A Common-Sense Theory of Gender

A critical analysis of third- and fourth-wave feminism

     In The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, published by Ignatius Press in 2022, Abigail Favale reviews the four waves of feminism.  The first wave was the movement for women’s suffrage, which emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, in the context of the denial to women of the right to vote, to own property, to serve on juries, to be witnesses in court, to have custodial rights over their children, to stand for election, and to attend most colleges and universities.  The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention was based in the Declaration of Independence, declaring the self-evident inalienable rights of men and women.  In the United States, the movement for women’s rights grew out of the movement to abolish slavery.  And it had ties to the Temperance Movement to ban alcohol, reflecting the alcohol-related domestic abuse that women and children suffered.  In the United States, the movement resulted in various states enacting laws to prot…