Feminism

I

Introduction

Feminism, general term covering a range of ideologies and theories which pay special attention to women’s rights and women’s position in culture and society. The term tends to be used for the women’s movement, which began in the late 18th century and continues to campaign for complete political, social, and economic equality between women and men. This article deals specifically with the development of the ideas behind that movement and their influence and impact.

Feminists are united by the idea that women’s position in society is unequal to that of men, and that society is structured in such a way as to benefit men to the political, social, and economic detriment of women. However, feminists have used different theories to explain these inequalities and have advocated different ways of redressing inequalities, and there are marked geographic and historical variations in the nature of feminism.

Historically, feminist thought and activity can be divided into two waves. The first wave, which began in about 1800 and lasted until the 1930s, was largely concerned with gaining equal rights between women and men. The second wave, which began in the late 1960s, has continued to fight for equality but has also developed a range of theories and approaches that stress the difference between women and men and which draw attention to the specific needs of women.

II

Traditional Ideas about Women

Archaeological evidence from Europe and the Near East has suggested that palaeolithic civilizations practised goddess worship and were organized as matriarchies. However, from the time of the earliest written records, these civilizations had been overtaken by male-deity-worshipping, patriarchal cultures in which men were political, religious, and military leaders and women were kept in subordination. In Classical times and the early Christian era, women were excluded from public life and were made subordinate to men. For example, Aristotle, in Politics, argued that women were inferior to men and must be ruled by men. St Paul told Christian wives to obey their husbands and not to speak in church. Throughout most of the second millennium, in most societies, women were deprived of property, education, and legal status. They were made the responsibility of their husbands, if married, or of their fathers or other male relatives if not. However, there were examples of exceptional women who challenged patriarchal structures in their lives and writings. For example, a German abbess, Hildegard of Bingen defied the authority of male Church leaders; and an Italian writer and courtier Christine de Pisan defended women and wrote biblical commentaries which challenged the patriarchal ideas inherent in Christianity. By the end of the 17th century, a number of women writers, such as Mary Astell, were calling for improvements in women’s education.

III

The First Wave

Although the word “feminism” was not used until the end of the 19th century, the emergence of recognizably feminist ideologies can be traced to the late 18th century. The earliest form of feminism was concerned with equal rights for women and men: this meant equal standing as citizens in public life and, to some extent, equal legal status within the home. These ideas emerged in response to the French Revolution and the American War of Independence, both of which advocated values of liberty and equality. Feminists in France argued that the revolution’s values of liberty, equality, and fraternity should apply to all, while women activists in America called for an extension of the principles of the American Declaration of Independence to women, including rights to citizenship and property.

In England, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she demanded equality and better education for women, and made the first sustained critique of the social system which relegated women to an inferior position. In the early 19th century, a small group of middle-class women in the United Kingdom began to call for better education, improved legal rights (especially within marriage), employment opportunities, and the right to vote. Equal-rights feminism was given theoretical justification by John Stuart Mill, who wrote The Subjection of Women (1869), which was partly influenced by his wife Harriet Taylor. From the 1850s onward, the campaign for equal rights for women became focused on winning the right to vote (women’s suffrage), and suffragist movements appeared in New Zealand, the Soviet Union, Germany, Poland, Austria, and Sweden.

Towards the end of the 19th century, another strand of feminist thinking appeared which questioned social attitudes towards women, including cultural and literary representations and social prescriptions for women’s behaviour. By the turn of the century, the media in the West became preoccupied with the stereotype of the “new woman”, who challenged patriarchy not only by demanding equal civil rights, but by defying conventions and choosing her own lifestyle and clothes. By the 1920s, feminists began to turn their attention from questions of equality between women and men to issues which mainly concerned women: for example, calling for improved welfare provision for mothers and children. These factors would become stronger in the second wave of feminism.

IV

The Second Wave

The original impetus for the “second wave” of feminism came from socialist and Civil Rights movements which emerged in the 1960s in North and Central America, Europe, and Australasia. The women’s liberation movement, which started in the United States, combined liberal, rights-based concerns for equality between women and men with demands for a woman’s right to determine her own identity and sexuality. These two strands of ideology were represented in the seven demands of the movement, established between 1970 and 1978. These were equal pay; equal education and equal opportunities in work; financial and legal independence; free 24-hour nurseries; free contraception and abortion on demand; a woman’s right to define her own sexuality and an end to discrimination against lesbians; and freedom from violence and sexual coercion.

Central to second-wave feminism is the notion that the personal is political; that is, individual women do not suffer oppression in isolation but as the result of wider social and political systems. This ideology was greatly influenced by the writings of Simone de Beauvoir and Kate Millett, who drew attention to ways in which women were oppressed by the very structure of Western society. In The Second Sex (1949) de Beauvoir argued that Western culture regarded men as normal and women as an aberration (“the Other”) and she called for the recognition of the special nature of women. Kate Millett, in Sexual Politics (1970), drew attention to the ubiquity of patriarchy and to the ways in which it reproduced itself through the family and culture, notably in literature. The recognition of the endemic nature of patriarchy fuelled the feminist idea of universal sisterhood—that women of all cultures and backgrounds can be united within their common oppression.

Second-wave feminism emphasized the physical and psychological differences between women and men. Some feminists criticized traditional psychoanalysis, notably the work of Sigmund Freud, for assuming that all people are, or should be, like men. They became concerned with ways in which women’s perceptions were determined by the particular nature of the female body and the female roles in reproduction and childbearing. In France, the feminist theorists Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray explored ways of making new knowledge from the viewpoint of the female body, including the idea of a women’s writing (écriture féminine). This strand of feminism, which became known as cultural or radical feminism, focused on differences between women and men that they believed make women superior to men, and advocated female forms of culture. It was regarded as a step backwards by many people who were working towards reducing the reproductive emphasis in women’s lives. Its opponents criticized it for being “essentialist”, that is, for reducing women to bodies, and for assuming that all women are the same. The arguments continue, over determinist ideas that women are always bound to be caring and nurturing, and that men are naturally agressive.

A powerful strand of feminism is concerned with the ways in which men have controlled and subordinated women’s bodies. For example, Mary Daly argued in Gyn/Ecology (1979) that patriarchy coerced women into heterosexuality, using violence to suppress women’s powers and sexuality. Feminists have argued that sexual and domestic violence are not isolated incidents, but are central to the subordination of women by patriarchy. Feminists, notably Andrea Dworkin, wrote powerfully against pornography as a means by which patriarchy exploits women’s bodies and incites violence against women. In response to these threats, feminists asserted women’s legal rights to their own bodies, including the importance of the right to choose motherhood. They have also looked at ways in which women might use motherhood as a source of strength and as a way of influencing future generations, rather than as a means of reproducing patriarchy. In particular, some feminists have advocated different forms of parenting, as single mothers or within lesbian relationships.