SOC 0851 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Michel Foucault, Queer Theory, Postcolonialism
25 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
5
Third Wave of Feminist Movement
• Response to contradictions of second-wave feminism
• Emerged in 1980s and 1990s
• Encompassed a diverse range of theories and
orientations among both academics and activists
• Strong influences from women of color
• Questioned essentialist tendencies in feminism, or the
tendency to assume some universal experience of being
a woman
• Fought to organize around issues of race, sexual
orientation, and social glass in addition to gender
• Attempts to articulate a way to be feminist that is
inclusive enough to include both men and women,
whites and people of color, lesbians, gays, and straight
people
• Influenced by postmodernism, postcolonialism, the work
of Michel Foucault, and Queer Theory
o Drew attention to ways in which women had
ignored the experiences of women outside the
Anglo-European world (postcolonialism)
o Raised questions about whether women could
claim one global movement or whether the
interests and goals of women in the global North
and global South were so different and opposed
to make any umbrella movement possible
o Orientations of feminism – feminists start with the assumption that
gender inequality exists; then they go about explaining that
inequality in a variety of different ways
Liberal Feminism – inequality between men and women is
rooted in the way existing institutions such as the government
treat men and women
• Institutions limit the opportunities for women to
compete with men in economic and political arenas
