Feminism, origin, development and women in

movement
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that
share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic,
personal, and social equality of sexes.[1][2] This includes seeking to establish
educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for
men.
Abstract:
This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about
the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination
of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I
suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist
trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent
narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of
progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history of
Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and
repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as ‘the first’ to
challenge the category ‘woman’ as the subject and object of feminist knowledge.
Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article
interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite
the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation
patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political
effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to
provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to
force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it.
Keywords:
Origin, postmodernism, progress, the seventies, Western
feminism
Introduction:

Feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's

rights, including the right to vote, to hold public office, to work, to earn
fair wages or equal pay, to own property, to receive education, to enter contracts,
to have equal rights within marriage, and to have maternity leave. Feminists have
also worked to ensure access to legal abortions and social integration, and to
protect women and girls from rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence.
[3]
 Changes in dress and acceptable physical activity have often been part of
feminist movements.[4]
Feminist campaigns are generally considered to be a main force behind major
historical societal changes for women's rights, particularly in the West, where they
are near-universally credited with achieving women's suffrage, gender neutrality in
English, reproductive rights for women (including access
to contraceptives and abortion), and the right to enter into contracts and own
property.[5] Although feminist advocacy is, and has been, mainly focused on
women's rights, some feminists, including bell hooks, argue for the inclusion
of men's liberation within its aims because they believe that men are also harmed
by traditional gender roles.[6] Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist
movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining
women's social roles and lived experience; it has developed theories in a variety of
disciplines in order to respond to issues concerning gender.[7][8]
Numerous feminist movements and ideologies have developed over the years and
represent different viewpoints and aims. Some forms of feminism have
been criticizedfor taking into account only white, middle class, and college-
educated perspectives. This criticism led to the creation of ethnically specific
or multicultural forms of feminism, including black feminism and intersectional
feminism.[9]
Historiographic approaches:
My approach to feminist storytelling here, then, is historiographic in that I am
concerned with the contested politics of the present over the ‘truth of the past’.
Historiography is in its broadest sense the name for historical accounts, or theories
of history. Combined with the practice of genealogy, it has proven particularly
amenable to feminist and queer work seeking to emphasize that all history takes
place in the present, as we make and remake stories about the past to enable a
particular present to gain legiti-macy.5 Gayatri Spivak cites Hayden White’s ironic
attack on the historian who searches for the absolute truth ‘buried in the archives,
hoping to find the “form of the reality” that will serve as the object of
representation in the account that they will write “when all the facts are known”
and they have finally “got the story straight”’ (White, 1978, in Spivak, 1999: 202–
3). For Spivak, as for White, wanting to ‘get the story straight’ is an act of
disavowed epistemic violence, which prevents attention to the political investments
that motivate the desire to know, and that generate a writer’s epistemological and
methodological practices.6 In a feminist context, which stories predominate or are
precluded or marginalized is always a question of power and authority.
That there is no single historical truth does not mean that history is simply a matter
of individual opinion, that all truths are somehow equal. Wary of the accusation of
relativism (an accusation productive of a depth of shame second only to that
produced by an accusation of essentialism), feminist historiographers are keen to
highlight the ways in which the challenge to a single truth allows for increased
rather than decreased political accountability in the present. Queer feminist
historiographer Jennifer Terry, for example, builds on Friedrich Nietzsche’s
critique of historians as ‘jaded idlers in the garden of knowledge’, suggesting that
history is useful to the extent that it makes us aware of the power relations at play
in the past and present (Terry, 1999: 25). In her work on the racial-ization of
sexology and homosexuality in An American Obsession, Terry pays close attention
to how inequalities in the present allow certain stories to flourish and not others,
allow certain alliances to be made and not others. A historiographic insistence on
the politics of the present in the making of the past more precisely still foregrounds
the location of the historian or teller of tales. Spivak emphasizes that ‘the past is a
past present a history that is in some sense a genealogy of the historian.

Origin/ History of the feminism:

Charles Fourier, a Utopian Socialist and French philosopher, is credited with

having coined the word "féminisme" in 1837.[10] The words "féminisme"
("feminism") and "féministe" ("feminist") first appeared in France and
the Netherlands in 1872,[11] Great Britain in the 1890s, and the United States in
1910,[12][13] and the Oxford English Dictionary lists 1852 as the year of the first
appearance of "feminist"[14] and 1895 for "feminism".[15] Depending on the
historical moment, culture and country, feminists around the world have had
different causes and goals. Most western feminist historians contend that all
movements working to obtain women's rights should be considered feminist
movements, even when they did not (or do not) apply the term to themselves.[16][17]
[18][19][20][21]
 Other historians assert that the term should be limited to the modern
feminist movement and its descendants. Those historians use the label
"protofeminist" to describe earlier movements.[22]The history of the modern
western feminist movements is divided into three "waves".[23][24] Each wave dealt
with different aspects of the same feminist issues. The first wave comprised
women's suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
promoting women's right to vote. The second wave was associated with the ideas
and actions of the women's liberation movement beginning in the 1960s. The
second wave campaigned for legal and social equality for women. The third
wave is a continuation of, and a reaction to, the perceived failures of second-wave
feminism, which began in the 1990s.[25]

Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:

First-wave feminism was a period of activity during the 19th century and early
twentieth century. In the UK and eventually the US, it focused on the promotion of
equal contract, marriage, parenting, and property rights for women. By the end of
the 19th century, a number of important steps had been made with the passing of
legislation such as the UK Custody of Infants Act 1839 which introduced
the Tender years doctrine for child custody arrangement and gave woman the right
of custody of their children for the first time.[26][27][28] Other legislation such as
the Married Women's Property Act 1870 in the UK and extended in the 1882 Act,
[29]
 these became models for similar legislation in other British territories. For
example, Victoria passed legislation in 1884, New South Wales in 1889, and the
remaining Australian colonies passed similar legislation between 1890 and 1897.
Therefore, with the turn of the 19th century activism had focused primarily on
gaining political power, particularly the right of women's suffrage, though some
feminists were active in campaigning for women's sexual, reproductive,
and economic rights as well.[30]
Women's suffrage began in Britain's Australasian colonies at the close of the 19th
century, with the self-governing colonies of New Zealand granting women
the right to vote in 1893 and South Australia granting female suffrage (the right to
vote and stand for parliamentary office) in 1895. This was followed by Australia
granting female suffrage in 1902.[31][32]
In Britain the Suffragettes and the Suffragists campaigned for the women's vote,
and in 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed granting the vote to
women over the age of 30 who owned property. In 1928 this was extended to all
women over 21.[33] Emmeline Pankhurst was the most notable activist in England,
with Time naming her one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th
Century stating: "she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into
a new pattern from which there could be no going back."[34] In the U.S., notable
leaders of this movement included Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
and Susan B. Anthony, who each campaigned for the abolition of slavery prior to
championing women's right to vote. These women were influenced by
the Quaker theology of spiritual equality, which asserts that men and women are
equal under God.[35] In the United States, first-wave feminism is considered to have
ended with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution (1919), granting women the right to vote in all states. The term first
wave was coined retroactively to categorize these western movements after the
term second-wave feminism began to be used to describe a newer feminist
movement that focused on fighting social and cultural inequalities, as well political
inequalities.
During the late Qing period and reform movements such as the Hundred Days'
Reform, Chinese feminists called for women's liberation from traditional roles
and Neo-Confuciangender segregation.[40][41][42] Later, the Chinese Communist
Party created projects aimed at integrating women into the workforce, and claimed
that the revolution had successfully achieved women's liberation.[43]
According to Nawar al-Hassan Golley, Arab feminism was closely connected
with Arab nationalism. In 1899, Qasim Amin, considered the "father" of Arab
feminism, wrote The Liberation of Women, which argued for legal and social
reforms for women.[44] He drew links between women's position in Egyptian
society and nationalism, leading to the development of Cairo University and the
National Movement.[45] In 1923 Hoda Shaarawifounded the Egyptian Feminist
Union, became its president and a symbol of the Arab women's rights movement.
[45]

The Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1905 triggered the Iranian women's

movement, which aimed to achieve women's equality in education, marriage,
careers, and legal rights.[46] However, during the Iranian revolution of 1979, many
of the rights that womenhad gained from the women's movement were
systematically abolished, such as the Family Protection Law.[47]
In France, women obtained the right to vote only with the Provisional Government
of the French Republic of 21 April 1944. The Consultative Assembly of Algiers of
1944 proposed on 24 March 1944 to grant eligibility to women but following an
amendment by Fernand Grenier, they were given full citizenship, including the
right to vote. Grenier's proposition was adopted 51 to 16. In May 1947, following
the November 1946 elections, the sociologist Robert Verdier minimized the
"gender gap", stating in Le Populaire that women had not voted in a consistent
way, dividing themselves, as men, according to social classes. During the baby
boom period, feminism waned in importance. Wars (both World War I and World
War II) had seen the provisional emancipation of some women, but post-war
periods signalled the return to conservative roles.[48]
Mid-twentieth century:
By the mid 20th century, in some European countries, women still lacked some
significant rights. Feminists in these countries continued to fight for voting rights.
In Switzerland, women gained the right to vote in federal elections in 1971;[49] but
in the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden women obtained the right to vote on local
issues only in 1991, when the canton was forced to do so by the Federal Supreme
Court of Switzerland.[50] In Liechtenstein, women were given the right to vote by
the women's suffrage referendum of 1984. Three prior referendums held
in 1968, 1971 and 1973 had failed to secure women's right to vote.
Feminists continued to campaign for the reform of family laws which gave
husbands control over their wives. Although by the 20th century coverture had
been abolished in the UK and the US, in many continental European countries
married women still had very few rights. For instance, in France married women
did not receive the right to work without their husband's permission until 1965.[51]
[52]
 Feminists have also worked to abolish the "marital exemption" in rape
laws which precluded the prosecution of husbands for the rape of their wives.
[53]
Earlier efforts by first-wave feminists such as Voltairine de Cleyre, Victoria
Woodhull and Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy to criminalize marital rape in
the late 19th century had failed;[54][55] this was only achieved a century later in most
Western countries, but is still not achieved in many other parts of the world.[56]
French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir provided a Marxist solution and
an existentialistview on many of the questions of feminism with the publication
of Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) in 1949.[57] The book expressed feminists'
sense of injustice. Second-wave feminism is a feminist movement beginning in the
early 1960s[58] and continuing to the present; as such, it coexists with third-wave
feminism. Second-wave feminism is largely concerned with issues of equality
beyond suffrage, such as ending gender discrimination.[30]
Second-wave feminists see women's cultural and political inequalities as
inextricably linked and encourage women to understand aspects of their personal
lives as deeply politicized and as reflecting sexist power structures. The feminist
activist and author Carol Hanisch coined the slogan "The Personal is Political",
which became synonymous with the second wave.[3][59]
Second- and third-wave feminism in China has been characterized by a
reexamination of women's roles during the communist revolution and other reform
movements, and new discussions about whether women's equality has actually
been fully achieved.[43]
In 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt initiated "state feminism", which
outlawed discrimination based on gender and granted women's suffrage, but also
blocked political activism by feminist leaders.[60] During Sadat's presidency, his
wife, Jehan Sadat, publicly advocated further women's rights, though Egyptian
policy and society began to move away from women's equality with the
new Islamist movement and growing conservatism.[61] However, some activists
proposed a new feminist movement, Islamic feminism, which argues for women's
equality within an Islamic framework.[62]
In Latin America, revolutions brought changes in women's status in countries such
as Nicaragua, where feminist ideology during the Sandinista Revolution aided
women's quality of life but fell short of achieving a social and ideological change.
[63]

In 1963, Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique was published and helped

voice the discontent that American women felt. The book is widely credited with
sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States.[64] The
book's success also meant that Friedan could lecture her views while she was on
tour in 1970. Within ten years, after Friedan's successful publishing, women made
up more than half of the total percentage in the First World workforce.[65]

Any such reconsideration for us has to acknowledge that the liberal “long
march through the institutions” may have brought a wide variety of significant
changes in its train, but many of these have served the interests of only the
most privileged women. What is more, gendered inequalities are not and have
never been reducible to the overt legal, educational and political discrimination
that continue to scar some societies.
Several key themes emerge from our strategies debate, which we will
address here in general terms:

1. Plurality beyond liberal feminism and an ethic of recognition

Strikingly, the contributions in the special section embrace organisational
plurality, in terms of the authors insisting on both their own right to be
autonomous and develop a feminism that speaks to their needs and desires, and
their recognition of the right of other feminists and women to similar freedoms.
What we might term an ethic of recognition can be said to underlie their
understandings of feminist strategy. This ethic is not relativistic, however, nor
does it deny the tensions and contradictions between different forms of
feminism. Many of our contributors do not feel represented by liberal,
bourgeois strands of feminism and do not believe that there are easy alliances
to be made with these strands. Rather, by giving voice and legitimacy to
feminisms that come from working class and black positionalities, they make
visible tensions among feminists and suggest that it is only by taking these
seriously that we can collectively think through the possibilities and parameters
of our alliances.

2.Experience and voice

In many of the contributions to the special section, we find an emphasis on the
strategic importance of enabling marginal voices to speak and of making
audible and visible diverse experiences of patriarchy. Structural incidents of
silencing, misrepresentation and exclusion are a particular focus of critique. To
overcome such patriarchal erasures and forgettings, we are urged to build the
conditions within feminist groups and broader activist movements in which
women feel sufficiently safe to begin to recount their experiences, find their
voices and have their words heard and respected. This is a strategy of
reclaiming, centering on dignity, remembering and recognition.

3. Communication
Another fascinating theme, one under-discussed in the wider literature, is that
of communication and the fact that it can be gendered, imbued with power
relations and assumptions about what certain terms mean and privileging some
positionalities and experiences over others. Some of our contributors to the
special section focus specifically on how we might overcome patriarchal forms
of communication that centre on the elevation of ego, the domination of space
and the clash of rival argumentation, by developing instead a praxis that is
mindful of others, opens space for a plurality of voices to be heard, and
challenges unspoken assumptions about race, class and gender.
4. Women-only spaces and self-care
Whilst not favouring separatist strategies as such, the pieces featured in the
section do emphasise the centrality of women-only spaces. Such spaces are
viewed as strategically necessary because they offer a safe environment in
which patriarchal forms of communication can be challenged and in which
women can begin to share experiences, reclaim individual and collective
voice(s), and develop theoretical understandings and strategies. Of course, as
black feminists, lesbian critics and working class women have long pointed
out, women-only spaces may sidestep gendered hierarchies but they do not
transcend power per se and indeed, if critical awareness and vigilance is
lacking, may replicate and entrench within them diverse axes of oppression
and inequality. Moreover, these spaces do not even escape patriarchy entirely.
Our contributors view patriarchy not merely as a structure “out there”, but as
infusing our subjectivities and many of our relationships in ways that are
impoverishing, harmful and painful. In this context, the importance of self-care
(including fun and pleasure) is also stressed, and women-only spaces are
depicted as key sites in which self-care can be both theorised and enacted.

Women have been forced to find individual and collective ways to survive on
the margins of the money economy (Federici, 1992; Hite and Viterna, 2005).
They have participated extensively in struggles against the erosion and
privatisation of public services, removal of subsidies to basic food stuffs and
disintegration of employment. And they have participated in familiar
struggles to defend welfare provision and rights that inevitably address the
state, whether in purely defensive / nostalgic forms or in struggles “in and
against the state” (London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, 1979).
In addition, the following trends strike us as of particular analytical and
political interest.

1. The politicisation of social reproduction

Women in movement are often organised around attempts to reclaim collective
process in the provision, definition and organisation of health, education and
housing. In addition, their coping strategies mean that by necessity they have
often become organisers and thinkers in the struggle for day-to-day survival
for themselves, their families and communities. Poor women in particular, who
have faced the harshest forms of alienation, oppression and exploitation under
neoliberalism, have engaged in a territorialised struggle to determine
collectively how best to provide for social reproduction in a way that ensures
the dignity and development of their community. These processes have
extended the terrain of the political to the community and resulted in the
growth of women’s social power and autonomy. They have provided an
alternative to the gendered, individualised forms of social welfare and
reproduction characteristic of capitalist social relations and may in some cases
have challenged patriarchal relationships and separations between the
community and work, and between women and men.

2. Motherhood, womanhood and family become a terrain of struggle

The gendered roles and identities of women as mothers and housewives have
been reinforced by the fact of their increasing care responsibilities in the
context of the withdrawal of more socialised forms of welfare provision.
However, such roles and identities have never been merely a product of
passivity and subordination, nor defended in isolation from other elements of
gendered and classed lives. In Latin America, most obviously, family,
womanhood and motherhood has become a terrain of resistance. Women’s
struggles in that context have been characterised by suspicion toward and often
rejection of political parties, as well as of the state, and heavily influenced by
traditions of direct democracy and community-led change (including
longstanding practices of popular education). From the 1980s onwards, they
have increasingly politicised the everyday, community and family (Motta,
2009; Fernandes, 2007). In the process of collectively organising social
reproduction, motherhood, womanhood and family may be transformed. This
is not inevitable, however, as the mobilisation of motherhood may also
reinforce restrictive representations of female subjectivity as premised around
care and self-sacrifice.

3. Politicisation of the personal

The politicisation of the community, the family and the body involves a
recognition of and struggle against pervasive and cross-cutting power
relations, including gendered divisions of labour, gendered norms of
behaviour, and patterns of power characterised by individualism, competition
and hierarchy.
Taking these power relations seriously expands the political agenda, so that it
ranges from childcare provision, to the forms of communication used in
movements, to intimate partner violence within the private sphere. Yet the
politicisation of the personal has been very uneven, in terms both of
women’s daily lives (which continue to be marred by the triple burden of
paid, domestic and political work) and women’s participation in movements
(which is characterised simultaneously by inclusion and marginalisation,
welcome and
containment). This results in the development of highly contradictory
female political subjectivities. As women build dignity, agency and
collective power, they also continue to experience multiple violences and
exclusions.
4. The politicisation of the body
The expansive politicisation process described above has implications for how
 women’s bodies are experienced and lived. It encourages challenges to the
gendered mechanisation of the female and/or feminine body, its exploitation
and commodification under capitalism, and its objectification as a site of
reproduction. Furthermore, for women in movement, the body is not merely a
site of pain, pleasure for others and exhaustion, but can also be an element in
the articulation and valuation of ability to create and defend life. Its use against
the oppressive and coercive elements of the state in protests, and as means to
protect the community, turns the body into a site of resistance and pride. As
mentioned in the strategies section of this editorial, the politicisation of the
body can also be accompanied by an emphasis on corporeal care and pleasure
in movement contexts.

Conclusion:
Thus far, I have been mapping some of the ways in which narratives of the recent
feminist past, whether seen as successes or failures, fix its teleo-logical markers in
very similar ways. One might simply argue that it is in the nature of all story-
telling to generalize, but to return to the genealogical inquiry I began this article
with, my concern is with which markers stick over others, and with where our
narratives position us as subjects of feminist history and theory. This particular
selective story detaches feminism from its own past by generalizing the seventies
to the point of absurdity, fixing identity politics as a phase, evacuating
poststructuralism of any political purchase, and insisting we bear the burden of
these fanta-sized failings. In the process we disappear class, race and sexuality
only to rediscover them ‘anew’ as embodiment and agency. Small wonder it is not
clear what the future of feminist theory holds.
My starting point, in what will inevitably be a longer set of reflections, concerns
the role of the citation of key feminist theorists. As I have argued, in the doubled
story of Western feminist theory, Butler, Haraway and Spivak are imaginatively
positioned at the threshold of the ‘death of feminism’ in several ways. They are
celebrated for pointing to the failures of an ‘early’ feminist emphasis on sisterhood,
and heralded as marking the long-awaited theoretical sophistication of feminist
theory. Yet in this narra-tive, and in the counter narratives that dispute this
celebration, these authors are split from their own legacies within feminism,
symbolically, textually and politically situated as ‘other’ to and ‘after’ that
imagined past. In the counter narratives that position poststructuralism as apolitical
and self-referential, these same theorists are understood both as marking the death
of politically accountable feminism, and as embodying that death through their
own self-referential academic style, frequently denoted in classroom and
conference contexts as aggressive inaccessibility. In both versions of the story, it is
the specificity of feminist accounts of difference, power and knowledge at all
points in the recent past that is elided. Instead, I would advocate an approach
stressing the links rather than the discontinuities between different theoretical
frameworks, as a way of challenging the linear ‘displacement’ of one approach by
another.

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