Art research: post-50’s feminism

1950s:

Attitudes and expectations of women:

The 1950s was the peak time of the ‘housewife’, it was an age of tradition and conformity.
Marriage was incredibly important and after marrying women had strict expectations of how they
should be. Very few women worked after getting married, their job was to stay home and raise
children and keep house. Women were heavily reliant on their husbands and rarely had money
of their own.
It was unusual for women to be educated, especially working class women. Most married
young and almost immediately after leaving school. Schools taught girls ‘leesons for life’, they
were taught things like cooking, household management, darning, sewing, and proper ironing.
They were trained to look after their house, their husband, and their kids.
Women were expected to shop, cook, clean, sew and provide basic tasks for their
families. They were expected to be happy, loving and nurturing constantly. They were also
responsible for their looks, their house and the stability of her family. They were not allowed or
‘supposed’ to have education, careers and independence, they were reliant on their
Husbands.

Feminism:
Feminism is a social movement that advocates for social, political and economic equality
for women. The movement originated in 1848 when a group of women gathered at the Seneca
Falls Convention to discuss women's rights. Since then, feminism has occurred in waves,
characterized by organized, large-scale efforts to increase the rights of women. The 1950s wave
of feminism occurred between the 1848 induction and later more-organized 20th century
feminism efforts. While feminism efforts in the '50s were not as widely felt at the time, those
actions resulted in major gains for women in later years.
In the 1950s, sending information about birth control through the mail was no longer a
federal crime, but women still lacked unobstructed access to safe and effective birth control pills.
This decade saw many actions from small groups of women. For example, numerous lawsuits
were filed by women in an attempt to establish a law granting women the right to receive birth
control pills. In addition, Katharine McCormick and Margaret Sanger were two influential
feminists who were instrumental in organizing research into the safety and effectiveness of birth
control. All of this independent advocacy eventually resulted in the Food and Drug Administration
approving the first birth control pill in 1960.
Due to the need for workers to replace the jobs of men who were deployed overseas
during World War II, many women began working outside of the home. In addition, women who
had held jobs prior to the war were given the opportunity to work in better jobs and receive more
pay due to the opening of positions that were previously male-dominated. After the war ended in
1945, women experienced greater social and political pressure to leave their jobs and return to
being homemakers which continued into the 1950s. While some women did return to more
traditional roles in their homes, many continued to work outside of their homes after the war. This
combination of women's wartime labour participation and continued entry into the previously
male-dominated job force had a strong social and cultural influence into later effects to try and
secure equal pay and opportunities for women. The effects of these early feminist movements in
the workplace are still ongoing with greater successes in certain employment sectors and a long
path ahead in others.
Feminist literature existed long before the 1950s, but two important feminist texts were
published during this time: "The Second Sex" and "The Feminine Mystique." Simone de
Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" challenged the view of women as inferior to men, which was a
radical assertion at the time. "The Feminine Mystique," written by Betty Friedan, discussed,
among other things, the fact that many women desired successes outside of childcare and
housework and wanted to work and enrol in college. This articulated a sentiment common among
many women who worked during WWII.
Many participants of the suffrage and abolitionist movements were closely allied in their
beliefs and advocacy movements. This relationship continued to evolve over time and was highly
present during the 1950s. While no major gains for women were made during the 1950s, the civil
rights movement was extremely successful. For example, the cases Plessy v. Ferguson and
Brown v. The Board of Education effectively ruled that segregation was unconstitutional. These
gains were the result of large-scale, organised protests. Feminists would later use the strategies
employed during the Civil Rights Movement to achieve rights for women, such as the legalization
of abortion.

Feminist developments:
● 1952: Equal pay for female teachers was required by law.
● 1954: Equal pay for women in the civil service was required by law.
● 1956 The Sexual Offences Act defines rape under specific criteria, such as incest, sex
with a girl under 16, no consent, use of drugs, anal sex and impersonation.
● 1958: The Life Peerages Act 1958 allowed for the creation of female peers entitled to sit
in the House of Lords. The first such women peers took their seats on 21 October 1958.
Baroness Swanbourough, Lady Reading and Baroness Barbara Wooton are the first to
take their seats.

Feminists/female artists or inflences:

Artists (pre feminst art movement-started Influences/ feminist icons

in 60s)

Romaine Brooks Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir (french feminist author).
Her book, The Second Sex, is considered the
starting point of second-wave feminism.

Vanessa Bell Betty Frieden

Betty Friedan. Wrote ‘The Feminine Mystique
and spoke out for Women’s rights and
detailed the unhappiness of 1950s women.

Natalia Goncharova Bobbye Ortiz

International socialist feminist grassroots
organizer from 1940s to 1980s.

Lee Krasner Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for
her political activism, writing, and speeches.
She played a pivotal role in the development
of anarchist political philosophy in North
America and Europe in the first half of the
20th century

Marie Laurencin Jessie Daniel Ames

Jessie Daniel Ames began her career in the
 suffrage and women’s rights movements in
Texas. In 1930 Ames founded the Association
of Southern Women for the Prevention of
Lynching, organizing against lynching in
Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma and
thoroughly repudiating the idea that lynching
was a defense of southern white girls.

Loren MacIver Lucy Randolph Mason

Labour activist, public relations representative
in the South for the Congress of Industrial
Organisations (CIO), and resident of
Richmond, Virginia, and Atlanta, Georgia

Alice Neel Mary Cowper

Active suffragette and an instrumental figure
in the formation and early years on NC
League of Women Voters

Sonia Delaunay Amy Ashwood Garvey

Feminist and activist who travelled
extensively and lived in west Africa

1960s:

Attitudes and expectations of women:

In the beginning of the 1960s, women were portrayed on television and in advertisements
as happy homemakers, secretaries, teachers, and nurses. Women who did not get married were
depicted as unattractive, unfortunate spinsters, and those who asserted themselves were
dismissed as nagging shrews.Women were to strive for beauty, elegance, marriage, children,
and a well-run home. Meanwhile, popular culture ignored the fact that all women did not fit the
mould that tradition had prescribed for them.
One of the major events that contributed to the change in women's roles in society was
the introduction of Enovid, the first birth control pill, in 1960. With the increasingly widespread
use of birth control, women gained greater control over when and if they would have children,
allowing many women to enter the workforce who would have otherwise been busy rearing
children. Many were challenged by Betty Friedan's 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique , which
described the frustration of many women who were unfulfilled by their efforts to conform to
society's ideal of femininity, living for their husbands and children, and neglecting their own
ambitions and dreams. According to Friedan, "the feminine mystique has succeeded in burying
millions of American women alive." In a call to action, she urged women to "break out of the
household trap and truly find fulfilment as wives and mothers—by fulfilling their own unique
possibilities as separate human beings."
In 1963, the President's Commission on the Status of Women issued a report entitled
American Women, which recommended that women be granted equality in employment and
educational opportunities, as well as wages. The report suggested that special support be given
for working mothers, including government-assisted day-care centres and government-required
maternity leave. In the same year, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, the first federal law
against gender discrimination. Women's legal rights were further promoted by the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, which banned employment discrimination on the basis on gender, as well as race, color,
religion, and national origin. The law also established the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, which would enforce the law, as well other later anti-discriminatory legislation.
Women took an active role in politics in greater numbers. Many individuals, such as Fanny Lou
Hamer and Joan Baez, made tremendous efforts as individuals and as part of larger civil rights
groups. In addition, organisations like Women Strike for Peace, founded in 1960 by Bella Abzug
and Dagmar Wilson, and the National Organisation for Women, NOW, founded in 1966 by Betty
Friedan, brought women together to influence political and social policy. In addition to protests for
equal rights for black Americans and anti-war demonstrations, women worked toward gains in
women's rights. One major issue was the Equal Rights Amendment, or the ERA. Beginning in
1967, NOW members worked hard to help get the ERA passed, but they were ultimately
unsuccessful in their efforts to get the amendment ratified.
As the role of women in American society evolved during the 1960s, the images of women in the
media and popular culture began to reflect those changes. Television shows still largely featured
stereotyped female characters, but movies began to portray women who did not fit into the
traditional moulds. Fashions among young women changed from neat, well-pressed outfits to
casual tie-dyed shirts and jeans. Women growing up in the 1960s saw a number of women
playing important roles outside the home, in business, politics, the media, and other influential
sectors. The achievements of women in the arts, sciences, and humanities were also
increasingly apparent. Although popular culture had yet to embrace the idea of the "modern
liberated woman," America became more open to a broader view of women's roles in society.

Feminism:
Second wave feminism. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, which
argued that women were chafing against the confines of their roles as wives and mothers. The
book was a massive success, selling 3 million copies in three years and launching what became
known as the second wave of feminism. Inspired by the civil rights movement and protests
against the Vietnam War, second-wave feminists called for a reevaluation of traditional gender
roles in society and an end to sexist discrimination.
Feminism—or “women’s liberation”—gained strength as a political force in the 1970s, as
Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in
1971. High points of the second wave included passage of the Equal Pay Act and the landmark
Supreme Court decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973) related to
reproductive freedom. But while Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, a
conservative backlash ensured it fell short of the number of states needed for ratification.
Like the suffrage movement, second-wave feminism drew criticism for centering
privileged white women, and some Black women formed their own feminist organizations,
including the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO). Despite its achievements, the
women’s liberation movement had begun to lose momentum by 1980, when conservative forces
swept Ronald Reagan to the White House.
The 1960s was a period when women artists wanted to gain equal rights with men within
the established art world, and to create feminist art, often in non-traditional ways, to help "change
the world".Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) and German-American Eva Hesse (1936-1970) were
some early feminist artists.
On 20 July 1964 Yoko Ono, a Fluxus, avant-garde artist, singer, and activist, presented
Cut Piece at the Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan where she sat still as parts of her clothing
were cut off of her, which meant to protest violence against women. She performed it again at
Carnegie Hall in 1965. Her son, Sean, participated in the artist's performance on 15 September
2013 at the Théâtre le Ranelagh in Paris. The Guardian's Jonathan Jones considered it "one of
the 10 most shocking performance artworks ever."
Mary Beth Edelson's Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972)
appropriated Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with the heads of notable women artists
collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles. Benglis was among those notable women
artists. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the
subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement."

Feminist development:
● 1961: The birth control pill was introduced in the UK by the National Health Service in
1961 for married women only.
● 1963: Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space
● 1963: The Peerage Act 1963 granted suo jure hereditary women peers (other than those
in the Peerage of Ireland) the right to sit in the House of Lords.
 ● 1965: Barbara Castle is appointed Minister of Transport, becoming the first female
minister of state.
● 1967: The birth control pill was made available for all women with the National Health
Service from 1967.
● 1967: The Abortion Act 1967 was enacted; it is an Act of the Parliament of the United
Kingdom legalising abortions by registered practitioners, and regulating the tax-paid
provision of such medical practices through the National Health Service. The Act made
abortion legal in all of Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland) up to 28 weeks' gestation.
In 1990, the law was amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act so that
abortion was no longer legal after 24 weeks, except in cases where it was necessary to
save the life of the woman, there was evidence of extreme fetal abnormality, or there was
a grave risk of physical or mental injury to the woman. Furthermore, all abortion remains
officially restricted to cases of maternal life, mental health, health, rape, fetal defects,
and/or socioeconomic factors.
● 1967: In the common law of crime in England and Wales, a common scold was a type of
public nuisance—a troublesome and angry woman who broke the public peace by
habitually arguing and quarrelling with her neighbours. The offence was punishable by
ducking: being placed in a chair and submerged in a river or pond. Although rarely
prosecuted it remained on the statute books in England and Wales until 1967.
● 968: The Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968, led by Rose Boland, Eileen Pullen, Vera
Sime, Gwen Davis, and Sheila Douglass, began because women sewing machinists, as
part of a regrading exercise, were informed that their jobs were graded in Category B
(less skilled production jobs), instead of Category C (more skilled production jobs), and
that they would be paid 15% less than the full B rate received by men. At the time it was
common practice for companies to pay women less than men, irrespective of the skills
involved.Following the intervention of Barbara Castle, the Secretary of State for
Employment and Productivity in Harold Wilson's government, the strike ended three
weeks after it began, as a result of a deal that immediately increased their rate of pay to
8% below that of men, rising to the full category B rate the following year. A court of
inquiry (under the Industrial Courts Act 1919) was also set up to consider their regrading,
although this failed to find in their favour. The women were only regraded into Category C
following a further six-week strike in 1984 (source BBC documentary broadcast 9 March
2013). The 1968 strike was a trigger cause of the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970.

Artists Feminist icons/influences

Louise Bourgeois Marsha P Johnson

a gay liberation and AIDS activist who was a
fixture of New York City's Greenwich Village.
As a Black trans woman, she was one of the
leading figures in the Stonewall Riots in 1969,
and a founding member of the Gay Liberation
Front. She was also prominent in New York's
art scene, modelling for Andy Warhol in the
1970s.

Eve Hesse Elizabeth (Betsy) Alden

United Methodist clergywoman, Duke
graduate, coordinator of Service Learning for
Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke. Primarily
published materials relating to women's
employment, religious, legal, and domestic
issues, especially during the 1970s and
 1980s in Texas.

Yoko Ono Dorothy Allison

Dorothy Allison is an author and feminist who
has written numerous books and short
stories, including Trash (1988), Bastard Out of
Carolina (1992), and Cavedweller (1998). The
Dorothy Allison Papers include drafts and
manuscripts of her writings (including Bastard
Out of Carolina, Trash, Cavedweller, and
other works), personal and professional
correspondence, research materials and
subject files, her personal journals, and other
materials. Includes some photographs,
electronic files, and oversize materials.

Mary Beth Edelson Pauline Bart

Pauline Bart is a feminist sociologist and
former professor of sociology and psychiatry.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, Bart was active
in many feminist and civil rights issues,
including anti-pornography protests, sexual
assault and rape law reform, Jewish and
middle-aged women's advocacy, reproductive
rights, and violence against women.

Agnes Martin Phyllis Chesler

Feminist psychologist and author (Women
and Madness, About Men, etc). Collection
includes publishing files, research files,
academic/teaching materials, subject files,
correspondence, writings, printed materials,
and ephemera. Parts of collection under
restricted access.

Yayoi Kusama Sara Evans

She is described as one of the foremost
scholars of feminist studies in the United
States, and is attributed with creating the field
of women's history. Her scholarly
contributions extend across the College of
Liberal Arts and include the areas of Women's
Studies and American Studies.

Vija Celmins Kay Leigh Hagan

Writer, teacher, and feminist. Much of her
early career focused on raising women's
consciousness by teaching how to recognize
various forms of internalised oppression in
private classes she called "Feminars."

Paula Rego Robin Morgan

Feminist activist, poet, journalist, author, child
star, and longtime editor of Ms. magazine.
Documents personal, political, and
 professional life.

Bridget Riley Catherine Nicholson

Lesbian, feminist writer and magazine
publisher, resident of Durham, N.C.;
co-founder of Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural
lesbian literary and art journal.

1970s:

Attitudes and expectations of women:

The women’s rights movement made significant strides in the 1970’s and took a
prominent role within society. Among these battles were challenging sexism, fighting for free
access to legal abortion, and analyzing and overcoming oppression. The Women’s Strike for
Equality and other protests in 1970 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (which legalised female suffrage).
The women’s rights movement was brought into the national spotlight in 1973 with the
Supreme Court’s decision to constitutionalize the right to an abortion in the Roe v. Wade
case. Feminism reached an even larger audience than ever before at the start of the
decade with published works such as Sexual Politics by Kate Millet (1970) and Sisterhood is
Powerful by Robin Morgan (1970). The proportion of women in state legislatures tripled.
Women surpassed men in college enrollment in 1979. However, the rising divorce rate left
an increasing number of women as sole breadwinners and forced more and more of them
into poverty.
Feminist political organizations were the driving force behind efforts of the movement
concerning social equality and repeal of the remaining oppressive, sexist laws. These
organizations included the National Organization for Women (NOW) formed in 1966 under
the leadership of Betty Friedan; the National Women’s Political Caucus (1971), composed of
such nationally known feminists as Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, and Gloria Steinem; the
Equal Rights Amendment Ratification Council (1973); and the Coalition of Labor Union
Women (1973).
One of the primary issues led by NOW during the women's rights movement was the
ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution. The ERA was
approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1971 and by the Senate in 1972. On June
30, 1982, however, ratification of the ERA fell three states short of the needed 38. Later
congressional efforts to reintroduce the measure have failed, although a number of states
have added equal rights clauses to their constitutions (efforts to ratify ERA in the unratified
states continue to this day and twenty-two states have adopted state ERAs). Also, the wage
gap failed to close, but it did become smaller and there is still action to ensure pay equality.
Despite these failures, women began to feel success in areas of business, politics,
education, science, and law making doors of opportunity more numerous and much further
open than before. Feminism was growing around the world which was altering the role of
women in society. A significant number of women were becoming heads of state outside of
monarchies and heads of government in a number of countries across the world during the
1970s, many being the first women to hold such positions.
Non-monarch women heads of state and heads of government in this period included
Isabel Martinez de Peron as the first woman President in Argentina and the first woman
non-monarch head of state in the Western hemisphere in 1974 until being deposed in 1976,
Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel and acting Chairman Soong Ching-ling of the People's
Republic of China continuing their leadership from the sixties, Elisabeth Domitien becomes
the first woman Prime Minister of the Central African Republic, Indira Gandhi continuing as
Prime Minister of India until 1977 (and taking office again in 1980), Lidia Gueiler Tejada
becoming the interim President of Bolivia beginning from 1979 to 1980, Maria de Lourdes
Pintasilgo becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Portugal in 1979, and Margaret
Thatcher becoming the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979.
Thatcher’s political and economic agenda began the first government committed to
neoliberalism. Both Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher would remain important political
figures in the following decade in the 1980's.

Feminism:

Feminist development:

● 1970: During Miss World 1970, feminist protesters threw flour bombs during the
live event at London's Royal Albert Hall, momentarily alarming the host, Bob
Hope
● 1970:Working women were refused mortgages in their own right as few women
worked continuously. They were only granted mortgages if they could secure the
signature of a male guarantor.
● 1970:Britain’s first national Women’s Liberation Conference is held at Ruskin
College. This is the first time women’s groups from across Britain have met in a
single place. The Women’s Liberation Movement , influential throughout the
1970s, developed from the conference.
● 1970: The Equal Pay Act makes it illegal to pay women lower rates than men for
the same work. (Greater London Authority (2002) capitalwoman, GLA: London)
The act covers indirect as well as direct sex discrimination. It is a direct result of
women’s strike action of Ford machinists and pressure from the women’s
movement.
● 1970: The Miss World Competition is interrupted by feminist protestors claiming
the contest is a cattle market. They throw flour and smoke bombs, inaugurating
the first protest event organised by the women’s movement.
● 1970: The National Women's Liberation Conference (or National Women's
Liberation Movement Conference) was a United Kingdom initiative organised to
bring together activists in the Women's Liberation Movement with an aim to
develop a shared political outlook. Ten UK conferences took place between 1970
and 1978, with the first taking place in 1970.
● 1970: The Equal Pay Act 1970 is an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament from
1970 which prohibits any less favourable treatment between women and men in
terms of pay and conditions of employment. The Act has now been mostly
superseded by Part 5, chapter 3, of the Equality Act 2010.
● 1971:Over 4,000 women take part in the first Women’s Liberation march in
London.
● 1972:Erin Pizzey sets up the first women’s refuge in Chiswick, London.
● 1972: Jockey Club rules began permitting women jockeys in 1972.
● 1973: The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 is an Act of Parliament of the United
Kingdom governing divorce law and marriage in England and Wales.
● 1973: Women were first admitted to the London Stock Exchange.
● 1973: The first known use of the term domestic violence in a modern context,
meaning violence in the home, was in an address to the Parliament of the United
Kingdom by Jack Ashley in 1973. The term previously referred primarily to civil
unrest, violence from within a country as opposed to violence perpetrated by a
foreign power.
● 1973: The marriage bar was abolished in 1973 for the Foreign Service; until then
women were required to resign when they married.
● 1974:The National Women’s Aid Federation is set up to bring together nearly 40
refuge services across the country.
● 1974:Contraception becomes available through the NHS. This is also a direct
result of pressure from the women’s movement
● 1975: The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 was an Act of the Parliament of the
United Kingdom which protected people from discrimination on the grounds of
sex or marital status. The Act concerned employment, training, education,
harassment, the provision of goods and services, and the disposal of premises.
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 and The Sex Discrimination Act 1975
(Amendment) Regulations 2008 amended parts of this Act to apply to
transgender people. Other amendments were introduced by the Sex
Discrimination Act 1986, the Employment Act 1989, the Equality Act 2006, and
other legislation such as rulings by the European Court of Justice. The Act did not
apply in Northern Ireland, however The Sex Discrimination Gender
Reassignment Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1999 does. The Act was repealed
in full by the Equality Act 2010.
● 1976: The Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 against sex
discrimination was enacted.
● 1977: Marches were held in 11 towns in England in response to the "Yorkshire
Ripper" murders; the marches were organised by the Leeds Revolutionary
Feminist Group.
● 1977:Women’s Aid lobbies government to acknowledge women and children at
risk of violence as homeless and introduce their right to state help with temporary
accommodation.
● 1977:Mainly Asian women workers mount a year long strike at Grunwicks in
London for equal pay and conditions
● 1977:International Women’s Day is formalised as an annual event by the UN
General Assembly.
● 1978:The Women’s Aid Federation of Northern Ireland established. It went on to
become the lead in the voluntary organisation challenging domestic violence in
Northern Ireland and currently provides support to over 10,000 women every
year.
● 1977:The first Rape Crisis Centre opens in London.
● 1978:The Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent is set up. It is the
first black women’s organisation in Britain to organise at a national level, bringing
black women from across the country to form an umbrella group for black
women’s organisations.
● 1979: The Kennel Club began admitting women members in 1979.
● 1979:The feminist journal ‘Feminist Review’ is founded. It went on to play a
crucial role in promoting contemporary feminist debate in the UK.
● 1979: Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain’s first female prime minister.
● 1979:Six women are acquitted in the ‘Reclaim the Night trials’ in London.
Artists Feminist icons/influences

Hannah Wilke Gloria Steinem

Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist
journalist and social political activist who
became nationally recognized as a leader and
a spokeswoman for the American feminist
movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s

Cindy Sherman Susan Brownmiller

Susan Brownmiller is an American journalist,
author and feminist activist best known for her
1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women,
and Rape, which was selected by The New
York Public Library as one of 100 most
important books of the 20th century.

Renate Eisenegger Kate Millet

Katherine Murray Millett was an American
feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist.
She attended Oxford University and was the
first American woman to be awarded a
degree with first-class honours after studying
at St Hilda's College, Oxford.

Lynn Hershman Leeson Cindy Nemser

Cindy Heller Nemser was an American art
historian and writer. Founder and editor of the
Feminist Art Journal, she was an activist and
prominent figure in the feminist art movement
and was best known for her writing on the
work of women artists such as Eva Hesse,
Alice Neel, and Louise Nevelson.

Valie Export Mary Daly

Mary Daly was an American radical feminist
philosopher and theologian. Daly, who
described herself as a "radical lesbian
feminist", taught at the Jesuit-run Boston
College for 33 years. Once a practising
Roman Catholic, she had disavowed
Christianity by the early 1970s.

Karin Mack Ntozake Shange

Ntozake Shange was an American playwright
and poet. As a Black feminist, she addressed
issues relating to race and Black power in
much of her work. She is best known for her
Obie Award-winning play, For Colored Girls
Who Have Considered Suicide / When the
Rainbow Is Enuf.

Ewa Partum Betty Frieden

Betty Friedan was an American feminist writer
and activist. A leading figure in the women's
movement in the United States, her 1963
 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited
with sparking the second wave of American
feminism in the 20th century.

Helena Almeida Bella Abzug

Bella Savitzky Abzug, nicknamed "Battling
Bella", was an American lawyer, politician,
social activist, and a leader in the women's
movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other
leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem,
Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan to found
the National Women's Political Caucus.

Penny Slinger Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American
politician who in 1968 became the first black
woman elected to the United States
Congress. Chisholm represented New York's
12th congressional district, a district centred
on Bedford–Stuyvesant, for seven terms from
1969 to 1983.

Orlan Jill Ruckelshaus

Jill Elizabeth Ruckelshaus is a former special
White House assistant and head of the White
House Office of Women's Programs and a
feminist activist. She also served as a
commissioner for the United States
Commission on Civil Rights in the early
1980s. Currently, she is a director for the
Costco Wholesale Corporation.

1980s:

Attitudes and expectations of women:

While college was largely a boys' club in the early 20th century, women turned that around during
the 1980s. Beginning in the '80s, more than half of bachelor's degrees were awarded to women,
according to the National Centre for Education Statistics. Women also made up about half of
graduates from master’s programs and nearly 30% of graduates with doctorates for the
1980-1981 school year, though these degrees were disproportionately awarded to white women.
As women became more educated, their salaries began to increase in relation to men's
salaries. The income gap wasn't closed during this time — it remains today — but it began
shrinking as women attained more high-paying professional and managerial positions. The
influence of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 — which allowed women to get a credit
card separate from their husbands and ushered in a new level of financial freedom — continued
to increase. Women now had more career options and more financial clout.
Women in the ’80s made huge strides in politics. Sandra Day O’Connor became the first
woman nominated to the Supreme Court in 1981. Geraldine Ferraro was the first female vice
presidential candidate for a major party in 1984. EMILY’s List was founded in 1985 to help fund
campaigns for Democratic women who supported abortion rights. Since it was started 35 years
ago, EMILY’s List has helped nearly 1,300 women get elected to federal, state and local offices.
Television in the 1980s showcased women in the workplace supporting their families and
themselves, while speaking out for women’s rights and equality. Two TV shows, "Family Ties"
and "The Cosby Show," weren’t perfectly feminist sitcoms by any means, but they both starred
strong, working female leads.
Elyse Keaton on "Family Ties" was a hippie-turned-work-at-home-mom who raised four children
with her husband, Steven, over the course of the show. Both worked full time, Steven in an office,
and Elyse at home as an architect. The show made it clear that a woman needs an identity
outside of her family and the ability to bring in an income in order to thrive in the modern world.
The matriarch of “The Cosby Show,” Clair Huxtable — a working mother of five — delivers
several pitch-perfect feminist speeches throughout the show’s eight seasons. She calls out the
sexism of the men around her, refusing to bite her tongue when faced with chauvinistic attitudes.
Clair was in a financial position that meant she arguably didn’t need to work, but she chose to do
so anyway. The show highlighted the importance of equality in marriage, with a division of
household labour that wasn’t all the responsibility of the wife.

Feminism:
The Second Wave of feminism is usually demarcated from the 1960s to the late 1980s. It was a
reaction to women returning to their roles as housewives and mothers after the end of the
Second World War. The men that had to leave the workforce to join the defence forces had
returned and women were fired from their positions and replaced by men.
38 percent of American women who worked in the 1960s were largely limited to jobs as
teachers, nurses or secretaries. Women were expected to quietly resume their lives as loyal and
subjugated wives. Housewives were estimated to spend an average of 55 hours a week on
domestic chores. However, after having worked and been independent of male dominance
during the war, women didn’t want to resume these roles and this brought about the Second
Wave of feminism.
This movement was initially concentrated in the United States of America and then
spread to other Western countries. While the First Wave was largely concerned with the
suffragette struggle for the vote, the Second Wave focused more on both public and private
injustices.
Issues of rape, reproductive rights, domestic violence and workplace safety were brought to the
forefront of the movement and there was widespread effort to reform the negative and inferior
image of women in popular culture to a more positive and realistic one. Women created their own
popular culture and the movement spread through feminist films, music, books and even
restaurants.
This movement was triggered by the publishing of Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine
Mystique, a renowned feminist text credited for daring to break social conventions regarding the
portrayal of women. Friedan was inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s book, The Second Sex, first
published in Paris in 1949.
This text was considered ground-breaking and became a landmark in the history of
feminism. The Feminine Mystique discussed “the problem that has no name”: the general
unhappiness of American women in the 1960s and 70s.
Friedan highlights the fault of the advertising industry and education system in restricting
women to the household and menial tasks that result in a loss of identity and individuality. This
book reached women all over the United States of America who were touched by it. Thousands
of white middle-class women were thus drawn to the feminist cause, marking the start of the
Second Wave of feminism.
Another demarcation of this stage was through legislative measures. The Food and Drug
Administration approved an oral contraceptive pill, made available in 1961 that was an important
step towards letting women develop careers instead of being forced into family life.
The Kennedy administration also set up a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women,
which was chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. A report released by the commission
on gender inequality recommended paid maternity leave, access to education and good
childcare to help women. An organization called Women Strike for Peace mobilized 50,000
women in 1961 to protest against nuclear bombs and tainted milk. Women became
more involved in protests and advocacy for equality by creating local, state and federal feminist
organizations. Legislature like the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 were significant measures taken to achieve greater equality for the sexes. Supreme Court
rulings like Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade also furthered the feminist cause.
In 1966, the National Organisation for Women (NOW) was created, with Friedan named
the first President. The founding statement of NOW demanded the removal of all barriers to
“equal and economic advance” and declared “the true equality for all women” as its aim.
The NOW, under Friedan, tried to enforce more work opportunities for women but there
was fierce opposition to this demand. The opposition argued that at that time, male African
Americans, who were heavily discriminated against by the white population, were in greater need
of employment than middle-class white women. As a result, Friedan stepped down from the
presidency in 1969.
The legal victories of the movement post-NOW creation were extensive. A 1967
Executive Order gave full affirmative action rights to women. A 1968 order made sex-segregated
help wanted ads for employment illegal, thus drastically decreasing female exclusion from the
workforce.
The Women’s Educational Equity Act of 1972 and 1974 provided greater educational
equality. Title X of 1970 addressed health and family planning, and the Equal Credit Opportunity
Act of 1974 and Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 were all notable reforms.
The outlaw of marital rape by all states in 1993 and the legalization of no-fault divorce greatly
reduced the dependence of wives on their husbands and gave them the tools to live healthier
lives. In 1975, a law requiring military academies to admit women was passed and the image of
women as simply “domestic goddesses” was altered.
All these successes were impressive, and many believed that the objective of female
liberation had been achieved. A massive let-down came in the form of the Equal Rights
Amendment to the United States Constitution’s failure to be ratified by 38 states in order to be
implemented.
Many ambitious and resourceful feminist leaders like Friedan arose during this wave. A
young journalist, Gloria Steinem, became a feminist leader when her writing about the Playboy
Club and its chauvinist elements gained popularity with women. She was a staunch advocate for
legalizing abortions and federally funding daycares.
Like Friedan and Steinem, there are other feminists who were forerunners of the Second
Wave. In 1969, feminist writer Kate Millet wrote Sexual Politics about how patriarchy invaded
sexual discourse and led to gender oppression. She stated that discrimination began with gender
and then occurred between race and class.
Another writer that had an impact still felt today was Carol Hanisch. Her essay, The
Personal is Political, argued that even the most private aspects of life like

Feminist developments:
● 1980: Lesley Abdela forms the 300 Group to push for equal representation of women in
the House of Commons
● 1980:Women working at Hoover, Merthyr Tydfil, take strike action against ‘women out
first’ redundancy plans.
● 1980:Women can apply for a loan or credit in their own names
● 1981: Baroness Young becomes the first woman leader of the House of Lords.
● 1981: The Welsh group Women for Life on Earth arrived on Greenham Common,
Berkshire, England. They marched from Cardiff with the intention of challenging, by
 debate, the decision to site 96 Cruise nuclear missiles there. On arrival they delivered a
letter to the Base Commander which among other things stated ‘We fear for the future of
all our children and for the future of the living world which is the basis of all life’.
● 1981: The United Kingdom signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women in 1981.
● 1982:30,000 women gather at Greenham Common Peace Camp. The camp remained
open for 19 years during which thousands of female protesters visited and lived in the
camp
● 1982: The Court of Appeal decides that bars and pubs are no longer able to refuse to
service women at the bar as this constitutes sex discrimination.
● 1982: In the case Gill and Coote v El Vino Co Ltd, Tess Gill and Anna Coote successfully
challenged El Vino’s ban on women being served at the bar and drinking there rather
than having their drinks brought to them at a table; the ban was held to be an illegal
violation of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975
● 1983:Lady Mary Donaldson becomes the first woman Lord Mayor of London.
● 1984: The national Black Feminist Conference is held
● 1984:During the Miners’ Strike, wives of picketing miners organise themselves into a
powerful women’s group. At first, they supply the picketers with food and other supplies,
but it soon becomes clear they want to be involved in the strike in their own right and not
just be regarded as providing welfare support in the background. Women’s support
groups form in every mining village and a working class women’s movement develops.
Their organisation gives the women the means to participate in a common struggle with
the men – a class struggle against their class enemies. The movement eventually
becomes national with conferences and an elected leadership. It leaves a legacy of a
common class struggle against sexism, women’s oppression and against capitalism
itself.
● 1985: Female genital mutilation was outlawed in the UK by the Prohibition of Female
Circumcision Act 1985, which made it an offence to perform FGM on children or adults.
● 1985:The Equal Pay (Amendment) Act allows women to be paid the same as men for
work of equal value
● 1985:The first black lesbian conference is held in Britain. Over 200 women of African and
Asian descent attend.
● 1985:Campaigning against female genital mutilation by the Foundation for Women’s
Health, Research and Development leads to the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act.
● 1985:The Local Government Act is narrowly passed in Parliament. It signals the abolition
of the Greater London Council. The GLC Women’s Committee was a significant advocate
of women’s equality and funder of women’s organisations
● 1986: The United Kingdom ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women in 1986
● 1986: National demonstration of women against violence against women organised by
Network of Women.
● 1987:Diane Abbot becomes the first black woman member of the Westminster
Parliament
● 1988:Julie Hayward, a canteen cook at a shipyard in Liverpool, is the first woman to win
a case under the amended Equal Pay Act.
● 1988:Section 28 of the Local Government Act made it illegal for any council or
government body to ‘intentionally promote homosexuality, or publish material with the
intention of promoting homosexuality’. Massive demonstrations took place against
Section 28 in London and Manchester, with high profile support from media stars and
 politicians. Lesbians invaded the House of Lords and even the BBC Six o’clock news in
protest against the draconian and homophobic legislation.
● 1988:Elizabeth Butler-Sloss becomes the first woman Law Lord when she is appointed
an Appeal Court Judge.

Artists Feminist icons/influences

Laura Aguilar Bell Hooks

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen
name bell hooks, was an American author
and social activist who was Distinguished
Professor in Residence at Berea College. She
is best known for her writings on race,
feminism, and class

Judy Chicago Dianne Abott

Black, female politician

Cindy Sherman
Cyndi Lauper

Cyndi Lauper's not-so-subtle homage to

dancing with yourself came out and hit #3 on
the Billboard charts. To that point, a song
extolling female masturbation had never
received such widespread acclaim (and hasn't
really since). Even the video for the
ridiculously catchy "She Bop" is a statement,
with Lauper flipping through some macho skin
mags while getting hot and bothered by her
lonesome in a classic car. The chorus is a sex
positive rallying cry, as she points out that
you, me, and everybody else does "it." In fact,
"She Bop" made such a mark on feminist
culture that it is now also the name of a
prominent feminist sex shop in Portland.

Barbara Kruger Sally Ride

The first American woman in space, second
overall.

Kiki Smith Whitney Houston

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American
singer and actress. Nicknamed "The Voice",
she is one of the bestselling music artists of
all time, with sales of over 200 million records
worldwide.

Lorna Simpson Madonna

Madonna Louise Ciccone is an American
singer, songwriter, and actress. Referred to as
the "Queen of Pop", Madonna is noted for her
continual reinvention and versatility in music
 production, songwriting, and visual
presentation.

Guerrilla Girls Princess Diana

Diana, Princess of Wales was a member of
the British royal family. She was the first wife
of Charles, Prince of Wales, later King
Charles III, and mother of Princes William and
Harry.

1990s:

Attitudes and expectations of women:

In the end, the 1990s didn’t advance women and girls; rather, the decade was marked by a
shocking, accelerating effort to subordinate them. As women gained power, or simply
showed up in public, society pushed back by reducing them to gruesome sexual fantasies
and misogynistic stereotypes. Women’s careers, clothes, bodies, and families were
skewered. Nothing was off limits. The trailblazing women of the 90s were excoriated by a
deeply sexist society. That’s why we remember them as bitches, not victims of sexism.
The 90s bitch bias is so pervasive, so woven through every aspect of the 90s
narrative, that it can actually be tough to spot. Stories of notable women in the 90s almost
invariably suggest they were sluts, whores, trash, prudes, “erotomaniacs,” sycophants,
idiots, frauds, emasculators, nutcrackers and succubi. These disparagements were so
embedded in the cultural dialogue about women that many of us have never stopped to
question them. I spoke with more than a hundred women about their remembrances of the
90s, and the majority of them internalised 90s bitchification, too. The stories of 90s women
have become sexist mythology, an erroneous history that saps women of their power, just as
it was intended to do. Indeed, the aftershocks of 90s bitchification ripple into contemporary
society. Discrediting women based solely on their gender, sexually harassing them and reducing
them to their sexuality endures today from the school yard to the boardroom in part because this
was, writ large, ubiquitous and accepted behavior in the 90s.
By the end of the 1990s, women’s participation in the workforce had grown to 60% —
while men’s participation shrank to 74.7% — according to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics.
Women’s income continued to rise in relation to men’s income, moving up to 76.5 cents on the
dollar by 1999.
While the steady rise of women’s wages during the ’80s and ’90s is great, it’s less
uplifting when you look at the income gap between women of different races. White women were
earning just 75.7 cents to every dollar white men earned in 1999, but they still made more than
Black and Latina women, who made 64.1 cents and 54.5 cents, respectively.
In 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act made it illegal for many women to be ejected
from the workforce for going on medical leave for pregnancy. Today, maternity and paternity
leave remains unpaid, but the FMLA requires employers to hold employees’ jobs for up to 12
weeks until they return from leave for qualified medical and family reasons. Such reasons include
pregnancy, adoption and foster care placement. Coverage eligibility is limited to those who have
worked for a qualified company with 50 or more employees for at least one year (putting in at
least 1,250 hours during that year) and live within 75 miles of that company.
In order to show the next generation of women their career potential, Take Our Daughters to
Work Day was created in 1992 and celebrated for the first time in 1993. It was founded by the
Ms. Foundation for Women and its president, Marie Wilson, with help from famed feminist Gloria
Steinem. It has since been renamed Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
Women also made great strides in politics in the ’90s. In 1992, dubbed “The Year of the
Woman” by the news media, four women were elected to the Senate — Barbara Boxer and
Dianne Feinstein of California, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois (the first Black woman elected to
the Senate) and Patty Murray of Washington — and 24 were elected to the House of
Representatives. A year later, Janet Reno became the first woman to serve as U.S. attorney
general.
While pop culture in the 1970s and 1980s featured middle-aged women who had to do
“men’s work” to feed themselves and their children, the shows of the ’90s hit a different
demographic: girls. With shows like "Clarissa Explains It All," "Pepper Ann" and "Moesha," pop
culture began to focus on intelligent, outspoken feminists-in-the-making.
"Clarissa Explains It All" — focusing on Clarissa Darling, a sarcastic teen computer-game
programmer — helped debunk the myth that boys could never enjoy a TV show with a female
protagonist. Pepper Ann was a sporty, independent 12-year-old with a feminist mother who
brought her to a women’s weekend to learn that women are as capable as men. Moesha, who
always stood up for what she believed was right, fought against racism and sexism in her school
and community while getting into teenage hijinks. And this isn’t an exhaustive list of ’90s
television shows with awesome girls. You don’t have to do much digging to find positive female
role models in ’90s pop culture.
What these leading ladies did for us as a society is this: They showed the next generation of
women that being a girl means whatever they want it to mean. Girls who grew up in the ’90s
weren’t told they should exclusively be teachers, nurses or moms. Instead, they learned that
every career opportunity was theirs for the taking, even in the face of adversity.

Feminism:

While the advances of second-wave feminism had undoubtedly achieved more equality and
rights for women, the movement that emerged in the early 1990s focused on tackling problems
that still existed, including sexual harassment in the workplace and a shortage of women in
positions of power. Rebecca Walker, the mixed-race daughter of second-wave leader Alice
Walker, announced the arrival of feminism’s “third wave” in 1992, while watching Anita Hill testify
before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her accusations of sexual harassment against
Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. That same year, dubbed the “Year of the Woman,”
saw an unprecedented number of women elected to Congress.
Embracing the spirit of rebellion instead of reform, third-wave feminists encouraged
women to express their sexuality and individuality. Many embraced a more traditionally feminine
style of dress and grooming, and even rejected the term “feminist” as a way of distancing
themselves from their second-wave predecessors. “Riot grrl” groups like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile
and Heavens to Betsy brought their brand of feminism into pop music, including songs that
addressed issues of sexism, patriarchy, abuse, racism and rape.
Third wave feminism also sought to be more inclusive when it came to race and gender.
The work of scholar and theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw on the concept of “intersectionality,” or how
types of oppression (based on race, class, gender, etc.) can overlap, was particularly influential
in this area. Third-wave feminists also drew on the work of gender theorist Judith Butler, including
support for trans rights in this type of intersectional feminism.
Feminist developments:
● 1990: The Abortion Act 1967 was amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Act so that abortion was no longer legal after 24 weeks, except in cases where it was
necessary to save the life of the woman, there was evidence of extreme fetal
abnormality, or there was a grave risk of physical or mental injury to the woman.
● 1990:Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill makes provisions to licence and monitor
the performance of fertility treatment clinics, and any research using human embryos.
● 1990:Independent taxation for women is introduced. For the first time, married women
are taxed separately from their husbands.
● 1991:The 'composite tax system', whereby all banks and building societies deducted an
average (or composite) rate of tax is abolished. The change to the tax regime allowed
women more independence and freedom from their husbands or partners.
● 1991:Southall Black Sister launch of the ‘Free Kiranjit Ahluwalia’ campaign, a woman
who was given a life sentence for murder for setting her violent husband on fire in a final
act of survival.
● 1991:Opportunity 2000, strongly supported by the BBC, is launched to push for more
women in commerce and public life. (www.woyla.co.uk) Initiated by Business in the
Community, the campaign is set up to increase the quality and quantity of women’s
participation in the workforces of its member organisations at all levels
● 1991: R v R [1998] is a court judgment delivered in 1991, in which the House of Lords
determined that under English criminal law it is possible for a husband to rape his wife.
● 1992: Kiranjit Ahluwalia is released and her original conviction is quashed and reduced to
manslaughter.
● 1992:Betty Boothroyd becomes the first female Speaker in the House of Commons
● 1993:With the help of lobbying by women’s organisations around the world, the United
Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women affirms that violence
against women violates their human rights.
● 1994:The UK starts its first ‘Take Our Daughters to Work’ Day
● 1994:The government introduces ‘Changing Childhood’ to make maternity services more
focused on the individual woman.
● 1994:Rape in marriage is made a crime after 15 years of serious campaigning by
women’s organisations.
● 1994:A House of Lords ruling gives equal rights to part-time workers
● 1995:The Disability Discrimination Act gives some new rights for disabled people in
employment and access to services.
● 1996:Northern Ireland’s Women’s Coalition was founded in an attempt to promote the
inclusion of women in social and political life, on an equal footing to men. Establishing
itself as a political party, it became an influential and liberalising force in Irish politics and
helped elect two of its members, Monica McWilliams and Jane Morrice, to the Irish
National Assembly
● 1996:Women’s Aid successfully lobbies the government for more effective civil remedies
for protection from violent partners with automatic powers of arrest where violence has
been used or threatened.
● 1997:The general election sees 101 Labour women MPs elected
● 1997:Southall Black Sisters secures a first ever conviction of a husband in a martial rape
in the Asian community. Members of his family are also sentenced for abusing his wife
● 1997:The Sexual Offenders Act requires sex offenders to notify police of personal detains
and any subsequent changes to them, resulting in a register of sexual offenders
● 1998:The European Union passes the Human Rights Act, guaranteeing basic principles
of life for everyone
 ● 1998: The British Boxing Board of Control initially refused to grant Jane Couch a
professional licence on the sole ground that she was a woman, and argued that PMS
made women too unstable to box.Claiming sexual discrimination and supported by the
Equal Opportunities Commission, Couch managed to have this decision overturned by a
tribunal in March 1998
● 1999:The House of Lords delivers a historic judgement in the Shah and Islam case that
women who fear gender persecution should be recognised as refugees.
● 1999:A new law on parental leave enables both men and women to take up to 13 weeks
off to care for children under age five.
● 1999:The Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations, makes it illegal for
employers to discriminate against trans people.

Artists Feminist icons/influences

Shirin Neshat Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an
American lawyer and jurist who served as
an associate justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States from 1993 until her
death in 2020

Mona Hatoum Spice Girls

The Spice Girls don't get enough credit. From

preaching girl power and having the best
selling single by a girl group of all time, the
girls were successful, but never taken all that
seriously. But take a closer look at girl power,
and you'll see the ladies of spice were more
than just a gimmick. The girls as a whole
promoted female friendship and
empowerment, supported each other in their
journey to the top, and pushed the idea that
women who are different can still exist, love,
and thrive together.

Rachel Whiteread Bikini Kill

Punk rock group Bikini Kill was the pioneer of
underground feminist movement Riot grrrl that
swept across the American Northwest in the
mid-90s. It put feminism back on the agenda
with hard-hitting lyrics that addressed issues
of rape, domestic abuse, misogyny and
female empowerment.

Jenny Saville Ann Bancroft

Anne Bancroft was an American actress.
Respected for her acting prowess and
versatility, Bancroft received an Academy
Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden
Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two
Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film
Festival Award. She is one of only 24
thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of
 Acting

Kara Walker Janet Reno

Janet Wood Reno was an American lawyer
who served as the 78th United States
attorney general from 1993 to 2001, the
second-longest serving in that position,
behind only William Wirt. A member of the
Democratic Party, Reno was the first woman
to hold that post.

Vanessa Beecroft Martha Lane Fox

Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of
Soho, CBE is a British businesswoman,
philanthropist, and public servant. She
co-founded Last Minute during the dotcom
boom of the early 2000s and has
subsequently served on public service digital
projects.

Julie Mehretu Jung Chang

Jung Chang is a Chinese-British writer now

living in London, best known for her family
autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10
million copies worldwide but banned in the
People's Republic of China

Post 2000s:

Attitudes and expectations of women:

In the 1980s women joined the workforce at a rapid rate, challenging the expectations set
in post-war Western culture that women had done their part and now it was time for them to
return to the kitchen and leave the artillery factories. By the end of the 1990s, a whole generation
had grown up with the notion that women work, earn their own money, and subvert the 1950s
model as a social norm. This led to an attitude at the change of the millennium that women had it
all, they could work, live independently, and lead their own lives, in turn, this gave rise to the idea
of ‘postfeminism’. Frankly, this was not an accurate assessment, and I would argue that sexism
in the 2000s was a rampant part of everyday media.
The notion that in the Western world was that the fight for gender equality was over, men
and women were equal and that was that. We know of course that this was not, and still is not
the case. Postfeminism was a major buzzword going into the 2000s with publications like Time
Magazine releasing cover stories titled ‘In the 80s women wanted it all, now they’ve plain had it.
Is there a future for feminism?’ and a wave of TV shows emerging in the early years of the new
decade such as Sex and the City and films such as Bridget Jones’ Diary which centred around
the idea of the ‘postfeminist’.
The ideal of the independent city girl who follows strict feminine gender norms and
ultimately aims to win a man’s heart became the face of aspirational female characters in the
media. These characters all followed a similar streak, they were white, feminine, and centred
their story arc on the dependence upon male gratification. And while this media itself is not
inherently misogynistic, the fact this was the face of womanhood at the time shows us that in the
eyes of society at the time, the fact women could work meant they had to pivot focus from that
right, and towards the attention of men. Films and TV shows like the aforementioned and others
such as 10 Things I Hate About You, Friends, and The Devil Wears Prada see women who are
independent, empowered, and financially liberated find themselves leaning towards traditional
gender roles and a focus on relationships with men as their primary goal and story arcs. I won’t
lie, as much as I love The Devil Wears Prada I will never come to love the ending, Andy should
have dropped her toxic boyfriend and lived happily ever after without him.
This is not to say that these films were not enjoyable or portrayed women who present
new heights for female characters, this is also not to say that there were films of this era that are
unambiguously empowering films for women still such as Legally Blonde and Erin Brockovich
which do not centre romantic interests. However, the majority of this media portrays a
dissatisfaction with this new landscape of choice and opportunity for women, struggling to find
happiness in the supposed ‘postfeminist’ utopia, leading some to argue that these films and TV
shows subliminally suggest happiness comes from heteronormative standards where women are
more traditionally feminine and tied to masculine straight men. A lot of the media of the time also
had quite complicated dynamics behind the scenes, particularly when filming sex scenes.
At this time it was incredibly common for women in the media to distance themselves
from feminism as a movement, even outspoken feminist figures in today’s media like Lady Gaga
at the start of her career candidly stated she was not a feminist because “she didn’t hate men”.
This doubles down on the myth around feminism at this time that women who identified as
feminists bowed into the overt negative stereotypes associated with feminists of the time,
oftentimes with routes in the marginalisation of non-feminine women and lesbians. This culture of
denial of feminism and the conscious distancing from explicit feminism tied into a deeply set
culture of misogyny in the media. At this time the social climate in regards to how women were
treated in the media was incredibly cold. The supposed gains won by women were the same
stick that was used to beat women with, with the tabloid media at the very heart of this. Women
were subjected to a more acidic scrutiny from tabloid media and the dawn of social media than
ever before.
This culture arguably began with the public lampooning of Monica Lewinsky in the late
1990s and continued through the new decade with the mistreatment of Britney Spears, Amanda
Bynes, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Janet Jackson, and Anna Nicole Smith to name only a
handful of women who were punished by the media. Lewinsky as a 22-year-old woman was
undoubtedly a victim of power imbalance in her relationship with the former president, Bill
Clinton, yet at the time she was the focal story of the scandal. The entire media pointed a finger
at Lewinsky and brandished her with Hawthorne's Que marker of being a ‘slut’. She was the
punchline and the problem, berated as a homewrecker and so acutely publicly shamed she
relocated out of the US to escape some of the scrutiny.
Britney Spears was the unlucky face in the media to have the media fury handed onto her around
2003 when she started to experience personal struggles and one of the most complete and
aggressive media takedown campaigns in history. For a large part of the decade, Spears was
questioned about her sex life, her relationships, and upon the ending of her relationship with
Justin Timberlake her alleged infidelity. Week after week unflattering photos of her were splashed
out on the cover of tabloid magazines and she existed in a state of being constantly surrounded
by a swarm of paparazzi snapping at every turn spinning stories out all that she did. As this
pressure and attention got to Spears it led to her having one of the most well-documented public
breakdowns in media history and it was served up to the masses as entertainment, and we all
ate it up. For so long Spears, Lohan, Hilton, Bynes, and many other women in the media were
the most popular punchline.
This created a culture where belittling women who lived in the public eye was not only
normal, it was a lucrative business and as this coincided with the rise of the internet and social
media it became more and more toxic and unrelenting. This also spoke to the way society saw
women as a whole in the alleged ‘postfeminist haven’ of the 2000s, and what it says is not good.
At this time it was normal to insult women in the media and for this to be perfectly normal
humour. Intersections of this misogyny also presented themselves, namely covert racism and
misogyny, with many stating this intersection being the reason Janet Jackson was so brutally
excluded from pop culture after the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. While Timberlake was the
one who exposed her breast, Janet was the one who was blacklisted and again, like Spears and
Lewinsky, became the international poster-woman for slut-shaming.
A lesser-known story from this time was the overt mistreatment of Shakira in the media,
as a non-native English speaker from Colombia debuting in the Western market in 2001 she was
subject to many questions and stories in the media and interviews berating her ability to speak
the language and frequent sexual comments about her looks and performances. This was
undoubtedly connected to her identity as a Latina woman in a pop culture space where people
from outside of White America were inherently seen as the ‘other’ and as exotic tokens. Recently
Shakira commented on this in Cosmopolitan USA where she stated “When I first crossed over to
the American market, many magazines would put emphasis on the fact that I was Colombian. I
was called the second finest export of Colombia, I guess they were referring to cocaine as the
first one. I was like, Why are journalists asking me about drug trafficking? My country’s so much
more than that”. Shakira is also one of many artists who have been identified as a collection of
predominantly women and POC artists who over the past 20 years have been purposefully
snubbed by the Grammys due to predominantly racist and sexist board members.
This issue permeated long after the early 2000s with the end of the decade centring still
on Britney Spears and her personal life, the brandishing of Amy Winehouse in tabloid media, and
the emergence of new faces to receive backlash such as Miley Cyrus, Megan Fox, Rihanna, and
Lady Gaga all receiving significant attacks in the media predominantly centred around
slut-shaming and questioning their validity as women in the public eye. Arguably this misogynistic
culture persists still, and even in the wake of movements like Free Britney and #MeToo and the
exposure of figures like Harvey Weinstein as misogynists and abusers of women, the pop culture
space still has a way to go. With this in mind, there are some happier endings for some of the
women in this article, Britney Spears has seen her father removed as her legal conservator and
as of November 2021 after nearly 14 years under control, Britney is now free. She recently
announced that she is expecting a baby, something Spears stated she wanted to do but was
unable to conceive under her conservatorship due an IUD she did not have the autonomy to
remove.
Shakira has persisted and headlined the most successful SuperBowl Half Time Show in
history with Jennifer Lopez in 2020 showcasing the Colombian culture she was targeted for 20
years ago. Janet Jackson has recently received a major vindication online as people have
criticised the media’s treatment of her following her SuperBowl Half Time Show. Even Monica
Lewinsky has been able to persevere and overcome the media’s abuse by starting a movement
online to combat social media bullying and media misogyny. She explained her experience as
the “patient zero” of online trolling in a very inspiring and moving TEDTalk. I don’t think this is
because the traditional media decided to change its tact with how it treats women, but this is
down to the grit, determination, and refusal to cower down on the women who have been so
heavily branded by the media. The 2000s was a misogynistic wasteland and it is a testament to
the talent, ingenuity, and drive of the women in this article that many of them have survived its
sexist grip. The voices of women online too, and the fan bases of the women who the media
loved (and probably still loves) to hate also worked to carry the narrative to a better and healthier
place.
To understand the baffling, chaotic times we live in, one can do no better than to look at
the disconnect in the U.S. between polling on what are often deemed "women's issues" and the
actual state of play in the world of politics. Feminist ideas are increasingly popular. But, because
Republicans have wildly disproportionate amounts of power, women are actually losing rights.
Abortion rights are more popular than ever, with 77% of Americans in an NPR/PBS poll saying
they want Roe v. Wade to be preserved.
But, by this time next year, it's likely Roe v. Wade will be toast. With Brett Kavanaugh
replacing Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, it was just a matter of time. Kennedy was the
deciding vote in 2016's Whole Woman's Health vs. Hellerstedt, in which the court ruled that
states can't ban abortion by drowning clinics in medically unnecessary and impossible-to-meet
regulations. But in shameless and unprecedented fashion, the court is retrying that same
abortion ban (though in a different state) in March. By June, it's almost certain that the court will
allow states to shut down all their abortion clinics, for the first time since 1973.
Similarly, support for birth control is rising, with an all-time high of 92% of Americans
supporting its use and 71% believing the government should require insurance companies to
cover contraception. But the Trump administration has been quietly undermining women's
access, using federal red tape to shut down birth control grants to nearly 900 public clinics, and
attempting to redirect that money to groups that argue abstinence is the only legitimate birth
control. The administration has also tried to roll back rules requiring insurers to cover
contraception.
The #MeToo movement, which was started by activist Tarana Burke in 2006 but really
blew up after Donald "Grab 'Em by the Pussy" Trump was elected and Harvey Weinstein's long
history of sexual abuse was exposed, is also relatively popular, with polls consistently showing
more than half of Americans support it.
Yet Republicans — who control the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the White House —
see it very differently. In fact, Republicans are growing increasingly hostile towards the #MeToo
movement. In 2018, a majority of Republican voters agreed that "women who complain about
harassment often cause more problems than they solve," casting the victims as the victimizers.
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This helps explain how Kavanaugh got confirmed to the Supreme Court in the first place,
despite more Americans believing the woman who accused him of attempted rape, Christine
Blasey Ford, than believing his denials. Republicans control the Senate and know full well their
voters are inclined to lash out at women who have the courage to stand up to abuse, rather than
supporting them.
Then there is perhaps the most dramatic example of all: In the 2016 election the first
female major-party candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote by nearly 3
million ballots cast. But, because the American electoral college system overweights the votes of
people living in rural areas, Trump — a misogynist who bragged about sexual assault on tape —
won the presidency anyway.
The gap between the popularity of feminism and the actual power of feminism was
illustrated in January 2017, when the number of people who hit the streets of Washington for the
Women's March utterly swamped that of Trump's inauguration the day before, drawing three
times the number of people. And that's not including the millions across the country who turned
out for solidarity marches in other cities, leading to quite possibly the largest political
demonstration in American history.
Feminists are winning the war of ideas. But feminists are losing in the halls of power,
where "Mad Men"-era views that women should be silent and servile are winning the day.
It's all a bitter pill, because, as these poll numbers show, the hard work of feminists over the past
decade to move the needle of public opinion has really paid off.
Younger readers may not remember this, but back when I was a fledging feminist blogger in the
era of the George W. Bush administration, things looked bleak for women both in the world of
politics and in the national discourse. Feminist rhetoric was often timorous, afraid to speak too
bluntly about issues like abortion or rape for fear of running off moderates. Younger women felt
sidelined by the major organizations, and there were frequently articles in the mainstream press
in which older feminists accused younger women of not caring about their own equality.
Meanwhile, progressive politics was in thrall to the "What's the Matter with Kansas" theory that
Republicans only pretended to oppose women's rights in order to win the votes of benighted
rubes, and would never actually act on it.
I'd like to think I played a role in changing that, being an early adopter of feminist
blogging that took a different approach of being both cheeky and confrontational — and also by
taking sexism seriously. While male pundits clucked over feminists who thought Republicans
would taking reproductive rights away, feminists bloggers raised the alarm over the Bush
administration's all-out assault on women having non-procreative sex. We raised awareness of
rape culture and introduced ideas like "affirmative consent" as a way to counteract it. We insisted
that it wasn't that women holding themselves back in the workplace, but that discrimination was
still a live issue. We bashed sexist dating manuals and those who claimed that women don't
make as much money as men because we don't work hard enough.
We were laughed at and trolled and abused and ignored, but we kept plugging away. And
by 2009, we were winning. Feminist blogs were wildly popular. Democrats started to be
unapologetically pro-choice. The first woman to become speaker of the House managed to do
what Democrats had failed to do for decades — pass a comprehensive health care bill, which
mandated that contraception be covered by insurance. Feminist bloggers published a manifesto
against rape, titled "Yes Means Yes," that would reshape the national conversation on consent.
The idea that "abstinence-only" was a legitimate ideology had turned into a joke. The idea that
young women were indifferent to politics was dying. And the feminist bloggers who had once
been relegated to the fringes were getting mainstream jobs, at such a pace that, over the next
decade, the blogs would be shuttered, victims of their own success.
It would be a lie to say that we were surprised by the backlash. If there's one book that
every Generation X and millennial feminist has read, it's probably "Backlash" by Susan Faludi.
We knew what to expect. Plus, those of us who had blogs spent ungodly amounts of time dealing
with unhinged trolls — men whose desire to control women manifested in online stalking — so
we weren't unaware that a lot of men really, really did not like the idea of women's equality.
(We also were aware of the liberal men who pooh-poohed our experiences and said trolls were
just a handful of guys and nothing to worry about, a line that held right up until those trolls elected
a president.)
Sure enough, the backlash came — and it was brutal. Arguably, the anti-feminist
backlash of the teens was the single most important reactionary movement of the time, the one
that did more than any other to lay the groundwork for the election of a confessed sexual
assailant to the White House.
Maybe the first sign was the sudden surge of attacks on reproductive rights. Women
gave Barack Obama his 2008 win — 53% of women voted for Obama vs. only 49% of men —
and unsurprisingly, Republicans in state legislatures decided to take their anger out on women.
Starting in 2010, Republican-controlled states went nuts restricting reproductive rights, passing
laws to block women from getting abortions and deprive women of affordable contraception
access. In some parts of the country, abortion clinics were shuttered at an alarming rate, leaving
huge numbers of women in "abortion deserts" that required lengthy drives to the nearest clinic.
The war on contraception, which many of us hoped would be over with the election of
Obama, only heated up in this frenzy of misogyny. On multiple occasions, congressional
Republicans had a standoff with Obama, threatening to shut down the government to try to force
him into cutting Planned Parenthood off government grants for affordable birth control.
Things also got ugly over the Obamacare rule requiring insurance companies to cover
contraception. Even though government-mandated insurance coverage of birth control had
previously been uncontroversial, the right-wing media swung into action in 2012 on this rule in
the Affordable Care Act to suddenly and dishonestly pretend the government was asking
taxpayers to bankroll hot young sluts to have sex with men who clearly aren't the Fox News
demographic. That's no exaggeration — for days on end, Rush Limbaugh railed about how
Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student who had testified in support of the new rule, was a
"slut" who wanted "to be paid to have sex." He even demanded that Fluke provide him with
videos of her private life as masturbation material.
Limbaugh's tone was emblematic of what the anti-feminist backlash of the teens looked
like. The face of misogyny was no longer pious Christians claiming that feminism was a threat to
"the family." Now it was vulgarians who gleefully used sexist slurs and didn't even bother to
pretend they wanted women on their knees for Jesus. It was a Trumpian kind of sexism.
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So even as traditional anti-choice forces tried to pass off their latest bans on abortion as
done in the name of "protecting" women, the actual right wing was in a full-blown lady-hate
uproar, culminating in utterly false accusations that women were getting abortions as part of a
scheme to sell "baby parts" on the open market. Unsurprisingly, there was also a rise in terrorism
against abortion clinics over the decade, kicked off by the murder of Dr. George Tiller in 2009,
with the deadliest incident being a 2015 shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado that
left three dead.
Outside the reproductive rights debate, the anti-feminist backlash was equally bleak, with
a well-funded right wing apparatus churning out a constant stream of shady articles and video
segments mocking alleged rape victims and sympathizing with their accused attackers, cheering
sexual harassment and claiming that men were under attack by a shadowy feminist conspiracy to
emasculate them. Meanwhile, a growing online movement of misogynists, such as the "men's
rights activists" and "incels," was becoming ever more radical and increasingly embracing
fascism and white nationalism as the answer to their anger at feminist gains.
Gamergate was perhaps the most perfect distillation of what the anti-feminist backlash
looked like in the past decade. There were efforts at the time to claim that Gamergate was
merely an explosion of anger over "corruption" in the video game press (no, really, that's what
they said), in truth it was an eruption of virulent misogyny that started in the video game
community and spread across the internet. Sexist video game players, assured in their belief that
video gaming "belonged" to them, were furious at feminist critics for their articles and videos
arguing that T&A-heavy games that presented women as bimbos and sex objects were
misogynistic. Those gamers spent months — years, really — raging endlessly online about it
and subjecting those feminist critics to unreal amounts of abuse.
Breitbart and other right wing media glommed onto Gamergate because they knew that it
wasn't just about video games, but about this growing and boiling rage in many men over the fact
that feminists were winning the argument. These were men who liked the prevailing system,
where they could be condescending and cruel and treat women like objects and unpaid servants
without consequence, and also knew they couldn't defend that point of view any longer.
Gamergate gave them another option: Give up trying to make coherent arguments, and instead
resort to outright trolling, bad faith, harassment and other abusive tactics meant not to win with
reason, but to exhaust your opponents into submission.
No wonder the 2016 election was dominated by the chant, "Lock her up!" A lot of men
were angry as hell at women and wanted to bring them to heel, and didn't really care how it was
done any longer.
But you know what? Feminists didn't give up. On the contrary, unlike during other backlash
periods, feminists, armed with social media, were able to fight back, instead of being forced to
cede ground to a male-dominated media that is inclined to side with the backlashers.
In the face of rising attacks on abortion rights, feminists started an online movement to "shout
your abortion" and rallied around Texas legislator Wendy Davis, who became a feminist hero by
filibustering a law meant to shut down most abortion clinics in Texas. Rather than being
browbeaten into silence, anti-rape activists created headline-worthy performance art and held
hands while Lady Gaga sang at the Oscars. The #MeToo movement blew up and thousands of
men were finally held accountable. Rather than let Trump's win scare them into the shadows,
Democratic women turned out in droves to run for office, making 2019 a record-setting year for
women in Congress.
The backlashers, using profane language and trying to affect a derring-do trollish attitude,
clearly thought they could make feminism uncool. At this, they failed. Beyoncé is a feminist.
Practically every famous woman in Hollywood has joined hands under the #MeToo banner. Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has the potential to be the next Obama-style political star. Feminist
blogs may be gone, but that's because we took the act mainstream. Trump may be president, but
the place to be that January was the Women's March.
In 2009, people made fun of feminists for supposedly not being cool. In 2019,
anti-feminists are far more likely to lash out at feminists with the angry resentment the terminally
uncool have for hipsters.
Still, there is no doubt that, thanks to an electoral system that gives far more voting
power to rural, white-dominated areas than the more diverse, urban areas where most
Americans live, we are a feminist-sympathetic country being ruled by a misogynist minority. The
country may hate Trump, but he is still the most powerful man in the world. We're all learning the
hard way that feminists can do the work, make the case and win the people over — and still the
patriarchy keeps on winning, because it holds a disproportionate share of power in a rigged
system.

Feminism:
In the early 2000s we saw a feminism that was characterized by individual narratives. It
was said that women are very different from one another and the question was raised whether
they really had anything much in common. Today, feminist narratives have a much more
collective feel, says sociology professor Cathrine Holst of the Department of Sociology and
Social Geography at the University of Oslo.
In her book, "What is feminism?”, which was recently republished in a new edition, she
writes about how feminism has developed throughout the ages. We have now come to the
so-called fourth wave, with tendencies that are continually disputed and uncertain.
The first wave of feminism was characterized by the struggle for formal, legal rights. This
was played out in the 17th and 18th centuries, central to which was the campaign for women's
voting rights.
Today feminist narratives have a much more collective feel.
The second wave swept much of the West in the 1960s and 70s and included the fight
for equal pay, family policy, abortion rights and the fight against domestic violence. There was an
upsurge of new social movements and the emergence of radical feminism, that promoted the
theory that all men suppress women through the "patriarchy" and that a radical upheaval of
society was necessary.
The third wave took place around the millennium and marked the desire for more
diversity in the feminist debate. Feminism was criticized as a western middle class project, and a
heterosexual project. Many have pointed out individualism and the cultivation of difference as
essential features of the third wave. There was also a more theoretical exploration of the role of
women.
The fourth wave-Holst emphasizes that the classification of the waves of feminism
implies gross simplifications. For example, it includes primarily western countries, although many
of the trends have also been visible on other continents.
However, it paints a picture of trends that have been present, to a greater or lesser
extent, in many places. Where do we stand today?
A new feature is the massive mobilization of feminism in social media.
"It's always hard to say what characterises an era while you're still in the middle of it.
Some of the features of the third and fourth waves of feminism overlap. "Intersectionality" is one
example - the idea that oppression based on gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity is interrelated,
says Holst.
This approach appeared in the 1990s but remains central today, according to Holst.
- A new feature, however, is the massive mobilization of feminism in social media.
We have seen this unfold in the #Metoo campaign, and we also saw ahead of the
demonstrations when Donald Trump was inaugurated as president.
January 21, 2017 may have been the biggest day of protest in US history. Between 3.3 and 4.6
million participated in the peaceful women's marches. There were also large demonstrations in
other countries

Parallels to the 1970s

Holst believes she sees clear parallels between today's mobilization in social media and
radical feminism's mobilization in the 60's and 70's. At that time, other means were used, but
women were united as they are today.
- Today's Twitter campaigns, like #Metoo, tell women about their common
experiences. Whether actors or cleaners, women are saying that they are all in the same
boat, says Holst.
For example, it is said that "all women" have been victim to sexual harassment, she p
points out.
- They paint the picture that men still have the power and they use it against
women. This is reminiscent of the view of society as patriarchy that radical feminism
promoted.

8 March is popular again

In recent years there has also been a boom of activity on women's day 8 March.
"For a while people thought that the 8th of March was going to die out, but in 2014 and 2015 it
attracted a huge turnout. At its peak in Oslo in 2014 10,000 people turned out for a
demonstration at Youngstorget, many of them to express opposition to the government's
proposal to allow doctors to reserve themselves from referring women for abortions, "Holst says.
The use of social media has been an important reason for the increased interest.
She believes that the use of social media has been an important reason for the increased
interest.
"We also see that groups of women who were previously absent from the debate now
more often discuss feminist issues, Muslim women, for example. Additionally, there are more
men who say they are feminists and we have got a new movement of “bluestockings”, who
defend gender equality from a liberal and conservative point of view. Being concerned with
practical policies is also not as "out" as it was during the most self-reflective phase of feminism
around the turn of the millennium.
Not an unambiguous time
 There is much indication that this is a boom time for feminism. But there are also signs of
setbacks, Holst emphasises.
"We do not live in a time that is unambiguous for feminism. For example, we see an
emergence of populist politics that is clearly hostile to gender equality, feminism, international
cooperation and human rights. The latest events in Poland are one example of this.
In addition, Donald Trump has moved in to the White House and neither China, Russia
nor the misogynistic islamist regimes that we currently see are going to campaign for equality.
100 years from now it is possible that we will not look at our time as the fourth wave, but as a
time of struggle, where differing views opposed one another and were in conflict. Perhaps,
increasing polarisation is the correct diagnosis

Forty years ago American women launched a liberation movement for freedom and equality.They
achieved a revolution in the Western world and created a vision for women and girls everywhere.
Today, women's economic and social participation is considered a standard requirement for a
nation's healthy democratic development.
But there is a need now, in the opening years of the 21st century, to rethink
feminism.There are new challenges and new potential allies that didn't exist in the mid-20th
century.
Islamic fundamentalism threatens women all over the world. Wherever they have gained
power, Islamists have denied women their essential humanity and dignity. Islamic
fundamentalism is not conservative religion but a fascist political movement that aims for world
domination. Many feminists are out of touch with the realities of the war that has been declared
against the secular, Judeo-Christian, modern West. They are still romanticizing and cheering for
Third World anti-colonialist movements, without a realistic view of what will happen to the global
status of women if the Islamists win. Many feminists continue to condemn the United States, a
country in which, for the most part, their ideas have triumphed.
Accompanying the rise in Islamic fundamentalism is an increase in anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism. Twentieth-century feminists condemned racism but never considered hatred of
Jews a form of racism. As a result, they continue to deny, minimize or even support
anti-Semitism in the name of opposing racism.
The exponential growth of the global sex trade is also a threat to the dignity and survival
of women and girls. Sex trafficking is a modern form of slavery for many girls, especially those
who are poor and uneducated. The sexual revolution benefited women in some ways, but it also
fueled sexual liberalism, which has resulted in the increasing normalization of prostitution.
Feminists have been hampered in their response to this threat because there are divisions within
feminism about the nature of prostitution: Is it a form of work that should be legalized or a human
rights violation that should be abolished?
Can we imagine telling our daughters that they can grow up to be "sex workers," that
prostitution is now a job like any other? Millions of victims of trafficking are enslaved in the sex
trade and dying of AIDS. This international human rights crisis should be met with feminist moral
clarity. We must recognize that prostitution is inherently harmful. We must actively oppose the
traffickers, the pimps and the men who patronize the brothels.
In the past, when faced with choosing allies, feminists made compromises. To gain the
support of the liberal left, feminists acquiesced in the exploitation of women in the pornography
trade -- in the name of free speech. The issue of abortion has prevented most feminists from
considering working with conservative or faith-based groups. Feminists are right to support
reproductive rights and sexual autonomy for women, but they should stop demonizing the
conservative and faith-based groups that could be better allies on some issues than the liberal
left has been.
 In the past feminists interpreted freedom of religion to mean freedom from religion. Too
often they have viewed organised religion only as a dangerous form of patriarchy, when it can
also be a system of law and ethics that benefits women. Too often feminists base their views of
religious groups on outdated stereotypes. Groups that were hostile to feminism 40 years ago
now take women's freedom and equality as a given. For example, faith-based groups have
become international leaders in the fight against sex trafficking.
Human rights work is not the province of any one ideology. Saving lives and defending
freedom are more important than loyalty to an outdated and too-limited feminist sisterhood.
Surely after 40 years feminists are mature enough to form coalitions with those with whom they
agree on some issues and disagree on others.
Twenty-first-century feminists need to become a force for literate, civil democracies. They
must oppose dictatorships and totalitarian movements that crush the liberty and rights of people,
especially women and girls. They would be wise to abandon multicultural relativism and instead
uphold a universal standard of human rights. They should demand that all girls have the
opportunity to reach their full potential instead of living and dying in the gulags of the sex trade.
Twenty-first-century feminists need to reassess the global threats to women and men,
rethink their vision, rekindle their passion and work in solidarity with pro-democracy forces
around the world to liberate humanity from all forms of tyranny and slavery.

Feminist developments:
● 2000:After a long battle led by refugee women’s groups in the UK to bring a gendered
analysis to asylum claims, the UK’s Immigration Appellate Authority (the immigration and
asylum tribunal) launched its Asylum Gender Guidelines for use in the determination of
asylum appeals. The guidelines note that the dominant view of what constitutes a ‘real
refugee’ has been of a man and this has meant that women asylum seekers in the UK
may not benefit equitably from the protection offered by the Refugee Convention. They
aim to ensure that the gender of the asylum seeker does not prejudice their application.
● 2001: The Mayor of London launches the London Partnerships Register, allowing
lesbians, gay men and unmarried heterosexual couples to register their partnerships.
(Greater London Authority (2003) capitol woman, GLA: London) Linda Wilkinson and
Carol Budd, who have been together for 16 years, are the first lesbian couple to register
their relationship.
● 2002:Parliament passes measures allowing lesbian and unmarried couples to adopt
children
● 2003:The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations are introduced to
protect people against discrimination based on their sexual orientation.
● 2003:The Female Genital Mutilation Act strengthens and amends the Prohibition of
Female Circumcision Act of 1985. For the first time, it is an offence for UK nationals or
permanent UK residents to carry out female genital mutilation abroad, or to aid, abet,
council, or procure the carrying out of female genital mutilation, even in countries where
the practice is legal
● 2003:After years of lobbying by voluntary and community organisations, particularly
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender organisations, Section 28 is repealed.
● 2004:Pauline Campbell organises protests outside HM Prisons Brockhill, Holloway and
New Hall to raise public awareness about the alarming death toll of women in British
prisons.
● 2004:Women march on Parliament in protest that one in four retired women live in
poverty.
● 2004:Members of the disabled people’s Direct Action Network block Westminster Bridge
in protest of the Draft Disability Bill which they believe does not go far enough.
● 2004:After years of campaigning by trans activists, the Gender Recognition Act allows
trans people who have taken decisive steps to live fully and permanently in their acquired
gender to gain legal recognition in that gender
● 2005:The first civil registrations of same-sex couples takes place as a result of the long
campaigned for Civil Partnerships Act
● 2005:In Northern Ireland, women’s voluntary and community organisations and their
service users march to the headquarters of the Voluntary and Community Unit,
Department of Social Development, to deliver a letter of protest about the funding crisis
facing the Northern Ireland women’s voluntary and community sector. As a result of the
protest, emergency funding is allocated and mass closures of women’s organisations are
averted.
● 2006: The Equality Act 2006 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, a
precursor to the Equality Act 2010, which combines all of the equality enactments within
Great Britain and provides comparable protections across all equality strands. Those
explicitly mentioned by the Equality Act 2006 include gender; disability; age; proposed,
commenced or completed gender reassignment; race; religion or belief and sexual
orientation. Among other things, it created a public duty to promote equality on the
ground of gender (The Equality Act 2006, section 84, inserting section 76A of the Sex
Discrimination Act 1975, now found in section 1 of the Equality Act 2010.)
● 2007: The Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007 (applicable in England and Wales,
and in Northern Ireland) was passed, which enables the victims of forced marriage to
apply for court orders for their protection.
● 2010: The Equality Act 2010 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom; the primary
purpose of the Act is to codify the complicated and numerous array of Acts and
Regulations, which formed the basis of anti-discrimination law in Great Britain. This was,
primarily, the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations
Act 1976, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and three major statutory instruments
protecting discrimination in employment on grounds of religion or belief, sexual
orientation and age. It requires equal treatment in access to employment as well as
private and public services, regardless of the protected characteristics of sex, age,
disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief,
and sexual orientation. In the case of gender, there are special protections for pregnant
women. The Act does not guarantee transgender people's access to gender-specific
services where restrictions are "a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim
● 2011: The Forced Marriage etc. (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011 gives
courts the power to issue protection orders.
● 2012-2014: In April 2012 after being sexually harassed on London public transport
English journalist Laura Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project, a website which
documents everyday examples of sexism experienced by contributors from around the
world. The site quickly became successful and a book compilation of submissions from
the project was published in 2014.
● 2012 - 2015: No More Page 3 was a campaign to stop The Sun newspaper from
including pictures of topless glamour models on its Page 3; it ended when the topless
feature was discontinued. The campaign was started by Lucy-Anne Holmes in August
2012;it reached 215,000 signatures by January 2015. The campaign gained widespread
support from MPs and organisations but was criticised by Alison Webster, the
photographer for Page 3. In January 2015, it was reported that The Sun had ended Page
3, but the feature was revived for one issue published on 22 January. Following that,
Page 3 has not been featured in The Sun again.
● 2013: The Succession to the Crown Act 2013 (c. 20) is an Act of Parliament of the United
Kingdom which altered the laws of succession to the British throne in accordance with
the 2011 Perth Agreement.The act replaced male-preference primogeniture with absolute
primogeniture for those born in the line of succession after 28 October 2011, which
meant the eldest child regardless of gender would precede her or his siblings. It was
brought into force on 26 March 2015, at the same time as the other Commonwealth
realms implemented the Perth Agreement in their own laws.
● 2013: The first oral history archive of the United Kingdom women's liberation movement
(titled Sisterhood and After) was launched by the British Library.
● 2014: Sisters Uncut was founded in 2014 to take direct action in response to cuts to
domestic violence services by the UK government, which has included demonstrating
against cuts at the 7 October London premiere of the 2015 film Suffragette. Sisters Uncut
organises intersectionality and sees the struggle against racism and borders as intimately
connected to the struggle against violence towards women.
● 2014: The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 makes forcing someone to
marry (including abroad) a criminal offence.The law came into effect in June 2014 in
England and Wales and in October 2014 in Scotland.
● 2015: In Northern Ireland, the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and
Support for Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 criminalises forced marriage (section 16
- Offence of forced marriage).
● 2015: The Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015, an Act of Parliament of the United
Kingdom, was enacted. It stipulates that whenever a vacancy arose among the Lords
Spiritual during the next ten years after the Act came into force, the position had to be
filled by a woman, if there was one who was eligible. It did not apply to the five seats of
Canterbury, York, London, Durham or Winchester, which are always represented in the
House of Lords. The Act was passed shortly after the Bishops and Priests (Consecration
and Ordination of Women) Measure 2014 authorised the Church of England to appoint
women as bishops
● 2016-2017: In 2016, a British receptionist was dismissed for not wearing high heels and
she then started a petition which attracted sufficient support to be considered by the UK
Parliament. Outsourcing firm Portico stated that Nicola Thorp "had signed the
appearance guidelines" but after Thorp launched her online petition—"Make it illegal for a
company to require women to wear high heels at work"—the firm changed their policy.
The new guideline states that all female employees "can wear plain flat shoes or plain
court shoes as they prefer." The petition gained widespread support from public figures
such as Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and MPs Caroline Dinenage, Margot
James and Tulip Siddiq. Two parliamentary committees in January 2017 decided that
Portico had broken the law; the company had already changed its terms of
employment.The petition gained over 130,000 signatures, sufficient for a debate in the
British parliament.This took place on 6 March 2017, when MPs decided the UK
government should change the law to prevent the demand being made by employers.
However, this was rejected by the government in April 2017 as they stated that existing
legislation was "adequate".
● 2020: Scotland became the first nation to pass a law (the Period Products (Free
Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021) making period products, including tampons and pads,
free and available to access in public buildings.
● 2021: Britain abolished the tampon tax, meaning there is now a zero rate of VAT applying
to women's sanitary products
Artists Feminist icons/influences

Kirsten Lilford Maya Angelou

Through her literature, public speaking and
powerful writing, Maya Angelou inspired both
women and African Americans to overcome
gender and race discrimination. In 2011,
Angelou was awarded the Presidential Medal
of Freedom for her works that spanned over
50 years including 36 books, seven
autobiographies and over 50 honorary
degrees.

Roxana Hall Alice Walker

A critical voice for black women in the
feminism movement, Walker has been
instrumental in her efforts for women and
even more specifically for women of color.
The writer and activist was involved in the
Civil Rights Movement alongside Dr. Martin
Luther King before joining Gloria Steinem as
an editor at Ms. Magazine. Walker's most
famous work, The Color Purple, became vital
in telling the story of Black women and was
later adapted into both a movie and a
Broadway musical. Two years after its
publication, Walker co-founded Wild Tree
Press, a feminist publishing company.
Walker's contribution to the feminist
movement is vital for her efforts to make sure
Black women's voices were included and
heard. In 1983, she was the first to coin the
term, "womanism," which sought to include
Black women in feminism.

Jenni Granholm Oprah

Motivated by the unequal pay she received in
the start of her broadcasting career, Oprah
set out to start her own television show and
from there built an empire catering to helping
women grow, develop and thrive. "I never did
consider or call myself a feminist, but I don't
think you can really be a woman in this world
and not be." She has since developed the
Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls,
the Oprah Winfrey Network and was awarded
the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Caroline Walker Diane von Furstenberg

DVF has built her entire fashion career on the
concept of female empowerment. "Feel like a
woman, wear a dress" and "Proud to be
woman!" are just two of the designer's
mantras evoked through her brand. Not only
does she use fashion to empower women,
 she has also since founded The DVF Awards,
which recognize incredible women who have
made positive impacts on the world through
leadership, philanthropy and hard work.

Alexandra Gallagher Malala Yousafzai

The courageous teenager rose to fame with
her memoir, I Am Malala, documenting her
fearless journey as a young student fighting
for access to education in Pakistan. Ever
since, Malala has been travelling the world
advocating for education rights for women
and children through her foundation, The
Malala Fund.

Shani Rhys James MBE Alexandria Ocasion-Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (colloquially known
as AOC) rose to prominence after her
underdog triumph in the 2018 midterm
elections, in which she defeated 10-term
incumbent Joe Crowley for his House of
Representatives seat in New York's 14th
district. At 30 years old, AOC's progressive
politics and unflinching confidence on the
House floor have helped revitalise a new
generation of voters and Democrats alike. Her
electoral victory also catapulted her to the
ranks of other young, female Democrats
elected to Congress in 2018, including Ilhan
Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley,
commonly referred to as the Squad.

LINKS

https://elephant.art/the-subversive-seven-the-feminist-artists-challenging-how-we-look-at-sex-1
5072020/
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/22/living/the-seventies-feminism-womens-lib/index.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/1970s-feminism-timeline-3528911
https://www.history.com/news/feminism-four-waves
https://feminisminindia.com/2018/04/25/summary-second-wave-of-feminism/
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-feminist-artists-whose-work-you-need-to-know/AQ
URUC6SwwhEKw?hl=en
https://www.citywomen.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gender-equality-timeline.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_the_United_Kingdom#1945%E2%80%931970
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/g4201/famous-feminists-throughout-history/
https://theartgorgeous.com/these-7-female-artists-ruled-the-90s/
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-feminist-artists-whose-work-you-need-to-know/AQ
URUC6SwwhEKw?hl=en
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/g4201/famous-feminists-throughout-history/
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/famous-feminist-photographers