Context

Feminism can be broken down into three major waves. The first wave, which was took place in the 19th and early 20th century, revolved around white women gaining the right to vote. Although it was an important step for white women, it was extremely exclusive of women of color and also did not establish any rights for the female population besides the white woman’s vote. However, this was a major step beginning the fight for gender equality. The second wave of feminism, which began in the early 1960’s and lasted two decades, opened the conversation of gender equality through focusing on sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, official legal inequalities, domestic violence and marital rape, engendered rape-crisis centers and women's shelters, and brought about changes in custody laws and divorce law. The third wave of feminism, which began in the 1990’s, and ended around 2008, broadened feminist theory even further, through working to  abolish gender-role stereotypes and expand feminism to be more intersectional by including women with diverse racial and cultural identities. The pieces analyzed in this exhibit were made during the second and third waves of feminism, where some of the main focuses of women’s liberation were shedding light on sexuality, domestic violence, rape, and objectification- which is reflected in the content of the art.