Feminism

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Feminism

• The Search for Equality

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What is Feminism?

• How would you describe it, as an ideology?

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Text definition

• An ideology that opposes the political,
  economic, and cultural relegation of women to
  positions of inferiority.
• Affirms womens equality with men.
• Rejects patriarchy.

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What does patriarchy mean?
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What does patriarchy mean?

• In the text
• the rule of men as a social group over women as
  a social group, and
• a system based on sexual hierarchy, with men at
  the top and women below.

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Examples of denial of equality

• Economically
• Women paid less than men throughout the world.
  In U.S., pay gap about 75 (controlling for all
  other factors).
• Women represent the majority of the worlds poor.

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Examples of denial of equality

• Politically
• Globally, only 23 women ever elected head of
  state (only 6 served in 1995).
• Underrepresented in legislatures.
• Political institutions dont provide equal
  protection equal access to the vote.

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Examples of denial of equality

• Educationally
• Girls denied access to education in many
  countries 2/3 of the worlds illiterate adults
  are women, higher in some places.
• Under certain regimes, females punished for
  seeking an education (as under the Taliban).

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Examples of denial of equality

• Access to basic health care food
• Females less likely to receive adequate nutrition
  or health care.
• Female babies much more likely to be subjected to
  infanticide sex-selected abortions.
• Females subjected to female genital mutilation
  (FGM) in some cultures.

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Examples of denial of equality

• Violence, including Femicide, the murder of
  women
• Outside the home, women vulnerable to assault and
  rape.
• In the home, women beaten and even murdered by
  husbands, their own family members, their in-laws
  (dowry deaths).

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Female subordination

• Legitimated historically by
• Some religious traditions
• Aristotle (classical Greece).
• Enlightenment writers such as Rousseau and
  Jefferson.
• Western democracies in the 19th early 20th
  centuries.

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U.S. Historical Trends

• First wave of feminism abolition movement.
  Mid-19th century
• Second wave of feminism suffrage movement. Late
  19th to early 20th c.
• Third wave of feminism equal legal rights
  political participation. Mid to late 20th
  century.

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Types of feminisms

• Liberal feminism
• Radical feminism
• Diversity feminism

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Liberal feminism

• Shared with liberalism these ideas
• Equality
• Rationality
• Individual rights

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Early liberal feminists

• Mary Wollstonecraft
• Lucretia Mott
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Susan B. Anthony

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Mary Wollstonecraft

• Mary Wollstonecraft late 18th century
• Women are human beings, rational and capable of
  self-determination and liberty.
• The patriarchy system distorts womens
  personalities, making them fulfill the worst
  stereotypes (vain shallow).

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Liberal feminists

• Betty Friedan
• Gloria Steinem
• Seeking to work
• within the existing
• democratic system
• Working with men as well as women.

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Radical feminisms

• Multiple types of radical feminisms, but they all
  share a common critique of liberal feminism for
  accepting the status quo economic and social
  structures.
• The status quo operates with the male model as
  the norm (e.g., competitive and aggressive).

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Types of Radical Feminisms

• Socialist feminists argue that patriarchy
  capitalism are linked.
• Lesbian feminists criticize societys definition
  of heterosexuality as normal, other
  sexualities as deviant.
• Some feminists argue that pornography fosters
  violence against women.

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Diversity feminism

• The needs and perspectives of non-Anglo,
  non-Western, and non-affluent women are ignored
  by liberal feminism.
• Womens issues change across cultures and across
  time no single feminist voice or viewpoint.