Feminists been divided over revolutionary and reformist  strategies, and feminist theory has at times drawn upon quite different political traditions and values. 

First-wave feminism

 Focused on the legal and political rights of women. By the mid nineteenth century the women's movement had acquired a central focus: the campaign for female suffrage most famously in the UK through the suffragette movement, which culminated in equal suffrage with men in 1928. Female suffrage was its principal goal because it was believed that if women could vote all other forms of sexual discrimination or prejudice would quickly disappear. 

The British suffrage movement adopted increasingly militant tactics after the formation in 1903 of the Women's Social and Political Union, led by Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) and her daughter Christabel (1880–1958). From their underground base in Paris, the Pankhursts coordinated a campaign of direct action in which ‘suffragettes’ carried out wholesale attacks upon property and mounted a series of well-publicized public demonstrations. ‘First-wave’ feminism ended with the achievement of female suffrage, introduced first in New Zealand in 1893. The Nineteenth Amendment of the US Constitution granted the vote to American women in 1920. The franchise was extended to women in the UK in 1918, but they did not achieve equal voting rights with men until 1928'

Second-wave feminism 

A radically new development occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called ‘second wave’ of feminism, inspired by such writers as Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1953), Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963), Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (1970) and, most famously, Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970). It shifted the entire debate from what might be generally considered political to the psychological, cultural and anthropological fields. 

Second-wave’ feminism acknowledged that the achievement of political and legal rights had not solved the ‘women's question’. Indeed, feminist ideas and arguments became increasingly radical, and at times revolutionary. Books such as Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970) and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970) pushed back the borders of what had previously been considered to be ‘political’ by focusing attention upon the personal, psychological and sexual aspects of female oppression. Women needed radical social change and political emancipation if they were to be ‘liberated’ from thousands of years of male oppression.

 Liberal and radical feminism agreed in their demand for both elements to improve women’s lot. Both equal rights legislation and considerable social change, especially in popular attitudes on gender issues, are needed to improve the lot of women and redress the power balance between men and women. In Britain, a great deal of legislation has been introduced to advance the cause of greater gender equality: Abortion Law Reform (1967), Divorce Law Reform (1969), Equal Pay Act (1970), Sex Discrimination Act (1975), Employment Protection Act (1975) and Domestic Violence Act (1977). However, there has been very limited progress in dealing with the forces of structural gender inequality in society and enforcement of legislation is weak.  

Some second-wave feminists argued for greater inclusion of women on the grounds of female moral superiority. Women were especially endowed with sympathy, emotion and a culture of co-operation as a consequence of their experience of motherhood. Men were seen as being tough, competitive and emotionally limited. Human history was a struggle between these conflicting male and female virtues between and within people. Feminists involved in the peace movement, for example, argued that the potential for destruction is now so great that it is vital that the female side of humanity gains more influence in politics and society to avoid nuclear war and environmental destruction. 

The goal of ‘second-wave’ feminism was not merely political emancipation but ‘women's liberation’, reflected in the ideas of the growing Women's Liberation Movement. Such a goal could not be achieved by political reforms or legal changes alone, but demanded, modern feminists argued, a radical and perhaps revolutionary process of social change. Since the first flowering of radical feminist thought in the late 1960s and early 1970s, feminism has developed into a distinctive and established ideology, whose ideas and values challenge the most basic assumptions of conventional political thought. Feminism has succeeded in establishing gender and gender perspectives as important themes in a range of academic disciplines and in raising consciousness about gender issues in public life in general. By the 1990s, feminist organisations existed in all western countries and most parts of the developing world. 

Third-wave feminism,

 In the 1990s, was concerned with the idea that feminism had solely focused on white middle-class women, failing to recognise the concerns of women of other cultures. By the 1990s some feminists argued that second-wave feminism was becoming rather dated. Major civil liberties and legal advances for women had occurred. Technological developments, such as the contraceptive pill and household labour-saving devices, had liberated women from the burdens of unplanned childbearing and the grind of housework that had held back earlier generations. 

A number of issues of gender discrimination remain to be addressed: female pay in Britain remains, on average, around 75 per cent of male wages; women are more likely to be found in low-paid, part-time, low-status, insecure, low-skilled and temporary work than men are; few women are at the top of the major professions of law, medicine, academia, the media and the senior civil service. In addition, in 2001 40 per cent of the FTSE Index companies were identified as having no women on their board and the proportion of leading businesses with women on the board fell from 69 per cent in 1999 to 57 per cent in 2001. 

• Fourth-wave feminism-New Feminism

  Some suggest that a new wave of feminists are reacting against inequality based on media images of women, online misogyny and issues arising through the expansion of social media. New feminism can be criticised on similar grounds to its second-wave predecessor. It concentrates on privileged women – white, middle-class, well-educated, Western, Christian, employed, heterosexual – and does little for the vast majority of women in the world. Women in developing countries face far worse forms of gender inequality than those in the West, with far fewer resources than their sisters in industrialised nations, and receive little help in their struggle. Today, any self-respecting Western woman would see herself as a ‘feminist’, with considerable choice in lifestyle and career, and not automatically dependent on a male. Feminism is not associated only with the radical or political left of politics. Women of all political persuasions argue for female equality in principle. Neither is it only a movement confined to the developed world. Women in developing countries increasingly see a crucial role for themselves in social and economic progress, in population control and environmental protection. They look to both the traditions of their own society and the major elements of Western feminist thinking for inspiration. Two processes have accompanied these developments.

 The first is a process of deradicalization, whereby there has been a retreat from the sometimes uncompromising positions that characterized feminism in the early 1970s. The second process if one of fragmentation. Instead of simply loosing its radical or critical edge, feminist thinking has gone through a process of radical diversification, making it difficult, and perhaps impossible, any longer to identify ‘common ground’ within feminism. In addition to the ‘core’ feminist traditions – liberal, socialist/Marxist and radical feminism – must now be added postmodern feminism, psychoanalytical feminism, black feminism, lesbian feminism and so on. 

Some difference feminists go further, stressing the superiority of women’s cultural values – such as compassion and pacifism – believing that these will overcome masculine qualities of selfishness, violence and lack of self-control in sexual behaviour. Cultural feminism also challenges the dominant cultural argument that women are inferior and subservient to men. An extension of this view comes in the form of separatism and political lesbianism. Separatist feminism is not a unified view. Some separatists suggest that women should create permanent separate societies from men, while others suggest that women should, from time to time, create separate spaces and spend time without men in order to separate themselves from patriarchal society, allowing themselves to reconnect with their female values. Charlotte Bunch  in Learning from Lesbian Separatism (1976)  ‘in a male-supremacist society, heterosexuality is a political institution and the practice of separatism is a way to escape its domination’. This suggests that any relationship with a man is based on power and control, and the only equal relationship a woman can have is with another woman – so lesbianism is a political choice. Sheila Jeffreys was a proponent of this view and co-wrote Love your Enemy? in 1979. It is worth noting that difference feminism has been extremely controversial among other feminist groups. They argue that suggesting that women have a passive, nurturing, caring nature takes women back hundreds of years and undermines all the progress that the women’s movement has made.