Batgirls and the Politics of Feminism in Gotham

Abstract

There have been several Batgirls in Gotham City since 1961. Betty, Barbara, Cassandra, Stephanie, and Nissa have roughly tracked the external concerns, the successes and failures, and the internal tensions of the US feminist movement—the push for equal opportunities for males and females in all areas of life, the difficulties of stereotypes of gender pervasive in American culture and institutions, and the diversity of people who identify as women. This movement has often been labeled as having “waves”: the First Wave, from 1848 to 1920; the Second Wave from the mid-1960s to mid-1980s, and the Third Wave from that time to the present. While the wave metaphor does not capture the underlying continuities of the feminist movement and uses dates more closely tied to white women’s activism than to women’s activism in general, it does capture ways in which the movement’s emphases have changed over time.