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Suzanne Degges-White

The history of feminist theory stretches back to the late 1800s, when women first began organizing and staging protests as they fought for the right to vote (Hannam, 2012). In fact, it might surprise some readers to realize that women in the United States have only held the right to vote since 1920. Feminism, like most social movements, rolled through on “waves,” and the first wave was tied to women’s fight for the right to vote. The next wave arrived in the 1960s, when women, as a group, began to recognize that the circumscription of their lives (which defined their life roles and options primarily as wives and mothers) was due, in part, to traditional gender role expectations and the limits imposed by their gender in a patriarchal society.

This dawning awareness of the structurally embedded inequities between genders led women to engage in grassroots efforts to communicate and confront these gender-enforced limitations. Thus, the “Women’s Movement,” as most of us know it, was born. Women began to organize and participate in consciousness-raising groups that provided participants opportunities to develop a sense of sisterhood and connection with other like-minded women. These groups uncovered feelings of unrest and distress that women previously had no place to acknowledge or express. A collective sense of shared identity developed, and groups coalesced to address and pursue equality between the genders, appropriate medical and psychological care for women, and safe spaces for women who were victims of male aggression or control.

In essence, feminist theory was developed as a response to the culturally accepted gender roles and gender rules that unfairly privileged men (Israeli & Santor, 2000). A patriarchal society possesses power to limit the aspirations, not just the achievements, of women. Feminists recognized that these rules and roles were actually forms of oppression and that women were disempowered and silenced by the fact of their gender. The most elemental goal that drove feminist activities in the second wave was the empowerment of all women through raised awareness and advocacy.

Today, the third wave of feminism is described as one that maintains a focus on gender role socialization but encompasses a widened lens that addresses the presence of multiple oppressions that are faced by diverse women and other marginalized groups. The lens also includes the roles of power and privilege and the fight for social justice (Enns & Byars-Winston, 2010). Feminist therapists aim to empower their clients and facilitate client movement toward self-differentiation and the self-determination of their goals and, ultimately, their lives (Wooley, 1995) regardless of the roadblocks they face from a patriarchal society. Feminist therapists also work to demystify the therapeutic process to allow their clients to understand and collaborate in facilitation of their healing journeys.