History:
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, personal, and social rights for women.”
Hollywood, as the leading movie producer in the world, has developed in accord with the progress of feminist movement. As it is known to all, the society has been a patriarchal society since ancient times. Men and women were set to different behavior rules. It was the same to the U.S until in the 1840s when the first wave of feminist movement arose. In the abolitionist movement, women participants played a positive role yet they were deprived of the qualification of saying at the meeting of it. This provoked the anger of women and lead to this feminist movement. During thismovement, women have made progress on their right to vote and be educated. However, they did not get rid of their subordinate and marginalized position to men. This movement ended in about 1935.
The second wave of feminist movement began in the 1960s. This time it aims to be against sexism, and women leaders tried to waken the feminine ego-subject sense.Women were called on to find their true self and potential. Equalities and equal treatments have been asked for by women while eroticism and sexual violence has been deeply criticized. In this time, though the ERA has not passed, gender consciousness of women in the U.S has been development and women’s social status has also been improved.
In the last 1980s, the third wave of feminist gained steam. Actually this challenged the second wave of feminist movement, and happened during the second wave. This time, people were divided into two camps. The first one consisted of colored people and feminists from ethnic groups. They criticized white-centralism and dealt with the oppression that their people faced. The second camp wasrepresented by feminists of post-modernism and post-structuralism. They questioned“having a consistent identity” and regarded the resistance of type and identity as true freedom. The third feminist movement was against white-dominant feminism, its core meaning is to emphasize race and class relations while admitting women status. For the first time, women identity has been addressed with race and class, and people of all colors and all classes should all be admitted.
Now the world has already entered post-feminism time since the end of the 20th century, where post-feminists believe the features and characteristics, and subjectivity of women are defined and made in a male discourse. This may lead to distortion and misunderstanding of women images and cannot really change the status of women. Thus female subjectivity should be rebuilt upon female discourse and experience so that women can really find their true self.
Reference:
Beasley, Chris. What is Feminism?. New York: Sage. 1999, 3–11.
金莉，“美国女权运动·女性文学·女权批评”，《美国研究》，2009年第1期，63-66。