SOCIOLOGY Post Graduate-2nd Semester, Compulsory Paper -7 Faculty: Dr Rafia GENDER AND SOCIETY Women in Early Sociology Jane Adams (1860-1935) Anna Julian Cooper (1858- 1964) Marianne Weber (1870-1954) Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) Key theories of the early women Sociologists They emphasised on the fact that their lives and their experiences were being equal in importance to me. They realized that owing to their experiences their views could be not as objective as men on issues related to women. They were not only theorist but also activists. Historical Roots of Feminism First wave of feminism focussed on women’s political rights, especially the right to vote. It was marked by two key events- 1) In 1848 when the first women’s rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York 2) in 1920 when the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote Second Wave of Feminism It began in the 1960s and continued till the end of the 1980s. It broadened the debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities. Third Wave of Feminism It started in the early 1990s and continued till the rise of the Fourth wave of feminism in 2010. The main aim was to establish that third- wave feminism was not just a reaction, but a movement in itself, because the feminist cause had more work ahead. The term intersectionality—to describe the idea that women experience "layers of oppression" caused, for example, by gender, race and class—had been introduced by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989. Third Wave..contd The third wave saw the emergence of new feminist currents and theories, such as intersectionality, sex positivity, vegetarian ecofeminism, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism. Key themes of feminist theories Gender Inequality Gender oppression Structural oppression Multiple levels of discrimination and oppression Varieties of feminist theories Cultural feminism Explanatory feminism Existential and phenomenological Liberal feminism Psychoanalytic feminism Radical feminism Intersectionality theory .