Topic: - Quest for Feminism in the literary and social world

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”

— Brigham Young

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."

— Rebecca West

Now the word feminism means female should have equal rights as male but not undue
advantage. The right should constitutes of political, social and economic rights without undue
advantage. It signifies that women should not be left behind in any aspect, both men and
women stand on the same footing. Woman should have equal opportunity as that compare to
man. It’s not about the belief that woman should hate men-misandry, there shouldn’t be male
oppression. In short if we can understand the quest for feminism in the literary and social
world is that it is the belief in social, political, economic and personal equality of sexes.

The question which arises is that what was the reason for Feminism? In earlier times, women
were deprived of basic rights such as the right to vote or right to ancestral property. They
were kept at bay from politics and higher education, and their existence was limited to doing
household chores. Physical violence and emotional abuse by men was customary. It was this
gross injustice that prompted women to rise against the oppression they faced, and
collectively assert their rights. This is because gender is one of the main factors that divides
the society.

All feminists are of the view that understanding of gender is crucial to understanding of
society. All the social structures that are based in gender casts women as inferior. It creates a
hierarchy with men at the top and women at the bottom which is commonly known as a
patriarchal society. The word ‘patriarchy’ simply means ‘rule of the father’. Simply put, this
is the kind of society that advantages men and disadvantages women. Therefore, patriarchy
society is unfair to women and needs reform.

Feminists differ in their views as to the sorts of change that are necessary. For some, legal
change is sufficient – for example, so that women are protected by anti-discrimination
legislation. For other, change in social norms is needed, such that women are no longer seen

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as destined for motherhood and domestic work, for example. For still other feminists, even
deeper change is needed, because patriarchy is rooted deeply in our attitudes and preferences.
Nonetheless, all feminists share the goal of gender equality. They want women and men to
have an equal status, and to enjoy equal respect. For most feminists, an important part of
gender equality of opportunity and, for many, greater equality of resources is also needed.
Feminists are also concerned to increase or protect women’s freedom. For many feminists,
women should be free to choose their own ways of life and should not be constrained by
traditional or stereotypical rules about ‘feminine’ behaviour.1

Feminist activists campaign for women's rights – such as in contract law, property, and
voting – while also promoting bodily integrity, autonomy, and reproductive rights for
women. Feminist campaigns have changed societies, particularly in the West, by achieving
women's suffrage, gender neutrality in English, equal pay for women, reproductive rights for
women (including access to contraceptives and abortion), and the right to enter into contracts
and own property. Feminists have worked to protect women and girls from domestic
violence, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. They have also advocated for workplace
rights, including maternity leave, and against forms of discrimination against women.
Feminism is mainly focused on women's issues, but because feminism seeks gender equality,
some feminists argue that men's liberation is a necessary part of feminism, and that men are
also harmed by sexism and gender roles.2

The first wave feminism started in late nineteenth and early twentieth century in United
Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States. It focused on de jure (officially
mandated) inequalities and primarily on gaining women's suffrage (the right to vote).

The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in 1848 in which
around 300 men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women. The Seneca Falls
Convention was outlined by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), claiming the natural equity
of women and outlining the political strategy of equal access and opportunity. This
declaration gave rise to the suffrage movement.

1
Catrina Mckinnon, Issues in Political Theory (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012)

2
Feminism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism (accessed on September 26, 2012)

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In the early stages, the first wave of feminism in the United States was interwoven with other
reform movements, such as abolition and temperance, and initially closely involved women
of the working classes. However, it was also supported by Black women abolitionists, such as
Maria Stewart (1803–1879), Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), and Frances E. W. Harper (1825–
1911), who agitated for the rights of women of colour. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and several
others from the more radical parts of the women’s rights movement appeared as delegates to
the National Labour Union Convention as early as 1868, before any successful attempts to
organize female labour (Firestone, 1968).3

Suffragists confronted stereotypes of women and, in particular, claims of proper female

behaviour and talk. First, they engaged in public persuasion, which in those days was
considered most unwomanly. Campbell (1989) put it this way: “No ‘true woman’ could be a
public persuader” (pp. 9–10). Second, their very activity challenged the “cult of domesticity,”
which in those days dictated that a true woman’s place was in the home, meeting the needs of
husband and children.

Women were further required to be modest and to wield only indirect influence, and certainly
not engage in public activities. So, when a woman spoke in public, she was, by definition,
displaying masculine behaviours. She was even ignoring her biological weaknesses— a
smaller brain and a more fragile physique—which she was supposed to protect in order to
ensure her reproductive abilities. Such claims led some women’s rights activists to argue that
women should indeed gain the right to vote from an argument of expediency (Campbell,
1999). This argument was based on the claim that women and men are, in fact, fundamentally
different and that women have a natural disposition toward maternity and domesticity.
However, the argument ran that it would therefore be advantageous to society to enfranchise
women, so they would then enrich politics with their “innately” female concerns.
Furthermore, if women had the vote, the argument ran, they would perform their roles as
mothers and housewives even better. On the other hand, we find another well-used argument:
justice (Campbell, 1989). Following this argument, women and men are, at least in legal
terms, equal in all respects; therefore, to deny women the vote was to deny them full
citizenship.

3
Three Waves of Feminism. https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-
binaries/6236_Chapter_1_Krolokke_2nd_Rev_Final_Pdf.pdf (accessed on September 26, 2012)

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Socialist feminists such as Rosa Luxemburg and, in particular, Alexandra Kollontai and
Emma Goldman, paved the way for second-wave feminism, fighting both politically and in
their own private lives for women’s right to abortion, divorce, and non-legislative partnership
—and against sexism both in bourgeois society and within the socialist movements.4

The second wave feminism started in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The second wave
unravelled itself in the context of the anti-war and civil rights movements and the growing
self-consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world. The New Left was on
the rise, and with that the voice of the second wave was increasingly radical.

French writer Simone de Beauvoir in her 1963 bestselling book The Feminine Mystique
explicitly objected to the mainstream media image of women, stating that placing women at
home limited their possibilities, and wasted talent and potential. The perfect nuclear family
image depicted and strongly marketed at the time, she wrote, did not reflect happiness and
was rather degrading for women. This book is widely credited with having begun second-
wave feminism.

The first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to
gender equality (i.e. voting rights, property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the
debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de
facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities. At a time when mainstream women were
making job gains in the professions, the military, the media, and sports in large part because
of second wave feminist advocacy, second-wave feminism also focused on a battle against
violence with proposals for marital rape laws, establishment of rape crisis and battered
women's shelters, and changes in custody and divorce law. Its major effort was passage of the
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States Constitution, in which they were
defeated by antifeminists led by Phyllis Schlafly, who argued as an anti-ERA view that the
ERA meant women would be drafted into the military.

4
Three Waves of Feminism. https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-
binaries/6236_Chapter_1_Krolokke_2nd_Rev_Final_Pdf.pdf

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Many historians view the second-wave feminist era as ending with the intra-feminism
disputes of the Feminist Sex Wars over issues such as sexuality and pornography, which
ushered in the era of third-wave feminism.5

The second wave began with the protests against the Miss America pageant which was held
in Atlantic City in 1968 and 1969. The Redstockings, the New York Radical Feminists, and
other significant feminist groups joined the 1969 protest to show how women in pageant
competitions were paraded like cattle, highlighting the underlying assumption that the way
women look is more important than what they do, what they think, or even whether they
think at all (Freeman, 1975). Marching down the Atlantic City boardwalk and close to the
event itself, feminists staged several types of theatrical activism: crowning a sheep Miss
America and throwing “oppressive” gender artifacts, such as bras, girdles, false eyelashes,
high heels, and makeup, into a trash can in front of reporters (Freeman, 1975). Carrying
posters reading, “Cattle Parades Are Degrading to Human Beings,” “Boring Job: Woman
Wanted,” and “Low Pay: Woman Wanted,” feminists made their message loud and clear:
Women were victims of a patriarchal, commercialized, oppressive beauty culture (Freeman,
1975). It was a perfectly staged media event. A small group of women bought tickets to the
pageant show and smuggled in a banner that read “WOMEN’S LIBERATION,” while
shouting “Freedom for Women” and “No More Miss America,” hereby exposing the public
to an early second-wave feminist agenda (Freeman, 1969).6

Third wave feminism began in the mid-1990s arising as a response to the failures of the
second wave and also to address the backlash of the initiatives and movements which
happened in the second wave feminism.

Lipstick feminism, girlie feminism, riot grrl feminism, cybergrrl feminism, transfeminism, or
just grrl feminism—feminism is alive and kicking. Born with the privileges that first- and
second-wave feminists fought for, third wave feminists generally see themselves as capable,
strong, and assertive social agents: “The Third Wave is buoyed by the confidence of having
more opportunities and less sexism” (Baumgartner & Richards, 2000, p. 83). Young feminists
now reclaim the term “girl” in a bid to attract another generation, while engaging in a new,
more self-assertive—even aggressive—but also more playful and less pompous kind of

5
Feminism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism (accessed on September 26, 2012)
6
Three Waves of Feminism. https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-

binaries/6236_Chapter_1_Krolokke_2nd_Rev_Final_Pdf.pdf (accessed on September 26,

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feminism. They declare, in the words of Karen McNaughton (1997), “And yes that’s G.r.r.l.s
which is, in our case, cyber-lingo for Great-Girls. Grrl is also a young at heart thing and not
limited to the under 18s.”7

In combination, third-wave feminism constitutes a significant move in both theory and

politics toward the “performance turn” we introduced earlier. The performance turn marks a
move away from thinking and acting in terms of systems, structures, fixed power relations,
and thereby also “suppression”— toward highlighting the complexities, contingencies, and
challenges of power and the diverse means and goals of agency. Embedded in the scientific
paradigm shift from structuralism to post structuralism, the performance turn is connected to
a broader intellectual transformation.8

7
Three Waves of Feminism. https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-
binaries/6236_Chapter_1_Krolokke_2nd_Rev_Final_Pdf.pdf (accessed on September 26, 2012)
8
Three Waves of Feminism. https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-

binaries/6236_Chapter_1_Krolokke_2nd_Rev_Final_Pdf.pdf (accessed on September 26,

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 CONCLUSION

Feminism initially started as a movement to give women equal rights as men. From the
nineteenth century to the twenty-first century the position of women in the society has
undergone a change. Women have progressed in every field and can be found in every sphere
possible at par with men. Though of condition of women in the twenty-first century is
remarkably better than the condition of women in the nineteenth century, there still exists a
class of women who are still deprived of their basic rights.

Feminism in the twenty-first century has become more of a fashion statement. What started
out as a strong and supportive initiative for women has turned into a fancy time pass for most
women now. Especially since most of the times, feminist movements like Slut Walk, Pink
Chaddi campaign are associated with over-the-top and overt expressions of sexualism, it
might turn out be a perfect ticket to a restless girl’s fifteen minutes of fame.

Where feminism will go from here is unclear, but the point it that feminism, by whatever
name, is alive and well both in academia and outside of it. Some older feminists feel
discouraged by the younger generation's seeming ignorance of or disregard for the struggles
and achievements of the early movement. They see little progress (the pay gap has not
significantly narrowed in 60 years), and are fearful that the new high-healed, red-lipped
college grrls are letting us backslide. This, however, is not likely the case. There have always
been feminisms in the movement, not just one ideology, and there have always been tensions,
points and counter-points. The political, social and intellectual feminist movements have
always be chaotic, multi balanced, and disconcerting; and let's hope they continue to be so;
it's a sign that they are thriving and growing.

Submitted by –Amulya

Anand Semester-4th

Collage-National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi

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.