The Women’s Movement

and Feminism
#1: Introduction and First Wave
 The Women’s Movement
• There are many facets to the women’s movement, but
generally it is a social movement made up of people who
work and fight to achieve sex and gender equality, and to
improve the lives of women as a social group.
 Feminism
• The ideology of the women’s movement, is feminism
• Feminism comes in many different forms, but generally it is an ideology
that identifies and denounces sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression,
with the goal to achieve full sex and gender equality in law and in practice.
• “Feminism is ‘to want for all people, female and male, liberation from
sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression’ and that ‘feminism is for
everybody’” - bell hooks.

bell hooks 1952-2021

 Preamble: Feminism
• No single feminism
• Several ideologies influence feminisms: liberalism,
socialism, anti-racism, environmentalism, etc.
 Preamble: Sex and Gender
• All feminisms, to lesser or greater extents, argue for a
distinction between sex and gender
• Typically, sex is considered the physical or biological quality
of being male or female
• Gender is the cultural meaning that is projected onto
sexual differences
• Men and women are constructed differently based on
“gender norms”
• Throughout this lecture, we will visit some of the main
“gender dichotomies” that constitute Western
understandings of gender
 “Waves” of Feminism
1. 1st Wave (liberal feminism)
2. 2nd Wave (socialist feminism)
3. 3rd Wave (identity politics)
4. 4th Wave (justice for marginalized women and
post-feminism)
 Wave #1: Liberal Feminism
• Fundamental source of oppression for women: legal
inequality
• Women did not have the same rights as men
 Early Legal Inequality
• Turn of the century Britain:
a. Non-equal political rights until 1928 (full suffrage)
b. Up until 1891 women had no right to divorce other
than for adultery (same rules applied to men, but
typically only men were successful in getting divorces)
c. Very difficult to be granted custody of children after
divorce until 1839
d. Until 1882 married women couldn’t own property
e. Up until the 1970s women were routinely and legally
paid lower wages than men for the same work
 Why didn’t women have rights?
• Quick Answer: they werent considered
‘rational’ actors.
 Gendered Dichotomy #1
Reason vs. Emotion
• Men = rational, universal, cultural…
• Women = emotional, particular, natural…*

Therefore …

*see pg. 11 in textbook for more

• Men are fit for public life (government, the
workplace)
• Women are fit for private life (the household)
 The Suffragettes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=gw4L6UJIJ7Q
 The Canadian Women’s Movement: The
First Wave
Emphases:
1. Protecting the integrity and maintenance of the
family against moral threats (“temperance”)
2. Charity
3. Suffrage
4. Full political rights
 First Wave in Canada
• Main Organization: National Council of
Women (formed 1893)
• Long tradition of formal organizing, lobbying,
and activism
• Their main goal was to obtain women’s
suffrage (a fancy way of saying the right to
vote”)
 Women’s Suffrage in Canada (1918)
• Women won the right to vote in 1918
• Their victory came in part due to the war-time Government’s (the
Conservatives under Robert Borden) institution of military conscription
in 1917
• The draft was popular amongst Canadians of British heritage, including
women, but not amongst French or other non-British Canadians
• Borden was worried that he would lose the 1917 election, so in
September 2017 he extended the right to vote to all women who were
helping the war effort overseas, and those who were related to men
fighting overseas
• In December 2017, his coalition won the election
• After the war, in 1918, this right was extended to most women
(excluding Inuit and First Nations women with Indian status)
Canada: The Persons Case (1929)
 The Persons Case
• In the early 20th century, women were not allowed to
vote, nor sit in the Senate
• In the Constitution, it declared that:
“The governor general shall from time to time, in the
Queen’s name, by instrument under the Great Seal of
Canada, summon qualified persons to the Senate; and,
subject to the provisions of this Act, every person so
summoned shall become and be a member of the Senate
and a senator.”

• Traditionally “persons” had always been interpreted as “men”

 The Persons Case: Emily Murphy and the
Famous Five
• In 1922, a group of feminist activists in Alberta, who came to be
known as the “Famous Five” proposed to the government that the
first Canadian female judge, Emily Murphy, should become a senator
• The Federal government said it was impossible, because the
Constitution does not allow for it
• The Famous Five sent a letter to the Governor General requesting that
the Supreme Court of Canada rule whether it is possible for a woman
to be a appointed as a senator
• The Court ruled that the Constitution does not allow for this, as
women are not legally “persons”
• However, at this point in history the Supreme Court was not the final
court of appeal in Canada; the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
in England was the final court of appeal
 The Persons Case: The Judicial
Committee’s reversal
• The Judicial Committee overturned the decision by
the Canadian Supreme Court and ruled that the
word “person” in the Constitution refers to both
men and women
• Lord Sankey, who delivered the judgement on
behalf of the Privy Council, also remarked that the
“exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic
of days more barbarous than ours […] and to those
who ask why the word [persons] should include
females, the obvious answer is why should it not.”
Second Wave Feminism
(1960s and 1970s)
Wave #2: Socialist Feminism
 Socialist Feminists
• 1960s/early 1970s
• Fundamental source of inequality: capitalism
• Focus turns to informal inequalities
1. Double-workday
2. Unpaid labour
3. Childbearing as labour/obstacle to career
4. Pay inequality (the “gender” pay gap)
 Socialist Feminist Demands
Welfare provisions:
• Remuneration for domestic work
• Daycare
• Maternity leave
• Security from discrimination in the workplace
• Equal pay legislation
 Royal Commission on the Status of
Women (1967-70)
• Mandate: to research and make policy
recommendations to create full equality for
women in Canadian society
• 167 Recommendations, including: 1. equal
minimum wage; 2. national child-care
program; 3. change to the Indian Act,
guaranteed annual income (GAI); 4. policies to
increase gender parity in government and
corporate positions
 Status of Women Canada (1971)

• The Status of Women was created to oversea the Women’s

Program – It was an agency incorporated into the Department of
Canadian Heritage
• The objective of the Women's Program is to achieve the full
participation of women in the economic, social and democratic
life of Canada. Funding is provided to eligible organizations in
support of projects at the local, regional and national levels that
address the following three priority areas:
• 1. Ending violence against women and girls
• 2. Improving women's and girls' economic security and prosperity
• 3. Encouraging women and girls in leadership and decision-
making roles
 Department of Women and Gender
Equality
• In 2018, the SWC became a full government
department called “Women and Gender
Equality”

The Honourable Marci Ien

Minister for WAGE
 Key Concept: Patriarchy
• “Patriarchy means men’s control over
women’s sexuality and fertility and
encompasses the institutional structure of
male domination.”
 Patriarchy is more than Institutions
• Patriarchy is engrained in our thinking
(androcentrism).
• Formal changes mean nothing without changing the
way we view gender.
 Gendered Dichotomy #2
Masculine/Feminine
• Masculine = strong, active, hard, primary,
detached, aggressive
• Feminine = weak, passive, soft, secondary,
caring/nurturing, peaceful
Demand for a “revaluation of values”
• “We’ve begun to raise our daughters more like our sons … but
few have the courage to raise our sons more like our
daughters” (Gloria Steinem)
• Second wave feminists sough a revaluation of values that
would seek to take traditionally feminine values, and
“revalue” them to be on par with, or more valued then,
traditional masculine values
Third Wave and Fourth Wave
Feminism (1980s to today)
 The Third Wave
• Both First and Second wave feminism was criticized for
being concerned with the issues of, and led by, primarily white
middle-class women
• Third Wave feminism was based in the idea that different
types of women have different challenges and interests
 Deconstructing “Woman”
• There is no single definition of “woman” or
“women” when it comes to defining the
interests of, and challenges to, women
• Women with different identity categories have
different experiences of being women, and
different social interests
 Key Concept of Third Wave Feminism:
Intersectionality
• Various aspects of one’s identity intersect to
produce distinct forms of relative privilege and
oppression
The Third Wave Trinity of Identity
Social Narratives and Intelligibility
• Social narratives define what is comprehensible or intelligible
to average people in any given society
• What is considered intelligible is determined by the news
media, popular culture, and everyday experiences
• Third wave feminism sought to re-orient what is socially
intelligible about women in relations to other identity
categories
The Case of Anita Hill and Clarence
Thomas
 Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas
• In 1991, President George Bush nominated
Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court
• Thomas would be only the second Black
Supreme Court Justice in American History
• During the proceedings to confirm him, Anita
Hill, a successful lawyer and former employee
for Judge Thomas, testified before Congress
that Thomas had repeatedly sexually harassed
her during her time as a clerk
 Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas
• In cross-examination, Congress, including some attacked
Anita Hill in an attempt to make her seem incredible
• Joe Biden was the chair of the committee and was
criticized for not reigning in the line of questioning
• A third-wave feminist argument was made that, in the
eyes of the mostly white and male committee, it was
unintelligible that an upper class Black man could
sexually harass an upper class Black woman
• It would be intelligible only if she was a middle or upper
class white woman
 Naomi Wolf on Third and Fourth Wave
Feminism
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCQI-
ougLsg
 Wave #4
2 Strains:
1. Justice for Women
2. Post-feminism
 1. Justice for Women
New focus on the most disadvantaged women
• Sex-trade workers
• Abused women
• Child-workers
• Indigenous women
• Refugees
• Asylum-seekers
• Victims of genital mutilation
• Immigrant women
• Trans-women/men
Canada: Missing and Murdered Indigenous
Women and Girls
• An Amnesty International report stated that between 1980 and
2012, 1070 Indigenous women and girls had been murdered in
Canada
• This is a homicide rate of over 4.5x that of other women in Canada
• 105 Indigenous women remained missing under suspicious
circumstances
Partial timeline to the National Inquiry
• This set off a national movement to get the
government to address the situation
• In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on
Residential Schools recommended a national inquiry
on MMIWG
• 2016 National Inquiry is announced
• 2019 National Inquiry is complete and report is issued
• National Inquiry found that Indigenous women were
12x more likely to be murdered or go missing than
other women
 Selected Recommendations of the National
Inquiry
1. Establish a national Indigenous and human-rights ombudsperson and a
national Indigenous and human-rights tribunal
2. Create a national action plan to ensure equitable access to employment,
housing, education, safety and health care
3. Provide long-term funding for education programs and awareness
campaigns related to violence prevention and combating lateral violence
—that is, violence committed by one Indigenous person against another
4. Prohibit taking children into foster care on the basis of poverty or cultural
bias
5. Fund Indigenous-led efforts to improve the representation of Indigenous
people in popular culture
 Selected Recommendations of the
National Inquiry
6. Create a guaranteed annual livable income for all Canadians, taking into
account “diverse needs, realities and geographic locations”

7. Create safe and affordable transit and transportation services in, to and
from remote communities, to reduce dependence on risky activities such
as hitchhiking

8. Fund policing in Indigenous communities so their services are equitable

compared to those in non-Indigenous communities, including modern
information technology, major-crime units and crime prevention

9. Increase Indigenous representation on all Canadian courts, including the

Supreme Court
 2. Post-Feminism
• Post-feminism is a product of the successes of
past feminisms (various forms of legal,
economic, and sexual equality/equity)
• New confidence, place of (relative) power and
privilege
• Re-appropriation of traditional femininity, but
from an empowered perspective
• Sense of playfulness and performativity
Iconic Images of Post-Feminism

Sex and the City

 Kill Bill
(film with Uma Thurman)
Oprah Winfrey
Performance and Playfulness: Guerilla
Girls
Guerilla Girls