Abad Agha

FEMINISM The belief that women and men are, and have been, treated differently by our

society, and that women have frequently and systematically been unable to participate fully in all social arenas and institutions.

A desire to change that situation.

That this gives a "new" point-of-view on society, when eliminating old assumptions about why things are the way they are, and looking at it from the perspective that women are not inferior and men are not "the norm."

• “I myself have never been able to figure out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat”.

Rebecca West

EVOLUTION OF FEMINISM

Women began fighting for equal rights centuries ago. In the early 1600s, French women began holding salons where educated women could interact equally with men. Women's rights movements were also influenced by the Revolutionary War and the French Revolution in the late 1700s. Then, in the 1800s, women began fighting harder to attain equal rights.

According to Joan Kelly, author of "Women, History and Theory," the word "feminism" only came to the United States from France in 1910. Suffragettes fought for the right to vote, but feminism also includes issues like legal rights and financial independence. The feminist movement splintered off from suffrage-oriented groups after U.S. women were granted the right to vote under the 19th Amendment in 1920.

The Women's Liberation Movement, popular in the 1960s and '70s, came about when more women began entering colleges and the workforce after World War II. They wanted to revolutionize the way women lived in terms of education, employment, domesticity and sexuality. Prominent feminists like Betty Friedan formed the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. This group was made up predominantly of older, white, college-educated women. The first national feminist conference took place two years later. At the same time, energized by anti-Vietnam War movements and the Civil Rights Movement, younger and more radical feminists started a more loosely organized group called Red stockings, which "Daring to be Bad" author Alice Echols says demonstrated more militantly and more publicly than NOW.

WAVES OF FEMINISMFollowing are the three waves of Feminism.

First Wave: The first wave of feminism took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

emerging out of an environment of urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics. The goal of this wave was to open up opportunities for women, with a focus on suffrage. The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 when 300 men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (d.1902) drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration outlining the new movement's ideology and political strategies.

In its early stages, feminism was interrelated with the temperance and abolitionist movements, and gave voice to now-famous activists like the African-American Sojourner Truth (d. 1883), who demanded: "Ain't I a woman?" Victorian America saw women acting in very "un-ladylike" ways (public speaking, demonstrating, stints in jail), which challenged the "cult of domesticity." Discussions about the vote and women's participation in politics led to an examination of the differences between men and women as they were then viewed. Some claimed that women were morally superior to men, and so their presence in the civic sphere would improve public behavior and the political process.

First Wave

Second Wave: The second wave began in the 1960s and continued into the 90's. This wave

unfolded 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 the voice of the second wave was increasingly radical. In this phase, sexuality and reproductive rights were dominant issues, and much of the movement's energy was focused on passing the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing social equality regardless of sex.

This wave began with protests against the Miss America pageant(ceremony) in Atlantic City in 1968 and 1969. Feminists parodied what they held to be a degrading "cattle parade" that reduced women to objects of beauty dominated by a patriarchy that sought to keep them in the home or in dull, low-paying jobs. The radical New York group called the Red stockings staged a counter pageant in which they crowned a sheep as Miss America and threw "oppressive" feminine artifacts such as bras, girdles, high-heels, makeup and false eyelashes into the trashcan.

Second Wave

Third wave The third phase of feminism began in the mid-90's and is informed by post-

colonial and post-modern thinking. In this phase many constructs have been destabilized, including the concept of "universal womanhood," body, gender, and sexuality. An aspect of third phase feminism that mystifies the mothers of the earlier feminist movement is the readoption by young feminists of the very lip-stick, high-heals, and cleavage proudly exposed by low cut necklines that the first two phases of the movement identified with male oppression. Pinkfloor expressed this new position when she said; "It's possible to have a push-up bra and a brain at the same time.“

The "girls" of the third wave have stepped onto the stage as strong and empowered, eschewing victimization and defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy. They have developed a rhetoric of mimicry, which reappropriates derogatory terms like "slut" and "bitch" in order to downfall sexist culture. The web is an important aspect of the new "girlie feminism." E-zines have provided "cybergirls" and "netgirls" another kind of women-only space. At the same time — rife with the irony of third-wave feminism because cyberspace is disembodied — it permits all users the opportunity to cross gender boundaries and so the very notion of gender has been become more problematic.

Third Wave

STEREOTYPED GENDERED ROLES Femininity Masculinity

Caring Tough

Nurturing Providing

Emotional Rational

Domestic Public,

Sensitive Thick-skinned

Passive Active

Gentle Rough

Soft Hard

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