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Feminism: a Very Short Introduction Very Short Introductions Are for Anyone Wanting a Stimulating and Accessible Way in to a New Subject Feminism: A Very Short Introduction Very Short Introductions are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide. The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. Over the next few years it will grow to a library of around 200 volumes – a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology. Very Short Introductions available now: ANARCHISM Colin Ward CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw CLASSICS Mary Beard and ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY John Henderson Julia Annas CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard ANCIENT WARFARE THE COLD WAR Robert McMahon Harry Sidebottom CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE Continental Philosophy John Blair Simon Critchley ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia COSMOLOGY Peter Coles ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn THE CRUSADES ARCHITECTURE Christopher Tyerman Andrew Ballantyne CRYPTOGRAPHY ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes Fred Piper and Sean Murphy ART HISTORY Dana Arnold DADA AND SURREALISM ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland David Hopkins THE HISTORY OF Darwin Jonathan Howard ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin Democracy Bernard Crick Atheism Julian Baggini DESCARTES Tom Sorell Augustine Henry Chadwick DESIGN John Heskett BARTHES Jonathan Culler DINOSAURS David Norman THE BIBLE John Riches DREAMING J. Allan Hobson BRITISH POLITICS DRUGS Leslie Iversen Anthony Wright THE EARTH Martin Redfern Buddha Michael Carrithers EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch BUDDHISM Damien Keown EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown BRITAIN Paul Langford CAPITALISM James Fulcher THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe EMOTION Dylan Evans CHOICE THEORY EMPIRE Stephen Howe Michael Allingham ENGELS Terrell Carver CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson Ethics Simon Blackburn The European Union THE MARQUIS DE SADE John Pinder John Phillips EVOLUTION MARX Peter Singer Brian and Deborah Charlesworth MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers FASCISM Kevin Passmore MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope FOSSILS Keith Thomson MEDIEVAL BRITAIN FOUCAULT Gary Gutting John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths THE FRENCH REVOLUTION MODERN ART David Cottington William Doyle MODERN IRELAND Senia Pasˇe t a FREE WILL Thomas Pink MOLECULES Philip Ball Freud Anthony Storr MUSIC Nicholas Cook Galileo Stillman Drake Myth Robert A. Segal Gandhi Bhikhu Parekh NATIONALISM Steven Grosby GLOBALIZATION NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner Manfred Steger NINETEENTH-CENTURY GLOBAL WARMING BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and Mark Maslin H. C. G. Matthew HABERMAS NORTHERN IRELAND James Gordon Finlayson Marc Mulholland HEGEL Peter Singer PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood paul E. P. Sanders HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson Philosophy Edward Craig HINDUISM Kim Knott PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE HISTORY John H. Arnold Samir Okasha HOBBES Richard Tuck PLATO Julia Annas HUME A. J. Ayer POLITICS Kenneth Minogue IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Indian Philosophy David Miller Sue Hamilton POSTCOLONIALISM Intelligence Ian J. Deary Robert Young ISLAM Malise Ruthven POSTMODERNISM JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves Christopher Butler JUDAISM Norman Solomon POSTSTRUCTURALISM Jung Anthony Stevens Catherine Belsey KAFKA Ritchie Robertson PREHISTORY Chris Gosden KANT Roger Scruton PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner Catherine Osborne THE KORAN Michael Cook Psychology Gillian Butler and LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews Freda McManus LITERARY THEORY QUANTUM THEORY Jonathan Culler John Polkinghorne LOCKE John Dunn RENAISSANCE ART LOGIC Graham Priest Geraldine A. Johnson MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR RUSSELL A. C. Grayling Helen Graham RUSSIAN LITERATURE SPINOZA Roger Scruton Catriona Kelly STUART BRITAIN John Morrill THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION TERRORISM S. A. Smith Charles Townshend SCHIZOPHRENIA THEOLOGY David F. Ford Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone THE HISTORY OF TIME SCHOPENHAUER Leofranc Holford-Strevens Christopher Janaway TRAGEDY Adrian Poole SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer THE TUDORS John Guy SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan ANTHROPOLOGY THE VIKINGS Julian D. Richards John Monaghan and Wittgenstein A. C. Grayling Peter Just WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman SOCIALISM Michael Newman THE WORLD TRADE SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce ORGANIZATION Socrates C. C. W. Taylor Amrita Narlikar Available soon: AFRICAN HISTORY HUMAN EVOLUTION John Parker and Richard Rathbone Bernard Wood ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea Paul Wilkinson CHAOS Leonard Smith JAZZ Brian Morton CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy THE MIND Martin Davies CONTEMPORARY ART PERCEPTION Richard Gregory Julian Stallabrass PHILOSOPHY OF LAW THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Raymond Wacks Timothy Lim PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Derrida Simon Glendinning Jack Copeland and ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta Diane Proudfoot THE END OF THE WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards Bill McGuire PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn RACISM Ali Rattansi THE FIRST WORLD WAR THE RAJ Denis Judd Michael Howard THE RENAISSANCE FUNDAMENTALISM Jerry Brotton Malise Ruthven ROMAN EMPIRE Christopher Kelly HIV/AIDS Alan Whiteside ROMANTICISM Duncan Wu For more information visit our web site www.oup.co.uk/vsi/ Margaret Walters FEMINISM A Very Short Introduction 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Margaret Walters 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as a Very Short Introduction 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–280510–X 978–0–19–280510–2 13579108642 Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall Contents List of illustrations ix Introduction 1 1 The religious roots of feminism 6 2 The beginning of secular feminism 17 3 The 18th century: Amazons of the pen 26 4 The early 19th century: reforming women 41 5 The late 19th century: campaigning women 56 6 Fighting for the vote: suffragists 68 7 Fighting for the vote: suffragettes 75 8 Early 20th-century feminism 86 9 Second-wave feminism: the late 20th century 97 10 Feminists across the world 117 Afterword 137 References 142 Further reading 149 Index 151 This page intentionally left blank List of illustrations 1 Quaker women preaching 8 Emily Davison throws in the 17th century 12 herself under the © 2005 TopFoto.co.uk King’s horse, 1913 82 © 2005 TopFoto.co.uk 2 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle 22 © 2005 TopFoto.co.uk 9 Poster showing a suffragette being 3 Mary Wollstonecraft 37 force-fed, 1910 84 © 2005 TopFoto.co.uk © 2005 TopFoto.co.uk 4 Florence Nightingale 51 10 Margaret Sanger 92 © Mary Evans Picture Library © Bettmann/Corbis 5 Song-sheet of ‘The March of the Women’, 1911 76 11 Simone de Beauvoir 100 © 2005 TopFoto.co.uk © Photos12.com/Keystone Pressedienst 6 The Pankhursts lead parade, 1911 79 12 Betty Friedan 103 © Hulton-Deutsch © J. P. Laffont/Sygma/Corbis Collection/Corbis 7 Emmeline Pankhurst 13 Demonstration against arrested outside the Miss America beauty Buckingham Palace, pageant, Atlantic City, 1914 81 1969 109 © J. P. Laffont/Sygma/Corbis © 2005 TopFoto.co.uk 14 Women’s Liberation 17 South African women march through protest against the London, 1971 111 death sentence of © Bettmann/Corbis Amina Lawal, 2003 126 © Juda Ngwenya/Reuters 15 Women’s Liberation 18 Sundanese Muslim girl rally, New York, 1970 113 with inked finger, © Ellen Shumsky/The Image proof of having voted 128 Works/2005 TopFoto.co.uk © Chris Stowers/Panos Pictures 19 Protest by a women’s 16 Anti-female circumcision rights group, Jakarta, poster, Sudan 124 2000 132 © Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures © Darren Whiteside/Reuters The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list. If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity. Introduction ‘I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is’, the writer Rebecca West remarked, sardonically, in 1913. ‘I only know that people call me a feminist whenever
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