As women of the Western world, we have brought a fourth wave of feminism. A hundred years ago, the first wave of feminism reached its peak. The fourth wave follows the first-wave campaign for votes for women. What's happening now in feminism feels like something new entirely. The fourth wave is defined by technology: tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online .
The feminist of Afghanistan are forced to work as an underground movement.They are recognized as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, or Rawa. During Taliban rule, Rawa ran secret girls' schools and filmed the state killings of women using cameras hidden under their burqas, thus creating footage that helped to fuel international outrage against the regime. This lead to the governments quick disapproval, as it shares attributes to those of an underground organization. One member may know only a select number of it's members. As that of a terrorist network, Rawa operates through a cell structure.
The idea is to protect the membership of the other thousand members. Members are careful to not keep incriminating material in their homes. They are sure to consistently move their meetings within different members homes. The women of Afghanistan and many other middle eastern countries need a revolution in the treatment of women. Rawa continues to grow within Afghanistan and surrounding countries. The organization is known to operate eight orphanages and four women literacy centers. Rawa continues their mission on spreading the awareness of women's rights.
Rawa uses their resources cleverly. They operate under a website called www.rawa.org, where they have been known to post incriminating articles and evidence against the occupiers and their stooges. These women believe that the freedom of Afghanistan is in the hands of it's citizens and would only be possible through an uprising across the country.
We're living a world quite like Game of Thrones. Where women are taking over their rightful regions. Coming together as a union, only bonding over the internet. Something that a hundred years ago, wouldn't ever be thought of.
Feminists around the world are now being able to communicate proactively through the internet. The fourth wave enacts concepts that the Third-wave feminists have put forth. Third wave feminism rejected the idea of a shared political priority or even issues as a feminist one must espouse.
By the time Hilary Clinton was in a face off with Obama in the Democratic primaries, a precarious mass of younger feminists had begun expressing themselves. Through globalization waves of mass continue to change. “One aspect of the ‘waves’ metaphor that I kinda like,” the historian Louise Bernikow wrote on our Second Wave–dominated LISTSERV, “is the idea that waves recede and gather strength and come back stronger, don’t they?"
The waves are all part of the same body politic known as feminism. These are dangerous games that are being played. Although, I believe this wave matters because I remember the women of Afghanistan, who's literacy rates are among the lowest in the world. Women who don't uprise because they have been stripped from their civil rights. Soon enough the waves will come together and prove to be a distinct force against these atrocities that have occurred to not only against women, but the people of the world.
