FEMINISM

rigins and development

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
rinciples 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
x 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?