Act 1893. For an artistic overview of the suffragette movement in England, see the feature film Suffragette (2015) directed by Sarah Gavron and starring Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep. However, that the film has ‘been widely criticized for a promotional photo-shoot that thoughtlessly ignored… important intersections’ between race and class (Rivers 2017:2).
3. See the television dramatisiation To Walk Invisible: The Brönte Sisters (2016) BBC Wales, which chronicles of the Brönte sisters battle publish their novels, which became some of the greatest in the English language.
4. The story of Beatrix Potter, author of the beloved children’s books is depicted in the feature film Miss Potter (2006) starring René Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.
5. See the feature film On the Basis of Sex (2018), starring Felicity Jones, about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s struggle for equal rights that lead to her nomination as a Supreme Court Justice in the United States of America and see further Mrs America (2020), starring Cate Blanchett and Rose Byrne, about the right against the Equal Rights movement in America during the 1970s.
6. The issue of the ‘white saviourism’ is explored in the film The Help (2011) starting Viola Davies and Emma Stone.
7. The intertwined issue of gender, race and class are considered in the film Hidden Figures (2016), starring Taraji Henson and Octovia Spencer, about three African-American mathematicians experiences working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) programme in the United States of America during the space race in the 1960s.
8. Depicted in the film She Said (2022) starring Carey Mulligan.
9. Available at: https://katahirine.org.br/
10. HeForShe. Available at: https://www.heforshe.org/en
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