Grassroots Justice: The Women's Movement (original) (raw)

Gender Studies Feminist Movements

The historical development of feminism (especially in Britain and the USA) is commonly divided into several key periods. They are characterised by a relative absence of feminist thought and mobilisation, and others by the sustained growth both of feminist criticism and of activism with a high public profile . The apparent pattern of rise and fall of feminism over time has led to the 'wave' analogy. 1

Feminism : Growth in 20 th Century

isara solutions, 2023

Feminism is a social and political movement that promotes gender equality, and it has grown significantly over the course of the 20th century. Women's rights made considerable achievements during this time period, including suffrage triumphs and job advancements. Change was sparked by waves of feminism, each with its own objectives. The first wave concentrated on voting rights and fundamental freedoms; the second wave dealt with social and cultural injustices; and the third wave addressed institutional obstacles. Intersectionality became more popular as a result of recognizing the distinctive difficulties of oppressed groups. The advancement of the century established the groundwork for current conversations about gender equity, stressing the significance of historical context and group activities in influencing the development of the feminist movement.

Comparing and Contrasting the Women’s Rights Movement from the 1960s and Today

2018

Throughout history, society has downgraded women. They have not been treated equally and did not have many rights. Women used to not have rights in education and were seen out of the norm when they wanted to seek an education or a job before the late 20th century. In the 1920s, after the Suffrage Movement women won the right to vote based on the Nineteenth Amendment. After many years, in the 1960s, women felt that the first movement was not successful enough and created a second wave of feminist movements pushing for more equality in the workforce and abortion rights. Some movements women created in the 1960s were NOW and Women’s Liberation movement. Although the years have passed, women today still protest about their right of their own body and equal pay. In January 2017, over one million people protested for women’s rights around the nation, which shows how women still feel downgraded by society in a way. Despite the fact that the Women’s March Movement has been inspired by the W...

Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism

Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism, 2017

Challenges to the wave metaphor A central theme of this collection is the reimagination and re-periodization of the "second wave" of feminism, which in the past has been described as occurring between the early 1960s through the 1970s. 1 There has been much discussion about the usefulness of the "wave" metaphor first used by feminists active in women's movements in those decades. When American activists claimed they were a "second wave, " they used the term to distance themselves from a "first wave, " often perceived of as a narrow struggle for suffrage that began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and terminated in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. As Nancy Hewitt writes, "The decades excluded from the waves-before 1848 or from 1920 to 1960-are assumed to be feminist-free zones, an assumption belied by recent scholarship. " 2 In the United States, the period immediately after women won the vote until the 1960s was viewed as devoid of feminist activism and dominated by conservative beliefs steeped in rigidly dichotomous gender roles. This view of the "doldrums" has changed, 3 as have historical accounts of the period that followed the "second wave" (the 1980s and the era of Reagan), which had also been described as an era of conservative backlash against feminism and devoid of activism, which in turn gave rise in the 1990s to a self-described "third wave" of feminist activism. 4 As Hewitt remarks, each "wave" is presumably an improvement upon the last in a "script. .. that each wave overwhelms and exceeds its predecessor. " 5 The "third wave" was identified by younger feminists in the early 1990s who, in their criticism of their feminist forebears, attempted to go beyond "dichotomous notions of gender toward consideration of the multiple identities of age, class, race, and sexual preference, " 6 which many scholars now see as "third wave" feminists' adoption of intersectionality developed earlier by scholars and activists of color in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world. The wave metaphor, even one that includes a more expansive consideration of intersectional identities (i.e., intersectionality), suggests that women's activism occurs in discrete phases led by individuals who prioritize gender/ sex inequality. In the United States, this has generally produced a notion of the importance of activism led by middle-class white women. For most historians, this view has now become far too narrow. Although groundbreaking historical work focusing on the lives of women of color and working women emerged in the early 1980s, historians writing about feminist movements in the United States have, since the 1990s, turned their attention to the contributions of women of color and working-class women to those movements, demonstrating that feminist activists have not spoken with a singular voice or articulated a set of homogenous demands. 7 Nor did women of color and working-class women merely react to an already constituted set of white and middle-class feminist demands. Instead, scholars point out that women of color, working-class women, and middle-class white women have been in dialogue with each other, although they have not always articulated the same set of priorities, agreed with each other, or worked easily together. 8 Focusing on how the movement for sex equality intersected with demands for racial and economic justice in the post-Second World War period has 4 global "North" feminists (Mehta); struggled for recognition of female Indian informal sector workers who had suffered from a historical lack of labor organization (Boris); worked to bring recognition and justice to women oppressed by sexual violence in Japanese-occupied areas during the Second World War (Mackie and Kim and Lee); debated long-held values of secular feminism in France (Chetcuti-Osorovitz), and rejected a discourse of "global sisterhood" that rested on the supposed degradation of Indian women by Indian men (Jha). This expansion of the historical period of the "second wave" makes particular sense when we go beyond the borders of the United States; in addition, it does not exclude the white middle-class American women whose foregrounding of gendered inequality did play an important though not the only role in inspiring women in the United States and elsewhere. An additional way of embracing a broader view of women's activism is to think of it as "women in movement" rather than exclusively as "women's movements. " 12 The latter suggests that feminism prompted activism; the former allows for feminism to grow organically from activist responses to marginalizations and oppressions. As several of the chapters in this volume argue, women who were activists for antiracism, political freedom, community well-being, and nationalist justice developed a strong feminist consciousness while working for these other causes. Women did not cease to be "in movement" just because their initial focus was not women's rights. Even in the troughs between the "first" and "second waves" and after the "second wave" presumably ended, women were involved in community, politics, and other forms of activism, creating a more fluid trajectory of feminism than that suggested by more rigidly defined wave patterns. The articulation of transnational feminist studies as well as the historical study of transnational feminism has also prompted conversations and debates about the meaning of feminism and its relationship to women's activism that is not perceived as necessarily feminist. This volume addresses these conversations by including scholarship on both feminism and women's activism, at times in the same chapter. Amrita Basu, drawing on the formative work of Maxine Molyneaux, explains that one way to distinguish between feminism and women's activism has been to separate women's practical and strategic interests. "Strategic interests, which are commonly identified as feminist, emerge from and contest women's experiences of gender subordination. Practical interests, by contrast, emerge from women's immediate and perceived needs." 13 Because the latter (practical interests) often gives rise to the former (strategic interests), the concept of "women in movement" can help to recognize how these types of activisms can coexist at the local, national, and transnational levels and to underscore continuity (while also recognizing local specificities) among activist movements of various time periods, rather than occurring only in discrete waves. Rather than abandon the wave metaphor, this volume tries to fill in the troughs and find ways to better connect women in movement across time and place. As Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor point out, the wave metaphor may still be useful "as long as we understand that the lulls between the waves are still moving, that, from a transnational perspective, there may be choppy seas rather than even swells, and that waves do not rise and crash independently of each other. " 14 Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism 6 6 that feminism is necessarily a Western import: "feminist perspectives are not foreign to. .. Third World national contexts. " 24 At the same time, the chapters also recognize the effects of global economic and political forces on women's lives, which may necessitate transnational networked responses from feminists inhabiting different regions of the world. As opposed to internationalism focused on international alliances among already established nations, transnational feminist studies attend to "transnational circuits of information, capital, and labor, [to] critique a system founded on inequality and exploitation. " 25 The concept of intersectionality, first articulated by women of color in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s and coined as a theoretical term in 1991 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, 26 has been a powerful analytical tool in feminist and antiracist studies that allows for the theorization of "the dynamics of difference and sameness, " including along overlapping axes of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. An "intersectional frame of analysis" allows us to examine the historical "mutually constituting" operation of identity categories that have produced complex relationships of power that defy simple dichotomous statements, such as men oppress women. In addition, activists may undertake "political interventions employing an intersectional lens. " 27 All the essays in this volume consider their feminist subjects through an intersectional frame of analysis. Jennifer Nash asserts that although the contemporary academy conflates intersectionality and transnationalism with diversity and difference, respectively, as a way of addressing important contemporary issues, intersectionality and transnationalism are not inherently at odds. 28 Indeed, transnational feminist studies have deepened intersectional analysis by shifting the focus away from the United States and Europe. Instead, the focus of transnational feminist studies has been on how power moves across historically shifting borders that both separate and generate nations and political regions and how this movement of power operates to structure inequalities in relation to mutually constituting categories (such as gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality). Along these lines, Vrushali Patil argues that transnational feminists "encourage an examination of how categories of race, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, nation, and gender not only intersect but are mutually constituted, formed, and transformed within transnational power-laden processes." 29 Chandra Mohanty, another central theorist of the first articulations of transnational feminist studies, has written critically of US and European feminisms grounded in the notion of a monolithic patriarchy that oppressed an equally monolithic "third world woman." She explains, "An analysis of 'sexual difference' in the form of a cross-culturally singular,...

Women's movements and feminist activism

Agenda

This issue is dedicated to the changing landscape of women's movements and activism in South Africa (SA) as well as other countries in Africa. Movements and mobilisation Over the last two decades the contributions and achievements as well as failures of women's movements and women's activism have been well documented in manuscripts that have specifically focused on Africa and been written from the vantage point of the Global South. Shireen Hassim's landmark study Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa-Contesting Authority (2006) chronicles and analyses the role of the women's movement in the South African liberation struggle, democratic transition, and the first engagements with institutional politics. She also highlights the role and failures of the ANC Women's League to contribute to substantive gender equality. In her book Democracy and the Rise of Women's Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa Kathleen Fallon (2008) engages the issue of women in democratisation processes in Africa and analyses Ghana as a case study.