The Third-Wave Feminist Movement

According to Meyer (2003), ‘social movements are challenges to authorities that use a broad range of tactics, both inside and outside of conventional politics, in an effort to promote social and political change” (p. 30). Therefore, feminism, is in fact a social movement. As a social movement, the feminist movement, also known as the women’s movement, is very large, with varied goals related to equality. In addition, there are many different organizations involved that target the specific goals of the movement. The time periods within the feminist movement are broken down into what is known as ‘waves’. The first-wave feminist movement encompasses everything prior to the 1960’s, focusing on issues such as suffrage. The second-wave feminist …show more content…
The third-wave feminist movement began in the early 1990’s, and is still happening today. Third-wave feminism has focused on issues that limit or oppress marginalized groups of people, and is also concerned with how media portrays these marginalized people. As a social movement, feminism is very complex in that it encompasses a very large span of time and that there are many individual or sub-movements involved. Due to the size and scope of the feminist movement, for the purpose of this paper I am going to focus on one organization active within the feminist movement, the National Organization for Women (NOW), and their work regarding reproductive rights. The opportunity to use media in a beneficial manner, enabled NOW to further the feminist and reproductive rights movements; without this opportunity, neither movement would have been as …show more content…
The media had the notion that organizations such as NOW wanted to completely do away with social institutions that stood in the way of the feminist movement; however, that was not the case, so NOW had to counteract this misrepresentation. To do this, NOW used various media releases to show the world that they were “serious, caring, and dedicated to improving America’s quality of life” (Barnett, 2005, p. 356). NOW portrayed themselves as just regular people who wanted everyone to be treated equally, with the ability to make their own decisions about things that personally affect them. By appearing as ‘regular’ people, NOW enticed people to support their causes, and even join their organization. The use of media to craft an appealing image of the the feminist movement, their organization, and the reproductive rights movement, mobilized people to become invested in change, and consider the possibility that the reproductive rights movement had legitimate