Women Emancipation

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THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMENThe emancipation of women, i.e. their liberation from religious, legal, economic, and sexual oppression, their access to higher education, and their escape from narrow gender roles is not easily achieved. The struggle for sexual equality has a long history and is likely to continue for some time. Even if it should soon be won in the industrial nations, it may well rage on in many "underdeveloped" countries.

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The following pages briefly sketch the history of the modern feminist movement in Europe and America and offer some observations about the position of women in the contemporary world.

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In traditionally patriarchal societies any improvement in the status of women has far-reaching consequences and produces fundamental political changes. Therefore it is always resisted by the established powers. However, it seems certain that they will ultimately have to relent, because the emancipation of women is both necessary and desirable. It will provide for a greater degree of social justice and thus benefit everyone. Indeed, from the beginning, the great "feminists" or champions of women's rights have always insisted that they worked in the interest of the whole human race. The feminist movement therefore has always been a humanist movement. Some of its representatives were reformers, others revolutionaries, but virtually all of them worked for a better, more equitable, and more humane world. Much can be learned from their experiences. They often suffered ridicule, persecution, and defeat, but also won admiration, support, and victory. Gradually, they achieved many of their goals. Their opponents, on the other hand, learned that a just cause cannot be suppressed forever. Where needed reforms are consistently blocked, revolution becomes inevitable

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THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION

BEGIN with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between various groups within the human race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.

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With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality.

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Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to be the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat and the true individuality, man and woman, can meet without antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Madame de Stal: "To understand everything means to forgive everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow-being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-being suffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire sex

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Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery. This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation. But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels, and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.

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Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny--an aim certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance. My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true.

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THE BEGINNINGS OF FEMINISM IN EUROPEThe ancient Romans and Celts had granted considerable freedom to women, but with the arrival of Christianity their legal status began to decline. In the Middle Ages single women still enjoyed many rights, but had to surrender them to their husbands upon marriage. Thus, in general, women were second-class citizens. Nevertheless, occasionally individual women were able to break out of conventional patterns and to impress their contemporaries with their accomplishments. The nun Hroswitha of Gandersheim as a playwright, Guillemine of Bohemia as a religious leader, and Joan of Arc as a soldier proved that the female sex was not inferior even in "male" occupations. Medieval queens like Matilda of Scotland (wife of Henry I of England) and Philippa of Hainault (wife of Edward III of England) even exercised a considerable and very beneficial political influence.

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The Renaissance saw more women of power, such as Diane de Poitiers, Marguerite of Navarre, Catherine de Medici, and Elizabeth I of England. Some noblewomen also won distinction as writers and scholars, such as Margaret Roper, the daughter of Thomas More. Indeed, the intellectual independence of women grew to a point where it frightened many men who then attacked it in vituperative books and pamphlets. The Scottish religious reformer John Knox, for example, in his First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), exclaimed: "To promote a Woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to Nature; contumely to God.... Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not rule and command him." This Natural-Law argument was to be used many more times in the following centuries not only against female monarchs, but also against any other women with higher aspirations.

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Or the Womanish Man (1620) which declared: "We are as freeborn as Men, have as free election and as free spirit, we are compounded of like parts, and may with like liberty make benefit of our creations." It went on to demand equal treatment for both sexes and to equate the oppression of women with slavery.

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In the 17th century a few women, such as the Swedish queen Christina and the French and English writers Mme, de La Fayette and Aphra Behn continued to excel as scholars, novelists and playwrights. In France, learned women began to cultivate "salons," i.e. sexually integrated intellectual circles where good manners, wit, and erudition were esteemed and exercised. That these efforts were not appreciated by everyone can be seen in Moliere's comedies Les Precieuses Ridicules and Les Femmes Savantes which satirize female attempts to enter "high culture." Still, the influence of women on French intellectual life was not diminished and has, in fact, continued to this very day. From Mme. de Sevigne to Mme. de Stae'l, George Sand, and Si-mone de Beauvoir, French women have held a position of eminence in French literature.

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However, while female intellectual brilliance found recognition in exceptional cases, women were not given any political rights. As a matter of fact, with a new growing cult of "nature" even an intellectual education for women came to be seen as inappropriate. jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his influential Emile (1762) flatly stated: "The education of women should always be relative to that of men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young, to take care of us when grown up; to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable. These are the duties of women at all times, and what they should be taught in their infancy." For a very long time this remained the accepted view. When, in 1 789y the French Revolution broke out, some attempts were made to secure equal rights and equal education for women, most notably by the Marquis de Condorcet in his essay The Admission of Women to Full Citizenship (1790). Unfortunately, Condorcet himself soon became a victim of the revolutionary "reign of terror" and his proposal, along with others, was quickly repudiated. Indeed, in 1793 the National Convention suppressed all women's clubs, societies, and "salons," and denied women all political rights. In the meantime, Talleyrand had formulated the educational policies of the new government which offered girls public education up to the age of eight, after which they were to be kept at home.

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The English writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who had observed the French Revolution at close range, and who admired both Rousseau and Talleyrand, nevertheless felt compelled to protest against this reactionary trend. She therefore challenged both of these male authors in her Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). In direct response to Rousseau she affirmed: "Woman was not created merely to be the solace of man. ... On this sexual error has all the false system been erected, which robs our whole sex of its dignity." Instead, she demanded full and equal education for all women as a means of escaping sexual oppression. The invocation of "nature" in defense of oppres-

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WOMEN AS SOLDIERS One of the most famous and successful military commanders of all time was a teenage girl: Joan of Arc (1412-31 A,D.) However, for most of human history women have been denied any active role in the military. Curiously enough, the myths and legends of many cultures tel! of soldier-like women and even of whole female armies.

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sive policies left her unconvinced. Rousseau had offered this seemingly "objective" observation: "Boys love sports and noise and activity: to whip the top, to beat the drum, to drag about their little carts; girls on the other hand are fond of things of show and ornamenttrinkets, mirrors, dolls." Woll-stonecraft now replied: "Little girls are forced to sit still and play with trinkets. Who can say whether they are fond of them or not?" For her, the different behaviors of males and females arose out of "unnatural" distinctions created by society. In demanding the abolition of these distinctions, she argued for equal opportunity and equal rights. Women should enter all professions and become active in politics. The fight for the "Rights of Man" was more properly broadened to include the "rights of humanity".

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THE FAMILY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The word "family" (from Latin famulus: domestic slave) originally referred to a group of slaves belonging to one man, then, by extension, to all persons ruled by one man or descended from one man, and finally to all persons living together in a man's household, such as servants, wives, children, parents, grandparents, other close and distant relatives, friends, and permanent guests. These various meanings were still very much alive in medieval English. Indeed, well through the Renaissance the word "family" was used to mean either a body of servants, or the retinue of a nobleman, or a group of people related by blood, or a group of people living together. It was not until the 17th and 18th centuries that the last two of these meanings were combined to describe a new social phenomenon: a small number of close relatives who lived by themselves under the same roof and who were also emotionally close to each other. By the early 19th century this usage had virtually replaced the others, and since then "family" has referred mostly to an intimate domestic group of parents and their children. Thus, we find that today the meaning of the word is both wider and narrower than it had been before. (The same semantic shifts at roughly the same time can be observed in the French famille and the German Familie.)

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This means, among other things, that our present particular concept of family cannot simply be applied to other cultures or even to our own past. If we really want to understand the issue, we have to be more discriminate and, as our philological observations suggest, we should perhaps distinguish between at least three separate phenomena:

1. The kindred, i.e., people who are related, whether they live together or not,

2. the household, i.e., people who live together, whether they are related or not,

3. the family (something now often called "domestic family"), i.e., people who are related and who live together.

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In our own present culture it is usually the third of these phenomena, the "domestic family", which dominates the discussion. Kindred systems and household patterns by themselves are now generally neglected as social issues. Instead, the main interest is focused on the one case where they happen to coincide. For example, for the purposes of a recent U.S. Census, "family" was officially defined as "two or more persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption and living together in a household".

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Compared to its previous wide range of meanings, this current definition of "family" is, of course, very narrow. Still, upon closer examination, it covers a surprising variety of possible combinations. Even in the simplest case, where a family consists of only two persons, we may find any one of at least a dozen different relationships:

1. A childless married couple,2. a woman and her natural child,3. a woman and her adopted child,4. a man and his natural child,5. a man and his adopted child,6. a woman and her natural grandchild,7. a woman and her adopted grandchild,8. a man and his natural grandchild,9. a man and his adopted grandchild,10. a brother and a sister,11. two sisters, and12. two brothers.

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Actually, the list could easily be expanded by including great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, stepparents, stepsisters, stepbrothers, and still other persons "related by blood, marriage, or adoption". According to the U.S. Census, any and all of these social units, even if they comprise only two elements, must be considered families as long as some common living arrangement is involved.

As we can see, the government bureaucrats who use the word "family" in this fashion thereby express a restrictive and modern, but also a "neutral" view. They do not postulate a particular type or ideal of domestic family, but rather look for a practical way of describing present realities. After all, they want simple, descriptive statistics. Thus, for them, all of the above examples represent legitimate families in their own right, not fragments of other, larger families that have "broken up", or become "disorganized".

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However, the average citizen may see the matter quite differently. To him, the "two-person family" may not appear as a "real" family at all. Instead, he may regard it as a regrettable exception, a mere vestige or relic of what a family should be. Therefore, he is likely to feel that a husband and his wife or a brother and his sister, for example, do not constitute a family, and that, at the very least, a family should include three persons of two generations: a father, a mother, and a child.

On the other hand, most people today would probably be reluctant to go very far beyond that basic constellation. They would, of course, include any additional number of children, but might begin to wonder whether grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews, and nieces really belong to the family proper. Here again, it will be remembered, the census takers think differently. They say nothing about the size of the family or the degree of relationship between its members. Their decisive criterion is the common household. Thus, the definition of the U.S. Census covers not only the smallest, but also the largest possible domestic family.

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Still, in actual fact most modern American families fall somewhat between the extremes. They usually consist of more than two persons, but rarely of more than two generations. Both very large and very small families are now considered atypical. Instead, there seems to be a general trend to reduce or restore the family to a certain "natural" elementary group or "kernel" of a married couple and their offspring. Therefore it seems that the single term "domestic family" is inadequate for a more detailed discussion. If domestic families can come in different shapes and sizes, and if one particular combination is clearly favored today, some further distinction seems to be useful. Such a distinction has been provided by sociologists who commonly list two basic types of domestic family:

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THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD TODAY

Since the early days of the Industrial Revolution women in Europe and North America have made considerable progress towards equality with men, although much remains still to be done. Of course, the industrialization of Western countries at first had not improved the status of women, but had degraded them even further by exploiting them and their children in factories as cheap labor. In the preceding relatively prosperous agrarian culture women had worked on an almost equal footing with men and had been skilled in many occupations. Families were still "producing units", and women received recognition for contributing their substantial share. The factory system changed all that by breaking up the traditional extended family with its large household and by giving people specialized monotonous tasks behind perpetually moving machines. Women and children were, however, paid much less for such work than men, and thus their economic "value" declined. It took many decades of struggle before unionization and legal reform ended the crassest form of this discrimination.

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At the same time, middle- and upper-class women were increasingly confined to the home with little to do except to take care of their children. Their husbands no longer worked inside the house, but were absent during most of the day. These idle women often played the role of frail, sensitive creatures who had "the vapours" and fainted in any "indelicate" situation. On the other hand, many of them also became critical of their position in society. They found time to devote themselves to various religious and moral causes and even to become interested in abolition and the women's rights movement. Eventually, both working-class and bourgeois women insisted on change and contributed to the success of feminism. This success still is not total, and, as we all know, even in the industrialized countries women continue to fight for equal rights. Today, however, in addition to economic issues, problems of sexual self-determination have come to the foreground.

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Emancipation

Emancipation is a term used to describe various efforts to obtain political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchised group, or more generally in discussion of such matters.

"Political emancipation" as a phrase is less common in modern usage, especially outside academic, foreign or activist contexts. However, similar concepts may be referred to by other terms. For instance, in the United States the civil rights movement culminating in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, can be seen as further realization of events such as the Emancipation Proclamation and abolition of slavery a century earlier

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Freedom (political Political freedom is the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression. The members of a free society would have full dominion over their public and private lives. The opposite of a free society would be a totalitarian state, which highly restricts political freedom in order to regulate almost every aspect of behavior. In this sense freedom refers solely to the relation of men to other men, and the only infringement on it is coercion by men.[

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FeminismFeminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities and equal rights for women.According to some, the history of feminism consists of three waves.[1][2] The first wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the second was in the 1960s and 1970s and the third extends from the 1990s to the present.[3] Feminist Theory developed from the feminist movement.[4][5] It takes a number of forms in a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography, feminist history and feminist literary criticism.Feminism has altered aspects of Western society, ranging from culture to law. Feminist political activists have been concerned with issues such as a woman's right of contract and property, a woman's right to bodily integrity and autonomy (especially on matters such as reproductive rights, including the right to abortion, access to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection from domestic violence; against sexual harassment and rape;[6][7] for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; and against other forms of discrimination.[8][9][10]

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Throughout much of its history, most of the leaders of feminist social and political movements, as well as many feminist theorists, have been predominantly middle-class white women from western Europe and North America. However, at least since Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech to US Feminists, women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms. This trend accelerated in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the collapse of European colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. Since that time, women in former European colonies and the Third World have proposed alternative "post-colonial" and "Third World" feminisms as well.[11] Some Postcolonial feminists, such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty, are critical of Western feminism for being ethnocentric.[12] Black feminists, such as Angela Davis and Alice Walker, share this view.[13]

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Since the 1980s some feminists (including the standpoint feminists) have argued that the feminist movement should address global issues (such as rape, incest, and prostitution) and culturally specific issues (such as female genital mutilation in some parts of Africa and the Middle East and glass ceiling practices that impede women's advancement in developed economies) in order to understand how gender inequality interacts with racism, homophobia, classism and colonization in a "matrix of domination."[14][15] Other feminists have argued that gender roles are social rather than biological phenomena.[16][17][18]

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History of Feminism

Feminists and scholars have divided the movement's history into three "waves". The first wave refers mainly to women's suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (concerned with women's right to vote). The second wave refers to the ideas and actions associated with the women's liberation movement beginning in the 1960s (which campaigned for legal and cultural equality for women). The third wave refers to a continuation of, and a reaction to the perceived failures of, second-wave feminism, beginning in the 1990s.[3]

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First-wave feminism First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom and the United States. Originally it focused on the promotion of equal contract and property rights for women and the opposition to chattel marriage and ownership of married women (and their children) by their husbands. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, activism focused primarily on gaining political power, particularly the right of women's suffrage. Yet, feminists such as Voltairine de Cleyre and Margaret Sanger were still active in campaigning for women's sexual, reproductive, and economic rights at this time.[19]

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In Britain the Suffragettes campaigned for the women's vote. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed granting the vote to women over the age of 30 who owned houses. In 1928 this was extended to all women over eighteen.[20] In the United States leaders of this movement included Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who each campaigned for the abolition of slavery prior to championing women's right to vote. Other important leaders include Lucy Stone, Olympia Brown, and Helen Pitts. American first-wave feminism involved a wide range of women, some belonging to conservative Christian groups (such as Frances Willard and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union), others resembling the diversity and radicalism of much of second-wave feminism (such as Matilda Joslyn Gage and the National Woman Suffrage Association). 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 retrospectively after the term second-wave feminism began to be used to describe a newer feminist movement that focused as much on fighting social and cultural inequalities as political inequalities.[19][21][22][23][24]

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Second-wave feminism

Second-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity beginning in the early 1960s and lasting through the late 1980s. The scholar Imelda Whelehan suggests that the second wave was a continuation of the earlier phase of feminism involving the suffragettes in the UK and USA.[25] Second-wave feminism has existed continuously since that time and coexists with what is termed third-wave feminism. Second-wave feminists saw cultural and political inequalities as inextricably linked and encouraged women to understand aspects of their personal lives as deeply politicized as well as reflective of a sexist structure of power. With her essay "The Personal is Political," Carol Hanisch coined a slogan that became synonymous with the second wave.[6] If first-wave feminism focused on rights such as suffrage, second-wave feminism was largely concerned with other issues of equality, such as the end to discrimination.[19]

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Women's Liberation in the USA The phrase "Womens Liberation" was first used in the United States in 1964[26] and first appeared in print in 1966.[27] By 1968, although the term Womens Liberation Front appeared in the magazine Ramparts, it was starting to refer to the whole womens movement.[28] Bra-burning also became associated with the movement.[29] One of the most vocal critics of the women's liberation movement has been the African American feminist and intellectual bell hooks, who argues that the movement's glossing over of race and class was part of its failure to address "the issues that divided women". She has highlighted the lack of minority voices in the women's movement.[30]

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The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) criticized the idea that women could only find fulfillment through childrearing and homemaking. According to Friedan's obituary in the The New York Times, The Feminine Mystique ignited the contemporary women's movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world and is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.[31] In the book Friedan hypothesizes that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family. Friedan specifically locates this system among post-World War II middle-class suburban communities. At the same time, America's post-war economic boom had led to the development of new technologies that were supposed to make household work less difficult, but that often had the result of making women's work less meaningful and valuable.[

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Third-wave feminism Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, arising as a response to perceived failures of the second wave and also as a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by the second wave. Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's essentialist definitions of femininity, which (according to them) over-emphasize the experiences of upper middle-class white women. A post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality is central to much of the third wave's ideology. Third-wave feminists often focus on "micro-politics" and challenge the second wave's paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for females.The third wave has its origins in the mid-1980s. Feminist leaders rooted in the second wave like Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Chela Sandoval, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many other black feminists, sought to negotiate a space within feminist thought for consideration of race-related subjectivities.Third-wave feminism also consists of debates between difference feminists, such as the psychologist Carol Gilligan, who believe that there are important differences between the sexes, and those who believe that there are no inherent differences between the sexes and contend that gender roles are due to social conditioning.

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Post-feminism

French feminism Simone de Beauvoir 1970spresent

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Feminism's many forms Liberal feminism

Liberal feminism asserts the equality of men and women through political and legal reform. It is an individualistic form of feminism, which focuses on womens ability to show and maintain their equality through their own actions and choices. Liberal feminism uses the personal interactions between men and women as the place from which to transform society. According to liberal feminists, all women are capable of asserting their ability to achieve equality, therefore it is possible for change to happen without altering the structure of society. Issues important to liberal feminists include reproductive and abortion rights, sexual harassment, voting, education, "equal pay for equal work", affordable childcare, affordable health care, and bringing to light the frequency of sexual and domestic violence against women.

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Feminist theory Feminist theory is an extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical fields. It encompasses work in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics, women's studies, literary criticism, and philosophy Feminist theory aims to understand gender inequality and focuses on gender politics, power relations, and sexuality. While providing a critique of these social and political relations, much of feminist theory also focuses on the promotion of women's rights and interests. Themes explored in feminist theory include discrimination, stereotyping, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, and patriarchyThe American literary critic and feminist Elaine Showalter describes the phased development of feminist theory. The first she calls "feminist critique", in which the feminist reader examines the ideologies behind literary phenomena. The second Showalter calls "gynocriticism", in which the "woman is producer of textual meaning" including "the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career [and] literary history". The last phase she calls "gender theory", in which the "ideological inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system" are explored".[58] This model has been criticized by Toril Moi who sees it as an essentialist and deterministic model for female subjectivity and for failing to account for the situation of women outside the West

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Women EmancipationRadical feminism considers the capitalist hierarchy, which it describes as sexist, as the defining feature of womens oppression. Radical feminists believe that women can free themselves only when they have done away with what they consider an inherently oppressive and dominating system. Radical feminists feel that there is a male-based authority and power structure and that it is responsible for oppression and inequality, and that as long as the system and its values are in place, society will not be able to be reformed in any significant way. Radical feminists see capitalism as one of the most important barriers to ending oppression. Most radical feminists see no alternatives other than the total uprooting and reconstruction of society in order to achieve their goals.

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Separatist feminism Separatist feminism is one form of radical feminism. It does not support heterosexual relationships because its proponents argue that the sexual disparities between men and women are unresolvable. Separatist feminists generally do not feel that men can make positive contributions to the feminist movement and that even well-intentioned men replicate patriarchal dynamics.[61] Author Marilyn Frye describes separatist feminism as "separation of various sorts or modes from men and from institutions, relationships, roles and activities that are male-defined, male-dominated, and operating for the benefit of males and the maintenance of male privilege this separation being initiated or maintained, at will, by women

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Sex-positive feminism Both the sex-positive and sex-negative forms of present-day feminism can trace their roots to early radical feminism. Some feminists joined the sex-positive feminist movement in response to anti-pornography feminists, such as Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Robin Morgan and Dorchen Leidholdt, who argued that heterosexual pornography was a central cause of women's oppression. Sex-positive feminism, sometimes known as pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, or sexually liberal feminism, is a movement that was formed in order to address issues of women's sexual pleasure, sex work, and inclusive gender identities. The initial period of intense debate and acrimony between sex-positive and anti-pornography feminists during the early 1980s is often referred to as the Feminist Sex Wars. Other, less academic, sex-positive feminists became involved not in opposition to other feminists, but in direct response to what they saw as patriarchal control of sexuality, such as the organization Feminists for Free Expression.Ellen Willis's 1981 essay, "Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex?" is the origin of the term, pro-sex feminism. In it, she argues against feminists making alliances with the political right in opposition to pornography and prostitution, as occurred, for example, during the Meese Commission hearings in the United States. Willis argues for a feminism that embraces sexual freedom, including men's sexual freedom, rather than one that condemns pornography, consensual BDSM, and in some cases sexual intercourse and fellatio.

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Anarcha-feminism Another offshoot of radical feminism is anarcha-feminism (also called anarchist feminism or anarcho-feminism), an ideology which combines feminist and anarchist beliefs. Anarcha-feminists view patriarchy as a manifestation of hierarchy, believing that the fight against patriarchy is an essential part of the class struggle and the anarchist struggle against the state.Anarcha-feminists such as Susan Brown see the anarchist struggle as a necessary component of the feminist struggle. In Brown's words, "anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is inherently feminist"Recently, Wendy McElroy has defined a position (she describes it as "ifeminism" or "individualist feminism") that combines feminism with anarcho-capitalism or libertarianism, arguing that a pro-capitalist, anti-state position is compatible with an emphasis on equal rights and empowerment for women.Individualist anarchist-feminism has grown from the US-based individualist anarchism movement.

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Black feminism Black feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably bound together.Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression but ignore race can discriminate against many people, including women, through racial bias. The Combahee River Collective argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression.One of the theories that evolved out of this movement was Alice Walker's Womanism. It emerged after the early feminist movements that were led specifically by white women who advocated social changes such as womans suffrage. These movements were largely white middle-class movements and ignored oppression based on racism and classism. Alice Walker and other Womanists pointed out that black women experienced a different and more intense kind of oppression from that of white womeAngela Davis was one of the first people who articulated an argument centered around the intersection of race, gender, and class in her book, Women, Race, and Class. Kimberle Crenshaw, a prominent feminist law theorist, gave the idea the name Intersectionality while discussing identity politics in her essay, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color".

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Socialist and Marxist feminisms Socialist feminism connects the oppression of women to Marxist ideas about exploitation, oppression and labor. Socialist feminists see women as being held down as a result of their unequal standing in both the workplace and the domestic sphere.Prostitution, domestic work, childcare, and marriage are all seen as ways in which women are exploited by a patriarchal system which devalues women and the substantial work that they do. Socialist feminists focus their energies on broad change that affects society as a whole, and not just on an individual basis. They see the need to work alongside not just men, but all other groups, as they see the oppression of women as a part of a larger pattern that affects everyone involved in the capitalist system.

Marx felt that when class oppression was overcome, gender oppression would vanish as well. According to socialist feminists, this view of gender oppression as a sub-class of class oppression is naive and much of the work of socialist feminists has gone towards separating gender phenomena from class phenomena. Some contributors to socialist feminism have criticized these traditional Marxist ideas for being largely silent on gender oppression except to subsume it underneath broader class oppression.Other socialist feminists, notably two long-lived American organizations Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party, point to the classic Marxist writings of Frederick Engels and August Bebel as a powerful explanation of the link between gender oppression and class exploitation.In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century both Clara Zetkin and Eleanor Marx were against the demonization of men and supported a proletarian revolution that would overcome as many male-female inequalities as possible

Post-structural and postmodern feminism Postcolonial feminists argue that oppression relating to the colonial experience, particularly racial, class, and ethnic oppression, has marginalized women in postcolonial societies. They challenge the assumption that gender oppression is the primary force of patriarchy. Postcolonial feminists object to portrayals of women of non-Western societies as passive and voiceless victims and the portrayal of Western women as modern, educated and empowered.Postcolonial feminism emerged from the gendered history of colonialism: colonial powers often imposed Western norms on colonized regions. In the 1940s and 1950s, after the formation of the United Nations, former colonies were monitored by the West for what was considered "social progress". The status of women in the developing world has been monitored by organizations such as the United Nations and as a result traditional practices and roles taken up by womensometimes seen as distasteful by Western standardscould be considered a form of rebellion against colonial oppression. Postcolonial feminists today struggle to fight gender oppression within their own cultural models of society rather than through those imposed by the Western colonizers.

Feminism and political movements Feminism and socialism

Some early twentieth century feminists allied with socialism. In 1907 there was an International Conference of Socialist Women in Stuttgart where suffrage was described as a tool of class struggle. Clara Zetkin of the Social Democratic Party of Germany called for women's suffrage to build a "socialist order, the only one that allows for a radical solution to the women's question".In Britain, the women's movement was allied with the Labour party. In America, Betty Friedan emerged from a radical background to take command of the organized movement. Radical Women, founded in 1967 in Seattle is the oldest (and still active) socialist feminist organization in the U.S. During the Spanish Civil War, Dolores Ibrruri (La Pasionaria) led the Communist Party of Spain. Although she supported equal rights for women, she opposed women fighting on the front and clashed with the anarcho-feminist Mujeres Libres.Revolutions in Latin America brought changes in women's status in countries such as Nicaragua where Feminist ideology during the Sandinista Revolution was largely responsible for improvements

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