Changes in Opportunity and Culture, 1986-2010 » Third-Wave Feminism and Continuing Sexism

Third-wave feminism

By the 1990s, women in Britain had the vote, and laws against unequal pay and sex discrimination had been passed in the 1970s. Many people thought the fight was over. Yet women still did not have equal power. A new generation of feminists, mostly young women, began to speak up. Historians call this movement third-wave feminism. The name suggests three "waves" of feminism: the campaign for the vote (the first), the Women's Liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s (the second) and this new one from the 1990s (the third). The term became popular in 1992, when the American writer Rebecca Walker used it in a magazine article.

Key terms:

• Third-wave feminism: the feminist movement from the 1990s, which focused on individual choice and on the different experiences of different women.
• Sexism: unfair treatment of someone, or the belief that one sex is better than the other, because of their sex.
• Glass ceiling: an invisible barrier that stops women rising to the top jobs, even when no rule says they cannot.
• Pay gap: the difference between the average pay of men and the average pay of women.

The third wave also fought sexism in everyday culture: how women were shown in magazines and adverts, and the idea that women should be quiet or "ladylike". In Britain the pop group the Spice Girls made "girl power" a popular slogan in 1996. Supporters said this brought feminist ideas to millions of young people. Critics said it was a slogan to sell records, with little power to change laws or pay. Historians still disagree about how much real change third-wave feminism caused. It is hard to point to a single law it won, so its impact was mainly on attitudes.

Women in Parliament

Parliament shows how slowly power changed. Before 1997, Parliament was overwhelmingly male. In the 1992 general election only 60 women were elected as MPs, about 9 per cent of the House of Commons. In the 1970s, fewer than 30 MPs had been women.

The 1997 election was a turning point. A record 120 women were elected, exactly double the 1992 figure. Most were Labour MPs, helped by the party's use of all-women shortlists (lists of candidates in some seats where only women could be chosen). Newspapers called the new Labour women "Blair's Babes", a nickname many of the women disliked because it did not treat them as serious politicians. In 2006 Margaret Beckett became Britain's first woman Foreign Secretary.

But progress was uneven. Labour's all-women shortlists were ruled unlawful by an employment tribunal in 1996 and were dropped, and Parliament only made them legal again in 2002. At the 2010 election 143 women were elected, 22 per cent of MPs. That was the highest figure so far, but it still meant that about four in every five MPs were men.

Sexism at work

By the 1990s the law said women must get equal pay for equal work. Yet women still earned less on average than men. Reasons included:

• Many women worked in lower-paid jobs, such as care work, cleaning and shop work.
• Most part-time workers were women, and part-time jobs often paid less per hour and had fewer chances of promotion.
• Women were more likely to take career breaks to look after children or relatives, and some employers treated mothers as less committed.
• Some women were simply paid less than men doing the same job, which was illegal but hard to prove.

The glass ceiling explained why so few women reached the top. Women could be promoted to middle jobs, but then seemed to hit an invisible barrier. Few were bosses of big companies or senior judges, and the top jobs went mostly to men. There was no rule stopping them, so the barrier was made of attitudes: managers choosing people "like themselves", long-hours cultures that suited those with fewer home duties, and old ideas about what women could do.

Change and continuity

This is the key idea for the exam: laws gave women equal rights on paper, but sexism was a barrier to change that carried on into the 21st century.

Exam-style question

This is a Paper 2, Section B type (a) question, worth 6 marks. Compare two things and give a specific fact about both sides in each way. One way alone can score no more than 3 marks.

Explain TWO ways in which the barriers facing women in the 1990s and 2000s were similar to the barriers facing women in the 1960s and 1970s. [6 marks]