The first wave is identified with the Women’s Suffrage Movement when women were granted voting rights in 1920. This movement basically granted women basic human rights. Increased their participation in the public realm and restored the right to and education as well as a career. The second wave expanded on the mainstream first wave concerns on voting on a range of issues including sexuality, family, workplace, reproductive rights, domestic violence, education and culture. The second wave also created an opening for a few women to become professionals such as lawyers, politicians, doctors, etc. The third wave of feminism began in the 1980’s after a vote for Medicare funding for abortion services as per the 1976 Hyde Amendment. This wave is greatly influenced by the rise of the LGBTQ movement. It challenged the traditional boundaries of gender, sex, and sexuality, basically redefining femininity and the woman.
               During the first wave views against women in psychology were negative. Most research on women was done by men and they consistently reinforce gender comparisons such as men are naturally more superior to women. Researchers proposed to hypotheses one being that men exhibited greater range and variability of physical and psychological traits than women do with a functional periodicity stating women were dysfunctional at certain portions of each month because of their menstrual cycles. The other originating from a theory of Charles Darwin: the most geniuses and most mentally retarded people are men; the lack of variation in females is a sign of inferiority, with a functional periodicity justifying the idea that women are suitable for work. After conducting her own research Leta Hollingworth argued that there was no difference in variability between male and female test subjects. In the second wave feminist work rapidly emerged in psychology. Groups also emerged and insisted that psychology reexamined its treatment of women as objects of knowledge, patients, students, and professionals. Phyllis Chesler and her colleagues attending an APA meeting in 1970 and demanded one million dollars in reparation for the ill-treatment and damage psychology has done to women’s minds and bodies thus far. Also at this time Social constructionism of gender rises, rejecting the biological essentialist perspective on women as a population fixed by genitalia. The third wave the wave of the 1980s to the present time calls for attention to diversity of women’s experiences. Now women of color protest their experiences as being excluded and silent for too long and encourage the use of intersectionality to further interlock the systems of oppression.

           Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge as well as the presumptions and basis and general reliability of claims to knowledge. Epistemologists are concerned with whether we are justified in claiming knowledge of some whole class of truths or whether knowledge is possible at all. A problem as Harding states is when evidence has been found uncontroversial when presented in support of nonfeminist claims is presented to support feminist claims, the uncontroversial becomes controversial. “Women are inferior at rigorous observation and at reason, such critics are probably thinking, and-- worse yet-- feminism is a politics. Harding, 108” The conventional epistemology was built on the construction of science and women as opposites; the evidence women produce through their lives and stories are suspicious to the eyes of scientific objectivity.

          The two types of feminist epistemology are feminist empiricism and feminist standpoint epistemology. Feminist empiricism is one of the main critical perspectives in feminist epistemology and is most frequently applied to philosophy of science. Standpoint feminism argues that feminist social science should be practiced from the standpoint of women or particular groups of women as some claim that they are better equipped to understand certain aspects of the world.

           Feminist empiricism justifies challenges of traditional scientific assumptions. It often argues or criticizes that the sexist and androcentric claims to which researcher objects as the product of bad science, caused by social biases, by prejudice. It is argued that it needs to follow a more rigorous rule and principles of science to dispute bad claims. “Feminist empiricists often point out, the women’s movement creates the opportunity for more women and feminists (male and female) to become researchers, and they are more likely than sexist men to notice androcentric biases. Harding, 111”
Feminist standpoint epistemology is said to be cultures beliefs, what it calls knowledge is socially situated. Specific aspects of women’s situations in gender-stratified societies were used as resources in the new feminist research. As Marx’s stated in the proletarian standpoint, the human activity or material life sets limits to human understanding; therefore we live in a gender differentiated world and as a result would understand the world through such structuralized differences. “The feminist standpoint theories focus on gender differences, on differences between women’s and men’s situations which give a scientific advantage to those who can make use of the differences. Harding , 120”

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