IMAGINING OTHER
People Power (Social Movements)
The women’s movement.
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Feminism as philosophy (extra notes)
Weeks 3 and 4: The women’s
movement – Summary Handout.
(i) Introduction: definition of feminism; what is
the problem?
1.1: feminism: definitions
1.2: what do feminists want?
An end to patriarchy, a sexual
revolution (Kate Millett, Sexual Politics 1969).
1.3 The problem of traditional socialisation:
Pythagoras
(500 BC):
"There is a good principle which created order, light and man, and
a bad principle which
created chaos, darkness and woman."
Aristotle (4th
century
Galen (2nd
century AD physician and biologist):
"The female is more imperfect than the male... just as man is the
most perfect of all animals,
so also, within the human species, man is more perfect than woman.”
Christianity:
Eve, Judeo-Christian tradition: St Paul – sin and the body
Science - and
witches. Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626): "He that hath wife and children
hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises,
either of virtue or of mischief.
Certainly the best works, and of greatest for the public, have proceeded
from the unmarried or childless men."
18th Century: Rousseau (1712 – 1778): women as more
‘feeling’ and nurturing; public life
is for men.
19th Century:
"Man is the rival of other men; he delights
in competition, and this leads to ambition... With
woman, the powers of intuition, of rapid
perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more
strongly marked than in man, but some, at least
of these faculties are characteristic of the
lower races, and therefore of a past and lower
stage of civilisation.
The chief distinction in the intellectual powers
of the two sexes is shown by man attaining to
a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than
woman can attain – whether requiring deep
thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the
use of the senses and hands".
2. history of the women’s movement:
French
Revolution:
2.1 Olympe de Gouges: Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791): “ignorance, omission or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments…”.
2.2 Mary Wollstonecraft: (1759 – 1797): Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, 1787 –Enlightenment ideals demanded that women be given a decent education.
Joined a radical group along with William Godwin (anarchist), Tom Paine (socialist/liberal), Henry Fuseli (artist, influenced
William Blake) and Joseph Priestley (scientist),
Vindication
of the Rights of Woman in 1792.
“Inheriting ... the sovereignty of beauty – [women] have, to maintain their power, resigned the natural rights which the exercise of reason might have procured them, and chosen rather to be short-lived queens than labour to obtain the sober pleasures that arise from equality.”
2.3 Anti- slavery movement: women played important roles in revolts against
slavery in Caribbean; the first female
anti-slavery convention in America (1837)’. Sojourner Truth in 1851.
2.4. Contribution of the Enlightenment: rationalism, humanism, science, democracy.
3. Other aspects of the ‘first wave’ of the movement:
Reform Act of 1832,
Women working in the mines.
But ambivalent attitudes to women: marriage,
‘chivalry’.
Education for women: America: Mount Holyoke, 1837; England: Queen’s College (Univ of
London) 1848, Bedford 1849, Girton (Camb) 1872, Lady Margaret Hall and
Somerville (Oxf) in 1979. For school
teachers…
Political aspects: July 1848, Seneca Falls Convention (based on Declaration of
Independence) : control of earnings, right to own property, access to education
and divorce, guardianship of children, and suffrage.
1850 Harriett Taylor (1807 – 1858) in London hears of the convention and
writes of it in the Westminster Review. 1856 Campaign for Women’s Property Act.
1866 J.S. Mill (1806 – 1873) presents the first suffrage petition to parliament, and publishes Subjection of Women in 1869.
1880s Women’s Suffrage Societies
1903 WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) – Emily Pankhurst (ILP) –
1908 rally of 250,000 - 500,000
‘suffragettes’ – imprisonment, forced
feeding; violence and non-violence.
1918, women over 30 got the vote.
World War II and women at work
Wages for housework
(ii) The women’s movement – phases/waves:
1. The origins and first wave/phase of the women’s movement:(1830s –
1930s/50s): to change attitudes, liberal perspective. Education, suffrage and the
suffragettes, equality of work; political equality, the liberal perspective,
inadequacies of Marxism, links with
other social movements.
2. The ‘second wave’ (1960s/70s - 1990s):
Radical demands: equal pay, wages for housework,
control over reproduction, abortion, opposition to domestic violence; issues of
‘difference’ and ‘identity’; Simone de Beauvoir; The Feminine Mystique, Betty
Friedan, 1963; non-hierarchical
organisation; backlash.
3. Third wave feminism:
Postmodernism, deconstruction, feminist
postmodernism...
4. Achievements of the women’s movement: New concepts and language derived
from feminist thought:
4.1 sex vs gender: biological vs
cultural, male/female vs
masculine/feminine
4.2 sexism: different and inferior
4.3 dualisms in language (normative):
angry ~ hysterical; assertive ~ bossy; talk ~ gossip; complain ~ nag; stud ~
whore/slut/slag; hard~ soft; rational ~ emotional;
4.4 the personal is the political:
domestic violence,
But NB - on
average, two women a week are killed by their partner or former partner in
England and Wales.
5. Recent issues, and where is the women’s movement now? Discussion.
The ‘glass ceiling’, inequality in pay, #meetoo movement, FGM…