The Three Waves Metaphor

How Culture Works and Shapes the Way We Work for Justice

Over several years of teaching culture studies, I have found the “Three Waves” metaphor of feminism helpful in explaining culture, and how our understandings of culture have changed over the last 100 years. How we understand culture, its workings, shapes how we engage culture for the gospel, God’s justice, and being the church in the world. So it’s no small thing to understand how culture works. For me, the “Three Waves” is a helpful explanatory tool for getting at this.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

The Three Waves

Feminism, the work of people for justice in regard to the place and role of women in culture, has evolved over time in three waves (there’s a fourth wave- but it’s contested and I want to focus on the main three). Here is my over-simplification, a caricature of the three waves.

THE 1^ST WAVE OF FEMINISM FOCUSED ON WOMEN AS INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY. Here women leaders emerged to give voice to the inequality of women in relation to men. They did so in terms of the individual rights of women in relation to individual rights of men. Women, they argued, should have the same right to work, the right to education, right to vote, as men do…THE FOCUS WAS ON WOMEN AS INDIVIDUALS IN RELATION TO MEN AS INDIVIDUALS …

This culminated in the women’s suffrage movement, woman achieving the right to vote via the 19^th amendment in 1920.  More women were allowed and accepted in previous male only educational institutions, male workplaces. The Seneca Fall Convention of 1848 was a landmark for the beginning of this movement.  Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady, Sojourner Truth (an abolitionist) were all were voices in this wave of feminism. during these times.

THE 2^nd WAVE OF FEMINISM FOCUSED ON WOMEN WITHIN SYSTEMS IN SOCIETY. In this wave, feminist leaders recognized that no matter how much you advocated for women’s rights as individuals qua men, if the social systems stayed the same little actual change would happen for women’s justice in society. Women might get a job, but they would get paid less than men. Women might have access to education, but if they are a mother, they must stay at home and take care of the child while the man works. The systems are built for men to achieve certain things and women not to and so these women leaders worked for change in the systems, the gender structures in the economy, family, education, etc. that disadvantaged women.

Leaders in this wave included Betty Friedan of Feminine Mystique and Gloria Steinem of Ms. Magazine. The National Organization of Women (NOW) worked for systemic changes. This wave saw legislative advancements like the Equal rights Amendment, The Equal Pay Act (1963), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974) that gave the right to women to own a credit card in their own name. Reproductive rights moved to the forefront.

THE 3^rd WAVE OF FEMINISM FOCUSED ON WOMEN AS AN IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT. This wave recognized that even if you change individual minds, or even systems, it is the ideological framework that shapes how we see, talk, and define women in relation to men. It is not enough to make women equal to men as individuals, it’s not enough to change the systems, if who women are is still defined (in terms of who they are and what they live for) only in relation to men, and the misogyny, the patriarchy, the sexualization of women and their bodies built in to those frameworks. If women are still seen, understood, treated and categorized with this frame, women may have equal rights, equal pay legislation, access to birth control/abortion, whatever, but the oppression still is there. The oppression is still powerful, if not more powerful, because it is more subtle, shaping how every woman sees herself in relation to men, how she must desire to be the object of desire of the male. It’s the frame that is the problem because it shapes how we feel, desire, understand our very identity. In the words of Judith Butler: maybe it’s the category of “women” itself that’s the real problem.

Leaders and thinkers within this wave, which began in the 1990’s, include Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Kimberle Crenshaw (of CRT fame) and many others.  …etc. etc.

The Metaphor Applies Across Issues of Social Justice

This metaphor, in all its simplicity, helps explain engagements with other social justice issues in our culture.

RACISM: We see it in the way racism has been engaged. In WAVE 1 people ask or are asked, “Am I as an individual a racist?” Do I have racial prejudice in my behaviors, ways of thinking? In WAVE 2 we think systemically about racism. The Civil Rights movement voting legislation, desegregation of schools, affirmative action and other significant legislation came out of this period. But still, with all that legislation, we now recognize the frame of white supremacy, the ideology of whiteness, rules the ways we see each other, judge one another, shapes our aspirations and desires whether we are white, black or other. Such ideological frames shape the  way our laws are written that govern society (CRT).

SEXUALITY: We see it in the way sexuality is and has been engaged. In WAVE 1, we focus on individual freedoms and the pursuit of (authentic) self expression of love (60’s sexual revolution) as liberated from traditional mores. In WAVE 2 we recognize systems must be changed to allow for and reshape marriage for individual rights/same sex marriage/self expression. In WAVE 3 we are aware that the whole frame of current heterosexuality is fraught with misogyny, patriarchy, romanticistic abuse. Furthermore, other sexualities having emerged from, and in reaction to, that heterosexuality matrix, must be careful not to built on the same frames, lest they carry forward its abuse and pain.

ECONOMICS: We see the metaphor in the way economics and capitalism is engaged. In WAVE 1 we focus on individuals as having access to the American dream. Everyone should be able to attain the dream, if you just work hard enough! In WAVE 2 we focus on the way the economic system favors certain groups over other groups economically. Finally in WAVE 3 we see how capitalism as an ideological frame shapes how we see ourselves, in terms of our productivity, our consumer goods. We see how capitalist ideology works to exploit and excuse exploitation by getting those in poverty to blame themselves for the fact they never get anywhere.

Each Wave Has A Different Emphasis in How We Work For Change

Each of the three waves has a different emphasis on how we work for change in society shaping culture for justice and righteousness.

In WAVE 1 we seek to change the hearts and minds of individuals. Education is the primary mode delivered through various means.

In WAVE 2 we seek to change the systems. Legislation via the state, on national and local levels, is the primary mode of change. We also work for structural changes in our organizations where we work or participate in at church.

In Wave 3, there is no changing individuals through education (or arguing). People will just dig in further into their ideological frames (their identities are woven into the frame). Systems may be changed incrementally, but true change of systems can only happen through disruption of the frame.

DEI education is an odd duck here? It tries to educate individuals out of the ideological frame of whiteness. It seems at times to use methods from WAVE 1 on a culture (it recognizes) absorbed in WAVE 3. As many have written, its results in corporations and educational institution have been underwhelming.

It is my conviction that the only way ideologies are changed is through disruption of the frame. And true ideological disruption can only happen when an alternative reality is lived out in a community, and this alternative reality is so compelling it cannot be argued with, only engaged with in a real interpersonal level. The church community, as a “demonstration plot” of the Kingdom, is a social strategy for the disruption of false ideologies. In my opinion, true change happens in the cultural worlds of Wave 3 only through the church being the church in an incarnational visceral way in the towns, villages and cities where we live.  

Two More Thoughts

Two more quick observations.

It is my opinion, most evangelicals (using evangelical in the broadest sense not political sense) as well as post-evangelicals, progressive evangelicals and mainline protestants, are stuck between wave 1 and 2, having no idea that wave 3 is clearly operational. And in working hard at their educational and legislative approaches to change, they play into the abuses and antagonisms going on in the ideological frames (of say Trumpian MAGA politics). As a result, these churches and their leaders are often working hard making little progress on the cultural issues of our day. They often approach issues in ways which don’t touch on the shaping ideology does on people’s lives in politics, sexuality and economics.

Most progressive evangelicals, having had a brutal disappointing, even abusive, experience in the church, see no future for the church as a change agent in our culture. They therefore often find themselves locked in Wave 1 and Wave 2 strategies for social change while living in a Wave 3 society. This can lead to enormous frustration, anger and little change amidst the places where they work for God’s justice in the world.

We need a renewal of the local church as God’s agent for transformation of people’s lives and social realities under the Kingdom of God through Jesus Christ.

I leave you with this.

Isaiah 42:6 -7 is the calling of God’s servant-Messiah to lead a people and a way of life offered to the world …

“I, the Lord, have called you to demonstrate my righteousness . . . And you will be a light to guide the nations. You will open the eyes of the blind.You will free the captives from prison,release all those who sit in darkness.

Comments are welcome. Push back is welcome. Questions are welcome.

You can study further in culture studies, ecclesiology, mission, and the gospel at Northern Seminary’s MA in Theology and Mission, and Doctoral program in Contextual Theology.

Look for my forthcoming book

Reckoning with Power: Why the Church Fails When It’s on the Wrong Side of Power. by David E Fitch. (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, early 2024)