Feminism

• Feminism is driven by promoting equality and emancipation for women
• Feminists argue that society and politics as they currently stand oppress and discriminate against women by favoring men, and they challenge this suppression and seek to create a society free of it where gender doesn't determine an individual's opportunities, rights or position in society
• Feminism began to become prominent during the Enlightenment period


  18th century
• First wave feminism


  Emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing primarily on formal inequalities in the public sphere and advocating for legal and political rights for women, central to this was the fight for women's suffrage
• Second wave feminism


  Expanded the debate from just the public sphere to a wider range of issues oppressing women in society including sexuality, family, the workplace and reproductive rights, challenging the traditional nuclear family model and gender roles
• Third wave feminism


  Emerged in the early 1990s, characterized by its focus on diversity and intersectionality, broadening feminist discourse to consider multiple identities and their impact on women's experiences
• Fourth wave feminism


  Defined by its use of social media as tools for advocacy and mobilization, particularly associated with the Me Too movement
• Liberal feminism


  Based on the key liberal ideas and principles of freedom, individual rights and equality, advocating for political and legal reforms to achieve gender equality in the public sphere
• Liberal feminism


  • Reformist in its approach, focusing on achieving gender equality through gradual change rather than radical restructuring of society, its focus is on the public sphere of society and the economy rather than the private sphere of the family and domestic environment
• Key reforms focused on by liberal feminism


  • Women's suffrage
  • Equal access to education
  • Equal pay
  • Abortion and reproductive rights
  • Increased political representation of women
• Mary Wollstonecraft


  An early liberal feminist who argued that women are rational and independent beings capable of reason, and advocated for equal rights and education for women
• Betty Friedan


  A key figure in the second wave feminist movement, who challenged oppressive laws and societal norms that limited women's roles, advocating for legal and societal changes to achieve gender equality
• Equal Rights Amendment


  Aimed at guaranteeing equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex
• Equal Rights Amendment was almost passed


  1970s
• Betty Friedan


  • Successful in campaigning for the passage of the Equal Pay Act
  • Played a pivotal role in establishing the National Organization for Women in 1966
  • Key figure in the second wave feminist movement
• Liberal perspective


  Promoted equal opportunity and freeing women from societal attitudes that undermined their rationality and autonomy
• Friedan wrote "The Feminine Mystique" which highlighted how societal attitudes that the primary role of women was that of wife and mother confined them to the domestic sphere
• Friedan called these attitudes the "Feminine Mystique" which suggested women could find complete fulfillment and identity exclusively through domestic life
• Liberal feminism


  Advocated for reforms in the public sphere so that women could participate equally in society and the economy, including advocating for the amendment of laws to prohibit discrimination based on gender and supporting measures such as affirmative action
• Socialists believed that gender inequality stemmed directly from capitalism and that overthrowing capitalism in favor of socialism would result in the abolition of patriarchy and gender inequality
• Socialists argued that women were responsible for the unpaid labor of maintaining the household and raising children, which was crucial for the reproduction of the labor force and upholding capitalism
• Socialists also linked the oppression of women to their role as a reserve army of labor which could be used in low paid, insecure jobs to keep wages low
• Early socialist feminists


  Believed that abolishing capitalism was sufficient to liberate women as domestic labor would be collectivized and domestic and other work would be equally valued and compensated
• Later socialist feminists


  Recognized that capitalism and patriarchy were closely linked and intersecting forms of oppression, and that a socialist revolution was necessary but not sufficient to remove gender oppression
• Sheila Rowbotham


  • Argued for a "revolution within a revolution" that required not only restructuring the economic system but also radically transforming social relations and institutions in the private sphere to eradicate gender oppression
• Radical feminism


  Emerged as part of the second wave feminist movement, believing that society is fundamentally patriarchal and that gender oppression affects all aspects of life in both the private and public spheres
• Radical feminists argued that reforms of the public sphere suggested by liberal feminists are not enough, and that society and the private sphere as well as the public sphere must undergo fundamental transformation to eliminate patriarchal oppression and achieve true gender equality
• The personal is political

  A key rallying cry of radical feminists, challenging the traditional separation of the private and public spheres and asserting that issues within the private sphere such as domestic labor, sexual violence, and power relations between men and women were political issues that needed to be addressed
• Radical feminists saw the patriarchal family structure as a microcosm of broader social inequalities where male dominance and female subordination perpetuated and reinforced the unpaid and undervalued domestic labor that women performed in the home
• Patriarchy


  A pervasive social structure in which men hold authority and control over women in both public and private spheres, which radical feminists argue is the root cause of women's subjugation and requires a profound transformation of societal norms, institutions, and personal relationships to dismantle
• Radical feminists analyze how the portrayal of women in society upholds traditional gender roles that facilitate male dominance and the exploitation of women, and aim to expose and dismantle the mechanisms through which patriarchy perpetuates women's oppression
• Radical feminists believe that patriarchy reduces women to a passive position, stripping them of their sexual autonomy and facilitating male dominance and violence, and they advocate for women's sexual autonomy and oppose practices that commodify women's bodies and perpetuate harmful stereotypes
• Radical feminists call for revolutionary changes that transform the underlying structures of power, including creating new forms of family and community, rejecting traditional gender roles, developing economic systems that value women's labor equally, and establishing legal and political frameworks that protect women's rights and promote their participation in all aspects of life
• Radical feminists called for revolutionary changes that transform the underlying structures of power
• Radical feminists advocated for creating women's only spaces founded by and run by women only to provide safety and protection to women
• Radical feminists argued that the traditional family structure needs to be completely dismantled and families needs to be redefined
• Postmodern feminists promote a more fluid and less fixed understanding of gender and what it means to be a woman
• Postmodern feminists argue that there is no single unified experience of Womanhood and gender depression
• Postmodern feminists emphasize intersectionality
• Postmodern feminists critiqued the second wave predominantly white middle class perspective which often overlooked the diverse experiences and perspectives of women of different races classes sexual orientations and cultures