"Women's and Feminist Activism in Western Europe" In
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Women’s and Feminist administration of the nation. Surprisingly, it was not only men, but also certain groups of Activism in Western conservative women, collectively gathered Europe into the Federation of Swiss Women Against the Right to Vote, who embraced this sepa- ROSEMARIE BUIKEMA ration of the private and the public spheres. Utrecht University, The Netherlands So, while second-wave feminism started to challenge the patriarchal foundations of Different generations of Western European post-World War II Western Europe’s welfare feminists struggled to realize full access to states, some countries were still in the pro- citizenship and the creation of a participatory cess of implementing essentially first-wave democracy that ensured social solidarity for goals. The Swiss example is just one of many allcitizens.Asadirectresultofthestruggles illustrating the tenacious force of gendered, of twentieth-century activists, twenty-first- social, and cultural structures. century women in Western Europe have the First- and second-wave (or pre- and post- right to vote, retain control over property war) feminist activists therefore stressed the and capital, combine motherhood and work, fact that next to attaining legal rights, women receive equal wages for equal work, pay taxes, also had symbolical hurdles to jump, such as and access higher education, and to enjoy contesting dominant images of womanhood. reproductive rights and gender-specific care. Virginia Woolf’s famous reference in 1931 However, it is important to realize that the to the “Angel in the House,” borrowed from majority of these rights, accessible now for Coventry Patmore’s poem celebrating domes- three or four generations of Western Euro- tic bliss, is a case in point (Woolf 1993). This peanwomen,stillproveelusiveinsome image of a selfless sacrificial woman of the contexts. nineteenth century, whose sole purpose in In some countries, specific so-called first- life was to soothe, flatter, and comfort men, wave goals were generally implemented only resonates in the contemporary moment, cap- a few decades ago. Most Western European turing ongoing struggles of feminist activism. countriespassedlawstogivethefullright In order to be able to participate effectively to vote for women between 1913 (Norway) in the public sphere, women and minority and 1944 (France). Remarkably, women groups must engage with an inner struggle in Switzerland accessed suffrage as late as with these “Angels in the House” – these 1971 owing to a persistent ideology linking icons of invisibility and submission. Such womentotherealmsofchildren,church,and consciousness-raising initiatives are usually kitchen. These private-sphere realms could seen as specific to second-wave feminism. presumably be dealt with through munici- However, as Woolf’s essays show, they were palities and cantons that included women’s also relevant to the first wave. votes. The belief was that parliament should Building on the first wave, second-wave occupy itself with issues that lay beyond the feminists made this issue one of their explicit “legitimate” sphere of women’s influence goals, raising awareness about the feminist such as questions of war and peace, the main- mantra that the personal is political. Fem- tenance of the army and the navy, and the inists of the time argued that it was not by The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, First Edition. Edited by Nancy A. Naples. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss656 2 WOMEN’S AND FEMINIST ACTIVISM IN WESTERN EUROPE nature that women in mid-twentieth-century simultaneously can function as a shelter from Western Europe were locked in the private racism. Black feminism was thereby claiming sphere or took care of the reproduction an explicitly race-specific manifestation of of male citizens without fully sharing in feminist activism within feminist activism, their civil rights. Personal experiences of by focusing on the complex intersection of marginalization and unequal power balances, sexual and racial politics (Carby 1982). second-wave feminists argue, are nearly While politicizing and complicating the always the result of interacting political and fixed connotations of the private sphere, societal structures. Second-wave feminism second-wave feminists also directed their revealed that Western European women’s actions toward the gendered politics of the personal experiences of marginalization and public sphere. One of the activist groups submission were shared by women in com- gaining international attention in this respect parable geopolitical situations and positions. was the Dutch Mad Mina (“Dolle Mina” in They challenged the idea that women in Dutch, named after the famous first-wave suf- general enjoyed being voiceless or rendered fragette Wilhelmina Drucker (1847–1925)). amerevisualspectacleinthepublicsphere. One of Mad Mina’s early actions consisted Rather, second-wave feminism posited that of the public burning of bras in front of the this division of gendered positions between statue of Drucker in Amsterdam, paying the private and the public was the result of a homage to the burning of corsets by first- historyofsocietalconventionsandgeopoli- generation feminists. Such feminist protests tics funded by patriarchal systems – the law, against patriarchal conventions and gen- the church, the class system, and so on. der divisions were radical and political but Institutionalized gender roles were assig- always characterized by humor and, there- ned to the female body and, as Simone de fore, easily garnered international media Beauvoir in 1949 famously claimed, “One is attention (Buikema and van der Tuin 2014). not born but rather becomes a woman” (de Mad Mina would pinch men’s bottoms in Beauvoir 1989, 301). Feminists contended public, close down Amsterdam public toi- that the structure of the private sphere was lets for men only, and occupy newsrooms entangled with and embedded in the orga- and the remaining male-only educational nization of the public sphere and equally institutions. governed by sexual politics. Therefore, West- Other famous second-wave feminist ern European feminist activists continuously actions involved pro-abortion politics. The demonstrated how the personal and the United Kingdom legalized abortion in 1967 political, the private and the public, were not whereas the Dutch only did so in 1981. For neatly separated but inevitably intersecting. example, Dutch feminist activists interrupted Following this line of thought, second- a conference of gynecologists in 1970 by wave feminists argued that the house as the showing their naked bellies painted with patriarchalmetaphorofseclusion,intimacy, the slogan “boss in own belly.” Thus, in the and nourishment was not necessarily a safe 1970s and 1980s, the streets and other public space for women and did not protect them spaces were claimed as sites to demonstrate from gendered power differences, violence, thepresenceandtheagencyofwomen.These and rape. Additionally, women of color kinds of actions determined, to a certain pointed out that although power and the extent, the public image of second-wave possibility of rape and violence are always feminists as bra-burning men haters and, present in the private sphere, the house somemightsuggest,mayhaveaddedtothe WOMEN’S AND FEMINIST ACTIVISM IN WESTERN EUROPE 3 alleged generation gap between second- and ties – as well as tensions – between the law third-wave activism in the West today. and feminist ethics, the inseparability of the In spite of this polarizing stereotypifica- privateandthepublic,thepersonalandthe tion, second-wave feminist activism playfully political, the empirical and the symbolical, performed and embodied the dethronement are all still feminist concerns. of Virginia Woolf’s “Angel in the House.” That notwithstanding, a major concern One aspect continually exposed by feminist of twenty-first-century feminist activism in activism is that attaining any semblance of Western Europe is that the achievements first-class citizenship is obstructed by many of the movement for women’s liberation more factors than legislation alone. Further threaten to become disconnected from work is needed to investigate the ways in their initial manifestations of equality for which womanhood and the female body are all, understood as transnational solidarity. imaged and also how female bodies and other Instead, the outcome of the two feminist systems of stratification such as class, race, waves seems mainly to serve neoliberal religion, and sexuality are entangled. Com- capitalism and the concomitant individual- pleting women’s access to full citizenship, ization of the process of emancipation and becoming an integral part of the democratic social participation (Scott 2011). As Nancy system of representation, is a complex and Fraser’s timely summary in The Guardian longitudinal process involving simultaneous (Fraser 2013) suggests, this risk of female change on many different levels. As first- and empowerment becoming the handmaiden of second-wave feminist activism illustrates, the global neoliberal capitalism might have been intersection of the personal and the political implicated in the movement from the start. can only ever be successfully realized if it Western European second-wave feminist includes the cultural analysis of the intersec- goals and strategies in the end seem to have tion of the empirical and the symbolic. As been ambivalent and thus susceptible for two