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

Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism

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

newgenprepdf viii 2 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 8 collective action and cooperation to empower themselves and improve their daily lives. Rochelle Ruthchild in Chapter 5, "Feminist Dissidents in the 'Motherland of Women's Liberation': Shattering Soviet Myths and Memory, " the last chapter in this part, writes of Russian dissident feminists who critiqued gender-based oppression in Russia. Forcefully opposed by the Soviet state, and also by many of their male dissident comrades, they continued to produce uniquely Russian feminist writings as exiles that in some cases differed markedly from European or US feminisms, such as in their open embrace of Russian Orthodox Christianity, and in other cases found a home within transnational feminism. The four chapters in Part Two, "Reconsidering 'Second Wave' Feminist Genealogies, " expand the periodization of the "second wave. " The first two chapters-Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney's Chapter 6, "On the 'F'-Word as Insult and on Feminism as Political Practice: Women's Mobilization for Rights in Chile"; and Magdalena Grabowska's Chapter 7, "Beyond the 'Development' Paradigm: State Socialist Women's Activism, Transnationalism, and the 'Long Sixties'"-link women's mobilizations and feminist activism of the 1960s and 1970s to earlier decades of the century. Pieper Mooney takes a long historical view of maternalist Chilean female activism that begins in the first decades of the twentieth century when women demanded changes that would improve family and community life and continues through the 1980s women's protests against Pinochet's dictatorship, which they said violated its supposed reverence for mothers and families when it caused the disappearance of individuals opposed to the state. Grabowska argues that Polish feminists embraced state-socialist feminism in the immediate post-Second World War period to foster an international feminist movement of Women's Congresses well before transnational feminist movements were founded by Western feminists in the 1970s and 1980s. Priya Jha's Chapter 8, "'Making a Point by Choice': Maternal Imperialism, Second Wave Feminism, and Transnational Epistemologies, " interrogates the effects of historical amnesia on claims to "global sisterhood" by US "second wave" feminists. Jha argues that Mary Daly's claims (in the 1970s) to women's universal oppression rested on racist misrepresentations of Indian women by American journalist Katherine Mayo in her 1927 book Mother India. The failure to recognize the historical genealogy behind claims to "global sisterhood" reinforced false understandings of women's oppression in the "global south" that had nothing to do with their own experiences. The last chapter in this section by Seungkyung Kim and Na-Young Lee, Chapter 9, "Shared History and the Responsibility for Justice: The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, " also makes connections across the twentieth century from Japan's sexual exploitation of Korean women during...

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.

Women Empowerment over the Ages

isara solutions, 2022

Today the empowerment of woman has become one of the most important concerns. But practically women empowerment is still on illusion of reality. Empowerment of women is essentially the process of upliftment to economic, social and political status of women. It is a process in which women gain control over their own lives of knowing and claiming their right at all levels of society at the international, local and household levels. Women empowerment is a vital instrument to expand women's ability to have resources and to make strategic life choices. Education is a milestone of empowerment because it enables them to respond to the challenges, to confront their traditional role and change their life. Women constitutes almost half of the population in world. Women bear almost all responsibility for meeting basic needs of the family. Household decision making power and freedom of movement of women vary considerably with their age, education and employment status. Fewer women have find say on how to spend their earning. This article attempts to analyze the status of women empowerment and highlights the challenges of women empowerment and concludes that access of education, employment and change in social structure are only enabling factors to women empowerment. Introduction : A Women with a voice is by definition-'A strong woman' : Women's empowerment can be defined to promoting women's sense of self-worth, their ability to determine their own choices, and their right to influence social change for themselves and others. It is closely aligned with female empowerment-a fundamental human right that's also key to achieving a more peaceful, prosperous world. In western countries, female empowerment is often associated with specific phases of women's rights movement in history. This movement tends to be split into three waves, the first beginning in the 19 th and early 20 th century where surface was a key feature. The second wave of the 1960s included the sexual revolution and the role of women in society. Third wave feminism is often seen as beginning in the 1990. But despite a great deal of progress, women and girls continue to face discrimination and violence in every part of the world. Women empowerment is about creating high-level corporate leadership for gander equality, treat all people fairly at work, respecting and supporting non-discrimination and human rights. Women must understand the value of self-worth. They should have equal rights and opportunities to participate in education, economics and politics. Women empowerment is to make all women independent and they should influence each other and boost the economic growth of the country. "If you educate a man you educate an individual, however, if you educate a woman you educate a whole family. Women empowered means mother India empowered".-Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Women's Movement: History and Theory

1993

Part 1 Women's movement, history and theory: men on women and peace, Marijke Mossink radical ideas and reasonable actions, Anneke Ribberink the Dutch development, Margo Brouns. Part 2 Labour and policy: controversial quality, Jeanne de Bruijn no career without encouragement, Saskia van Bottenburg what distinguishes successful female managers from their male counterparts?, Anne Pastor and Celeste P.M. Wilderom matrilineage, myths and gender identity, Marion den Uyl changing views on Third World women in Dutch international development co-operation, Ina Keuper women's groups and food aid programmes in the urban neighbourhoods of Arequipa, Peru, Roelie Lenten. Part 3 Images of women: stepmothers and motherless girls in narratives from Kabylia, Algeria: oral and written productions, Daniella Merolla christology or christolotry?, Julie Hopkins love and how gender makes a difference, Ymkje de Boer.