2. “When girls are educated, their countries become stronger
and more prosperous,”
-former first lady Michelle Obama
3. BIG QUESTIONS
1. WHY DO WE STILL NEED FEMINISM? ARE WE
NOT EQUAL NOW?
2. ARE MEN AND WOMEN EQUAL?
4. The term ‘feminism’ has been derived from the Latin word ‘femina,’ meaning
‘woman’ and was first used with regard to the issues of equality and women’s
Rights Movement.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘feminism’ as a state of being feminine or
womanly.
The Webster’s Dictionary defines the term ‘feminism’ as the principle that
women should have political rights equal to those of men.
Toril Moi says that “The words ‘feminist’ or ‘feminism’ are political labels
indicating support for the aims of the new Woman’s Movement which emerged
in the late 1960s.” Similarly, Simone de Beauvoir argues that the terms,
masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form on the
legal papers.”
5. The definition of the term ‘feminism’ differs from person to
person.
Chaman Nahal in his article,
“Feminism in English Fiction”, defines feminism as “a mode of
existence in which the woman is free of the dependence
syndrome. There is a dependence syndrome: whether it is the
husband or the father or the community or whether it is a
religious group, ethnic group. When women free themselves of
the dependence syndrome and lead a normal life, my idea of
feminism materialises.”
6. Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the authors who wrote about feminism, advocates
in her A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) that women must be treated
equally because they have to play a crucial and vital role in society especially
bringing up children.
She attacks male thinker and scholar like Rousseau who argued that women did
not need education but she supported education as a means of women’s
improvement.
Like her American activist, Margaret Fuller one of the famous female writers of
the 19th century, in her Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845) believed that
education is the means of emancipation for women and her key planks are
education, employment and political.
7. While in the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf, a modernist and
female Victorian author, explored gender relation in her A Room of
One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineans (1938). She vehemently argued
that patriarchal education systems and reading practices prevent
women readers from reading as women.
It is also remarkable when she remarks “a woman must have money
and a room of her own if she to write fiction”. She advocates for the
liberation of women, financially independence and right to reveal
feelings and experience through words.
The exploitation, discrimination and the crisis of women’s
identification faced by women in the society have questioned by
female writers, activists, and critics.
8. The fundamental belief behind feminist theory is that from the
beginning of human civilization, women have been given a secondary
status by masculine dominated social discourse and western
philosophical tradition.
The history of every civilization shows that women have always been
subordinated to a position where they have no means to re-claim
their unique identity unless and until they re-visit the history, explore
it and finally re-establish it through their own experiences and
insights.
In order to explore their own unique identity, women have to define
themselves against the male informed ideals and beliefs that are
passed down from generation to generation.
9. These beliefs have produced dominant system by creating female
subjects who are conditioned to accept the values of the system. The
physical universe is also dishonored and exploited by men through an
analogous exploitation that women are subjected to, reducing both to
the docile entities and selfless artefacts.
So, in all these three areas- historical traces, philosophical or epistemic
tradition and ecological inhalation, men have gained immense control
to maneuver the dominance over women as well as nature.
10. Traditionally, the history of feminism is divided into the three
waves of feminism. The first wave of feminism hits the world
in the nineteenth and early parts of the twentieth century.
This wave of feminism tackled issues like: contractual rights
and property rights for women, opposition to chattel
marriage, women suffrage and the treatment of women as
properties.
11. The second wave of feminism span the period of 1960 to 1980s. The
main demands of this wave include: civil rights, sexual liberation,
childcare, health, welfare, education, work and reproductive rights.
This wave of feminism specifically campaigned against social and
cultural stereotyping of the female gender as only good for the
kitchen and bed.
They therefore advocated for equal rights for both women and men
to pursue a career of their choice. Thus, while first-wavers focused on
absolute rights, such as suffrage, second-wavers largely concentrated
on other issues of equality, such as the end to discrimination.
12. The Third-wave of feminism began in the early 1990s, continuing the
campaign of the second wave and also amending its perceived
failures. The third wave feminists seek to challenge or avoid what it
deems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity,
which (according to them) overemphasized the experiences of upper
middle class white women. The third wave therefore expanded their
ideology to cover; race, gender and feminism. The wave also
witnessed the involvement of different shades of feminism from
different societies and culture.
13. They argue that the feminist movement should address global issues
(such as rape, incest, and prostitution) and culturally specific issues
(such as female genital mutilation in some parts of Africa and the
Middle East and glass ceiling practices that impede women's
advancement in developed economies) in order to understand how
gender inequality interacts with racism, homophobia, classism and
colonization in a "matrix of domination (Harding 12).
14. Matrix of domination is a theoretical approach that
explores the interlocking systems of oppression in terms
of race, gender, class, and other social categories faced
by marginalized or othered people. It theorizes power in
four domains: structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and
interpersonal.
15. Third-wave feminism also contains internal debates between
difference feminists, who believe 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 (Galligan, 184).
17. Liberal Feminism:
Liberal feminism advocates for equality between men and
women through political and legal reforms without altering
the structure of society. This variety of feminism works within
the structure of mainstream society to integrate women into
that structure. Its roots stretch back to the social contract
theory of government instituted by the American Revolution.
18. Radical Feminism:
Radical feminism sees the male controlled capitalist hierarchy as the
root cause of women's oppression and thus advocates for a total
uprooting and reconstruction of society (Echol, 416). The reason this
group gets the "radical" label is that they view the oppression of
women as the most fundamental form of oppression, one that cuts
across boundaries of race, culture, and economic class. This is a
movement intent on social change.
19. Cultural Feminism:
As radical feminism died out as a movement, cultural feminism got
rolling. As various 1960s movements for social change fell apart or got
co-opted, some people got pessimistic about the very possibility of
social change. Many of them therefore, turned their attention from
radical feminism to building alternatives, so that if they couldn't
change the dominant society, they could at least avoid it as much as
possible were accompanied with reasons justifying the abandonment
of working for social change.
Notions that women are "inherently kinder and gentler" are one of
the foundations of cultural feminism, and remain a major part of it.
20. Marxist and Socialist Feminism: Marxist feminism recognizes that
women are oppressed, and attributes the oppression to the
capitalist/private property system.
Thus, they insist that the only way to end the oppression of women is
to overthrow the capitalist system. Socialist feminism distinguishes
itself from Marxist feminism by arguing that women's liberation can
only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural
sources of women's oppression.
21. Eco-Feminism: Ecofeminists see men's control of land as
responsible for the oppression of women and destruction of the
natural environment. This branch of feminism is much more
spiritual than political. Its basic tenet is that a patriarchal society
will always exploit its resources without regard to long term
consequences as a direct result of the attitudes fostered in a
patriarchal/hierarchical society.
Parallels are often drawn between society's treatment of the
environment, animals, or resources and its treatment of women.
In resisting patriarchal culture, eco-feminists feel that they are
also resisting plundering and destroying the Earth.
