Feminist Perspectives on Organizational Communication

The feminist movement is often referred to in terms of waves. The first wave of feminism from the mid-19th through the early 20th century defined oppression principally in terms of women’s exclusion from voting and property rights. The first wave of feminism from the mid-19th through the early 20th century defined oppression principally in terms of women’s exclusion from voting and property rights. The second wave of feminism that began in the early 1960s was a much broader movement.

It was concerned with such issues as reproductive freedom, domestic violence, rape, and the participation of women in domains—such as upper management and politics—that were previously reserved for men (women have always been a significant portion of the workforce but until the last 30 years or so have been denied a significant presence in the upper echelons of organizations). Liberal feminism focused on voting and property rights, but the feminist second wave was a much broader movement.

Despite these legislative efforts, women still lag behind men on a number of different organizational fronts. For example, many women continue to experience the glass ceiling phenomenon. Tokenism refers to a condition whereby a person finds himself or herself identified as a minority in a dominant culture. Like the second wave of liberal feminism, radical feminism has its roots in the political movements of the 1960s and arose out of disenchantment with the sexism of those movements. However, it developed in a very different direction and is rooted in a different set of premises than liberal feminism.