The first feminist wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the second was in the 1960s and 1970s, and the third extends from the 1990s to the present. Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements. It is manifest in a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography , feminist history and feminist literary criticism.

Regardless of what culture we are talking about, and regardless of the level of development of that culture (pre-modern, modern, postmodern), men and women are part of the same gender system and are assigned roles and tasks according to what works, not according to any kind of oppression. Therefore the gender system is always some kind of variant of women being protected (and perhaps limited) in order to be safe during pregnancy and when raising the next generation while men take risks in order to find adequate resources for the women and the children as well as defend them from any dangers. Instead of taking in the entirety of this gender system, feminism somewhat simplistically postulates that the gender system oppresses women while giving men all the benefits and this very assumption means that feminism tries to correct an imbalance that dosen’t exist, instead of effectively working towards increased freedom and opportunity for both sexes. This is exactly what is now starting to happen in Third World Countries.