F E M I N I S M
Feminism comprises a number of movements, theories and philosophies that are concerned with issues of gender difference, that advocate equality for women, and that campaign for women's rights and interests.
According to some, the history of feminism can be divided into three waves.
The first wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, spurred on by the Age of
Enlightenment. See here:
http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php/topic,9560.msg81960.htmlThe second was in the 1960s and 1970s and the third extends from the 1990s to the present.
Feminist Theory developed from the feminist movement. 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 choose whether to have an abortion, access to contraception and quality prenatal care);
for protection from domestic violence;
against sexual harassment and ****;
for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; and
against other forms of discrimination.
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. Some Postcolonial feminists, such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty, are critical of Western feminism for being ethnocentric. Black feminists, such as Angela Davis and Alice Walker, share this view.
Since the 1980s some feminists (including the standpoint feminists) have argued that the feminist movement should address global issues (such as ****, 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."
Other feminists have argued that gender roles are social rather than biological phenomena.