Theorizing the 'First Wave' Globally

Bibliographic Data

ID3945393
AuthorsPamela L Caughie (0000-0002-1894-5059, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume95
Issue1
Pages5-9
Publication date2010-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/fr.2009.63
OpenAlexW2084735325
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited8

The contributors to this special section on 'Theorizing the ''First Wave'' Globally' initially presented versions of these essays at the 2006 Modern Language Association Convention (MLA) on a panel organized by myself and Kanika Batra.In proposing this panel, we understood that the Western periodization of the feminist movement into first, second, and third waves is not directly applicable to postcolonial locations, yet as scholars and teachers of women's studies, we wondered if the wave model might be a convenient (albeit schematic and necessarily provisional) means of analysing the shift in concerns articulated by women in non-Western nations.The articles that follow historicize feminisms in a global framework, interrogating the applicability of Western periodization to women's movements in specific regional contexts within Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.Since this examination of non-Western feminisms takes the wave model as a point of departure, I begin by clarifying what we mean by 'first'-and 'second'-wave feminism, drawing on Nancy Cott's and Nancy Fraser's useful summaries of these movements in the West.The first phase of the women's movement in non-Western contexts is roughly coterminous with the Western understanding of the first wave and often connected to women's participation in the anti-colonial nationalist movement from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s.During this period women modelled their plans for gender equity on Western feminists' demands for electoral, educational, and employment rights adapted to an indigenous programme of social reform in the public sphere as well as a re-assessment of gender and sexual mores in the private sphere.In a 1936 article in The Listener, the journal of the BBC, for example, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau dates the women's movement in India to 1917 with the formation of the first 'all-India organization -the Women's Indian Association, formed in Madras ' (1936: 637).The franchise for women was among its first concerns.By 1925 an annual All-India Women's Conference had been established that addressed the social and legal status of women, including labour problems and women's education.By the time of Rau's article, women's organizations were working to widen the franchise, obtain the right of divorce, and establish more

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