Feminism

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“ Feminism is the radical idea that women are people. ”

—Cheris Kramarae & Paula Treichler[1]

There is a broader, perhaps slightly less biased, article on Wikipedia about Feminism
For those living in an alternative reality, Conservapedia has an "article" about Feminism

Contents

[edit] History

Feminism has a long history, dating from the movements for women's rights to vote, through the sexual revolutions of the twenties and sixties, to the workplace equality efforts still underway. While it seems as if "you've come a long way, baby", sadly women are still second-class citizens even in some developed nations.

In the United States and Great Britain, feminism began with the simple demand that women be allowed equal political footing with men. As with all anti-discrimination movements, even when the formal apparatus of discrimination was overturned, ingrained prejudices and biased institutions still prevailed. Even today, women have still not reached the same levels of success in pay and position that men have held for centuries.

Taken in broad (so to speak) terms, the history of feminism is divided into three waves:

First Wave: Women's Suffrage. Getting out the vote (which, of course, required getting the vote in the first place), having a voice. The very basic stuff.

Second Wave: Women's Lib. Following a large number of women working in factories in World War II, the idea that women could actually do jobs as well as men started to take root, exploding in the 1960's in any number of ways. Advances in birth control brought a coincident sexual revolution which turned a lot of things on their head and generally pissed off people who had a vested interest in the status quo.

Third Wave: This is where we are today. Reproductive rights are a big issue, as are international women's concerns. Where the first two waves tended to concentrate on North America and Europe, now things like female genital mutilation, Sharia law, anti-female practices in Asia, experiences of women in war, etc. are all part of the mix. Post-modern concepts come into play as well, with women looking at the use of language and media as tools of oppression which must be overthrown. Again, those who have a vested interest aren't terribly supportive of any of this.

[edit] Successes

Here are a few highlights More detail! of successes in the movement (please add refs if possible):

[edit] General

  • Property: Equal rights to ownership and inheritance, and women not being considered property anymore.
  • Workplace: Equal pay for equal work is now accepted as proper (if not always put into practice); greater diversification of opportunity.
  • Privacy: CT vs. Griswold allowed married couples to use birth control; Roe v. Wade allowed women to make their own decisions about childbearing.
  • Education: Where once technical higher education was available only to men, women now outnumber men in many areas of study.
  • Social: Women are now able to socialise (pubs, clubs, bars etc) unaccompanied by men, without being stigmatised as "loose women".
  • Gender roles: Women wearing pants, women driving heavy machinery, women flying jet fighters, women (the horror!) supervising men, etc.

[edit] Suffrage

The battle to gain the right to vote has raged since the early 19th century.[2]

  • In 1893, New Zealand became the first major self-governing country in the world to give women the vote.
  • In the years before the First World War, Norway (1913) and Denmark also gave women the vote.
  • 1917 - Canada granted the right, except in Quebec, where it was postponed until 1940.
  • 1917 - Soviet Russia also allowed women to "vote" for the winner of their "elections".
  • 1920 - Women achieved the vote in the U.S. with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
  • 1926 - Turkey
  • 1928 - The United Kingdom granted full voting rights to women.
  • 1944 - France extended the franchise, finally.
  • 1984 - Liechtenstein joined the rest of the free world in sisterhood.

[edit] Suffrage in the United States

  • 1890 - Wyoming admitted to the union with women's suffrage - the first state!
  • 1893 - Colorado enfranchised women through a referendum.
  • 1896 - Utah & Idaho both passed laws enfranchising women.
  • 1910 - Washington State established women's suffrage.
  • 1913 - Illinois gave women the vote in most elections.
  • August 18, 1920 - The Tennessee legislature became the 38th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. The Amendment was passed by a single vote, thanks to a letter Senator Burns received from his mother minutes before the vote was taken. Mrs. Burns has become one of those extremely important figures in American history that are often forgotten.

[edit] Major political office

  • Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka was the modern world's first female elected head of state and served as Prime Minister from 1960-1965, 1970-1977 and 1994-2000.
  • Indira Ghandi was the Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984.
  • Golda Meir, after serving as the Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister, became Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, until her resignation in 1974.
  • Margaret Thatcher (oh well) served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, and leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 until 1990.
  • Benazir Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having twice been Prime Minister of Pakistan, from 1988–1990 and 1993–1996.
  • Hillary Clinton ran a prominent campaign for President of the U.S. in 2008. The U.S. Senate, where she currently serves, is still over 80% male, however.
  • Nancy Pelosi became the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States following the 2006 elections.
  • In New Zealand, at one point, the Prime Minister, Governor General, Speaker of the House, and High Court Chief Justice were all female; the Governor General and Speaker have since rotated to males, but Aunty Helen is still numero uno!
  • Mary Robinson was elected the President of the Republic of Ireland (more of a figurehead than a leader) in 1990. She was succeeded in 1997 by Mary McAleese.

More detail!

[edit] Some lists at another website

  • See the Wikipedia article on female heads of state.
  • See the Wikipedia article on female heads of government.

[edit] Ideology

While feminism is not one single ideology, there have been various movements with more-or-less well defined outlooks.

[edit] Criticisms

Here are a few dubious backlashes and losses the movement has suffered:

  • Rush Limbaugh and his nasty namecalling.
  • Don Imus and his racist, sexist namecalling.

[edit] Reactionary movement

Because feminism demands that society re-evaluate how it views women and what roles women must and can take on, and because the core of feminism is the ultimate self-empowerment and self-realization of women (in no small cost to traditional male power and supremacy [3]), many conservatives view feminism as an attempt to set up a castrating matriarchy, where neopaganism reigns supreme and all women are lesbians. Rush Limbaugh even invented his own pet derogatory term, "feminazis".[4] This is not limited to male reactionaries; even some female conservatives have stated a wish to abolish female suffrage. Conservatives often use a straw man depection of feminists' support for abortion rights as an excuse not to take any of their other opinions seriously, turning complex arguments into one-liners like "They don't want to take responsibility for thier (sexual) actions" or "They want their cake and want to eat it too".[5] At their most petty level, conservative critics of feminists resort to weak accusations of wearing pants instead of dresses in order to look like men, and "shirking traditional gender activities, like baking".[6]

[edit] Some unlinked dumbasses

McGill University misandry researchers Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young call modern gender-focused feminism "fascist". They say that gender-feminism uses recycled Marxism, Romanticism and Classism to create a man-hating worldview.

However, it must be remembered that in all political theories, there are competing sub-theories. "Gender feminism" and "Marxist feminism" are not the end-all and be-all of feminism. If anything, "liberal feminism" is the most accepted form of feminism outside of academia. Liberal feminism (also known as classical feminism) instead seeks to create gender equality in institutions by removing discrimination and promoting equality. (Even within academia, Marxist feminism is probably not the most common. Academic feminism usually revolves around the study of female viewpoints within a classical discipline, without using Marxist critiques beyond that used by the discipline already.)

[edit] Another asinine myth spun sideways

For some reason, there are plenty of women who hate feminism. Some of these are due to feminism's attempts to free women from their traditional roles as servants to their husbands. Examples of these kind of critics include Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter.

There are also many women who call themselves feminists, who have been highly critical of the ideologies underpinning modern and post-modern feminism (interesting detail required here, otherwise this sentence has no meaning). These include Suzanne Hoff-Sommers, Wendly McElroy, Camille Paglia, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Kate Fillion and others. In addition, criticism that feminists have systematically subverted scholarship for political indoctrination is shown in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales From the Strange World of Women's Studies by Patia and Koerge, two women from within the movement. However, even in these academic cases, it is a simple case of women who are upset with a particular sub-theory of feminism, rather than the notion of feminism as a whole.

[edit] Conservapedia's take on the duties of a woman

From: Conservapedia:Sexual Discrimination (10:57, 28 August 2008 (EDT))

[edit] Sexism and Religion

"Despite being a Christian nation, many liberals in America deny that a women's (sic) rightful place is serving her husband. Feminists are famous for trying to change the natural order of things so that (cp link removed) men and women are exactly equal. They don't realize that by not obeying their husband (sic) is against (cp link removed) Biblical principles and likely to damn them to hell.[7]"

[edit] Feminism and the 2008 US Vice Presidential race

For the first time in a long time, an honest feminist is in the Vice Presidential race. No, not her, but instead Joe Biden himself. Biden has already spent 20 years fighting for women's rights. He fought to make marital rape as heinous a crime as other kinds; when he found out that his home state treated date rape as a lesser offense, he fought that; and he worked his ass off on the Violence Against Women Act, specifically the section on Civil Rights for women.[8]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://www.memorable-quotes.com/cheris+kramarae+++paula+treichler,a1818.html is one of many sources.
  2. ↑ Data ripped from Wikipedia:Women's suffrage
  3. ↑ and having to do the damned laundry and dishes, and diaper changing -- them's women's work!
  4. ↑ At the core, it is totally insulting to compare women who are aggressive about equality with people who wanted to destroy an entire population. Yet, surprisingly, no one called or calls him on this obscene comparison.
  5. ↑ And so what if we do, men have the remote and the TV too!
  6. ↑ Conservapedia on feminism.
  7. ↑ (Cp's link)
  8. ↑ A fuller story on Biden's record
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