Trace the origin of the term "Feminism".
Enumerate
different types of feminism with views from various
feminist scholars.
We know Feminism as one knows today from social media and books.
When someone tells others that they are feminists, the person is
prejudges to be someone who hates men. The social media pages post
anti-feminist memes portraying feminists as women who hate men. But
if someone READS and look up in the history, feminism is so much
more than that. It is the belief in the political, economic and
cultural equality of women, has roots in the earliest eras of
human civilization. From Ancient Greece to the fight for
women’s suffrage to women’s marches and the #MeToo movement,
the history of feminism is as long as it is fascinating.
According to Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the history of
feminism can be divided into three waves. 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.
First-wave feminism refers to an extended period of feminist
activity during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century
in the United Kingdom and the United States. Originally it focused
on the promotion of equal contract and property rights for women and
the opposition to chattel marriage and ownership of married women
(and their children) by their husbands. However, by the end of the
nineteenth century, activism focused primarily on gaining political
power, particularly the right of women's suffrage. Yet, feminists
were still active in campaigning for women's sexual, reproductive,
and economic rights at this time.
The term first wave was coined retrospectively after
the term second-wave feminism began to be used to describe a newer
feminist movement that focused as much on fighting social and
cultural inequalities as political inequalities.
Second-wave feminism refers to the period of activity in the early
1960s and lasting through the late 1980s. The scholar Imelda
Whelehan suggests that the second wave was a continuation of the
earlier phase of feminism involving the suffragettes in the UK and
USA. Second-wave feminism has continued to exist since that time and
coexists with what is termed third-wave feminism. The scholar
Estelle Freedman compares first and second-wave feminism saying that
the first wave focused on rights such as suffrage, whereas the
second wave was largely concerned with other issues of equality,
such as ending discrimination.
The feminist activist and author Carol Hanisch coined the slogan
"The Personal is Political" which became synonymous with the second
wave. Second-wave feminists saw women's cultural and political
inequalities as inextricably linked and encouraged women to
understand aspects of their personal lives as deeply politicized and
as reflecting sexist power structures. Third-wave feminism began in
the early 1990s, arising as a response to perceived failures of the
second wave and also as a response to the backlash against
initiatives and movements created by the second wave.
Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the
second wave's essentialist definitions of femininity, which
(according to them) over-emphasize the experiences of upper middle-
class white women.
A post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality is
central to much of the third wave's ideology. Third-wave feminists
often focus on "micro-politics" and challenge the second wave's
paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for females. The third wave
has its origins in the mid-1980s. Feminist leaders rooted in the
second wave like Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Chela Sandoval,
Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many other
black feminists, sought to negotiate a space within feminist thought
for consideration of race-related subjectivities.
Third-wave feminism also contains internal debates between
difference feminists such as the psychologist Carol Gilligan (who
believes that there are important differences between the sexes) and
those who believe that there are no inherent differences between the
sexes and contend that gender roles are due to social conditioning.
Post feminism: Post-feminism describes a range of viewpoints
reacting to feminism. While not being "anti-feminist," post-
feminists believe that women have achieved second wave goals while
being critical of third wave feminist goals. It post-feminists say
that feminism is no longer relevant to today's society.
Socialist and Marxist
Socialist feminism connects the oppression of women to Marxist ideas
about exploitation, oppression and labor. Socialist feminists think
unequal standing in both the workplace and the domestic sphere holds
women down.[59] Socialist feminists see prostitution, domestic work,
childcare and marriage as ways in which women are exploited by a
patriarchal system that devalues women and the substantial work they
do. They focus their energies on broad change that affects society
as a whole, rather than on an individual basis. They see the need to
work alongside not just men, but all other groups, as they see the
oppression of women as a part of a larger pattern that affects
everyone involved in the capitalist system.
Marx felt when class oppression was overcome, gender oppression
would vanish as well. According to some socialist feminists, this
view of gender oppression as a sub-class of class oppression is
naive and much of the work of socialist feminists has gone towards
separating gender phenomena from class phenomena. Some contributors
to socialist feminism have criticized these traditional Marxist
ideas for being largely silent on gender oppression except to
subsume it underneath broader class oppression. Other socialist
feminists, many of whom belong to Radical Women and the Freedom
Socialist Party, two long-lived American organizations, point to the
classic Marxist writings of Frederick Engels and August Bebel as a
powerful explanation of the link between gender oppression and class
exploitation.
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century both
Clara Zetkin and Eleanor Marx were against the demonization of men
and supported a proletarian revolution that would overcome as many
male-female inequalities as possible. As their movement already had
the most radical demands of women's equality, most Marxist leaders,
including Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai, counterposed Marxism
against feminism, rather than trying to combine them.
Socialist feminists like Maria Mies have argued that just as
capitalism within the west depends on exploiting women’s unpaid
domestic labor, unpaid labor by third world women and especially
peasant women, subsidizes the international capitalist economy. This
insight is truly revolutionary given the fact that in most third
world countries we often hear of the redundancy of feminism because
of its western origin, but socialist feminist ideas actually help us
to establish the nature of exploitation experienced by poor women in
the countries of the south and its inextricable links with global
capitalism.
Radical
Radical feminism considers the male controlled capitalist hierarchy,
which it describes as sexist, as the defining feature of women’s
oppression. Radical feminists believe that women can free themselves
only when they have done away with what they consider an inherently
oppressive and dominating patriarchal system. Radical feminists feel
that there is a male-based authority and power structure and that it
is responsible for oppression and inequality, and that as long as
the system and its values are in place, society will not be able to
be reformed in any significant way. Some radical feminists see no
alternatives other than the total uprooting and reconstruction of
society in order to achieve their goals.
Views of Kate Millet Kate Millet, one of the earliest radical
feminists to use the term in the 1970s, developed on sociologist Max
Weber's conception of domination to argue that throughout history
the relationship between the sexes has been one of domination and
subordination, in which men have exercised domination in two forms -
through social authority and economic force. The emphasis is oil
patriarchy as a system, to establish that men's power over women is
not all individual phenomenon, but is part of a structure.
Liberal
Liberal feminism asserts the equality of men and women through
political and legal reform. It is an individualistic form of
feminism, which focuses on women’s ability to show and maintain
their equality through their own actions and choices. Liberal
feminism uses the personal interactions between men and women as the
place from which to transform society. According to liberal
feminists, all women are capable of asserting their ability to
achieve equality, therefore it is possible for change to happen
without altering the structure of society. Issues important to
liberal feminists include reproductive and abortion rights, sexual
harassment, voting, education, "equal pay for equal work",
affordable childcare, affordable health care, and bringing to light
the frequency of sexual and domestic violence against women.
Mary Astell (1661-1731), who employed the newly emerging liberal
discourse in a classic way to examine the impact of these advances
on the lives of women. In a way her arguments lay down the
foundation of the classic liberal feminist question. If all human
beings have rationality and therefore are deserving of freedom of
choice and autonomy, how come women are kept out of this charmed
circle?
Black
Black feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are
inextricably bound together. Forms of feminism that strive to
overcome sexism and class oppression but ignore race can
discriminate against many people, including women, through racial
bias. The Combahee River Collective argued in 1974 that the
liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it
would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression. One
of the theories that evolved out of this movement was Alice Walker's
Womanism. It emerged after the early feminist movements that were
led specifically by white women who advocated social changes such as
woman’s suffrage. These movements were largely white middle-class
movements and had generally ignored oppression based on racism and
classism. Alice Walker and other Womanists pointed out that black
women experienced a different and more intense kind of oppression
from that of white women. Angela Davis is of the opinion that a
feminism that begins with the experiences of white middle class
women would have very little room in it for the experiences of black
women. After all, a key aspect of white women’s privilege is to talk
of themselves as though they are indeed talking about all women, and
if there are some women whose experiences and struggles don’t fit,
they are seen as marginal.
With times, the motives of feminist protests and demand may have
changed; but what’s same is- the condition of women. Men still hold
the power to decide the rights and opportunities for the women. The
MEN of the families still think they are open-minded and just
because they “let” the women around them study. But you see? That’s
the problem with out society, It doesn’t understand the fact that
They don’t OWN the women around them, and as an individual women can
take their life decisions themselves. I agree that changes is there,
but we are still to far away from the EQUALITY of all the sexes.
