FEMINISM Origins and development of feminism First wave

FEMINISM

Origins and development of feminism • First wave feminism: women united in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to demand suffrage • Second wave feminism: acknowledged that suffrage had not brought about female liberation • 1960 s/70 s onwards: feminism is now viewed as an ideology, and de-radicalizes and spreads • 1990 s to today: ‘post-feminism’ and feminist diversification/fragmentation

Principles of feminism Feminist ideology perceives other ideologies as inadequate vehicles for female social advancement, for the way in which they have each systematically incited the oppression of women. Feminist themes focus primarily on: • • a redefinition of what constitutes ‘the political’ acknowledging the patriarchy sex and gender equality and difference

Sex and politics • Feminism has been influenced by other political traditions, liberalism and socialism most obviously, but also modern traditions such as post-modernism and psychoanalysis. • Hierarchical and elitist ideologies, such as conservatism, are commonly associated with anti-feminism, in arguing that the woman’s ‘private’ role in inevitable and natural. • Reactionary feminism, critiqued as a contradiction in terms by conventional feminism, also exists, for example with Islamic feminism.

Sex and politics • • Liberal feminism Socialist feminism Radical feminism Third-wave feminism and beyond

Sexism in the global age • Can feminism become a truly global ideology? • How should feminists respond to globalization? • Are feminist ideas universally applicable?