FEMINISM

Origins and development

of feminism

• First wave feminism: women united in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries to demand suffrage
• Second wave feminism: acknowledged that suffrage had not
brought about female liberation
• 1960s/70s onwards: feminism is now viewed as an ideology,
and de-radicalizes and spreads
• 1990s to today: ‘post-feminism’ and feminist
diversification/fragmentation
 Principles of feminism

Feminist ideology perceives other ideologies as inadequate

vehicles for female social advancement, for the way in which
they have each systematically incited the oppression of women.
Feminist themes focus primarily on:

• a redefinition of what constitutes ‘the political’

• acknowledging the patriarchy
• sex and gender
• equality and difference
 Sex and politics

• Feminism has been influenced by other political traditions,

liberalism and socialism most obviously, but also modern
traditions such as post-modernism and psychoanalysis.
• Hierarchical and elitist ideologies, such as conservatism, are
commonly associated with anti-feminism, in arguing that the
woman’s ‘private’ role in inevitable and natural.
• Reactionary feminism, critiqued as a contradiction in terms by
conventional feminism, also exists, for example with Islamic
feminism.
 Sex and politics

• Liberal feminism
• Socialist feminism
• Radical feminism
• Third-wave feminism and beyond
 Sexism in the global age

• Can feminism become a truly global ideology?

• How should feminists respond to globalization?
• Are feminist ideas universally applicable?