History of feminism
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Feminism, perhaps more correctly "feminisms", as a social construct, can be thought of as having existed for as long as there have been women, and women who have recognised that patriarchy and patrilineage were problematic. [1] The word "feminism", did not come into common usage until the late nineteenth century, although over time it has been called a number of other things, including womanism. [2] The History of Feminism has traditionally been portrayed as the recent history of the Feminist Movement, and thus criticised for ignoring women's voices over thousands of years. [3] [4] [5] [6] Some find the use of a term prior to its coinage "ahistoric". Others prefer to see "feminsm" as a self-conscious and systematic ideology beginning in the late eighteenth century. Both of these approaches risk losing continuity. The new feminist literary history of the last few decades, although presaged by Virginia Woolf, has largely been a process of retrieval and recovery. [7] [8] [9] [10]
"What I find deplorable...is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century."
(Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own. 1928.)[6]
[edit] Etymology
The word "Feminism" appeared first in France in the 1880s, Great Britain in the 1890s, and the United States in 1910. [11] [12] The Oxford English Dictionary lists 1894 for "feminism", and 1895 for "feminist". [13] Prior to that time "Woman's Rights" was probably the term used most commonly, hence Queen Victoria's description of this "mad, wicked folly of 'Woman's Rights' ". [14] It was the London Daily News, that coined the term, and by importing it from France, automatically branded it as dangerous. "What our Paris Correspondent describes as a 'Feminist' group...in the ..Chamber of Deputies".
[edit] Introduction
A broad understanding of feminism includes women acting, speaking and writing on women's issues and rights, identifying social injustice in the status quo and bringing their own unique perspective to bear on issues. (q.v. for further discussion on this) Prior to the appearance of "feminist" as a label for women involved in discussing or advancing women's issues, it is not uncommon to find the term 'protofeminist' used, although this defies a standardised definition as much as any other variety of feminist, and may not necessarily add value to the investigation of the history of feminism (For one attempt, see Botting and Houser, 2006 [15] ), and potentially detracts from the importance of their contributions. Marie Urbanski refers to this as erasing women from history in her account of Margaret Fuller's life, [16] therefore the term global use of "feminist" is preferred. Nancy Cott stresses the need to see feminism retrosectively and inclusively as "an integral tradition of protest".[17]
Human events and ideas do not fit neatly into periods. This is particularly true in relation to women's history. [18] [5] Where periodicity schemes have been defined by a culture, in which some voices are silent, engaging those voices creates an awkward fit with other "communities of discourse". [19] Ideas and movements rarely commence with the stroke of a pen, and a true understanding of a complex concept requires understanding of antecedents rather than sharp definitions into periods of time.
The "disappearing woman" has been a focus of attention of academic feminist scholarship. [20] [21] Research into women's history and literature reveals a rich heritage of neglected culture. One debate is whether women should be referred to by their birth names or by their married names, if they were subsequently married. Barbara Leigh Smith broke with tradition in England, by merely appending her husband's name, whereas Lucy Stone in America created a sensation when she refused to take her husband's name. An argument for using birth names is that it helps to prevent these women disappearing again.
[edit] Early origins from prehistory to the sixteenth century
[edit] Assumptions of patriarchy
Till the mid nineteenth century, writers assumed that a patriarchal order was a natural order that had existed, [22] as JS Mill wrote, since "the very earliest twilight of human society". [23] This was not seriously challenged till the eighteenth century when Jesuit missionaries found matrilineality in native North American peoples. [24]
Many feminist writers, and writers on feminism have yearned romantically for a utopian and mythical past that if not strictly matriarchal (gynocratic [25] ), was at least matrilineal or at worst equilineal. In the seventeenth century, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes had observed the maternal-child bond was a primary relationship, compared to the child's relationship to the father. French utopian socialists of the 1830s, and 1840s challenged the "natural order" stating that in the Romantic tradition, the only natural order was the mother-child bond, paternity being a legal bond defined by civil law. [26] [27] [28]
One of the best known accounts is that of Robert Graves, whose "The White Goddess" was first published in 1948, and is itself based on Fraser's "The Golden Bough" (1890-1922). Other writers include Charles Fourier[29] in the early nineteenth century. While the debate over the origins of patriarchy has been long running, a seminal work was Johann Jakob Bachofen's "Mutterecht" (1861).[5]This has generated vigorous debate, for instance Cynthia Eller criticises the work of Elizabeth Gould Davis, Marija Gimbutas and others in The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory,[30] and is in return refuted by Joan Marler. [31] The ongoing debates on the origins of patriarchy can be dated to the appearance of Bachofen's work which has woven its central thesis through many disciplines over 150 years, particularly in relation to the concept of family.
[edit] The classical world
Women's voices are often difficult to discern in the ancient world, but although classical Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato are sometimes claimed to be feminists, a role that is debated, [32] although their works have been one element shaping feminist and gender studies, even if only in rebuttal of inherent misogyny.[33] Sappho might be considered a feminist by today's standards, [34] and Lysistrata an activist. [35] (This has been a subject of some debate [36].)
[edit] Judaeo-Christian patriarchy
In the Judaeo-Christian world women found themselves depicted in negative imagery by religious leaders who also set social norms. This extended from Genesis, with the Creation and the Fall, to the teachings of St. Paul in the New Testament. [37] Certainly political and social patriarchal systems were firmly entrenched by the beginning of the Christian era.[38]
While women's voices were few in relation to men, nevertheless we have records of a number of women who brought feminine perspectives to the interpretation of religion, and questioned patriarchal models.[39] There are glimpses of feminist thinking in the Bible, but probably the first recorded activities go back to at least the 12th century, in which Hildegard of Bingen was writing on religion in a uniquely feminine way, describing the 'motherhood of God', and encroaching on a hitherto male profession, that of preaching. [40] Secular women writers included the fourteenth century Italian-French Christine de Pizan who attacked misogyny in 'The City of Ladies' (1404). [41]
By the 15th century Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe [42] [43] [44] [45] were writing what may be considered feminist religious literature in the sense of independent thought challenging patriarchal assumptions. [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] The Reformation allowed more women to add their voices in the 16th century, although it is argued that the closure of convents deprived women of one path to education. These include Jane Anger, Aemilia Lanyer, and Anna Trapnell. [51] [52] [37] Giving voice in the secular context was more difficult, deprived of the rationale and protection of divine inspiration. Queen Elizabeth I demonstrated leadership amongst women, even if unsupportive of their causes, and was a role model for the education of women. [53]
[edit] Seventeenth Century: Nonconformism, Protectorate and Restoration
The 17th century saw the development of many nonconformist sects which allowed more say to women than the established religions, especially the Quakers. Noted feminist writers on religion and spirituality included Rachel Speght, Katherine Evans, Sarah Chevers and Margaret Fell. [54] [55] [56]
This increased participation of women was not without opposition, notably John Bunyan, leading to persecution, and emigration to the Netherlands and the Americas. Over this and preceding centuries women who expressed opinions on religion or preached were also in danger of being suspected of lunacy or witchcraft, and many like Anne Askew[37] died "for their implicit or explicit challenge to the patriarchal order".[57]
In France as in England, feminist ideas were attributes of heterodoxy, such as the Waldensians and Catharists, than orthodoxy. Religious egalitarianism, such as embraced by the Levellers, carried over into gender equality, and therefore had political implications. Leveller women mounted large scale public demonstrations and petitions, although dismissed by the authorities of the day.
This century also saw more women writers emerging, such as Anne Bradstreet, Bathsua Makin, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Lady Mary Roth,[58][59] and Mary Astell, who depicted women's changing roles and made pleas for their education. However they encountered considerable hostility, as exemplified by the experiences of Cavendish, and Roth whose work was not published till the 20th century.
Astell is frequently described as the first feminist writer. However this depiction fails to recognise the intellectual debt she owed to Schurman, Makin and other women who preceded her. She was certainly one of the earliest feminist writers in English, whose analyses are as relevant to day as in her own time, and moved beyond earlier writers by instituting educational institutions for women.[3][2] Astell and Behn together laid the groundwork for feminist theory in the seventeenth century. No woman would speak out as strongly again, for another century. In historical accounts she is often overshadowed by her younger and more colourful friend and correspondent Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
The liberalisation of social values and secularisation of the English Restoration provided new opportunities for women in the arts, an opportunity that women used to advance their cause. However female playwrights encountered similar hostility. These included Catherine Trotter, Mary Manley and Mary Pix. The most influential of all[2][60][61] was Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to achieve the status of a professional writer. Critics of feminist writing included prominent men such as Alexander Pope.
In continental Europe, important feminist writers included Marguerite de Navarre, Marie de Gournay and Anne Marie van Schurmann (Anna Maria van Schurman) who mounted attacks on misogyny and promoted the education of women. In the New World the Mexican nun, Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695), was advancing the education of women particularly in her essay entitled "Reply to Sor Philotea".[62] By the end of the seventeenth century women's voices were becoming increasingly heard, becoming almost a clamour, at least by educated women. The literature of the last decades of the century being sometimes referred to as the "Battle of the Sexes",[63] and was often surprisingly polemic, such as Hannah Woolley's "The Gentlewoman's Companion".[64] However women received mixed messages, for they also heard a strident backlash, and even self-deprecation by women writers in response. They were also subjected to conflicting social pressures, one of which was less opportunities for work outside the home, and education which sometimes reinforced the social order as much as inspire independent thinking.
[edit] Role of men
The British philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes asserted the primacy of mother-child bonding within the family relationships.
[edit] Eighteenth Century: The Age of Enlightenment
[edit] Wollstonecraft, and the Vindication
The Age of Enlightenment was characterised by secular intellectual reasoning, and a flowering of philosophical writing. The most important feminist writer of the time was Mary Wollstonecraft, often characterised as the first feminist philosopher. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), written in response to Gouges' "Declaration of the Rights of Women", is one of the first works that can unambiguously be called feminist, although by modern standards her comparison of women to the nobility, the elite of society, coddled, fragile, and in danger of intellectual and moral sloth, may seem dated at first, as a feminist argument. Wollstonecraft saw that it was the education and upbringing of women that created their limited expectations based on a self-image dictated by male gaze. Despite her perceived inconsistencies (Brody refers to the "Two Wollestoncrafts" [65] ) reflective of problems that had no easy answers, this book remains a foundation stone of feminist thought.[2] Wollstonecraft believed that both sexes contributed to the inequalities and took it for granted that women had considerable power over men, but that both would require education to ensure the necessary changes in social attitudes. Her legacy remains the need for women to speak out and tell their stories. Her own achievements speak to her own determination given her humble origins and scant eduction. As Pope attacked Astell and Montagu, so Wollstonecraft attracted the mockery of Samuel Johnson who described her and her ilk as 'Amazons of the pen'. Given his relationship with Hester Thrale [66] it would appear that his problem was not with intelligent educated women, but that they should encroach onto a male territory of writing. For many commentators, Wollstonecraft represents the first codification of "equality" feminism, or a refusal of the feminine, a child of the Enlightenment. [67] [68] Other important writers of the time included Catherine Macaulay.
In other parts of Europe, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht was writing in Sweden, and what is thought to be the first scientific society for women was founded in Middelburg, in the south of Holland in 1785. This was the Natuurkundig Genootschap der Dames (Women's Society for Natural Knowledge). [69] [70] which met regularly to 1881, finally dissolving in 1887. However Deborah Crocker and Sethanne Howard point out that women have been scientists for 4,000 years. [71] Journals for women which focused on science became popular during this period as well. [72]
[edit] France
The French Revolution focussed people's attention everywhere on the cry for "égalité", and hence by extension, but in a more limited way, inequity in the treatment of women. In 1791, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, elicited an immediate response from the writer Olympe de Gouges who amended it as the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, arguing that if women were accountable to the law they must also be given equal responsibility under the law. She also addressed marriage as a social contract between equals and attacked women's reliance on beauty and charm, as a form of slavery.
[edit] United States
New Jersey appears to be the first jurisdiction to give the vote to women when it it joined the other States to form the United States in 1776, but removed it in 1807.
[edit] Feminism in fiction
Meanwhile women novelists such as Fanny Burney and later, Jane Austen were addressing the dilemmas that women faced, often taking the form of melodrama, such as Ann Radcliffe, and Austen in Northanger Abbey (1818). Some male writers like Samuel Richardson also drew attention to these issues.
[edit] Role of men
The eighteenth century also saw male philosophers attracted to issues of human rights, and men such as the Marquis de Condorcet championed women's education, while liberals such as the utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham, demanded equal rights for women in every sense, as people increasingly came to believe that women were treated unfairly under the law. Missionaries first described matrilineality amongst the Iroquois in North America.
[edit] Early nineteenth century: “Womanliness” and social injustice
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, although individual women, and some men, were speaking out, it is doubtful how influential they were, other than to create awareness. There was little sign of change in the political or social order, nor any evidence of a recognizable women’s movement. By the end of the century the voices of concern were beginning to coalesce into something more tangible. This paralleled the emergence of a more rigid social model and code of conduct, that Marion Reid (and later John Stuart Mill) would refer to as a ”Womanliness” that admitted to “self-extinction”. While the increasing emphasis on feminine virtue partly stirred the call for a woman’s movement, the tensions that this role duality caused for women plagued many early nineteenth century feminists with doubt and worry.
In Britain, no statement, as eloquent as Wollestonecraft’s ‘’Vindication’’ would appear till Reid published her ‘’A plea for women’’ in 1843[73] and which set an agenda for the rest of the century, including votes for women.
Caroline Norton was a woman who became active in advocating rights for women, the absence of which upon entering into marriage she, had become painfully aware of. The publicity that she generated, including her appeal to Queen Victoria, helped establish one of the first women’s movements, Barbara Leigh Smith’s (Barbara Bodichon) Married Women’s Property Committee, which took up her cause.
While many women, including Norton, were wary of organized movements, their actions and words often motivated and inspired such movements. Amongst these was Florence Nightingale whose conviction that women had all the potential of men but none of the opportunities [74]drove her to a career that would make her a national figure as a scientist and administrator even if the popular image of her at the time emphasized her feminine virtues more. The paradox of the gulf between the achievements which we recognize now, and how she was portrayed underline the plight that women of talent and determination faced at the time.
Women were not always supportive of each other’s efforts, and often distanced themselves from other feminists. Harriet Martineau and many others dismissed Wollstonecraft’s contributions as dangerous, and deplored Norton’s candidness, but seized on the abolition of slavery campaign she had witnessed in the United States, as one that should logically be applied to women. Her ‘’Society in America’’ was pivotal in that for the first time it caught the imagination of women who urged her to take up their cause.
Anna Wheeler had come under the influence of the Saint Simonian socialists while working in France, advocated suffrage and attracted the attention of Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative leader, as a dangerous radical on a par with Bentham. Later she was to be the inspiration for William Thomson.
Earlier centuries had concentrated on women’s exclusion from education as the key to their being relegated to domestic roles and denied advancement. The education of women in the nineteenth century was no better, and Frances Power Cobbe was but one of many women who were calling for reform. But now many other issues were opening up as battlegrounds including marital and property rights, and domestic violence. Nevertheless women like Martineau and Cobbe in Britain, and Margaret Fuller in America, were achieving journalistic employment which placed them in a position to influence other women. If ‘feminism’ had not been invented, certainly women like Cobbe were referring to “Woman’s Rights”, not just in the abstract, but as an identifiable cause.
[edit] Feminism in fiction
Just as Jane Austen had addressed the restricted lives women faced in the early part of the century, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell and Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) depicted the limitations of a Victorian marriage like Caroline Norton’s and the different futures in store for brothers and sisters. Not only women appreciated such injustice, the novels of George Meredith and George Gissing and the plays of Henrik Ibsen also outlined the plight of women of the time, and Meredith’s ‘’Diana of the Crossways‘’ (1885) is an account of Caroline Norton’s life. One critic later called Ibsen's plays "feministic propaganda". [13]
[edit] France
Conservative postrevolutionary France was not a favourable climate for feminist ideas, as expressed in the counter-revolutionary writings on women's role by Joseph de Maistre and Viscount Louis de Bonald. Further advancement would have to wait for the revolution of 24 February 1848, and the proclamation of the Second Republic which introduced manhood suffrage, and hopes that similar benefits would apply to women. Although the Utopian Charles Fourier is considered a feminist writer of this period, his influence was minimal. [75]
[edit] United States
Feminism in America took a slightly different course than that in Britain, and was slightly more advanced. The antislavery campaign of the 1830s provided a perfect cause for women to take up, identify with and learn political skills. Attempts to exclude women only fuelled their convictions further, and were instrumental in moving women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott firmly into the feminist camp, leading to the 1848 Seneca Falls (New York) women’s convention, where a declaration of independence for women ("A Declaration of Sentiments") was drafted. Barbara Leigh Smith describes her meeting with Mott there in her American Diary[76], one of many links between the movements on each side of the Atlantic. The Declaration of Sentiments became the focus for the organised women's rights movement in America. Sarah and Angelina Grimké were examples of other women who moved rapidly from the emancipation of slaves to the emancipation of women, while Sojourner Truth, a freed slave, pointed to the injustice of freeing slaves and then only giving the vote to black males. The most influential writer of the time was the colourful journalist Margaret Fuller whose Woman in the Nineteenth Century was published in 1845. Her dispatches from Europe for the New York Tribune also helped create a universality in the women's rights movement. Had she lived, she was expected to become the leader of the women's rights movement. Her involvement with prostitutes was the beginning of a long and at times difficult relationship between the women's movement and prostitution. Other notable feminists of this period include Lucy Stone.
[edit] Role of men
The Utilitarian movement continued to espouse equality for women, even if inconsistently. Admittedly John Stuart Mill gave credit to his wife Harriet Taylor for his commitment, as did William Thompson, the other major male champion of women’s rights. Yet Mill’s father James Mill argued against this in his Essay on Government, and it was this position that led Thompson to respond with his ‘’Appeal of one half of the human race’’ (1825). Although giving credit to his wife, the ‘’Appeal’’ is actually dedicated to Anna Wheeler in the intoduction, to whose radicalism he owed a considerable debt. Thompson’s (and Wheeler’s) radicalism is revealed in his unique criticism of Mary Wollstonecraft for being too timid.
[edit] Late nineteenth century: The Women's Movement, reform and campaigns
[edit] The emerging women’s movement
[edit] The Feminine ideal
Part of the rationale of nineteenth century feminists was not only a reaction to the injustices they saw but the increasingly suffocating Victorian image of the proper role of women and their "sphere". This was the "Feminine Ideal" as typified in Victorian "Conduct Books", notably those of Sarah Stickney Ellis. "The Angel in the House" (1854-1862) was a long poem by Coventry Patmore, whose image of wedded love in the title soon came to be the symbol of the Victorian feminine ideal.
[edit] The Ladies of Langham Place
Barbara Leigh Smith and her friends started to meet regularly during the 1850s in Langham Place in London to discuss the need for women to present a united voice to achieve reform. This earned them the name of the Ladies of Langham Place. They included Besssie Raynes Parker and Anna Jameson. Issues they took up focused on education, employment and marital law. One of the causes they vigorously pursued became the Married Women’s Property Committee of 1855. They collected thousands of signatures for petitions for legislative reform, some of which were successful. Smith had also attended the first women’s convention in Seneca Falls in America in 1848. Smith and Parker wrote many articles, both separately and together, on education and employment opportunities, and like Norton in the same year, Smith summarized the legal framework for injustice in 1854 in her “A Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women”. Playing an important role in the “English Women's Journal”, she was able to reach large numbers of women, and the response of women to this journal led to their creation of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW). The Langham Ladies continued to provide inspiration, infrastructure and funding for much of the women’s movement for the remainder of the century.
Their task was not made easier by the reluctance of even those women who had themselves been outspoken, to unconditionally embrace such a radical idea, and who in their own words reveal the conflict of competing emotions. These included Evans, Gaskell and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who herself used the phrase "women’s rights" in Aurora Leigh,[77] in addition to Caroline Norton.
Harriet Taylor published her ‘’Enfranchisement’’ in 1851, and wrote about the inequities of family law. In 1853 she married John Stuart Mill, providing him with much of the subject material for ‘’The Subjection of Women”. Taylor’s relatively low profile after her marriage has been a subject of speculation, but Mill was perhaps in a better position to translate theory into action.
Emily Davies was another woman who would encounter the Langham group, and with Elizabeth Garrett would help create branches of SPEW outside of London. While obtaining education remained largely a privilege rather than a right, the small group of women who were able to do so, were then able to campaign for women as a whole, realizing it was not just a portal to employment and financial self sufficiency but that the denial of education was tied to women’s expectations and their self image of their potential and worth.
[edit] Education reform
The interrelated themes of barriers to education and employment continued to form the backbone of feminist thought in the nineteenth century, as described, for instance by Harriet Martineau in her 1859 article “Female Industry” in the Edinburgh Journal. The economy was changing but women’s lot was not. Martineau, however, remained a moderate, for practical reasons, and unlike Cobbe, did not support the emerging call for the vote.
Slowly the efforts of women like Davies and the Langham group started to make inroads. Queen’s (1848) and Bedford Colleges (1849) in London were starting to offer some education to women from 1848, and by 1862 Davies was establishing a committee to persuade the universities to allow women to sit for the recently established (1858) Local Examinations, with partial success (1865). A year later she published “The Higher Education of Women”. She and Leigh Smith founded the first higher educational institution for women, with 5 students, which became Girton College, Cambridge in 1873, followed by Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford in 1879. Bedford had started awarding degrees the previous year. Despite these measurable advances, few could take advantage of them and life for women students was very difficult.
As part of the continuing dialogue between British and American feminists, Elizabeth Blackwell, one of the first women in the US to graduate in medicine (1849) lectured in Britain with Langham support, and they also supported Elizabeth Garrett’s attempts to assail the walls of British medical education against virulent opposition, eventually taking her degree in France. Garrett’s very successful campaign to run for office on the London School Board in 1870 is another example of a how a small band of very determined women were starting to reach positions of influence at the level of local government and public bodies.
[edit] Women’s campaigns
Campaigns gave women the opportunity to test their new political skills, for disparate elements to come together, and for them to join forces with other social reform groups. One had been the campaign for the Married Women’s Property Act, eventually passed in 1882. Next was the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 186 and 1869, which brought together women’s groups and utilitarian liberals such as John Stuart Mill. [78] Women in general were outraged by the inherent inequity and misogyny of the legislation and for the first time women in large numbers took up the rights of prostitutes. Prominent critics included, Blackwell, Nightingale, Martineau and Elizabeth Wolstenholme. Elizabeth Garrett did not support the campaign, though her sister Millicent did. Later she admitted the campaign had done good. However Josephine Butler, already experienced in prostitution issues, a charismatic leader and a seasoned campaigner, emerged as the natural leader[79] of what became the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (1869). [80] [81] This demonstrated the potential power of an organised lobby group. The association successfully argued that the Acts not only demeaned prostitutes, but all women and men too, containing a blatant double sexual standard. Butler's activities resulted in the radicalisation of many moderate women. The Acts were repealed in 1886.
On a smaller scale was Annie Besant's campaign for the rights of match girls and against the apalling conditions under which they worked demonstrated how to raise public concern over social issues.
[edit] Suffrage
The fight for suffrage represents one of the most fundamental struggles of women, because explicitly denying them representation in the legislature gave a very clear message of second class citizenship. No campaign has embedded itself in popular imagination than that of women's suffrage over 250 years.[82] However it took a long time to work its way up the list of priorities to gradually become the dominant issue. A form of suffrage was on Wollstonecraft's agenda in a limited form, but the embracement of the rights of man, and hence by extension, women laid the intellectual foundations. The French Revolution accelerated this, with the assertions of Condorcet and de Gouges, and it was women that marched on Versailles. This reached it s climax with the founding of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women (1793) which included suffrage on its agenda, before being suppressed at the end of that year. However this ensured that the issue was on the European political agenda. German women were involved in the Vormärz, a prelude to the 1848 revolution. In Italy Clara Maffei, Cristina Trivulzio Belgioso and Ester Martini Currica were politically active in the events leading up to the events of 1848 there. In Britain suffrage emerged in the writings of Wheeler and Thompson in the 1820s, and Reid, Taylor and Anne Knight in the 1840s.
The success of the movement was critical, not just for the right to be represented, but the very real problem that political reform was highly unlikely without the electoral power of women. Over its history it was bitterly opposed, and by women as well as men, and even amongst its supporters there were often deep divisions. To keep this in perspective, not even men had universal suffrage in the nineteenth century, but with each successive enfranchisement, women became even more relatively disadvantaged. Women only achieved a limited vote at the time that men achieved universal suffrage in Britain (1918). A number of influential women such as Nightingale opposed the vote for women but gradually came to realise its importance.
[edit] Suffragism
The Langham Place ladies again played a central role, and set up a suffrage committee in 1866 at a meeting at Elizabeth Garrett's home, renamed the London Society for Women's Suffrage in 1867. Soon similar committees had spread across the country, raising petitions, and worked closely with JS Mill. Denied outlets by establishment periodicals, women like Lydia Becker started the Women's Suffrage Journal in 1870. Other publications included Richard Pankhurst's Englishwoman's Review (1866). Tactical disputes were the biggest problem, and the membership of various groups varied over time. One issue was whether men like Mill should be involved. As it was Mill also withdrew as the movement became more aggressive with each disappointment. The political pressure ensured debate, but year after year was defeated in parliament. despite this the women benefited from their increasing political experience, which translated into slow progress at the level of local government and public bodies. However the years of frustration took their toll, and many women became increasingly radicalised. Some refused to pay taxes, and the Pankhurst family emerged as the dominant influence on the movement, having also founded the Women's Franchise League in 1889.
[edit] International suffrage
The Isle of Man was probably the first free standing jurisdiction to grant women the vote (1881), followed by New Zealand in 1893, where Kate Sheppard [83] had pioneered reform. Some Australian states had also granted women the vote. This included Victoria for a brief period (1863-5), South Australia (1894), and Western Australia (1899).
[edit] France
In France, with the fall of the conservative Louis-Philippe in 1848, feminist hopes were raised, as in 1790. Several newspapers and organizations appeared. Eugénie Niboyet (1800-1883) founded La Voix des Femmes (The Women's Voice), as the first feminist daily newspaper in France 'a socialist and political journal, the organ of the interests of all women'. Niboyet was a Protestant woman who had adopted Saint-Simonianism, and La Voix des Femmes attracted other women from that movement, including the seamstress Jeanne Deroin (1805-1894) and the primary schoolteacher Pauline Roland. Unsuccessful attempts were also made to recruit Georges Sand. The enthusiasm was short lived, feminism which was allied with socialism was seen as a threat as it had been under the previous revolution, Deroin and Roland were both arrested, tried and imprisoned in 1849. With the emergence of a new, more conservative government in 1852, feminism would have to wait until the Third French Republic.
[edit] United States
This period saw the contributions of Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage amongst others. Stanton and Gage saw the church as a major obstacle to women's rights. [84] They therefore welcomed the emerging literature on matriarchy, and both Gage and Stanton produced works on this topic, Stanton's "The Matriarchate or Mother-Age", [85] and Gage's "Woman, Church and State", neatly inverting Bachofen's thesis and adding a unique epistemological perspective, the critique of objectivity and the perception of the subjective.
Stanton made an astute observation regarding assumptions of female inferiority "The worst feature of these assumptions is that women themselves believe them". [86] However this attempt to replace "androcentric" theological tradition with a "gynecentric" view made little headway in the women's movement which was dominated by religious elements, and she and Gage were largely ignored by subsequent generations.
Stanton, Anthony and many others led a 50 year battle for women's suffrage. Their first victory was in In 1869 when Wyoming Territory extended equal suffrage to women. That same year the legislature in the Utah Territory passed an act giving women in Utah the right to vote. These rights were later revoked by the US congress in the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887, but restored by Utah in 1895. Gradually individual States joined them. [87]
[edit] The role of men: Emerging theories of patriarchy
John Stuart Mill who wrote “The Subjection of Women” in 1869 had presented a women’s petition to parliament in 1866, supported an amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill and joined the Contagious Diseases Act campaign. Criticisms of Mill include his ignorance of the creative and intellectual contributions of women in previous centuries, but this may also be seen as an accurate reflection of the times. Although his efforts were concentrated on the problems of married women, this is a realistic acknowledgement that marriage for Victorian women was a sacrifice of liberty, rights and property. His involvement in the women's movement stemmed from his long standing friendship with Harriet Taylor, who he eventually married. The British legal historian, Sir Henry Maine criticised the inevitability of patriarchy in his Ancient Law (1861) [22] , and the Swiss legal scholar Johann Jakob Bachofen first indicated the possibility of a primal matrilineality in 1854. Bachofen's observations were confirmed by a late nineteenth century anthropologists studying woman-centred familial and kinship structures (e.g. Lewis Henry Morgan, John Ferguson McLennan, Edward Burnett Tylor, Adolf Bastian, Sir John Lubbock) and the concept of "progression" from a primitive matriarchy to a sublimated "patriarchy" became accepted as an essential and universal element of cultural development. This was often used to vindicate male supremacy, although at the same time it opened the door to challenging the inevitability of patriarchy, and was developed further by feminist writers such as Stanton and Gage.[5]
Friedrich Engels then incorporated these concepts into his "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State" (1884), but reversed the interpretation, as did a number of socialist authors of the era. The concept was also incorporated into early sociological theory such as the work of Herbert Spencer. The major debate was not the existence of matriarchy/matrilineality, but whether patriarchy represented inevitable "progression" or was merely an evolutionary step on the way to "equarchy", a truly egalitarian state.[88]
Amongst male feminists, was the scientist Karl Pearson, who introduced Bachofen's work to Stanton, but Bachofen and the matrifocal theories were also coming under attack from emerging Darwinists, such as Edward Westermarck. [89] James Fraser also drew a distinction between matrifocal kinship and male dominance. The collateral effect of this literature was to undermine the Victorian principle of linear progression, and set the scene for twentieth century cultural relativism, [90] and new interpretations of Bachofen, such as Ferdinand Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and Society), first published in 1887, which extended the binary to social oppositions in general, with Gemeinschaft representing the female element, and Gesellschaft, the male. No longer was cultural evolution the driving force, but rather variety among and within cultures, and without implying natural superiority of either Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft. Tönnies also extended Marxist alienation to a more general estrangement of the individual from the sustainability of home, hearth, land and family. [91]
[edit] Twentieth century
Women's history in the twentieth century can be depicted as a story punctuated by conflagrations in which they both participated to an unprecedented degree, and which both profoundly altered the demographics and power relationships of the landscape they found themselves in.
[edit] Twentieth century: I. The Edwardian era
[edit] Suffragettes and the prelude to war
The Edwardian era saw a loosening of Victorian rigidity and complacency, women had more employment opportunities, and were more active, leading to a relaxing of clothing restrictions.
Women's rights were dominated by the increasing clamour for political reform and votes for women. The charismatic and controversial Pankhursts took the political initiative, forming the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. As Emmline Parhurst put it, votes for women were seen now as no longer "a right, but as a desperate necessity". At the States level, Australia and the United States had already given the vote to some women, and American feminists such as Susan B Anthony (1902) visited Britain. While the WSPU is the best known suffrage group, it was only one of many, such as the Women's Freedom League and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). WSPU was largely a family affair, although externally financed. Christabel Pankhurst became the dominant figure and gathered friends such as Annie Kenney, Flora Drummond, Teresa Billington and Ethel Smythe around her.
Veterans such as Elizabeth Garrett also joined. In 1906, the Daily Mail first labeled these women 'suffragettes' as a form of ridicule, but the term was quickly embraced to describe a more militant form of suffragist, which were becoming increasingly visible with their marches and distinctive Green, Purple and White emblems, while the Artists' Suffrage League created dramatic graphics. Even underwear in WPSU colours appeared in stores. They quickly learned new ways of exploiting the media and photography. The visual record they have left remains vivid, such as the 1914 photograph of Emmeline, shown here. As the movement became more active deep divisions appeared with older leaders of the movement parting company with the radicals. Sometimes the splits were ideological, and others tactical. Even Christabel's sister, Sylvia, was expelled.
Slowly but surely the protests became more vigorous, heckling, banging on doors, smashing shop windows, and eventually, by 1914, arson. In 1913, one of the group, Emily Davison, sacrificed herself on Derby Day, dying under the King's horse. These tactics produced mixed results of sympathy and alienation and many of them were imprisoned, creating an increasingly embarrassing situation for the Government. Matters progressively worsened, with hunger strikes, then risky force feeding, and eventually the notorious
Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913, nicknamed the Cat and Mouse Act [92] which allowed women to be released when their illness or injury became dangerously acute, but officers were then not prevented from arresting and charging these women again once they recovered. Although it could be argued, as did Reginald McKenna, the Home Secretary, that this was relatively humane, since a number of these women appeared ready to die for their cause.
If the aims were to reveal institutional sexism in British society, they certainly created publicity, but it may have been as much the methods as the cause. They did, though, draw attention to the brutality of the legal system at the time. One can only speculate where things might have led, had not the First World War intervened in August 1914.
[edit] Other jurisdictions
Australian women received the vote in 1902, Finland in 1906, and Norway initially in 1907 (completed in 1913).
[edit] Feminist theory: The debate on kinship evolution
- See also: Feminist theory
Ann Taylor Allen [5] describes the striking gulf between the collective male pessimism and fin-du-siècle angst of male intellectuals such as Tönnies, Weber and Simmel, at the beginning of the twentieth century, [93] compared to the optimism of their female counterparts, whose contributions have largely been ignored by social historians of the era. [94] Feminists were well aware of Weber's "iron cage", it is just that they saw it as a starting point, not a finishing point.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the sociology of the family was one of the more prominent concerns of feminist theorists, who have been incorrectly typified as accepting the historical fact of primal matriarchy, whereas their interest was more in an empowering symbolism in interpreting the social issues they confronted. They used Bachofen and the rejection of an inevitable patriarchy to address family law reform and sexual morality. Feminists were sceptical about the objectivity of those who wrote about objective culture, as expressed in their perceived androcentricity. Jeanne Oddo-Deflou, leader of Groupe Français d'Etudes Féministes, went so far as to state that male rejection of Bachofen by male intellectuals was good enough reasons for females to embrace him. She rejected the emotion-rationalism dichotomy association with matriarchy and patriarchy, and with Stanton, asserted that rationality was as much an attribute of any mother-age civilisation as of patriarchy, and that it was mainly patriarchal behaviour that was logically irrational. [95]
In English academic circles the challenge to patriarchy started to permeate a variety of disciplines. Jane Ellen Harrison, a classicist, working from Friedrich Nietzsche's Bachofen inspired interpretation view of Greek culture [96] argued that it was a shift in Pantheons that influenced the loss of matrilineal Greek culture with its more "primitive" pantheistic deities to a patriarchate both on Olympus and on Earth. [97] Many other feminist theorists incorporated matriarchal approaches. These include the American Charlotte Perkins Gilman and British Frances Swiney. Gilman developed the idea of matriarchate as imaginative, pointing out how the trivial male role of fertilisation was responsible for "arresting the development of half the world" [98] and depicts how rationality and emotionality can co-exist harmoniously in her utopian Herland. [99] Swiney utilised Bachofen's work and his successors, such as Mona Caird, in addressing the social concerns of suffragettes, including sexually transmitted disease, infant mortality and prostitution, and founded a group, the League of Isis that produced a number of empowering works. These women's work in turn would be popularised by the reform minded periodicals of the time (such as The Suffragette, The Vote, The Malthusian, Westminster Review). [100] More controversial, was the way these views were used to uphold or challenge the standards of sexual morality, [101] [102] which were very assymmetrical. Generally British writers upheld the standards but expected them to apply to men equally, while in the Netherlands and Germany they were challenged.
While the majority of feminists supported enforcement of paternal responsibility, the minority used the more radical matriliny argument that support of mothers and children was a state responsibility, and that women should not be humilated by pursuing fathers. In Holland this was the Vrije Vrouwen (Free Women), through their journal Evolutie, edited by Wilhelmine Drucker in the 1890s. [103] In Germany Ruth Bré (Elisabeth Bouness) founded the Bund für Mutterschutz (League for the Protection of Mothers) in 1905, and took this further advocating a a matriarchal society of single mothers, while the league attracted many prominent reformers, female and male, including Helene Stöcker, Lily Braun and Henriette Fürth, they did not support her radicalism, believing that the genders should not be separated in a more evolved social model. [104] However all groups supported equality of rights. The inspiration for these views came largely from Ellen Key in Sweden who believed that matrilineality was closest to nature. [105] [106] The Bund für Mutterschutz advanced the "New Ethic" of women controlling their own sexual and reproductive needs, [103] as a creative and life providing force. For instance Fürth believed that motherhood transcended marriage. [107] Disproportionate to their numerical size, these sexual radicals set a new agenda for the discussion of morality in the west. [108] Understandably, many saw these new ideas as alarming, and threatening.
The moderate majority is represented by groups such as the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (League of German Women's Organizations) led by Marianne Weber (who was married to Max Weber), and who warned against belief in “lost paradise”. [109] Weber repudiated Bachofen in her ‘’Wife and Mother in Legal History’’ along socialist interpretations, distinguishing between matrilineality and the status of women. Interestingly she argued for marriage to protect the status of children, without doubting the need for this in the first place. [110] However she also rejected the inevitability of the status quo, portrayed further evolution to equality, reform of family law, and although describing monogamy as an ideal, went so far to suggest it was not for everyone, and that non-monogamous relationships were not immoral, views she shared with her husband.
In France, Madeleine Pelletier was equally sceptical about historical patriarchy, but more so some of her colleagues flowery symbolism which she suspected was actually confining. In a foreshadowing of Betty Friedan she pithily summed up the hiatus between male worship of the goddess and emancipation “Future societies may build temples to motherhood, but only to lock women into them.” [111] She also held, what for those times were radical views on the need for women to control their reproductive rights.
However, despite all of these disagreements, there were common elements, an acceptance of some form of nonpatrilineal kinship in the past, the evolution of family kinship structures, and a belief in the evanescent nature of the status quo. Common to both male and female socialist writers were challenges to traditional views of family, this includes Gilman, Braun, Fürth and Alice Melvin. [112] Some of the most radical ideas in American writing are found in Elsie Clews Parsons’ ”The Family” [113] (used as a textbook), which included premarital sexual relationships, trial marriage and sexual liberation from better provision of contraception. These views attracted some negative media publicity, however discussions about kinship were now widely held. Countess Franziska zu Reventlow was a bohemiam who became a member of the mainly male Georgekreis (George circle), but parodied them, and predicted the sinister outcome of their male Dionysian view of liberated women. [114]
Thus, most of what seemed radical ideas of the late twentieth century had already been described in the early years of the century.
[edit] Role of men
Emerging sociological thinking at the turn of the century was divided in relation to the nature and evolution of kinship. Herbert Spencer maintained a belief in patriarchal supremacy, while Lester Frank Ward, who was also a socialist and feminist, vigourously opposed this as did the socialist writer Paul Lafargue. Ward went further, teaching the natural supremacy of the female, and the evil that had come from male supremacy. Ward also wrote the there would be a reconciliation with egalitarian relationships.
On the other hand Georg Simmel, though thought of as a feminist sociologist, was deeply pessimistic about an "objective culture" that he considered as inalienably male as the Gesellschaft of Ferdinand Tönnies. [115] For Simmel, objective male culture had detached itself from its well springs of subjective feminine holistic culture. Women were trapped in a culture in which they could not advance. Max Weber went on to develop the concept of civilisation as an stahlhartes Gehäuse ("iron cage"), a tragically inevitable triumph of rationality over emotion. [116] These writers became widely accepted as depicting a universal truth of the state of family in western society. Weber was generally supportive of his wife, Marianne’s work, and reflects her new morality. [117]
Stefan George led an intellectual avant-garde, the Georgekreis (George Circle), nicknamed Das geheime Deutschland (The Secret Germany), which was receptive to homosexual males. They embraced the Bachofen philosophy, and a smaller group within this, the Kosmiche Runde (Cosmic Circle) elevated it to almost cult status. [118] Carl Jung was associated with this group, and incorporated primal matriarchy into his collective unconscious, [119] while the group, with its Bohemian trappings, prophesied an early return to this vision of paradise. However their overall view was misogynist and a rejection of feminist goals. [120] Some women, such as Countess Reventlow, identified their sinister goals, and eventually the group collapsed as patriarchy became associated with Judaism, and provided a quasi-rationalisation for ant-semitism and National Socialist racial theory.
Woman power was a very real concept in the pre war years, used by feminists to attack traditional values, and by their critics to depict an evil threat to Western civilization, reflected in the arts, [121] and in the reaction to suffragettes, depicted in H.G. Wells’s Ann Veronica (1909). [122] Wells, who had a relationship with Rebecca West, was amongst socialist writers who challenged traditional patrilineal family kinship. [123]
[edit] Psychoanalysis and feminism
Psychoanalytic theory emerged during the debate on kinship, and kinship and gender relations form the core of the theoretical writings, and has been portrayed as one of the elements containing feminism. It origins can be found in the Romantic, and in particular Bachofen's representation. [124] The matriarchy-patriarchy conflict is central to Sigmund Freud's work, and to the schism that followed between him and Carl Jung. Freud's theories can be seen to be centred around the triangular Oedipus complex, the patricidal relation between child and father, and incestuous desire for the mother, as a model for the development of each individual's personality. The correspondence between Freud and Jung reveals their conflicting concepts of universal patriarchy on the former's part, and the yearning for liberation and return to matriarchy of the latter. [125] [126] Freud disliked feminist sexual radicalism, but echoed some of it "Mother-right should not be confused with gynaecocracy". The centrality of Oedipal desire is best expressed in Totem und Tabu (1913). [127] He based his anthropological speculation on the work of J.J. Atkinson, [128] who in turn was influenced by Darwin. Freud proceeded to layer Greek myth onto the Darwinian ethology of the herd and the polygamous dominant male, challenged by its male offspring.
[edit] Twentieth century: II. Between the wars
In the First World War women entered the labour market in unprecedented numbers, often in new sectors. They discovered that their work outside the home was now valued, but also left large numbers of women bereaved and with a net loss of household income. Meanwhile the large numbers of men killed and wounded created a major shift in demographic composition. War also split the feminist groups, with many opposed to the war, while other women became involved in the White Feather campaign.
In the years between the wars, women continued to fight opposition to women's rights from the establishment, media caricatures and discrimination. Examples of this can be found in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, where she also describes the extent of the backlash and her frustration at the waste of so much talent. Important writers of the time also included Rebecca West, who had a relationship with H.G.Wells. Although the word "feminism" was now in use, the media and others had given it such a negative image, that women were afraid to embrace it. By 1938, Woolf was writing, in Three Guineas, "an old word...that has much harm in its day and is now obsolete". On another occasion she had to defend West, who had been attacked as a "feminist". Woolf also started to paint homosexuality in a positive light "women...had almost always been seen in relation to men", and to examine the constructs of gender more minutely. West has perhaps best been remembered for her comment "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute" [129]
[edit] Electoral reform
Women's demand for the vote could no longer be ignored, and the Representation of the People Act, 1918 [130] enacted in February of that year gave men almost universal suffrage, and the vote to women over 30 years of age till the Representation of the People Act 1928 provided equal suffrage for men and women. It also shifted the socioeconomic make up of the electorate towards the working class, favouring the Labour Party who were more sympathetic to women's issues. The first election was held in December, and gave Labour the most seats in the house to date. The electoral reforms also allowed women to run for parliament. Although Christabel Pankhurst narrowly failed to win a seat in 1918, in 1919 and 1920 both Lady Astor and Margaret Wintringham won seats for the Conservatives and Liberals respectively, by succeeding to their husband's seats. Labour swept to power in 1924, including Ellen Wilkinson. Constance Georgine (Sinn Féin) was the first woman to be elected, in Ireland in 1918, but as an Irish nationalist, refused to take her seat. Astor's proposal to form a women's party in 1929 was unsuccessful, which some historians feel was a missed opportunity, and there were still only 12 women in parliament by 1940. Women gained considerable electoral experience over the next few years as a series of minority governments ensured almost annual elections. Close affiliation with Labour also proved to be a problem for NUSEC, which had little support in the Conservative party. However their persistence with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was rewarded by the passage of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.
[edit] United States
Wilson's Fourteen Points recognised self determination as a vital component of society, the hypocrisy of denying half the population of modern nations the vote became difficult for men to ignore. Individual States continued to grant the vote one by one, and the nineteenth amendment was passed in 1919, and ratified in 1920.
[edit] Other jurisdictions
Women received the vote in Denmark and Iceland in 1915 (full in 1919), the USSR in 1917, Austria and Germany in 1918 (1928), and many countries including the Netherlands in 1919, Canada in 1920, and South Africa in 1930. French women did not receive the vote till 1945. Lichtenstein was one of the last contries, in 1984.
[edit] The women's movement and social reform
As with many movements, women soon discovered that political change does not necessarily translate into an immediate or noticeable change in circumstances, and with economic recession they were the most vulnerable sector of the workforce. Many had been made redundant by the end of hostilities. Some women who had held jobs prior to the war were obliged to give them up to returning soldiers. With limited franchise, the NUWSS needed to change its role. The new organisation, the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC) [131] still advocated equality in franchise but extended its scope to examine equality in the social and economic area. Legislative reform was sought for those laws that were discriminatory, including family law and prostitution. One area of division which is significant in the light of later developments was between equality and equity, which addressed accommodation to allow women to overcome barriers to fulfillment. In more recent years this has been referred to as the "equality vs. difference conundrum". [132] Eleanor Rathbone, who became an MP in 1929, succeeded Millicent Garrett as president in 1919. She expressed the critical need for consideration of difference in gender relationships as "what women need to fulfill the potentialities of their own natures". A more formal split appeared with the 1924 Labour government's social reforms, with a splinter group of strict egalitarians forming the Open Door Council in May 1926. [133] This eventually became an international movement, and continued till 1965. Other important social legislation of this period included the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 1919 (which opened professions to women), and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1923. In 1932, NUSEC separated advocacy from education, and continued the former activities as the National Council for Equal Citizenship and education became the role of the Townswomen's Guild. The council continued until the end of the Second World War.
Another group, formed in 1921 by Margaret Mackworth (Lady Rhondda), was the Six Point Group [134] This included Rebecca West. It was a political lobby group, whose six aims were political, occupational, moral, social, economic and legal equality. Thus it was ideologically allied with the Open Door Council, rather than National Council. It also lobbied at an international level, such as the League of Nations, and continued its work till 1983. In retrospect both ideological groups were influential in advancing women's rights in their own way. Despite women being admitted to the House of Commons from 1918, Mackworth, a Viscountess in her own right, spent a lifetime fighting to take her seat in the House of Lords against bitter opposition, a battle which only achieved its goal in the year of her death (1958). This revealed the weaknesses of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. Mackworth also founded Time and Tide which became the group's journal, and to which West, Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay and many others contributed. A number of other women's periodicals also appeared in the 1920s, including Woman and Home, and Good Housekeeping, but whose content reflect very different aspirations. In 1925 Rebecca West wrote in Time and Tide something that reflected not only the movement's need to redefine itself post suffrage, but a continual need for re-examination of goals. "When those of our army whose voices are inclined to coolly tell us that the day of sex-antagonism is over and henceforth we have only to advance hand in hand with the male, I do not believe it."
[edit] Reproductive rights
As feminism sought to redefine itself, new issues rose to the surface, one of which was reproductive rights. Even mentioning these could be hazardous. Annie Besant had been tried in 1877 for publishing Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy, a work on family planning, under the Obscene Publications Act 1857.[135] [136] Knowlton had previously been convicted in the United States. She and her colleague Charles Bradlaugh were convicted but acquitted on appeal, the subsequent publicity resulting in a decline in the birth rate.[137] [138] Not discouraged in the slightest, Besant followed this with The Law of Population. [139]
Similarly in America, Margaret Sanger was prosecuted for her Family Limitation under the Comstock Act 1873, in 1914, and fled to Britain where she met with Marie Stopes until it was safe for her to return. Sanger continued to risk prosecution, and her work was prosecuted in Britain. Stopes was never prosecuted but was regularly denounced for her work in promoting birth control. Even more controversial was the establishment of the Abortion Law Reform Association in 1936. The penalty for Abortion had been reduced from execution to life imprisonment by the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, although some exceptions were allowed in the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929. [140] [141] Following the prosecution of Dr Alec Bourne in 1938, the 1939 Birkett Committee made recommendations for reform, that like many other women's issues, were set aside at the outbreak of the Second World War. [142]
[edit] France
The Groupe Français d'Etudes Féministes were French women intellectuals at the beginning of the twentieth century who translated part of Bachofen's cannon into French, [143] and campaigned for family law reform. In 1905 they founded L'entente which published many articles on women's history , and became the focus for the intellectual avant garde advocating higher education for women and entry into the professions. [144] Meanwhile socialist feminists, the Parti Socialiste Féminin, adopted a Marxist version of matriarchy. Aline Vallette depicted the overthrow of matriarchy with capitalism exploitation of labour. But like the Groupe Français saw the struggle as being for a new age of equality not a return to a prehistorical matriarchate. [145] [146]
[edit] Twentieth century: III. The postwar period and the second wave
During the Second World War women were able to contribute much more than in the previous war, especially in skills and professional expertise, as a result of the educational and employment opportunities that had opened to them. However at the end of the war they again found that many of the apparent gains were short term. A well publicised example was women's baseball where they had proven they were at least as good as men, but were no longer wanted after the end of hostilities. In World War II, the popular icon Rosie the Riveter became a symbol for a generation of working women.
The feminist interpretation of the role of women in the wars has been emphasis of the preoccupation of national leaders with mobilising and regulating women. While earlier writers had depicted was as emancipating, more recent scholarship[147] such as Francoise Thebaud and Nancy Cott, emphasises the conservative effect with reinforcement of traditional imagery, and a literature directed towards motherhood. These phenomena have been called the "nationalization of women".
Despite gains over the first half of the twentieth century, the essential problems remained of discrimination, inequality and limited opportunities. In a number of countries the emergence of a new feminism after the war started to be referred to as second-wave feminism to reflect the hiatus the war had caused and the new directions. Later it became popular to refer to feminism prior to the war as first-wave feminism.
[edit] Second wave feminism
- See also: Second-wave feminism
Post war feminism reflected a shift in emphasis from tangible and concrete discrimination such as unequal laws, to more abstract concepts of gender relationships. While many very real issues of discrimination, unequal opportunity, pay and control of reproduction remained, the newer directions included an examination of the pervasiveness of male models of society and politics, and of how women were portrayed, and ultimately how women saw themselves by incorporating such models, resulting in distorted expectations. Second wave feminists were concerned with gaining full social and economic equality, having already gained almost full legal equality in many western nations.
If the emergence of an organised women's movement in the late nineteenth century was partly a reaction to the tone of Victorian conduct books, then second wave feminism was a reaction to the glorified femininity portrayed by the media and the entertainment industry. The publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963 is often portrayed as a turning point, a direct attack on the myth of middle American complacency, and arising from Friedan's inquiries as to what women really felt and wanted. The book became an icon for mid century feminism and the feminist movement. Predictably and understandably it has been criticised for being simplistic and middle class. While partly justified, this misses the point that it was timely, insightful, and accurate, and that that it's central tenet is the wasted potential of half of the population. Its success speaks to the way it addressed unmet need.
These criticisms were to underlie much of the debate within feminism for the rest of the century. For instance bell hooks wrote "To be able to work and to have to work are two very different matters". While The Feminine Mystique is widely credited with launching the feminist movement of the 1960s, it is difficult to separate this from Friedan's political activities, founding the National Organization of Women (NOW) three years later, of which she became the first president, incorporating elements of and building on the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. NOW became the focus of the fight for equality in the United States. Later Friedan would become as concerned as Virginia Woolf with the confining labels of feminism and 'libber', and the whole concept of tagging. [148]
[edit] Sexual politics
One of the main fields of interest to these women was in gaining the right to contraception and birth control, which were almost universally restricted until the 1960s. With the development of the birth control pill feminists hoped to make it as available as possible. Many hoped that this would free women from the perceived burden of mothering children they did not want; they felt that control of reproduction was necessary for full economic independence from men. Access to abortion was also widely demanded, but this was much more difficult to secure because of the deep societal divisions that existed over the issue. To this day, abortion remains controversial in many parts of the world.
Many feminists also fought to change perceptions of female sexual behaviour. Since it was often considered more acceptable for men to have multiple sexual partners, many feminists encouraged women into "sexual liberation" and having sex for pleasure with multiple partners. (See: Sexual revolution)
These developments in sexual behavior have not gone without criticism by some feminists.[citation needed] They see the sexual revolution primarily as a tool used by men to gain easy access to sex without the obligations entailed by marriage and traditional social norms. They see the relaxation of social attitudes towards sex in general, and the increased availability of pornography without stigma, as leading towards greater sexual objectification of women by men. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin gained notoriety in the 1980s by attempting to classify pornography as a violation of women's civil rights.
There is a so called third wave, but feminists disagree as to its necessity, its benefits, and its ideas. Often also called "Post-Feminist," it can possibly be considered to be the advancement of a female discourse in a world where the equality of women is something that can be assumed—rather than fought for.
[edit] International feminism
Immediately after the war a new international dimension was added by the formation of the United Nations. In 1946 the UN established a Commission on the Status of Women. [149] [150] Originally as the Section on the Status of Women, Human Rights Division, Department of Social Affairs, and now part of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). In 1948 the UN issued its Universal Declaration of Human Rights [151] which protects "the equal rights of men and women", and addressed both the equality and equity issues. Since 1975 the UN has held a series of world conferences on women's issues, starting with the World Conference of the International Women's Year in Mexico City, heralding the United Nations Decade for Women (1975-1985). These have brought women together from all over the world and provided considerable opportunities for advancing women's rights, but also illustrated the deep divisions in attempting to apply principles universally, [152] in successive conferences in Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985). However by 1985 some convergence was appearing. These divisions amongst feminisms included; First World vs. Third World, the relationship between gender oppression and oppression based on class, race and nationality, defining core common elements of feminism vs. specific political elements, defining feminism, homosexuality, female circumcision, birth and population control, the gulf between researchers and the grass roots, and the extent to which political issues were women's issues. Emerging from Nairobi was a realisation that feminism is not monolithic but "constitutes the political expression of the concerns and interests of women from different regions, classes, nationalities, and ethnic backgrounds. There is and must be a diversity of feminisms, responsive to the different needs and concerns of women, and defined by them for themselves. This diversity builds on a common opposition to gender oppression and hierarchy which, however, is only the first step in articulating and acting upon a political agenda." [153] The fourth conference was held in Beijing in 1995. [154] At this conference a the Beijing Platform for Action was signed. This included a commitment to achieve "gender equality and the empowerment of women". [155] The most important strategy to achieve this was considered to be "gender mainstreaming" which incorporates both equity and equality, that is that both women and men should "experience equal conditions for realising their full human rights, and have the opportunity to contribute and benefit from national, political, economic, social and cultural development". [156] Now, ten years later there is still debate as to how much difference this has made.
[edit] Feminist theory
- See also: Feminist theory
In the immediate postwar period, Simone de Beauvoir stood alone in her fierce opposition to an image of woman in the home and in relation to men. De Beauvoir provided an existentialist dimension to feminism with the publication of Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) in 1949. [157] As the title implies, the starting point is the implicit inferiority of women, and the first question de Beauvoir asks is "what is a woman"?. [158] Woman she realises is always perceived of as "other", "she is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her". In this book and her essay, "Woman: Myth & Reality", de Beauvoir anticipates Betty Friedan in seeking to demythologise the male concept of woman. "A myth invented by men to confine women to their oppressed`state. For women it is not a question of asserting themselves as women, but of becoming full-scale human beings." "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman", or as Moril Toi puts it "a woman defines herself through the way she lives her embodied situation in the world, or in other words, through the way in which she makes something of what the world makes of her". Therefore, woman must regain subject, to escape her defined role as "other", as a Cartesian point of departure. [159] In her examination of myth, she appears as one who does not accept any special privileges for women. Ironically, feminist philosophers have had to extract de Beauvoir herself from out of the shadow of Jean-Paul Sartre to fully appreciate her. [160] The sheer volume of critical works on de Beauvoir is a testament to her stature. While it has become fashionable in some circles to dismiss de Beauvoir as an historical artefact, others claim that all the essential elements of modern feminism can be found in her work. [161] While more philosopher and novelist than activist, she did sign one of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes manifestos.
[edit] Feminism and political movements
[edit] Feminism and socialism
- See also: The left and feminism and Socialist feminism
Traditionally feminism has allied itself with socialism which as generally been more sympathetic to women's agenda sharing a common theme of oppression. This alliance has not always served it well, since to achieve reform feminism needed to not only attract women from all parts of the political spectrum, but also bipartisan political support. While conservative and fundamentalist elements on the right have tended to promote traditional roles for women, the left has also often submerged their agenda in class issues. In communist systems of Eastern Europe women's causes have often been reformulated as variants of economic exploitation by western capitalism and links with western feminism rejected. In Russia this goes back to at least the Tchaikovsky circle of the 1870s. Following the 1905 revolution the Russian women's movement became split between those primarily involved in the class struggle and those concerned with gender oppression, who were labeled as bourgeois. By 1907 there was an International Conference of Socialist Women in Stuttgart where suffrage was depicted as a tool to aid class struggle. Clara Zetkin of the Social Democratic Party of Germany called for women's suffrage to build a "socialist order, the only one that allows for a radical solution to the women's question". [163] [164] [147] After the 1917 revolution there was little support for a separate women's organisation, and women's aspirations were seen as being best served by the Bolshevik cause. Throughout all of this, the work of Alexandra Kollontai emerges as the central woman in the soviet establishment who laid the foundations for this form of feminist thinking.
Socialism and communism have advanced the rights of women to economic parity with men in some countries. Women were often encouraged to take their place as equals in these societies, although they rarely enjoyed the same level of political power as men, and still often faced very different social expectations. In Britain, the women's movement was allied with the Labour party. In America, Betty Friedan emerged from a radical background to take command of the organised movement.
The revolutions occurring in Latin America saw changes in women's status in countries like Nicaragua where Feminist Ideology During the Sandinista Revolution was largely responsible for the significant improvements to the quality of life for women but still fell short of achieving a true social ideological change. In some areas, regimes actively discouraged feminism and women's liberations. [165]
[edit] Feminism and fascism
In Nazi Germany, and the other fascist states of the 1930s and 1940s, [166] the political agenda illustrates the disastrous consequences for women of a state ideology that in glorifying women became antifeminist. In Germany there was a rapid dissolution of the gains made during the prewar period, and to some extent the 1920s after the political shift in 1933. In Franco's Spain, the right wing catholic conservatives undid the gains of the Republic. Fascist society emphasised virility, was very hierarchical, and was idealized, with women maintaining a position largely subordinate to men.[147]
[edit] Recent activities
In many areas of the world women are still paid less than men for equivalent work, hold much less political and economic power, and are often the subject of intense social pressure to conform to relatively traditional gender expectations. Feminists continue to fight these conditions. The most high profile work is done in the field of pay-equity, reproductive rights, and encouraging women to become engaged in politics, both as candidates and as voters. In some areas feminists also fight for legislation guaranteeing equitable divorce laws and protections against rape and sexual harassment. Radical feminism was a significant development in second wave feminism, viewing women's oppression as a fundamental element in human society and seeks to challenge that standard by broadly inverting perceived gender roles along with promoting lesbian and gay rights.
In the Arab and Islamic world, feminist movements face very different challenges. In Morocco and Iran, for example, it is the application of Islamic personal status laws that are the target of feminist activity. According to Islamic law, for example, a woman who remarries may lose custody over her children; divorce is an unqualified male privilege; in certain countries polygamy is still legal. While not attacking Islamic law itself, these women and men in different Islamic countries offer modern, feminist, egalitarian readings of religious texts. In Egypt feminist gynecologist Nawal al-Sa'dawi centers her critique on the still-prevalent custom of female genital mutilation. Feminist groups in other African countries have targeted the practice as well.
One problem feminists have encountered in the late 20th century is a strong backlash against perceived zealotry on their part. This backlash may be due to the large amount of radical feminist activism that has been perceived as representing the feminist movement as a whole. Many women, and some men, have become reluctant to be identified as feminists for this reason. Outside of the West, feminism is often associated with Western colonialism and Western cultural influence, and is therefore often delegitimized. Feminist groups therefore often prefer to refer to themselves as "women's organizations" and refrain from labeling themselves feminists.
[edit] Islamic feminism
The Feminist movement in the Muslim world saw Egyptian jurist Qasim Amin, the author of the 1899 pioneering book Women's Liberation (Tahrir al-Mar'a), as the father of the Egyptian Feminist Movement. In his work, Amin criticized some of the practices prevalent in his society at the time, such as polygamy, the veil, and women's segregation. He condemned them as un-Islamic and contradictory to the true spirit of Islam. His work had an enormous influence on women's political movements throughout the Islamic and Arab world, and is read and cited today. Less known, however, are the women who preceded Amin in their feminist critique of their societies. The women's press in Egypt started voicing such concerns since its very first issues in 1892. Egyptian, Turkish, Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese women and men had been reading European feminist magazines even a decade earlier, and discussed their relevance to the Middle East in the general press.
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[edit] List of feminists discussed
(Alphabetical, by First Name; for a more complete list, see: List of notable feminists)
- Abigail Adams
- Aemilia Lanyer
- Angela Davis
- Anna Maria van Schurman
- Anna Trapnell
- Ann Radcliffe
- Anne Askew
- Anne Bradstreet
- Anne Knight
- Annie Besant
- Annie Kenney
- Aphra Behn
- Barbara Bodichon
- Bathsua Makin
- Betty Friedan
- Caroline Norton
- Catherine Macaulay
- Catherine Trotter
- Charlotte Bronte
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Christabel Pankhurst
- Christine de Pizan
- Concepción Arenal
- Eleanor Rathbone
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Elizabeth Blackwell
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- Elizabeth Garrett
- Elizabeth Gaskell
- Elizabeth Gould Davis
- Ellen Wilkinson
- Emily Davis
- Emily Davison
- Emma Goldman
- Emmeline Pankhurst
- Ethel Symthe
- Fanny Burney
- Fatima Mernissi
- Florence Nightingale
- Frances Power Cobbe
- Frances Swiney
- Georges Sand
- Gloria E. Anzaldúa
- Gloria Steinem
- Harriet Martineau
- Harriet Taylor
- Harriet Tubman
- Hildegard of Bingen
- Jane Ellen Harrison
- Jane Anger
- Jane Austen
- Josephine Butler
- Juana Ines de la Cruz
- Julian of Norwich
- Lucretia Mott
- Lucy Stone
- Lydia Becker
- Lysistrata
- Margaret Cavendish
- Margaret Fell
- Margaret Fuller
- Margery Kempe
- Margaret Mackworth (Lady Rhondda)
- Marguerite de Navarre
- Marie de Gournay
- Marie Stopes
- Marija Gimbutas
- Margaret Sanger
- Marion Reid
- Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot)
- Mary Astell
- Mary Pix
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
- Matilda Joslyn Gage
- Millicent Garrett
- Mona Caird
- Lady Nancy Astor
- Olympe de Gouges
- Pauline Roland
- Rachel Speght
- Rebecca West
- Rose Macaulay
- Sappho
- Simone de Beauvoir
- Sojourner Truth
- Susan B. Anthony
- Sylvia Pankhurst
- Virginia Woolf
and many more
[edit] List of male feminists discussed
[edit] See also
- Feminist history in the United States
- Feminist history in the United Kingdom: stub only
- Feminist history in Latin America
- List of feminism topics
- List of notable feminists
- New Woman
- List of notable feminist literature
- Women's Music
- Feme covert
- Bluestocking
- Brassiere
[edit] Suffrage
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[edit] Other sources
[edit] Books
For a chronological list of historically important individual books see: List of notable feminist literature
[edit] General
- Cott, Nancy F. The Bonds of Womanhood. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
- Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
- Duby, George and Perrot, Michelle (eds.) A history of women in the west. 5 vols. Harvard 1992-4
- I. From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints
- II. Silences of the Middle Ages
- III. Renaissance and the Enlightenment Paradoxes
- IV. Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War
- V. Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century
- Ezell, Margaret J M. Writing Women's Literary History. Johns Hopkins University 2006 216 pp. ISBN 0-8018-5508-X
- Foot, Paul. The vote: How it was won and how it was lost. Viking London 2005
- Foucault, Michael. The History of Sexuality. Random House, New York 1978
- Freedman, Estelle No Turning Back : The History of Feminism and the Future of Women, Ballantine Books, 2002, ISBN B0001FZGQC
- Fulford, Roger. Votes for women. Faber and Faber, London 1957
- Jacob, Margaret C. The Enlightenment: A Brief History With Documents, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001, ISBN 0-312-17997-9
- Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy. Oxford University Press, 1993
- McQuiston, Liz. Suffragettes and she-devils: Women's liberation and beyond. Phaidon London 1997
- Mill, John Stuart. The subjection of women. Okin, Susan M (ed.) Yale, Newhaven CT 1985
- Prince, Althea and Susan Silva-Wayne (eds.). Feminisms and Womanisms: A Women's Studies Reader. Women's Press 2004 ISBN 0-88961-411-3
- Rossi, Alice S. The feminist papers: from Adams to Beauvoir. Northeastern University, Boston. 1973 ISBN 1-55553-028-1
- Rowbotham, Sheilah. A century of women. Viking, London 1997
- Schneir, Miriam. Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. Vintage 1994 ISBN 0-679-75381-8
- Scott, Joan Wallach Feminism and History (Oxford Readings in Feminism), Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-875169-9
- Smith, Bonnie G. Global Feminisms: A Survey of Issues and Controversies (Rewriting Histories), Routledge, 2000, ISBN 0-415-18490-8
- Spender, Dale (ed.) Feminist theorists: Three centuries of key women thinkers, Pantheon 1983, ISBN 0-394-53438-7
[edit] International
[edit] Europe
- Anderson, Bonnie S. and Judith P. Zinsser A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present, Oxford University Press, 1999 (revised edition), ISBN 0-19-512839-7
- Offen, Karen M. European Feminisms, 1700–1950: A Political History. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2000
[edit] Great Britain
- Caine, Barbrara. Victorian Feminists. Oxford 1992
- Chandrasekhar, S. "A Dirty, Filfthy Book": The Writing of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and British Control and an Account of the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial. University of California Berkeley 1981
- Craik, Elizabeth M.(ed.) 'Women and Marriage in Victorian England', in Marriage and Property. Aberdeen University 1984
- Forster, Margaret. Significant Sisters: The grassroots of active feminism 1839-1939. Penguin 1986
- Fraser, Antonia. The weaker vessel. Vintage, N.Y. 1985 ISBN 0-394-73251-0
- Manvell, Roger. The trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Elek, London 1976
- Pankhurst, Emmeline. My own story. Virago London 1979
- Pankhurst, Sylvia. The suffragette movement. Virago London 1977
- Phillips, Melanie. The Ascent of Woman - A History of the Suffragette Movement and the ideas behind it, Time Warner Book Group London, 2003, ISBN 0-349-11660-1
- Pugh, Martin. Women and the women's movement in Britain, 1914 -1999 , Basingstoke [etc.] : St. Martin's Press , 2000
- Walters, Margaret. Feminism: A very short introduction. Oxford 2005 (ISBN 0-19-280510-X)
[edit] Italy
- Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, liberazione della donna. feminism in Italy, Wesleyan University Press 1986
[edit] India
- Feminism in India, ed. by Maitrayee Chaudhuri, London [etc.] : Zed Books, 2005
[edit] Japan
- Vera MacKie, Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality, Paperback Edition, Cambridge University Press 2003, ISBN 0-521-52719-8
[edit] Latin America
- Nancy Sternbach, Feminism in Latin America : from Bogota to San Bernardo in: SIGNS, Winter 1992, pp.393-434
[edit] USA
- Brownmiller, Susan. In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution, Dial Books 1999
- Cott, Nancy and Elizabeth Pleck, eds., A Heritage of Her Own; Toward a New Social History of American Women New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979
- Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975, University of Minnesota Press 1990
- Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, Paperback Edition, Belknap Press 1996
- Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth., "Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life": How Today's Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch With the Real Concerns of Women, Doubleday 1996
- Keetley, Dawn (ed.) Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism.3 vls.:
- Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1900, Madison, Wis. : Madison House, 1997
- Vol. 2: 1900 to 1960, Lanham, Md. [etc.] : Rowman & Littlefield, 2002
- Vol. 3: 1960 to the present , Lanham, Md. [etc.] : Rowman & Littlefield, 2002
- Messer-Davidow, Ellen : Disciplining feminism : from social activism to academic discourse, Durham, NC [etc.] : Duke University Press, 2002
- O'Neill, William L. Everyone was brave: A history of feminism in America. Chicago 1971
- Roth, Benita. Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
[edit] Journal articles
- Allen, Ann Taylor. Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860–1914. The American Historical Review 1999 October 104(4)
- Cott, Nancy F. Feminist Politics in the 1920s: The National Woman’s Party. Journal of American History 71 (June 1984): 43–68.
- Cott, Nancy F. What’s In a Name? The Limits of ‘Social Feminism’; or, Expanding the Vocabulary of Women’s History. Journal of American History 76 (December 1989): 809–829.
