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Home , The Subjection of Women

Key issues in 2nd and 3rd Wave US Professor Naomi Zack Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon

The 3 waves First Wave (1789-1920) (Vindication of the Rights of Women) and (The Subjection of Women) Issues – equality for women as citizens, property owners and marriage partners, as well as educational opportunities so they could be better wives and mothers. Sufferage was achieved in 1920.

Second Wave: (1955- circa 1975) (The Second Sex) and (The Feminine Miystique) Equal access was achieved in the second wave but the following problems remain for the Third Wave

1.Feminism has been dominated by white privileged women. 2.Women of color and poor women have different problems than white priviledged women, which may result in different genders, on the model “Sex + Race = Gender.” 3. Some writers claim that there is no such thing as women and that the group is too diverse to be defined. 4. Despite equal access in employment, women encounter “glass ceilings” and have chosen to work second shifts.

I have developed three solutions to these problems in my recent book, Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave Theory of Women’s Commonality.

First, We can define women as those human beings who are assigned to or identify with the group of birth females, biological mothers and heterosexual choices of men. This is an essentialist but non-substantial definition. It refers to a relation shared by all women, namely their relation to this group, call it category FMP. Not all who are women need be any one of the three sub-categories mentioned and male-to-female transsexuals would be women on this definition.

Second, The problem of the second shift is a problem in how we value goods that are not priced, such as motherhood, family care and child rearing. It wouldn’t solve the problem to pay women for serving in a second shift, because that would only commodify women’s work, which should probably remain unpriced but be more highly respected.

Third, Human recorded history has been men’s history with male rulers. One thing that might bring about the transvaluation of values called for above would be women heads of state, where women are traditionally defined as those who are assigned to or identify with category FMP.