The feminist role within the family

Feminism is the result of several historical social movements attempting to gain equality politically, economically and socially in terms of rights for women. They wanted to gain power within a society ruled by men and equalize the gender roles. First-wave feminism focused mainly on education, employment, legal equality, such as voting, and the rights for intelligent, white, middle-class women. Second-wave feminism went a step further by demanding equality within the family, employment and sexuality. Although there were great improvements thanks to women that extended globally, the movement was not unified and so different forms of feminism appeared as a result.

In many cultures, a mother is the wife in a married couple and her role in the family is vital but weak in power. Generally, mother's duties are seen as raising and looking after their children every minute of the day. Recently both feminist and masclist authors have described such arrangements in the family as unequal. In the United States, 82.5 million women are mothers of all ages, while the national average age of first child births is 25.1 years. In 2008, 10% of births were to teenage girls and 14% were to women aged 35 and above.

So, as we can see nowadays, first mother's ages are quite varied, but it is no inconvenient to prove that the mother is an essential part of the family, and her role is as important as the father's even though it may not seem so at times. To sum up, today's society is much more like the one feminists fought for 50 years ago, although inequality within households still persists, but much more in the background.