Introduction: Feminism is a combination of social political movements with a common goal to

define develop and demand political social and fiscal rights for women. Also ‘Feminism’ is a wide
range of political movements, ideologies and social movements that share a common goal to
define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal and social equality of sexes. Feminism
is to seek women’s equality and justice in every sphere of life and create opportunities for
women to have the same access to the resources that are otherwise freely available to men. Since,
feminism covers diverse area of inquiry, dealing with the history of women’s oppression and
possible means to overcome the ‘anxiety of
authorship’ by establishing a literary canon of their own. Feminism is, indeed, a serious attempt
to analyse, comprehend and clarify because there are numerous psychosocial and cultural
constructs of feminity.

Meaning: The term Feminism appeared in France in the late of 1880s by Hunburtine Auclert in
her Journal La Citoyenne as La Feminitè where she tried to criticize male domination and to claim
for women‟s rights in addition to the emancipation promised by the French revolution. The term
‘feminism’ has been derived from the Latin word ‘femina,’ meaning ‘woman’ and was first used
with regard to the issues of equality and women’s Rights Movement.

Definition: The definition of the term ‘feminism’ differs from person to person. Some
documentary definition are given below:
Chaman Nahal in his article, “Feminism in English Fiction”, defines feminism as “a mode of
existence in which the woman is free of the dependence syndrome.
Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, Bell Hooks(2000) share her simple definition of
Feminism “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression”.

“A common belief that guides feminism is that gender bias exists systematically and is manifest
in the major institutions in society. (Donna R Podems)
Feminism examines the intersection of gender, race, class, and sexuality in the context of
power” (Mertens, 2005, p. 154).

Toril Moi says that “The words ‘feminist’ or ‘feminism’ are political labels indicating
support for the aims of the new Woman’s Movement which emerged in the late 1960s.
Simone de Beauvoir argues that the terms, masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only
as a matter of form on the legal papers.”

Finally we can say that feminism is political, cultural, and economic movements that aim to
establish equal rights and legal protections for women.
Types of feminism
Feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks justice for
women and the end of sexism in all forms. There are many kinds of feminism in which sometimes
and each one of them gives principles and conditions for giving woman her rights.

Liberal feminism
Liberal feminism is a particular approach to achieving equality between men and women. It
emphasizes on the power of an individual Person to alter discriminatory practices against women.
It is considered as the most important kinds of feminism, which works within the structure of
society to integrate women into it. Its roots stretch back to the social contract theory of government
instituted by the American Revolution.
Liberal feminism aims for individuals to use their own abilities and the democratic process to help
women and men to become equal in the eyes of the law and in society. By organizing women into
larger groups that can speak at a higher level, push for legislation, and raise awareness of issues,
those taking a liberal feminist approach will use the resources and tools available in our society to
advocate for change.
The main thrust of liberal feminism is that an individual woman should be able to determine her
social role with as great freedom as does a man. The major emphasis is that equality of women
before the law, in educational and professional opportunities, change in marriage laws, property
rights, inequitable divorce, equal pay for equal work, protection from rape, wife battering in the
home and liberation from all dehumanizing forces.

Radical feminism
Radical feminism is a movement that believes sexism is so deeply rooted in society that the only
cure is to eliminate the concept of gender. It started to emerge in the late 1960s by the famous
leaders T. Grace Atkinson and Shulamith Firestone. Radical feminism aims to challenge and
overthrow patriarchy by opposing standard gender roles and oppression of women and calls for a
radical reordering of society.
Radical feminism claims that the root of women's oppression is biological. They believe that the
physical subordination of women by men is the primary form of oppression and others are
secondary. Therefore, radical feminism believes that woman‟s liberation requires a biological
revolution. The chief institution of patriarchy is the family and the family promotes patriarchy in
the society.
Radical feminism principles contains pregnancy and child birth in which they consider them as the
most painful and unpleasant experiences that can person pass through. Radical feminists believe
that the male psychology or biology is the source of women's oppression and pain. This is why
they call for separatism and the independence from men.

Socialist feminism
Socialist feminism also known as Marxist feminism or Materialist feminism is an important
movement of feminism. It calls for an end to capitalism through a socialist reformation of
economy. Socialist feminists view gender inequalities as intrinsic to the capitalist system, which
makes vast profits off women's unpaid labor in the home and underpaid labor in the workforce.

Socialist feminism argues that capitalism strengthens and supports the sexist status because men
are the ones who currently have power and money. Those men are more willing to share their
power and money with other man, which means that women have fewer opportunities and
resources. Therefore, they tried to eliminate the capitalist system and replace it with socialism,
which collectively shares the wealth created by human labor and has no economic stake in
maintaining exploitation. Sexism benefits the capitalism, by providing a supply of cheap labor for
industry. Women are in low paid, low status or even no paid work. It means that, Socialist feminists
reject the idea that liberation for women requires the abolition of childbirth.

Black feminism
School of thought which argues that sexism, class oppression, gender identity and inextricably
bound together. The way these concepts relate to each other is called intersectionality. The term
intersectionality theory was first coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. In her work,
Crenshaw discussed Black feminism, which argues that the experience of being a black woman
cannot be understood in terms of being black or of being a woman. Each concept is considered
independently, but must include the interactions, which frequently reinforce each other. The
Combahee River Collective argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for
all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression.

Muslim feminism
Muslims believe that justice and equality are intrinsic values and cardinal principles in Islam.
Human beings are equal whether they are black or white, man or women. This idea of equality
between sexes emerged in Muslim societies by the coming of Islam centuries before, but a Muslim
extremist were always trying to remove the right given by God to women and makes her a servant
or less. By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of 20th century people started to think
differently by forming new ideologies, organization and departments of women, most of the time
called “Islamic feminism” or “Arab Feminism”. Scholars and researchers were always studying
and discussing issues and stories of women in the Quran, which contains principles of gender
equality and wider issues of social justice, thus laying grounds for challenging patriarchal
traditions done by those researchers.

Eco-Feminism
Eco-feminism is a movement that sees a connection between the exploitation and degradation of
the natural world and the subordination and oppression of women. It emerged in the mid-1970s
alongside second-wave feminism and the green movement. Ecofeminism brings together elements
of the feminist and green movements, while at the same time offering a challenge to both. It takes
from the green movement a concern about the impact of human activities on the non-human world
and from feminism the view of humanity as gendered in ways that subordinate, exploit and oppress
women.
Ecofeminism is an ideology and movement that sees climate change, gender equality, and social
injustice more broadly as intrinsically related issues, all tied to masculine dominance in society.

Cyber Feminism
Cyber feminism refers to feminism(s) applies to and/or performed in cyberspace. Cyber
Feminism emerged in the 1990’s. According to Jennifer Brayton- Cyber feminism takes
feminism as its starting point and turns its focus upon contemporary technologies, exploring the
intersections between gender identity, the body, culture and technology. At the first international
cyber feminist conference , delegates avoided stating what cyber feminism was and instead
devised the 100 anti- theses and defined what cyber feminism was not.
100 Anti thesis
• Cyber feminism is not anti male
• Cyber feminism is not a single women
• Cyber feminism is not science fiction
• Cyber feminism is not one way street
• Cyber feminism has not Only one language
The idea of defining/not defining it through several overlapping ideas (anti-theses) is appropriate
to post modern feminist ideals of a fluid worldview rather than a rigid binary oppositional view.

Sadie Plant in her 1997 book, Zeros and ones: Digital Women and the New Techno-culture
refers how feminisms and cyber culture still relatively unexplored. She pointed a major
mathematician named Ada Lovelace who’s contribution was neglected when it came to a male
counterparts. Also, she refers how computer science turns into a male dominated section as well.

According to Donna Haraway, cyber feminism was born mainly as a reaction to “the pessimism
of the 1980s feminist approaches that stressed the inherently masculine nature of techno-science”,
so it became a counter movement against the “toys for boys “ perception of new internet
technologies.
Cyber feminist education projects (for both men and women) in technology,
programming, software and hardware design address traditional gender constructions and biases
built into technology.
Women have appropriated this space and used it with great creativity and innovation for a variety
of purposes : creating solidarity, networking , building, pressure groups .

WAVES OF FEMINISM
Feminist history can be divided into four waves.

First Wave: Votes for Women and Education (1848 to 1920)

The first feminist wave has its roots in the social revolutions of the 1700s. First-wave feminism
promoted equal contract and property rights for women, opposing ownership of married women
by their husbands. By the late 19th century, feminist activism was primarily focused on the right
to vote.
The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 when 300 hundred men and
women rallied to the cause of equality for women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (d.1902) drafted the
Seneca Falls Declaration outlining the new movement's ideology and political strategies. Members
of national women’s party made a strike in the USA outside white house.
The First Wave of Feminism in Europe was mentioned in the famous work of Mary
Wollstonecraft‟s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792) that considered as a
revolution in its own. In that book, Wollstonecraft believed that education is the best way
to make woman took her position in society in equivalent with man.
In this wave, Virginia Woolf wrote a famous book about women rights “A Room of One"s Own”
(1929) in which she helped Mary Wollstonecraft and others to build a new road for woman to
change her life.
American first-wave feminism ended with passage of the 19th Amendment to the US
Constitution in 1919, granting women voting rights.

Second Wave: The Personal is Political (1963 – 1980)

The term second-wave feminism referred mostly to the radical feminism and mainly to Women‟s
liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In this period there was a competition
called Miss America Pageants in 1968 and 1969 in which woman was presented as cattle to
emphasize and highlight that the way woman looks, wears and speaks is more important from the
way she thinks, believes and acts.
Second-wave feminism of the 1960s-1980s focused on issues of equality and discrimination. The
second-wave slogan, “The Personal is Political,” identified women’s cultural and political
inequalities as inextricably linked and encouraged women to understand how their personal lives
reflected sexist power structures.

Betty Friedan was a key player in second-wave feminism. In 1963, her book The Feminine
Mystique criticized the idea that women could find fulfillment only through childrearing and
homemaking.
According to Friedan’s New York Times obituary, her book “ignited the contemporary women’s
movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States
and countries around the world” and “is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction
books of the 20th century.”
Friedan hypothesizes that women are victims of false beliefs requiring them to find identity in their
lives through husbands and children. This causes women to lose their own identities in that of their
family.
Third Wave: The Transversal Politics ( 1990 - Present)

This wave of feminism referred to a group of feminist activity. They were appeared in the
early 1990s and continuing to the present. Rebecca Walker is the symbol of this wave. She
used this term „third wave feminism‟ at the first time in 19928. This wave came as a
reaction of the second wave ideas and activities like women in pornography, sex work, and
prostitution.
The third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating how race, ethnicity, class,
religion, gender, and nationality are all significant factors when discussing feminism.
Early third-wave activism tended to involve fighting against workplace sexual harassment and
working to increase the number of women in positions of power. Intellectually, it was rooted in
the work of theorists of the ’80s: Kimberlé Crenshaw, a scholar of gender and critical race theory
who coined the term intersectionality to describe the ways in which different forms of oppression
intersect; and Judith Butler, who argued that gender and sex are separate and that gender is
performative. Crenshaw and Butler’s combined influence would become foundational to the third
wave’s embrace of the fight for trans rights as a fundamental part of intersectional feminism.
It examines issues related to women’s lives on an international basis.
Lastly, riot grrrl music groups emerged, giving rise to punk feminism and contrasting the previous
wave with a reclamation of femininity.
Fourth Wave: Present Day
The main attribute of the fourth wave is its relationship to the media and its online advocacy for
social change. This means that it promotes feminist causes on the internet, especially on social
media, with campaigns on rape culture and body shaming, or hashtags like #MeToo or
#YesAllWomen. This has led to a transformation of pop culture, resonating with young girls,
women and minority genders around the world, giving rise to young activist online spaces. While
the fourth wave supports the features of the third, it is argued that it goes a step further in terms of
sex- and body-positivity, as well as reinforcing women’s empowerment.

Feminist and Development

Five Elements of Feminist Methodology
• Gender and inequality

• Experience

• Action

• Critique of Research

• Participatory methods

FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF DEVELOPMENT MODELS

• The idea of integrating women in development

• Advocating a new ethical framework in which development process should be placed

• challenging the concepts advanced by development researchers and agencies
• The methods used by social scientists in gathering data from which development
programmes are designed