UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY OF GENDER STUDIES
The Dictionary of Cambridge:
“ Feminism is the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state” The terms "feminism" and "feminist" did not gain widespread use until the 1970s Katherine Hepburn speaks of the "feminist movement" in the 1942 film, “Woman of the Year” The feminist movement, like any other social movements is constantly changing. In the present wave of feminism, activism and advocacy for equality for all people despite race, class, religion, age or sexual orientation is at the heart of the feminist agenda. In medieval Europe, women were denied the right to own property, to study, or to participate in public life At the end of the 19th century in France, in parts of Germany, a husband still had the right to sell his wife Even as late as the early 20th century, women could neither vote nor hold elective office in Europe and in most of the United States Traditional patriarchal set up establishing men as the decision-makers Prevailing social evils like sati, child- marriage, widowhood, low caste women exploited by high-caste men The eradication of social evils was a common platform where reformers belonged-Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, Prarthana Samaj in Maharashtra and Arya Samaj in northern India Indian leaders coming in contact with western education and ideals of liberty and equality According to Maggie and Rebecca Walker, the history of feminism can be divided into three waves: The first feminist wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries The second feminist wave was in the 1960s and 1970s The third feminist wave extends from the 1990s to the present First Wave: Political Equality
Second Wave: Legal Equality
Third Wave: Social Equality The ancient world Influence of the Enlightenment The suffrage era The post-suffrage movement In late 14th and early 15th century France, the first feminist philosopher, Christine de Pisan, challenged prevailing attitudes towards women with a bold call for female education
Defenders of the status quo painted women as superficial and inherently immoral, while the emerging feminists produced long lists of women of courage and accomplishment and proclaimed that women would be the intellectual equals of men, if they were given equal access to education Feminists began to apply ideals of liberty and equality to their own situations. They were called as female abolitionists Mary Wollstonecraft’s, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792) was published in England challenging the notion that women exist only to please men She proposed that women and men be given equal opportunities in education, work, and politics. Women, she wrote, are as naturally rational as men Many women related journals and magazines increasingly began to be published After the American Civil War, feminists assumed that women’s suffrage would be included in the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibited disfranchisement on the basis of race
Yet leading abolitionists refused to support such inclusion, which prompted Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to form the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 In 1918, the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed granting the vote to women over the age of 30 who owned houses In 1928, this was extended to all women over twenty-one. In the United States, leaders of this movement included Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery prior to championing women's right to vote American first-wave feminism is considered to have ended with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1919), granting women the right to vote in all states The women’s movement of 60s and 70s is known as second wave of feminism Abolitionism was replaced by civil rights movement Women’s concerns were on Pres. John F. Kennedy’s agenda. In 1961 he created the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt to lead it The report in 1963, firmly supported the nuclear family and preparing women for motherhood. But it also documented a national pattern of employment discrimination, unequal pay, legal inequality, and meagre support services for working women The Equal Pay Act of 1963 offered the first guarantee, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was amended to bar employers from discriminating on the basis of sex Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's definitions of femininity, which over- emphasize the experiences of upper middle- class white women Third-wave feminism also contains internal debates between difference feminists such as those who believe that there are no inherent differences between the sexes and contend that gender roles are due to social conditioning Mary Wollstonecraft Sojourner Truth Elizabeth Cady Stanton Susan Brownell Anthony Emmeline Pankhurst Simone de Beauvoir Betty Friedan Gloria Steinem Malala Yousafzai Feminists hate men Feminists are angry Feminists are unattractive and not feminine All feminists are lesbians If you are a feminist, you cannot be religious All feminists are career women and do not support stay-at-home moms Feminists can only be women Feminists do not believe in marriage Dr. Priyanka Jain Department of Sociology School of Liberal Arts Noida International University Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh