Feminist movement
The feminist movement, also known as the women's movement, refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by inequality between men and women. Such issues are women's liberation, reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. The movement's priorities have expanded since its beginning in the 19th century, and vary among nations and communities. Priorities range from opposition to female genital mutilation in one country, to opposition to the glass ceiling in another.
Feminism in parts of the Western world has been an ongoing movement since the turn of the century. During its inception, feminism has gone through a series of four high moments termed Waves. First-wave feminism was oriented around the station of middle- or upper-class white women and involved suffrage and political equality, education, right to property, organizational leadership, and marital freedoms. Second-wave feminism attempted to further combat social and cultural inequalities. Although the first wave of feminism involved mainly middle class white women, the second wave brought in women of different social classes, women of color, and women from other developing nations that were seeking solidarity. Third-wave feminism continued to address the financial, social, and cultural inequalities of women in business and in their home lives, and included renewed campaigning for greater influence of women in politics and media. In reaction to political activism, feminists have also had to maintain focus on women's reproductive rights, such as the right to abortion. Fourth-wave feminism examines the interlocking systems of power that contribute to the social stratification of traditionally marginalized groups, as well as the world around them.
History
The base of the Women's Movement, since its inception, has been grounded in the injustice of inequality between men and women. Throughout history, the relationship between men and women has been that of a patriarchal society, citing the law of nature as the justification, which was interpreted to mean women are inferior to men. Allan Johnson, a sociologist who studies masculinity, wrote of patriarchy: "Patriarchy encourages men to seek security, status, and other rewards through control; to fear other men's ability to control and harm them; and to identify being in control as both their best defense against loss and humiliation and the surest route to what they need and desire". During the pre-feminist era, women were expected to be proper, delicate, and emotional nurturers of the household. They were raised in a manner in which gaining a husband to take care of them and raising a family was their ultimate priority. Author Mary Wollstonecraft wrote of the lesser sex in her 1792 novels A Vindication of the Rights of Woman & A Vindication of the Rights of Men, "..for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity." Early ideas and activism of pro-feminism beliefs before the existence of the Feminist movement are described as protofeminist.Protofeminists in the United States organized before the Seneca Falls convention as part of the suffrage, abolition, and other movements. Gender equality movements were practiced within the Haudenosaunee nations long before America was colonized. Some have come to recognize the beginning of the feminist movement in 1832, as American Anti-Slavery Society, and The Connecticut Female Anti-Slavery Society formed as early as 1833. By the year 1837, 139 AASS societies were formed across the nation. The first national AASS convention was held in New York City in 1837. During the first convention, it was debated whether black women could participate. By the second and third conventions, demands were heard which saw to it that conventions were open to African American leadership and membership participation. On the evening of the second convention held in Philadelphia Hall, after the meeting adjourned and the attendees left, a violent mob burned down the hall. The issues discussed included the vote, oppression, and slavery, and laid the basis for future movements.
On November 15, 1895, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote an address describing how, in her perspective, the Seneca Falls Convention "... was the first woman's rights convention ever held in the world... a declaration was read and signed by most of those present, and a series of radical resolutions adopted." Stanton's recollection prompted historians since the 1950s to attribute the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 as the earliest North American Feminist Movement. The convention met annually for fifteen years thereafter. Attendees drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, outlining the new movement's ideology and political strategies.
The earliest North American and European international women's organizations were the International Council of Women, established in 1888 in Washington, DC, US. The term Feminist Movement was coined in the late nineteenth century to distinguish the Feminist Movement from the Women's Movement, allowing for inclusion of male feminists. The new movement thus prompted the likes of male feminists George Lansbury of the British Labour Party to run for political candidacy on the feminist ticket in 1906. As the awareness of feminist movements evolved, transnational feminism and nationalist feminist movements established themselves worldwide. Priorities and ideas vary based on the political or cultural positions of the women in the area where each movement originates. General topics of feminist coalition politics include lack of legal rights, poverty, medical vulnerability, and labor. These political issues are often organized around division by class, caste, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, nationality, and age. Early
Russian nationalist feminist activists founded the All-Russian Union for Women's Equality in 1905, allowing women to vote and allowing co-education. In 1931, the All-Asian Women's Conference was held in Lahore in what was then British India. This meeting is one example of the time period which "demonstrated the networking of women across various divides". The spirit of the conference can be understood as International or Global feminist.
Pre-feminism society
The feminist movement has been an ongoing force throughout history. There is no way to determine when the exact date was when the feminist movement was first thought up, because women have been writing on the topic for thousands of years. For instance, the female poet from Ancient Greece, Sappho, born in roughly 615 BC, made waves as an acclaimed poet during a time when the written word was conducted primarily by men. She wrote poetry about, among other things, sexuality.There have been four main waves of feminism since the beginning of the feminist movement in Western society, each with their own fight for women's rights. The first in the wave was in the 1840s. It was based on Education, right to property, organizational leadership, right to vote, and marital freedoms. The second wave was in the 1960s. It was based on gender issues, women's sexual liberation, reproductive rights, job opportunities for women, violence against women, and changes in custody and divorce laws. The third wave was in the 1990s. It was based on individualism, diversity, redefined what it meant to be a feminist, intersectionality, sex positivity, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism. Lastly, the fourth wave began in the 2000s, and is currently still in progress. It has been based around female empowerment, body shaming, sexual harassment, spiritual concerns, human rights, and concerns for the planet. The feminist movement continued during the periods between waves, just not to the extent of the four large motions.
The first documented gathering of women to form a movement with a common goal was on 5 October 1789, during the French Revolution. The event was later referred to as the Women's March on Versailles. The gathering was based on a lack of food, high market prices, and the fear of another famine occurring across France. On that day, women along with revolutionaries, had planned to gather in the market. Once gathered, the crowd stormed the Hotel de Ville where weapons were being stored. The armed crowd then marched to the Palace of Versailles to draw King Louis XVI's attention to the high prices and food shortages. For King Louis XVI's remaining time on the throne, he stopped fighting the Revolutionaries. The march signaled a sort of change of power, showing that there is power in the people, and diminished the perception that the monarch was invincible.
The French Revolution began with the inequality felt by French citizens and came as a reaction from the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" which was signed in August 1789. The declaration gave rights to men who were termed active citizens. Active citizenship was given to French men who were twenty-five years, or older, worked, and paid taxes, and who could not be titled a servant. The declaration dismissed the population who were women, foreigners, children, and servants, as passive citizens. Passive citizens, French women in particular, focused their fight on gaining citizenship and equal rights.
One of the first women to speak out on women's rights and inequality was French playwright Olympes de Gouges, who wrote the "Declaration of the Rights of Woman" in 1791, in contrast to the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen." She famously stated, "Women are born free and are man's equal in law. Social distinctions can be founded solely on common utility." Olympes used her words to urge women to speak up and take control of their rights. She demonstrated the similarity between the duties as a citizen of both men and women and the cohesion to ensue if both genders were considered equal.
British philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft published in 1792 what has been seen as the first feminist treaty on the human rights of women, "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." She pressed the issue of equality between men and women, stating: "No society can be either virtuous or moral while half of the population are being subjugated by the other half'.
She went on to write about the Law of Nature and the desire for women to present more as themselves, and demand respect and equality from their male counterparts, "...men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not see, to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow-creatures who find amusement in their society".
During the mid-nineteenth century, the women's movement developed as a result of women striving to improve their status and usefulness in society. Nancy Cott, historian and professor, wrote about the objectives of the feminist movement: "to initiate measures of charitable benevolence, temperance, and social welfare and to initiate struggles for civil rights, social freedoms, higher education, remunerative occupations, and the ballot."The setting of these goals resulted from women's rising awareness of the precariousness of their situation in the patriarchal society of the 1800s. The developing movement promoted a series of new images for women: True Womanhood, Real Womanhood, Public Womanhood, and New Womanhood."
True Womanhood was the ideal that women were meant to be pure and moral. A true woman was raised learning manners and submission to males to be a good wife and mother.
Real Womanhood came to be with the Civil war, when women were forced to work in place of men who were at war. Real Women learned how to support themselves and took that knowledge with them in their marriage and education.
Public Womanhood came with women being allowed to work domestic type jobs such as nursing, teaching, and secretary, which were jobs previously performed by men, but the corporation could pay women much less than men.
New Womanhood was based on eliminating the traditional conformity of women's roles, inferiority from men, and living a more fulfilled life.
"The four overlapping phases of the Women's Movement advanced women from domestic prisoners to significant members of their communities within less than a century."
In the 1820s the women's movement, then called the temperance movement, expanded from Europe and moved into the United States. Women began speaking out on the effects of the consumption of alcohol had on the morals of their husbands and blamed it on the problems within their household. They called for a moral reform by limiting or prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol, beginning the fight toward Prohibition which did not begin until 1920. The women fighting for the temperance movement came to the realization, without the ability to vote on the issues they were fighting for, nothing would ever change.