feminism expository essay

5 Essays About Feminism

On the surface, the definition of feminism is simple. It’s the belief that women should be politically, socially, and economically equal to men. Over the years, the movement expanded from a focus on voting rights to worker rights, reproductive rights, gender roles, and beyond. Modern feminism is moving to a more inclusive and intersectional place. Here are five essays about feminism that tackle topics like trans activism, progress, and privilege:

“Trickle-Down Feminism” – Sarah Jaffe

Feminists celebrate successful women who have seemingly smashed through the glass ceiling, but the reality is that most women are still under it. Even in fast-growing fields where women dominate (retail sales, food service, etc), women make less money than men. In this essay from Dissent Magazine, author Sarah Jaffe argues that when the fastest-growing fields are low-wage, it isn’t a victory for women. At the same time, it does present an opportunity to change the way we value service work. It isn’t enough to focus only on “equal pay for equal work” as that argument mostly focuses on jobs where someone can negotiate their salary. This essay explores how feminism can’t succeed if only the concerns of the wealthiest, most privileged women are prioritized.

Sarah Jaffe writes about organizing, social movements, and the economy with publications like Dissent, the Nation, Jacobin, and others. She is the former labor editor at Alternet.

“What No One Else Will Tell You About Feminism” – Lindy West

Written in Lindy West’s distinct voice, this essay provides a clear, condensed history of feminism’s different “waves.” The first wave focused on the right to vote, which established women as equal citizens. In the second wave, after WWII, women began taking on issues that couldn’t be legally-challenged, like gender roles. As the third wave began, the scope of feminism began to encompass others besides middle-class white women. Women should be allowed to define their womanhood for themselves. West also points out that “waves” may not even exist since history is a continuum. She concludes the essay by declaring if you believe all people are equal, you are a feminist.

Jezebel reprinted this essay with permission from How To Be A Person, The Stranger’s Guide to College by Lindy West, Dan Savage, Christopher Frizelle, and Bethany Jean Clement. Lindy West is an activist, comedian, and writer who focuses on topics like feminism, pop culture, and fat acceptance.

“Toward a Trans* Feminism” – Jack Halberstam

The history of transactivsm and feminism is messy. This essay begins with the author’s personal experience with gender and terms like trans*, which Halberstam prefers. The asterisk serves to “open the meaning,” allowing people to choose their categorization as they see fit. The main body of the essay focuses on the less-known history of feminists and trans* folks. He references essays from the 1970s and other literature that help paint a more complete picture. In current times, the tension between radical feminism and trans* feminism remains, but changes that are good for trans* women are good for everyone.

This essay was adapted from Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability by Jack Halberstam. Halberstam is the Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is also the author of several books.

“Rebecca Solnit: How Change Happens” – Rebecca Solnit

The world is changing. Rebecca Solnit describes this transformation as an assembly of ideas, visions, values, essays, books, protests, and more. It has many layers involving race, class, gender, power, climate, justice, etc, as well as many voices. This has led to more clarity about injustice. Solnit describes watching the transformation and how progress and “ wokeness ” are part of a historical process. Progress is hard work. Not exclusively about feminism, this essay takes a more intersectional look at how progress as a whole occurs.

“How Change Happens” was adapted from the introduction to Whose Story Is it? Rebecca Solnit is a writer, activist, and historian. She’s the author of over 20 books on art, politics, feminism, and more.

“Bad Feminist” extract – Roxane Gay

People are complicated and imperfect. In this excerpt from her book Bad Feminist: Essays , Roxane Gay explores her contradictions. The opening sentence is, “I am failing as a woman.” She goes on to describe how she wants to be independent, but also to be taken care of. She wants to be strong and in charge, but she also wants to surrender sometimes. For a long time, she denied that she was human and flawed. However, the work it took to deny her humanness is harder than accepting who she is. While Gay might be a “bad feminist,” she is also deeply committed to issues that are important to feminism. This is a must-read essay for any feminists who worry that they aren’t perfect.

Roxane Gay is a professor, speaker, editor, writer, and social commentator. She is the author of Bad Feminist , a New York Times bestseller, Hunger (a memoir), and works of fiction.

16 Inspiring Civil Rights Leaders You Should Know

15 Trusted Charities Fighting for Housing Rights

15 Examples of Gender Inequality in Everyday Life

11 Approaches to Alleviate World Hunger

15 Facts About Malala Yousafzai

12 Ways Poverty Affects Society

15 Great Charities to Donate to in 2024

15 Quotes Exposing Injustice in Society

14 Trusted Charities Helping Civilians in Palestine

The Great Migration: History, Causes and Facts

Social Change 101: Meaning, Examples, Learning Opportunities

Rosa Parks: Biography, Quotes, Impact

About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Essay on Feminism

500 words essay on feminism.

Feminism is a social and political movement that advocates for the rights of women on the grounds of equality of sexes. It does not deny the biological differences between the sexes but demands equality in opportunities. It covers everything from social and political to economic arenas. In fact, feminist campaigns have been a crucial part of history in women empowerment. The feminist campaigns of the twentieth century made the right to vote, public property, work and education possible. Thus, an essay on feminism will discuss its importance and impact.

Importance of Feminism

Feminism is not just important for women but for every sex, gender, caste, creed and more. It empowers the people and society as a whole. A very common misconception is that only women can be feminists.

It is absolutely wrong but feminism does not just benefit women. It strives for equality of the sexes, not the superiority of women. Feminism takes the gender roles which have been around for many years and tries to deconstruct them.

This allows people to live freely and empower lives without getting tied down by traditional restrictions. In other words, it benefits women as well as men. For instance, while it advocates that women must be free to earn it also advocates that why should men be the sole breadwinner of the family? It tries to give freedom to all.

Most importantly, it is essential for young people to get involved in the feminist movement. This way, we can achieve faster results. It is no less than a dream to live in a world full of equality.

Thus, we must all look at our own cultures and communities for making this dream a reality. We have not yet reached the result but we are on the journey, so we must continue on this mission to achieve successful results.

Impact of Feminism

Feminism has had a life-changing impact on everyone, especially women. If we look at history, we see that it is what gave women the right to vote. It was no small feat but was achieved successfully by women.

Further, if we look at modern feminism, we see how feminism involves in life-altering campaigns. For instance, campaigns that support the abortion of unwanted pregnancy and reproductive rights allow women to have freedom of choice.

Moreover, feminism constantly questions patriarchy and strives to renounce gender roles. It allows men to be whoever they wish to be without getting judged. It is not taboo for men to cry anymore because they must be allowed to express themselves freely.

Similarly, it also helps the LGBTQ community greatly as it advocates for their right too. Feminism gives a place for everyone and it is best to practice intersectional feminism to understand everyone’s struggle.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Feminism

The key message of feminism must be to highlight the choice in bringing personal meaning to feminism. It is to recognize other’s right for doing the same thing. The sad part is that despite feminism being a strong movement, there are still parts of the world where inequality and exploitation of women take places. Thus, we must all try to practice intersectional feminism.

FAQ of Essay on Feminism

Question 1: What are feminist beliefs?

Answer 1: Feminist beliefs are the desire for equality between the sexes. It is the belief that men and women must have equal rights and opportunities. Thus, it covers everything from social and political to economic equality.

Question 2: What started feminism?

Answer 2: The first wave of feminism occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It emerged out of an environment of urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics. This wave aimed to open up new doors for women with a focus on suffrage.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

Travelling Essay
Picnic Essay
Our Country Essay
My Parents Essay
Essay on Favourite Personality
Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
Essay on Knowledge is Power
Essay on Gurpurab
Essay on My Favourite Season
Essay on Types of Sports

Download the App

Table of Contents
New in this Archive
Chronological
Editorial Information
About the SEP
Editorial Board
How to Cite the SEP
Special Characters
Support the SEP
PDFs for SEP Friends
Make a Donation
SEPIA for Libraries
Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

Friends PDF Preview
Author and Citation Info
Back to Top

Topics in Feminism

Feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks justice for women and the end of sexism in all forms. However, there are many different kinds of feminism. Feminists disagree about what sexism consists in, and what exactly ought to be done about it; they disagree about what it means to be a woman or a man and what social and political implications gender has or should have. Nonetheless, motivated by the quest for social justice, feminist inquiry provides a wide range of perspectives on social, cultural, economic, and political phenomena. Important topics for feminist theory and politics include: the body, class and work, disability, the family, globalization, human rights, popular culture, race and racism, reproduction, science, the self, sex work, human trafficking, and sexuality. Extended discussion of these topics is included in the sub-entries to feminism in this encyclopedia.

1. Introduction

2.1 feminist beliefs and feminist movements, 2.2 normative and descriptive components, 2.3 feminism and the diversity of women, 2.4 feminism as anti-sexism, 3. topics in feminism: overview of the encyclopedia sub-entries, feminism and class, feminism and disability, feminism, human rights, global feminism, and human trafficking, feminism and race/ethnicity.

Feminism, Sex, and Sexuality

Related Entries

Feminism brings many things to philosophy including not only a variety of particular moral and political claims, but ways of asking and answering questions, constructive and critical dialogue with mainstream philosophical views and methods, and new topics of inquiry. Feminist philosophers work within all the major traditions of philosophical scholarship including analytic philosophy, American Pragmatist philosophy, and Continential philosophy. Entries in this Encyclopedia appearing under the heading “feminism, approaches” discuss the impact of these traditions on feminist scholarship and examine the possibility and desirability of work that makes links between two traditions. Feminist contributions to and interventions in mainstream philosophical debates are covered in entries in this encyclopedia under “feminism, interventions”. Entries covered under the rubric “feminism, topics” concern philosophical issues that arise as feminists articulate accounts of sexism, critique sexist social and cultural practices, and develop alternative visions of a just world. In short, they are philosophical topics that arise within feminism.

Although there are many different and sometimes conflicting approaches to feminist philosophy, it is instructive to begin by asking what, if anything, feminists as a group are committed to. Considering some of the controversies over what feminism is provides a springboard for seeing how feminist commitments generate a host of philosophical topics, especially as those commitments confront the world as we know it.

2. What is Feminism?

The term ‘feminism’ has many different uses and its meanings are often contested. For example, some writers use the term ‘feminism’ to refer to a historically specific political movement in the US and Europe; other writers use it to refer to the belief that there are injustices against women, though there is no consensus on the exact list of these injustices. Although the term “feminism” has a history in English linked with women's activism from the late 19th century to the present, it is useful to distinguish feminist ideas or beliefs from feminist political movements, for even in periods where there has been no significant political activism around women's subordination, individuals have been concerned with and theorized about justice for women. So, for example, it makes sense to ask whether Plato was a feminist, given his view that women should be trained to rule ( Republic , Book V), even though he was an exception in his historical context. (See e.g., Tuana 1994.)

Our goal here is not to survey the history of feminism — as a set of ideas or as a series of political movements — but rather is to sketch some of the central uses of the term that are most relevant to those interested in contemporary feminist philosophy. The references we provide below are only a small sample of the work available on the topics in question; more complete bibliographies are available at the specific topical entries and also at the end of this entry.

In the mid-1800s the term ‘feminism’ was used to refer to “the qualities of females”, and it was not until after the First International Women's Conference in Paris in 1892 that the term, following the French term féministe, was used regularly in English for a belief in and advocacy of equal rights for women based on the idea of the equality of the sexes. Although the term “feminism” in English is rooted in the mobilization for woman suffrage in Europe and the US during the late 19th and early 20th century, of course efforts to obtain justice for women did not begin or end with this period of activism. So some have found it useful to think of the women's movement in the US as occurring in “waves”. On the wave model, the struggle to achieve basic political rights during the period from the mid-19th century until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 counts as “First Wave” feminism. Feminism waned between the two world wars, to be “revived” in the late 1960's and early 1970's as “Second Wave” feminism. In this second wave, feminists pushed beyond the early quest for political rights to fight for greater equality across the board, e.g., in education, the workplace, and at home. More recent transformations of feminism have resulted in a “Third Wave”. Third Wave feminists often critique Second Wave feminism for its lack of attention to the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion (see Section 2.3 below; also Breines 2002; Spring 2002), and emphasize “identity” as a site of gender struggle. (For more information on the “wave” model and each of the “waves”, see Other Internet Resources .)

However, some feminist scholars object to identifying feminism with these particular moments of political activism, on the grounds that doing so eclipses the fact that there has been resistance to male domination that should be considered “feminist” throughout history and across cultures: i.e., feminism is not confined to a few (White) women in the West over the past century or so. Moreover, even considering only relatively recent efforts to resist male domination in Europe and the US, the emphasis on “First” and “Second” Wave feminism ignores the ongoing resistance to male domination between the 1920's and 1960's and the resistance outside mainstream politics, particularly by women of color and working class women (Cott 1987).

One strategy for solving these problems would be to identify feminism in terms of a set of ideas or beliefs rather than participation in any particular political movement. As we saw above, this also has the advantage of allowing us to locate isolated feminists whose work was not understood or appreciated during their time. But how should we go about identifying a core set of feminist beliefs? Some would suggest that we should focus on the political ideas that the term was apparently coined to capture, viz., the commitment to women's equal rights. This acknowledges that commitment to and advocacy for women's rights has not been confined to the Women's Liberation Movement in the West. But this too raises controversy, for it frames feminism within a broadly Liberal approach to political and economic life. Although most feminists would probably agree that there is some sense of “rights” on which achieving equal rights for women is a necessary condition for feminism to succeed, most would also argue that this would not be sufficient. This is because women's oppression under male domination rarely if ever consists solely in depriving women of political and legal “rights”, but also extends into the structure of our society and the content of our culture, and permeates our consciousness (e.g., Bartky 1990).

Is there any point, then, to asking what feminism is? Given the controversies over the term and the politics of circumscribing the boundaries of a social movement, it is sometimes tempting to think that the best we can do is to articulate a set of disjuncts that capture a range of feminist beliefs. However, at the same time it can be both intellectually and politically valuable to have a schematic framework that enables us to map at least some of our points of agreement and disagreement. We'll begin here by considering some of the basic elements of feminism as a political position or set of beliefs. For a survey of different philosophical approaches to feminism, see “Feminism, approaches to”.

In many of its forms, feminism seems to involve at least two groups of claims, one normative and the other descriptive. The normative claims concern how women ought (or ought not) to be viewed and treated and draw on a background conception of justice or broad moral position; the descriptive claims concern how women are, as a matter of fact, viewed and treated, alleging that they are not being treated in accordance with the standards of justice or morality invoked in the normative claims. Together the normative and descriptive claims provide reasons for working to change the way things are; hence, feminism is not just an intellectual but also a political movement.

So, for example, a Liberal approach of the kind already mentioned might define feminism (rather simplistically here) in terms of two claims:

(Normative) Men and women are entitled to equal rights and respect.
(Descriptive) Women are currently disadvantaged with respect to rights and respect, compared with men […in such and such respects and due to such and such conditions…].

On this account, that women and men ought to have equal rights and respect is the normative claim; and that women are denied equal rights and respect functions here as the descriptive claim. Admittedly, the claim that women are disadvantaged with respect to rights and respect is not a “purely descriptive” claim since it plausibly involves an evaluative component. However, our point here is simply that claims of this sort concern what is the case not what ought to be the case. Moreover, as indicated by the ellipsis above, the descriptive component of a substantive feminist view will not be articulable in a single claim, but will involve an account of the specific social mechanisms that deprive women of, e.g., rights and respect. For example, is the primary source of women's subordination her role in the family? (Engels 1845; Okin 1989) Or is it her role in the labor market? (Bergmann 2002) Is the problem males' tendencies to sexual violence (and what is the source of these tendencies?)? (Brownmiller 1975; MacKinnon 1987) Or is it simply women's biological role in reproduction? (Firestone 1970)

Disagreements within feminism can occur with respect to either the descriptive or normative claims, e.g., feminists differ on what would count as justice or injustice for women (what counts as “equality,” “oppression,” “disadvantage”, what rights should everyone be accorded?) , and what sorts of injustice women in fact suffer (what aspects of women's current situation are harmful or unjust?). Disagreements may also lie in the explanations of the injustice: two feminists may agree that women are unjustly being denied proper rights and respect and yet substantively differ in their accounts of how or why the injustice occurs and what is required to end it (Jaggar 1994).

Disagreements between feminists and non-feminists can occur with respect to both the normative and descriptive claims as well, e.g., some non-feminists agree with feminists on the ways women ought to be viewed and treated, but don't see any problem with the way things currently are. Others disagree about the background moral or political views.

In an effort to suggest a schematic account of feminism, Susan James characterizes feminism as follows:

Feminism is grounded on the belief that women are oppressed or disadvantaged by comparison with men, and that their oppression is in some way illegitimate or unjustified. Under the umbrella of this general characterization there are, however, many interpretations of women and their oppression, so that it is a mistake to think of feminism as a single philosophical doctrine, or as implying an agreed political program. (James 1998, 576)

James seems here to be using the notions of “oppression” and “disadvantage” as placeholders for more substantive accounts of injustice (both normative and descriptive) over which feminists disagree.

Some might prefer to define feminism in terms of a normative claim alone: feminists are those who believe that women are entitled to equal rights, or equal respect, or…(fill in the blank with one's preferred account of injustice), and one is not required to believe that women are currently being treated unjustly. However, if we were to adopt this terminological convention, it would be harder to identify some of the interesting sources of disagreement both with and within feminism, and the term ‘feminism’ would lose much of its potential to unite those whose concerns and commitments extend beyond their moral beliefs to their social interpretations and political affiliations. Feminists are not simply those who are committed in principle to justice for women; feminists take themselves to have reasons to bring about social change on women's behalf.

Taking “feminism” to entail both normative and empirical commitments also helps make sense of some uses of the term ‘feminism’ in recent popular discourse. In everyday conversation it is not uncommon to find both men and women prefixing a comment they might make about women with the caveat, “I'm not a feminist, but…”. Of course this qualification might be (and is) used for various purposes, but one persistent usage seems to follow the qualification with some claim that is hard to distinguish from claims that feminists are wont to make. E.g., I'm not a feminist but I believe that women should earn equal pay for equal work; or I'm not a feminist but I'm delighted that first-rate women basketball players are finally getting some recognition in the WNBA. If we see the identification “feminist” as implicitly committing one to both a normative stance about how things should be and an interpretation of current conditions, it is easy to imagine someone being in the position of wanting to cancel his or her endorsement of either the normative or the descriptive claim. So, e.g., one might be willing to acknowledge that there are cases where women have been disadvantaged without wanting to buy any broad moral theory that takes a stance on such things (especially where it is unclear what that broad theory is). Or one might be willing to acknowledge in a very general way that equality for women is a good thing, without being committed to interpreting particular everyday situations as unjust (especially if is unclear how far these interpretations would have to extend). Feminists, however, at least according to popular discourse, are ready to both adopt a broad account of what justice for women would require and interpret everyday situations as unjust by the standards of that account. Those who explicitly cancel their commitment to feminism may then be happy to endorse some part of the view but are unwilling to endorse what they find to be a problematic package.

As mentioned above, there is considerable debate within feminism concerning the normative question: what would count as (full) justice for women? What is the nature of the wrong that feminism seeks to address? E.g., is the wrong that women have been deprived equal rights? Is it that women have been denied equal respect for their differences? Is it that women's experiences have been ignored and devalued? Is it all of the above and more? What framework should we employ to identify and address the issues? (See, e.g., Jaggar 1983; Young 1990a; Tuana and Tong 1995.) Feminist philosophers in particular have asked: Do the standard philosophical accounts of justice and morality provide us adequate resources to theorize male domination, or do we need distinctively feminist accounts? (E.g., Okin 1979; Hoagland 1989; Okin 1989; Ruddick 1989; Benhabib 1992; Hampton 1993; Held 1993; Tong 1993; Baier 1994; Moody-Adams 1997; Walker 1998; Kittay 1999; Robinson 1999; Young 2011; O'Connor 2008).

Note, however, that by phrasing the task as one of identifying the wrongs women suffer (and have suffered), there is an implicit suggestion that women as a group can be usefully compared against men as a group with respect to their standing or position in society; and this seems to suggest that women as a group are treated in the same way, or that they all suffer the same injustices, and men as a group all reap the same advantages. But of course this is not the case, or at least not straightforwardly so. As bell hooks so vividly pointed out, in 1963 when Betty Friedan urged women to reconsider the role of housewife and demanded greater opportunities for women to enter the workforce (Friedan 1963), Friedan was not speaking for working class women or most women of color (hooks 1984, 1-4). Neither was she speaking for lesbians. Women as a group experience many different forms of injustice, and the sexism they encounter interacts in complex ways with other systems of oppression. In contemporary terms, this is known as the problem of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991). This critique has led some theorists to resist the label “feminism” and adopt a different name for their view. Earlier, during the 1860s–80s, the term ‘womanism’ had sometimes been used for such intellectual and political commitments; more recently, Alice Walker has proposed that “womanism” provides a contemporary alternative to “feminism” that better addresses the needs of Black women and women of color more generally (Walker 1990).

To consider some of the different strategies for responding to the phenomenon of intersectionality, let's return to the schematic claims that women are oppressed and this oppression is wrong or unjust. Very broadly, then, one might characterize the goal of feminism to be ending the oppression of women. But if we also acknowledge that women are oppressed not just by sexism, but in many ways, e.g., by classism, homophobia, racism, ageism, ableism, etc., then it might seem that the goal of feminism is to end all oppression that affects women. And some feminists have adopted this interpretation, e.g., (Ware 1970), quoted in (Crow 2000, 1).

Note, however, that not all agree with such an expansive definition of feminism. One might agree that feminists ought to work to end all forms of oppression — oppression is unjust and feminists, like everyone else, have a moral obligation to fight injustice — without maintaining that it is the mission of feminism to end all oppression. One might even believe that in order to accomplish feminism's goals it is necessary to combat racism and economic exploitation, but also think that there is a narrower set of specifically feminist objectives. In other words, opposing oppression in its many forms may be instrumental to, even a necessary means to, feminism, but not intrinsic to it. E.g., bell hooks argues:

Feminism, as liberation struggle, must exist apart from and as a part of the larger struggle to eradicate domination in all its forms. We must understand that patriarchal domination shares an ideological foundation with racism and other forms of group oppression, and that there is no hope that it can be eradicated while these systems remain intact. This knowledge should consistently inform the direction of feminist theory and practice. (hooks 1989, 22)

On hooks' account, the defining characteristic that distinguishes feminism from other liberation struggles is its concern with sexism:

Unlike many feminist comrades, I believe women and men must share a common understanding — a basic knowledge of what feminism is — if it is ever to be a powerful mass-based political movement. In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center , I suggest that defining feminism broadly as “a movement to end sexism and sexist oppression” would enable us to have a common political goal…Sharing a common goal does not imply that women and men will not have radically divergent perspectives on how that goal might be reached. (hooks 1989, 23)

hooks' approach depends on the claim that sexism is a particular form of oppression that can be distinguished from other forms, e.g., racism and homophobia, even though it is currently (and virtually always) interlocked with other forms of oppression. Feminism's objective is to end sexism, though because of its relation to other forms of oppression, this will require efforts to end other forms of oppression as well. For example, feminists who themselves remain racists will not be able to fully appreciate the broad impact of sexism on the lives of women of color. Furthermore because sexist institutions are also, e.g., racist, classist and homophobic, dismantling sexist institutions will require that we dismantle the other forms of domination intertwined with them (Heldke and O'Connor 2004). Following hooks' lead, we might characterize feminism schematically (allowing the schema to be filled in differently by different accounts) as the view that women are subject to sexist oppression and that this is wrong. This move shifts the burden of our inquiry from a characterization of what feminism is to a characterization of what sexism, or sexist oppression is.

As mentioned above, there are a variety of interpretations — feminist and otherwise — of what exactly oppression consists in, but the leading idea is that oppression consists in “an enclosing structure of forces and barriers which tends to the immobilization and reduction of a group or category of people” (Frye 1983, 10-11). Not just any “enclosing structure” is oppressive, however, for plausibly any process of socialization will create a structure that both limits and enables all individuals who live within it. In the case of oppression, however, the “enclosing structures” in question are part of a broader system that asymmetrically and unjustly disadvantages one group and benefits another. So, e.g., although sexism restricts the opportunities available to — and so unquestionably harms — both men and women (and considering some pairwise comparisons may even have a greater negative impact on a man than a woman), overall, women as a group unjustly suffer the greater harm. It is a crucial feature of contemporary accounts, however, that one cannot assume that members of the privileged group have intentionally designed or maintained the system for their benefit. The oppressive structure may be the result of an historical process whose originators are long gone, or it may be the unintended result of complex cooperative strategies gone wrong.

Leaving aside (at least for the moment) further details in the account of oppression, the question remains: What makes a particular form of oppression sexist? If we just say that a form of oppression counts as sexist oppression if it harms women, or even primarily harms women, this is not enough to distinguish it from other forms of oppression. Virtually all forms of oppression harm women, and arguably some besides sexism harm women primarily (though not exclusively), e.g., body size oppression, age oppression. Besides, as we've noted before, sexism is not only harmful to women, but is harmful to all of us.

What makes a particular form of oppression sexist seems to be not just that it harms women, but that someone is subject to this form of oppression specifically because she is (or at least appears to be) a woman. Racial oppression harms women, but racial oppression (by itself) doesn't harm them because they are women, it harms them because they are (or appear to be) members of a particular race. The suggestion that sexist oppression consists in oppression to which one is subject by virtue of being or appearing to be a woman provides us at least the beginnings of an analytical tool for distinguishing subordinating structures that happen to affect some or even all women from those that are more specifically sexist (Haslanger 2004). But problems and unclarities remain.

First, we need to explicate further what it means to be oppressed “because you are a woman”. E.g., is the idea that there is a particular form of oppression that is specific to women? Is to be oppressed “as a woman” to be oppressed in a particular way? Or can we be pluralists about what sexist oppression consists in without fragmenting the notion beyond usefulness?

Two strategies for explicating sexist oppression have proven to be problematic. The first is to maintain that there is a form of oppression common to all women. For example, one might interpret Catharine MacKinnon's work as claiming that to be oppressed as a woman is to be viewed and treated as sexually subordinate, where this claim is grounded in the (alleged) universal fact of the eroticization of male dominance and female submission (MacKinnon 1987; MacKinnon 1989). Although MacKinnon allows that sexual subordination can happen in a myriad of ways, her account is monistic in its attempt to unite the different forms of sexist oppression around a single core account that makes sexual objectification the focus. Although MacKinnon's work provides a powerful resource for analyzing women's subordination, many have argued that it is too narrow, e.g., in some contexts (especially in developing countries) sexist oppression seems to concern more the local division of labor and economic exploitation. Although certainly sexual subordination is a factor in sexist oppression, it requires us to fabricate implausible explanations of social life to suppose that all divisions of labor that exploit women (as women) stem from the “eroticization of dominance and submission”. Moreover, it isn't obvious that in order to make sense of sexist oppression we need to seek a single form of oppression common to all women.

A second problematic strategy has been to consider as paradigms those who are oppressed only as women, with the thought that complex cases bringing in additional forms of oppression will obscure what is distinctive of sexist oppression. This strategy would have us focus in the U.S. on White, wealthy, young, beautiful, able-bodied, heterosexual women to determine what oppression, if any, they suffer, with the hope of finding sexism in its “purest” form, unmixed with racism or homophobia, etc. (see Spelman 1988, 52-54). This approach is not only flawed in its exclusion of all but the most elite women in its paradigm, but it assumes that privilege in other areas does not affect the phenomenon under consideration. As Elizabeth Spelman makes the point:

…no woman is subject to any form of oppression simply because she is a woman; which forms of oppression she is subject to depend on what “kind” of woman she is. In a world in which a woman might be subject to racism, classism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, if she is not so subject it is because of her race, class, religion, sexual orientation. So it can never be the case that the treatment of a woman has only to do with her gender and nothing to do with her class or race. (Spelman 1988, 52-3)

Recent accounts of oppression are designed to allow that oppression takes many forms, and refuse to identify one form as more basic or fundamental than the rest. For example, Iris Young describes five “faces” of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and systematic violence (Young 1990c, Ch. 2). Plausibly others should be added to the list. Sexist or racist oppression, for example, will manifest itself in different ways in different contexts, e.g., in some contexts through systematic violence, in other contexts through economic exploitation. Acknowledging this does not go quite far enough, however, for monistic theorists such as MacKinnon could grant this much. Pluralist accounts of sexist oppression must also allow that there isn't an over-arching explanation of sexist oppression that applies to all its forms: in some cases it may be that women's oppression as women is due to the eroticization of male dominance, but in other cases it may be better explained by women's reproductive value in establishing kinship structures (Rubin 1975), or by the shifting demands of globalization within an ethnically stratified workplace. In other words, pluralists resist the temptation to “grand social theory,” “overarching metanarratives,” “monocausal explanations,” to allow that the explanation of sexism in a particular historical context will rely on economic, political, legal, and cultural factors that are specific to that context which would prevent the account from being generalized to all instances of sexism (Fraser and Nicholson 1990). It is still compatible with pluralist methods to seek out patterns in women's social positions and structural explanations within and across social contexts, but in doing so we must be highly sensitive to historical and cultural variation.

However, if we pursue a pluralist strategy in understanding sexist oppression, what unifies all the instances as instances of sexism? After all, we cannot assume that the oppression in question takes the same form in different contexts, and we cannot assume that there is an underlying explanation of the different ways it manifests itself. So can we even speak of there being a unified set of cases — something we can call “sexist oppression” — at all?

Some feminists would urge us to recognize that there isn't a systematic way to unify the different instances of sexism, and correspondingly, there is no systematic unity in what counts as feminism: instead we should see the basis for feminist unity in coalition building (Reagon 1983). Different groups work to combat different forms of oppression; some groups take oppression against women (as women) as a primary concern. If there is a basis for cooperation between some subset of these groups in a given context, then finding that basis is an accomplishment, but should not be taken for granted.

An alternative, however, would be to grant that in practice unity among feminists cannot be taken for granted, but to begin with a theoretical common-ground among feminist views that does not assume that sexism appears in the same form or for the same reasons in all contexts. We saw above that one promising strategy for distinguishing sexism from racism, classism, and other forms of injustice is to focus on the idea that if an individual is suffering sexist oppression, then an important part of the explanation why she is subject to the injustice is that she is or appears to be a woman. This includes cases in which women as a group are explicitly targeted by a policy or a practice, but also includes cases where the policy or practice affects women due to a history of sexism, even if they are not explicitly targeted. For example, if women are deprived an education and so are, on the whole, illiterate. And if under these circumstances only those who are literate are entitled to vote. Then we can say that women as a group are being disenfranchised and that this is a form of sexist oppression because part of the explanation of why women cannot vote is that they are women, and women are deprived an education. The commonality among the cases is to be found in the role of gender in the explanation of the injustice rather than the specific form the injustice takes. Building on this we could unify a broad range of feminist views by seeing them as committed to the (very abstract) claims that:

(Descriptive claim) Women, and those who appear to be women, are subjected to wrongs and/or injustice at least in part because they are or appear to be women.
(Normative claim) The wrongs/injustices in question in (i) ought not to occur and should be stopped when and where they do.

We have so far been using the term ‘oppression’ loosely to cover whatever form of wrong or injustice is at issue. Continuing with this intentional openness in the exact nature of the wrong, the question still remains what it means to say that women are subjected to injustice because they are women. To address this question, it may help to consider a familiar ambiguity in the notion “because”: are we concerned here with causal explanations or justifications? On one hand, the claim that someone is oppressed because she is a woman suggests that the best (causal) explanation of the subordination in question will make reference to her sex: e.g., Paula is subject to sexist oppression on the job because the best explanation of why she makes $1.00 less an hour for doing comparable work as Paul makes reference to her sex (possibly in addition to her race or other social classifications). On the other hand, the claim that someone is oppressed because she is a woman suggests that the rationale or basis for the oppressive structures requires that one be sensitive to someone's sex in determining how they should be viewed and treated, i.e., that the justification for someone's being subject to the structures in question depends on a representation of them as sexed male or female. E.g., Paula is subject to sexist oppression on the job because the pay scale for her job classification is justified within a framework that distinguishes and devalues women's work compared with men's.

Note, however, that in both sorts of cases the fact that one is or appears to be a woman need not be the only factor relevant in explaining the injustice. It might be, for example, that one stands out in a group because of one's race, or one's class, or one's sexuality, and because one stands out one becomes a target for injustice. But if the injustice takes a form that, e.g., is regarded as especially apt for a woman, then the injustice should be understood intersectionally, i.e., as a response to an intersectional category. For example, the practice of raping Bosnian women was an intersectional injustice: it targeted them both because they were Bosnian and because they were women.

Of course, these two understandings of being oppressed because you are a woman are not incompatible; in fact they typically support one another. Because human actions are often best explained by the framework employed for justifying them, one's sex may play a large role in determining how one is treated because the background understandings for what's appropriate treatment draw invidious distinctions between the sexes. In other words, the causal mechanism for sexism often passes through problematic representations of women and gender roles.

In each of the cases of being oppressed as a woman mentioned above, Paula suffers injustice, but a crucial factor in explaining the injustice is that Paula is a member of a particular group, viz., women (or females). This, we think, is crucial in understanding why sexism (and racism, and other -isms) are most often understood as kinds of oppression. Oppression is injustice that, first and foremost, concerns groups; individuals are oppressed just in case they are subjected to injustice because of their group membership. On this view, to claim that women as women suffer injustice is to claim that women are oppressed.

Where does this leave us? ‘Feminism’ is an umbrella term for a range of views about injustices against women. There are disagreements among feminists about the nature of justice in general and the nature of sexism, in particular, the specific kinds of injustice or wrong women suffer; and the group who should be the primary focus of feminist efforts. Nonetheless, feminists are committed to bringing about social change to end injustice against women, in particular, injustice against women as women.

Given a schematic framework for considering different forms of feminism, it should be clearer how philosophical issues arise in working out the details of a feminist position. The most straightforward philosophical commitment will be to a normative theory that articulates an account of justice and/or an account of the good. Feminists have been involved in critiquing existing normative theories and articulating alternatives for some time now. A survey of some of this work can be found under “Feminism, interventions”, in the sub-entries within “Feminist Political Philosophy”, viz., Liberal Feminism, Materialist Feminism, and Radical Feminism. (See also Hampton 1993; Jaggar 1983; Kittay 1999; MacKinnon 1989; Nussbaum 1999; Okin 1979; Okin 1989; Pateman 1988; Schneir 1972; Schneir 1994; Silvers 1999; Young 1990.)

However, there is also important philosophical work to be done in what we have been calling the “descriptive” component of feminism. Careful critical attention to our practices can reveal the inadequacy of dominant philosophical tropes. For example, feminists working from the perspective of women's lives have been influential in bringing philosophical attention to the phenomenon of care and care-giving (Ruddick 1989; Held 1995; Held 2007; Hamington 2006), dependency (Kittay 1999), disability (Wilkerson 2002; Carlson 2009) women's labor (Waring 1999; Delphy 1984; Harley 2007), scientific bias and objectivity (Longino 1990), and have revealed weaknesses in existing ethical, political, and epistemological theories. More generally, feminists have called for inquiry into what are typically considered “private” practices and personal concerns, such as the family, sexuality, the body, to balance what has seemed to be a masculine pre-occupation with “public” and impersonal matters. Philosophy presupposes interpretive tools for understanding our everyday lives; feminist work in articulating additional dimensions of experience and aspects of our practices is invaluable in demonstrating the bias in existing tools, and in the search for better ones.

Feminist explanations of sexism and accounts of sexist practices also raise issues that are within the domain of traditional philosophical inquiry. For example, in thinking about care, feminists have asked questions about the nature of the self; in thinking about gender, feminists have asked what the relationship is between the natural and the social; in thinking about sexism in science, feminists have asked what should count as knowledge. In some such cases mainstream philosophical accounts provide useful tools; in other cases, alternative proposals have seemed more promising.

In the sub-entries included under “feminism (topics)” in the Table of Contents to this Encyclopedia , authors survey some of the recent feminist work on a topic, highlighting the issues that are of particular relevance to philosophy. These entries are:

perspectives on autonomy
perspectives on class and work
perspectives on disability
perspectives on globalization
perspectives on objectification
perspectives on power
perspectives on rape
perspectives on reproduction and the family
perspectives on science
perspectives on sex and gender
perspectives on sex markets
perspectives on the body
perspectives on the self
perspectives on trans issues

See also the entries in the Related Entries section below.

Alexander, M. Jacqui and Lisa Albrecht, eds. 1998. The Third Wave: Feminist Perspectives on Racism , New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.
Anderson, Elizabeth. 1999. “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics , 109(2): 287-337.
Anzaldúa, Gloria, ed. 1990. Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras , San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
Baier, Annette C. 1994. Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Barker, Drucilla and Edith Kuiper. 2010 Feminist Economics , New York: Routledge.
Barrett, Michèle. 1991. The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault , Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bartky, Sandra. 1990. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” In her Femininity and Domination , New York: Routledge, 63-82.
Basu, Amrita. 1995. The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women's Movements in Global Perspective , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Baumgardner, Jennifer and Amy Richards. 2000. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future , New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1974 (1952). The Second Sex , Trans. and Ed. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1992. Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics , New York: Routledge.
Bergmann, Barbara. 2002. The Economic Emergence of Women (Second edition) New York: Palgrave, St. Martin's Press.
Breines, Wini. 2002. “What's Love Got to Do with It? White Women, Black Women, and Feminism in the Movement Years,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 27(4): 1-095-1133.
Brownmiller, Susan. 1975. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape , New York: Bantam.
Calhoun, Cheshire. 2000. Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet: Lesbian and Gay Displacement , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––. 1989. “Responsibility and Reproach.” Ethics , 99(2): 389-406.
Campbell, Sue, hetitia Meynell and Susan Sherwin. 2009. Embodiment and Agency , University Park, PA: Penn State Press.
Carlson, Licia. 2009. The Faces of Intellectual Disability: Philosophical Reflections , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black Feminist Thought , Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman.
Cott, Nancy. 1987. The Grounding of Modern Feminism , New Haven: Yale University Press.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review , 43(6): 1241-1299.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller and Kendall Thomas. 1995. “Introduction.” In Critical Race Theory , ed., Kimberle Crenshaw, et al. New York: The New Press, xiii-xxxii.
Crow, Barbara. 2000. Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader , New York: New York University Press.
Davis, Angela. 1983. Women, Race and Class , New York: Random House.
Davis, Lennard J. 2010. The Disability Studies Reader , 3rd edition. New York: Routledge.
Delmar, Rosalind. 2001. “What is Feminism?” In Theorizing Feminism , ed., Anne C. Hermann and Abigail J. Stewart. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 5-28.
Delphy, Christine. 1984. Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women's Oppression , Trans. Diane Leonard. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Duplessis, Rachel Blau, and Ann Snitow, eds. 1998. The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women's Liberation , New York: Random House (Crown Publishing).
Dutt, M. 1998. “Reclaiming a Human Rights Culture: Feminism of Difference and Alliance.” In Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age , ed., Ella Shohat. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 225-246.
Echols, Alice. 1990. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75 , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Engels, Friedrich. 1972 (1845). The Origin of The Family, Private Property, and the State , New York: International Publishers.
Enloe, Cynthia. 2007. Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link , hanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Farr, Kathryn. 2004. Sex Trafficking: The Global Market in Women and Children , New York: Worth Publishing.
Findlen, Barbara. 2001. Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation , 2nd edition. Seattle, WA: Seal Press.
Fine, Michelle and Adrienne Asch, eds. 1988. Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture, and Politics , Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Firestone, Shulamith. 1970. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution , New York: Bantam.
Folbre, Nancy. 2010. Greed, Lust, and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fraser, Nancy and Linda Nicholson. 1990. “Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism.” In Feminism/Postmodernism , ed., Linda Nicholson. New York: Routledge.
Friedan, Betty. 1963. The Feminine Mystique , New York: Norton.
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The Politics of Reality , Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature , New York: Columbia University Press.
Green, Joyce, ed. 2007. Making Space for Indigenous Feminism , London: Zed Books.
Grewal, I. 1998. “On the New Global Feminism and the Family of Nations: Dilemmas of Transnational Feminist Practice.” In Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age , ed., Ella Shohat. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 501-530.
Hamington, Maurice. 2006. Socializing Care: Feminist Ethics and Public Issuses , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Hampton, Jean. 1993. “Feminist Contractarianism,” in Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt, eds. A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Harley, Sharon ed. 2007. Women's Labor in the Global Economy: Speaking in Multiple Voices , New Burnswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Haslanger, Sally. 2004. “Oppressions: Racial and Other.” In Racism, Philosophy and Mind: Philosophical Explanations of Racism and Its Implications , ed., Michael Levine and Tamas Pataki. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Held, Virginia. 1995. Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
–––. 1993. Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Held, Virgina. 2007. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, Global , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heldke, Lisa and Peg O'Connor, eds. 2004. Oppression, Privilege, and Resistance: Theoretical Perspectives on Racism, Sexism, and Heterosexism , New York: McGraw Hill.
Hernandez, Daisy and Bushra Rehman. 2002. Colonize This! Young Women of Color in Today's Feminism. , Berkeley: Seal Press.
Herrman, Anne C. and Abigail J. Stewart, eds. 1994. Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Heywood, Leslie and Jennifer Drake, eds. 1997. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism ,
Hillyer, Barbara. 1993. Feminism and Disability , Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Hoagland, Sarah L. 1989. Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Values , Palo Alto, CA: Institute for Lesbian Studies.
hooks, bell. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black , Boston: South End Press.
–––. 1984. Feminist Theory from Margin to Center , Boston: South End Press.
–––. 1981. Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism , Boston: South End Press.
Hurtado, Aída. 1996. The Color of Privilege: Three Blasphemies on Race and Feminism , Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Jaggar, Alison M. 1983. Feminist Politics and Human Nature , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Jaggar, Alison M. 1994. Controversies within Feminist Social Ethics , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
James, Susan. 1998. “Feminism.” In Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Vol. 10. London: Routledge, p. 576.
Kempadoo, Kamala, ed. 2005. Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights , Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Kiss, Elizabeth. 1995. “Feminism and Rights.” Dissent , 42(3): 342-347
Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency , New York: Routledge.
Kymlicka, Will. 1989. Liberalism, Community and Culture , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Longino, Helen. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mackenzie, Catriona and Natalie Stoljar, eds. 2000. Relational Autonomy: Feminist perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1989. Towards a Feminist Theory of the State , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
–––. 1987. Feminism Unmodified , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Maturi, Ellen, ed. 2003. Women and the Economy: An Economic Reader , New York: M.E. Sharpe.
McRuer, Robert and Abby Wilkerson, eds. 2003. “Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies.” Special Issue Gay and Lesbian Quarterly , 9. 1-2.
Moghadam, Valentine M. 2005. Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
Mohanty, Chandra, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres, eds. 1991. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism , Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Molyneux, Maxine and Nikki Craske, eds. 2001. Gender and the Politics of Rights and Democracy in Latin America , Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan.
Moody-Adams, Michele. 1997. Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy , Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Moraga, Cherrie. 2000. “From a Long Line of Vendidas: Chicanas and Feminism.” In her Loving in the War Years , 2nd edition. Boston: South End Press.
Moraga, Cherrie and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color , Watertown, MA: Persephone Press.
Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism , New York: Routledge.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1995. “Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings.” In Women, Culture and Development : A Study of Human Capabilities , ed., Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 61-104.
–––. 1999. Sex and Social Justice , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O'Brien, Mary. 1979. “Reproducing Marxist Man.” In The Sexism of Social and Political Theory: Women and Reproduction from Plato to Nietzsche , ed., Lorenne M. G. Clark and Lynda Lange. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 99-116. Reprinted in (Tuana and Tong 1995: 91-103).
O'Connor, Peg. 2008. Morality and Our Complicated Form of Life: Feminist Wittgensteinian Metaethics , University Park, PA: Penn State Press.
Ong, Aihwa. 1988. “Colonialism and Modernity: Feminist Re-presentation of Women in Non-Western Societies.” Inscriptions , 3(4): 90. Also in (Herrman and Stewart 1994).
Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Justice, Gender, and the Family , New York: Basic Books.
–––. 1979. Women in Western Political Thought , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract , Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. 1983. “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century.” In: Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology , ed. Barbara Smith. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 356-368.
Robinson, Fiona. 1999. Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory, and International Affairs , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Rubin, Gayle. 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ”Political Economy“ of Sex.” In Towards an Anthropology of Women , ed., Rayna Rapp Reiter. New York: Monthly Review Press, 157-210.
Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace , Boston: Beacon Press.
Schneir, Miriam, ed. 1994. Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present , New York: Vintage Books.
–––. 1972. Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings , New York: Vintage Books.
Scott, Joan W. 1988. “Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: or The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism.” Feminist Studies , 14 (1): 33-50.
Silvers, Anita, David Wasserman, Mary Mahowald. 1999. Disability, Difference, Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy , Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
Simpson, J. A. and E. S. C. Weiner, ed., 1989. Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OED Online. Oxford University Press. “feminism, n1” (1851).
Snitow, Ann. 1990. “A Gender Diary.” In Conflicts in Feminism , ed. M. Hirsch and E. Fox Keller. New York: Routledge, 9-43.
Spelman, Elizabeth. 1988. The Inessential Woman , Boston: Beacon Press.
Springer, Kimberly. 2002. “Third Wave Black Feminism?” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 27(4): 1060-1082
Tanner, Leslie B. 1970 Voices From Women's Liberation , New York: New American Library (A Mentor Book).
Taylor, Vesta and Leila J. Rupp. 1996. “Lesbian Existence and the Women's Movement: Researching the ‘Lavender Herring’.” In Feminism and Social Change , ed. Heidi Gottfried. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Tong, Rosemarie. 1993. Feminine and Feminist Ethics , Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Tuana, Nancy and Rosemarie Tong, eds. 1995. Feminism and Philosophy , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Walker, Alice. 1990. “Definition of Womanist,” In Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras , ed., Gloria Anzaldúa. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 370.
Walker, Margaret Urban. 1998. Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics , New York: Routledge.
–––, ed. 1999. Mother Time: Women, Aging, and Ethics , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Walker, Rebecca, ed. 1995. To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism , New York: Random House (Anchor Books).
Ware, Cellestine. 1970. Woman Power: The Movement for Women's Liberation , New York: Tower Publications.
Waring, Marilyn. 1999. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth , Second edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Weisberg, D. Kelly, ed. 1993. Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations , Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Wendell, Susan. 1996. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability , New York and London: Routledge.
Wilkerson, Abby. 2002. “Disability, Sex Radicalism, and the Problem of Political Agency.” NWSA Journal , 14.3: 33-57.
Young, Iris. 1990a. “Humanism, Gynocentrism and Feminist Politics.” In Throwing Like A Girl , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 73-91.
Young, Iris. 1990b. “Socialist Feminism and the Limits of Dual Systems Theory.” In her Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
–––. 1990c. Justice and the Politics of Difference , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Young, Iris. 2011. Responsibility for Justice , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zophy, Angela Howard. 1990. “Feminism.” In The Handbook of American Women's History , ed., Angela Howard Zophy and Frances M. Kavenik. New York: Routledge (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities).

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up this entry topic at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

Resources listed below have been chosen to provide only a springboard into the huge amount of feminist material available on the web. The emphasis here is on general resources useful for doing research in feminist philosophy or interdisciplinary feminist theory, e.g., the links connect to bibliographies and meta-sites, and resources concerning inclusion, exclusion, and feminist diversity. The list is incomplete and will be regularly revised and expanded. Further resources on topics in feminism such as popular culture, reproductive rights, sex work, are available within each sub-entry on that topic.

Feminist Theory Website
Women and Social Movements in the US: 1600–2000
The Path of the Women's Rights Movement: Detailed Timeline 1848–1997
Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement (Duke Univ. Archives)
Documenting Difference: An Illustrated & Annotated Anthology of Documents on Race, Class, Gender & Ethnicity in the United States
Race, Gender, and Affirmative Action Resource Page

“Waves” of Feminism

“Waves of Feminism” by Jo Freeman (1996).
Winning the Vote (Western NY Suffragists).
Amendments to the US Constitution: 13th, 14th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 21st
NOW's 1966 Statement of Purpose
“The Women's Liberation Movement: Its Origins, Structures, and Ideals” by Jo Freeman (1971).

Marxist, Socialist, and Materialist Feminisms

WMST-L discussion of how to define “marxist feminism” Aug 1994)
Marxist/Materialist Feminism (Feminist Theory Website)
A Marxist Feminist Critique
Marxist Feminism

Feminist Economics

Feminist Economics (Feminist Theory Website)
International Association for Feminist Economics
Re:Gender , formerly National Council for Research on Women
International Center for Research on Women

Women and Labor

Rights for Working Women
United States Department of Labor
United States Department of Labor: Audience – Women , a shortcut to information and services the Department of Labor (DOL) offers for women.
Center for Research on Women with Disabilities (CROWD)
Global Feminism (Feminist Majority Foundation)
NOW and Global Feminism
United Nations Development Fund for Women
Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI)
Polaris Project
Not For Sale Campaign
Human Trafficking Search Website

General Resources

Women's Studies Librarian's Office
Women of Color Resource Sites

African-American/Black Feminisms and Womanism

African-American/Black/Womanist Feminism on the Web
Black Feminist and Womanist Identity Bibliography (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library)
Black Feminist/Womanist Works: A Beginning List (WMST-L)

Asian-American and Asian Feminisms

American Women's History: A Research Guide (Asian-American Women)
South Asian Women's Studies Bibliography (U.C. Berkeley)
Journal of South Asia Women's Studies

Chicana/Latina Feminisms

Bibliography on Chicana Feminism (Cal State, Long Beach Library)
Chicano/a Latino/a Movimientos

American Indian, Native, Indigenous Feminisms

Native American Studies Prgoram (Dartmouth College)

Feminism, Sex, Sexuality, Transgender, and Intersex

History of Sexuality Resources (Duke Special Collections)
Internet Resources: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (Stanford University Library)
QueerTheory.com

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Elizabeth Harman for research assistance in preparing this essay. Thanks also to Elizabeth Hackett, Ishani Maitra, and Ásta Sveinsdóttir for discussion and feedback. Thanks to Leslee Mahoney for the 2011 revisions.

Most Popular

12 days ago

Can You Start a Sentence with Because?

Starting an essay: innovative approaches, murder vs. kill, how to use a semicolon.

11 days ago

Is It Bad to Be an Average Student? Redditors Weigh In with Support

The beginnings of feminism essay sample, example.

By Johannes Helmold

Though feminism is seen as a modern-day perspective and philosophy, its history extends far back. In fact, feminism does not have, like many movements, a linear history. Its beginnings are difficult to trace, but in the following paragraphs, I will do my best to unravel the earliest recorded works on feminism and works that added to the discourse of the advancement of women within societies.

Strangely enough, the first person credited as advocating for the equality of women was a man: the philosopher Plato. During his lifetime, which was about 24 centuries ago, he “[argued] for the total political and sexual equality of women, advocating that they be members of his highest class, … those who rule and fight” (Baruch, Elaine Hoffman). The next important figure in history to challenge the status quo was French writer Christine de Pizan (1364 – c. 1430). She is said to be the first woman in history to denounce misogyny in writing. Her books The Book of the City of Ladies and Epistle to the God of Love were landmark volumes in her time, and were even presented to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria (de Beauvoir, Simone).

After de Pizan, many other feminists worked to get out their message of the equality of the sexes. For instance, in the 16th century, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi were prominent literary figures pushing a feminist agenda. And in the 17th century, Hannah Woolley, Inés de la Cruz, Marie Le Jars de Gournay, Anne Bradstreet, and François Poullain de la Barre were the key literary proponents of feminism (Schneir, Miram). However, one 17th-century writer outshone others during her time in terms of being an advocate for women’s rights: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Many feminist scholars refer to her as a shining example of how education could shape a woman’s intellect and outdo men’s intelligence. She was said to be brighter than most of men she encountered, which was revolutionary in the 17th century (Makin, Bathsua). Most women in the 17th century were not afforded a proper and full education.

The more formal introduction of feminist ideals were made in the Age of Enlightenment. In this more secular and introspective time, many writers began to support the equality of women in society as a whole. Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation published in 1781 proposed that we should not deny women’s rights based on preconceived notions of women’s lack of intelligence. He gave many examples of intelligent and able women in this volume (Williford, Miriam). Around the same time, Nicolas de Condorcet, a mathematician, politician, revolutionary, and defender of human rights published De l’admission des femmes au droit de cité ( For the Admission to the Rights of Citizenship For Women ). As a French revolutionary, he was an advocate for women’s suffrage in the fresh French government of 1790 (Williams, David). In 1791, a compatriot, Olympe de Gouges, saw de Condorcet’s failure to appeal to the French National Assembly to change women’s rights, and wrote and printed the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen . This document set a precedent in the way of writing about women’s rights, which was to satirize the style of existing legislation written by men (Hesse, Carla). However, the most essential feminist writer of the time was Mary Wollstonecraft. She is mentioned as the first feminist philosopher, and published the pivotal A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. In this work, she noted that the perception of women came almost exclusively from the male perspective, and that both genders contributed to inequality. She determined that both genders needed a proper education to understand and work towards equality. Wollstonecraft had set the stage for writing unabashedly about women’s standing, and what to work towards and how in relation to women’s rights ( Foundation for Economic Education ).

Though feminism is thought of as a new trend, advocates of women’s rights have been active since Classical Greek times. Plato was the first to be famous for proposing equality among genders, though it was not until Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792 that feminism claimed a respectable place in literature. Though early feminist literature had been criticized harshly, by the Age of Enlightenment and the Victorian Era, feminist literature had become more commonplace and even respected. In between Plato’s lectures and Wollstonecraft’s essays, there were many other key figures that established what we know of as feminism today. Without their advocacy, the natural born rights of women would not have been achieved on an almost global scale.

Baruch, Elaine Hoffman. Women in Men’s Utopias , in Rohrlich, Ruby, & Elaine Hoffman Baruch, eds., Women in Search of Utopia , op. cit., p. [209] and see p. 211 (Plato supporting “child care” so women could be soldiers), citing, at p. [209] n. 1, Plato, trans. Francis MacDonald Cornford, The Republic (N.Y.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973), Book V.

de Beauvoir, Simone. English translation 1953 (1989). The Second Sex . Vintage Books. p. 105. ISBN 0-679-72451-6.

Schneir, Miram, 1972 (1994). Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings . Vintage Books. p. xiv. ISBN 0-679-75381-8.

Makin, Bathsua (1673). An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen . London: Printed by J.D., to be sold by Tho. Parkhurst.

Williford, Miriam. Bentham on the rights of Women, Journal of the History of Ideas , 1975.

Williams, David. “Condorcet, Feminism, and the Egalitarian Principle.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 5 (1976): 151+.

Hesse, Carla. The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (2001), 42.

“Mary Wollstonecraft – Equal Rights for Women.” Foundation for Economic Education .

Comments (0)

Welcome to A*Help comments!

We’re all about debate and discussion at A*Help.

We value the diverse opinions of users, so you may find points of view that you don’t agree with. And that’s cool. However, there are certain things we’re not OK with: attempts to manipulate our data in any way, for example, or the posting of discriminative, offensive, hateful, or disparaging material.

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

More from Essay on Civil Rights Examples and Samples

Nov 23 2023

Why Is Of Mice And Men Banned

Nov 07 2023

Pride and Prejudice Themes

Jun 13 2023

George Washington as Military Leader and President – views and attitudes Essay Sample, Example

Related writing guides, writing an expository essay.

Remember Me

What is your profession ? Student Teacher Writer Other

Forgotten Password?

Username or Email

Tools and Resources
Customer Services
African Literatures
Asian Literatures
British and Irish Literatures
Latin American and Caribbean Literatures
North American Literatures
Oceanic Literatures
Slavic and Eastern European Literatures
West Asian Literatures, including Middle East
Western European Literatures
Ancient Literatures (before 500)
Middle Ages and Renaissance (500-1600)
Enlightenment and Early Modern (1600-1800)
19th Century (1800-1900)
20th and 21st Century (1900-present)
Children’s Literature
Cultural Studies
Film, TV, and Media
Literary Theory
Non-Fiction and Life Writing
Print Culture and Digital Humanities
Theater and Drama
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Feminist theory.

Pelagia Goulimari Pelagia Goulimari Department of English, University of Oxford
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.976
Published online: 19 November 2020

Feminist theory in the 21st century is an enormously diverse field. Mapping its genealogy of multiple intersecting traditions offers a toolkit for 21st-century feminist literary criticism, indeed for literary criticism tout court. Feminist phenomenologists (Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, Toril Moi, Miranda Fricker, Pamela Sue Anderson, Sara Ahmed, Alia Al-Saji) have contributed concepts and analyses of situation, lived experience, embodiment, and orientation. African American feminists (Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Hortense J. Spillers, Saidiya V. Hartman) have theorized race, intersectionality, and heterogeneity, particularly differences among women and among black women. Postcolonial feminists (Assia Djebar, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Florence Stratton, Saba Mahmood, Jasbir K. Puar) have focused on the subaltern, specificity, and agency. Queer and transgender feminists (Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Susan Stryker) have theorized performativity, resignification, continuous transition, and self-identification. Questions of representation have been central to all traditions of feminist theory.

continuous transition
heterogeneity
intersectionality
lived experience
performativity
resignification
self-identification
the subaltern

Mapping 21st-Century Feminist Theory

Feminist theory is a vast, enormously diverse, interdisciplinary field that cuts across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. As a result, this article cannot offer a historical overview or even an exhaustive account of 21st-century feminist theory. But it offers a genealogy and a toolkit for 21st-century feminist criticism. 1 The aim of this article is to outline the questions and issues 21st-century feminist theorists have been addressing; the concepts, figures, and narratives they have been honing; and the practices they have been experimenting with—some inherited, others new. This account of feminist theory will include African American, postcolonial, and Islamic feminists as well as queer and transgender theorists and writers who identify as feminists. While these fields are distinct and while they need to reckon with their respective Eurocentrism, racism, misogyny, queerphobia, or transphobia, this article will focus on their mutual allyship, in spite of continuing tensions. Particularly troubling are feminists who define themselves against queer and transgender theory and activism; by way of response, this article will be highlighting feminist queer theory and transfeminism.

On the one hand, literary criticism is not high on the agenda of many 21st-century feminist theorists. This means that literary critics need to imaginatively transpose feminist concepts to literature. On the other hand, a lot of feminist theorists practice literature; they write in an experimental way that combines academic work, creative writing, and life-writing; they combine narrative and figurative language with concepts and arguments. Contemporary feminist theory offers a powerful mix of experimental writing, big issues, quirky personal accounts, and utopian thinking of a new kind.

Feminists have been combining theory, criticism, and literature; Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Hélène Cixous, and Alice Walker have written across these genres. In African Sexualities: A Reader ( 2011 ), Sylvia Tamale’s decision to place academic scholarship side by side with poems, fiction, life-writing, political declarations, and reports is supported by feminist traditions. 2 Furthermore, the border between feminist theory, literature, and life-writing has been increasingly permeable in the 21st century , hence the centrality of texts in hybrid genres: theory with literary and life-writing elements, literature with meta-literary elements, and so on. Early 21st-century terms such as autofiction and autotheory register the prevalence of the tendency. This is at least partly a question of addressing different audiences—aiming for public engagement and connection with activism outside universities and bypassing the technical jargon of academic feminist theory. Another reason is that feminist theorists, especially those from marginalized groups, have found some of the conventions of academic scholarship objectionable or false—for example, the assumption of a universal, disembodied, or unsituated perspective.

Nevertheless, recent feminist experiments with genre—for example, by Anne Carson, Paul B. Preciado, Maggie Nelson, or Alison Bechdel—nod toward an integral part of women’s writing and feminist writing. 3 Historic experiments in mixed genre, going back to Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s poem-novel Aurora Leigh , include: Virginia Woolf’s critical-theoretical-fictional A Room of One’s Own ; Julia Kristeva’s poetico-theoretical “Stabat Mater”; Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time , oscillating between speculative science fiction and naturalist novel; Audre Lorde’s “biomythography,” Zami ; the mix of theory, fiction, and life-writing in Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues and Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick ; or Qurratulain Hyder’s Fireflies in the Mist , hovering between historical fiction and romance. 4

Twenty-first-century feminist theory also tends to be thematically expansive and more than feminist theory narrowly understood, in that it is not only about “women” (those assigned female at birth or socially counted as women or self-identifying as women). It is a mature field that addresses structural injustice, social justice, and the future of the planet. As a result, cross-fertilization with other academic fields abounds. Relatively new academic fields such as feminist theory, postcolonial theory, and critical race theory—emerging since the 1960s, established in the 1980s, and having initially to cement their distinctiveness and place within the academy—have been increasingly coming together and cross-fertilizing in the 21st century . Distinct feminist perspectives (phenomenological, poststructuralist, African American intersectional, postcolonial, Islamic, queer, transgender) have also been coming together and variously informing 21st-century feminist theory. While this article will introduce these perspectives, it will aim to show that feminist theorists are increasingly difficult to put in a box, and this is a good thing.

Feminist Phenomenology (Beauvoir, Young, Moi, Fricker, Anderson, Ahmed, Al-Saji): Situation, Lived Experience, Embodiment, Orientation

Simone de Beauvoir initiates feminist phenomenology, her existentialism emerging within the broader tradition of phenomenology. While the present account of feminist theory begins with Beauvoir, it is important to acknowledge the continuing influence of older feminists and proto-feminists, as “feminism” only acquired its current ( 20th- and 21st-century ) meaning in the late 19th century , according to the Oxford English Dictionary. See, for example, Christine de Pizan, “Jane Anger,” Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Mary Astell, Anne Finch, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Davies, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, and Virginia Woolf.

All contemporary feminist theory has been influenced by Beauvoir, in some respect or other. Her famous claim that “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman,” opening volume 2 of The Second Sex ( 1949 ), points to the asymmetrical socialization of men and women. 5 In her philosophical terms, man is the One, the universal, subject, freedom, transcendence, mind, spirit, culture; woman is the Other, the particular, object, situation, immanence, body, flesh, nature. Patriarchy for Beauvoir is a system of binary oppositions, whose terms are mutually exclusive: the One/the Other, the universal/the particular, subject/object, freedom/situation, transcendence/immanence, mind/body, spirit/flesh, culture/nature. Men have been socialized to aim for—indeed to become—the valued terms in each binary opposition (the One, the universal, subject, freedom, transcendence, mind, spirit, culture); while the undesirable terms (the Other, the particular, object, situation, immanence, body, flesh, nature) are projected onto women, who are socialized to become those terms—to become object, for example. Emerging from this system is the illusion of a transhistorical feminine essence or a norm of femininity that misconstrues, disciplines, and oppresses actual, historical women. Women for Beauvoir are an oppressed group, and her aim is their liberation. 6

Beauvoir critiques the social aims and myths of patriarchy, pointing to the pervasiveness of patriarchal myths in philosophy, literature, and culture. But she also critiques the very forms of patriarchy—binary opposition, dualistic thinking, essentialism, universalism, abstraction—while not completely able to free her own analysis from them. Instead of them, Beauvoir advocates attention to concrete situation and close phenomenological description; indeed The Second Sex abounds in vivid and richly detailed descriptions of early 20th-century French women’s lives. Such close attention and description allow her to demonstrate that all humans are, potentially, both subject and object, free and situated, transcendent and immanent, spirit and flesh, hence the ambiguity of the human condition. 7

The philosophy of existentialism and the broader philosophical movement of phenomenology, within which Beauvoir situates her work, claim to offer radical aims and methods. Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon) is committed to the phenomenological description of the particular in order to avoid the abstractions of scientism. It aims to avoid traditional philosophical dualisms such as mind/body. It re-describes human beings not as disembodied minds but as intentional beings engaged with the world, being-in-the-world (Heidegger’s term), situated in a particular time and place; as lived bodies that are centers of perception, action, and lived experience rather than mere objects; and as being-with and being-for others in inter-subjective relationships rather than just subject/object relationships. Human beings immerse themselves in their projects, using the world and their own bodies—with all their acquired skills, competencies, and sedimented habits—as instruments. While these instruments are indispensable to their projects, they are usually unperceived and remain in the background. They are the background against which objects of perception and action objectives come into view. And yet what is backgrounded can always come to the foreground, suddenly and rudely—when the world resists one, when a blunt knife does not cut the bread, when one’s body is in pain or sick and intrudes, interrupting one’s vision and plans. 8

Without minimizing the novelty of Beauvoir’s theorization of patriarchy, the present quick sketch of phenomenology ought to have highlighted its suitability for feminist appropriations. Nevertheless, Sartre, Beauvoir’s closest collaborator, for example, continues to think that one is distinctively human only to the extent that they transcend their situation. This arguably universalizes Sartre’s particular situation as a member of a privileged group determined to be free, while effectively blaming the situation of oppressed groups on their members, blaming the victims for lacking humanity. 9 By contrast, Beauvoir sheds light on women’s social situation and lived experience: men have “far more concrete opportunities” to be effective; women experience the world not as tools for their projects but as resistance to them; their “energy” is “thrown into the world” but “fails to grasp any object”; a woman’s body is not the “pure instrument of her grasp on the world” but painfully objectified and foregrounded. 10 Beauvoir goes on to distinguish between a variety of unequal social situations with different degrees of freedom inherent in them. Yes, on the whole, French men are freer, less constrained than French women. But Beauvoir discusses the “concrete situation” of other groups “kept in a situation of inferiority”—workers, the colonized, African American slaves, her contemporary African Americans, Jews—while explicitly acknowledging that women themselves are socially divided by class and race. 11

Beauvoir outlines impediments to women’s collective and individual liberation and sketches out paths to collective action and to the “independent woman” of the future, placing literature center stage. She claims that women lack the “concrete means” to organize themselves “in opposition” to patriarchy, in that they lack a shared collective space, such as the factory and the racially segregated community for working-class and black struggles, instead living dispersed private lives. 12 While white middle-class women “are in solidarity” with men of their class and race, rather than with working-class and black women, Beauvoir calls for solidarity among women across class and race boundaries. 13 She addresses white middle-class women like herself, who benefit materially from their connection to white middle-class men, asking them to abandon these benefits for the precarious pursuit of women’s solidarity and freedom. To the extent that women lack freedom by virtue of their social situation qua women, they need to claim their freedom in collective “revolt.” 14 Beauvoir’s 1949 call to organized political action was “the movement before the movement,” according to Michèle Le Doeuff. 15

However, Beauvoir also advocates writing literature as a means of liberation for women and considers all her writing—philosophical, literary, life-writing—a form of activism. Beauvoir devotes considerable space to literary criticism throughout The Second Sex . She shows how writers have reproduced patriarchal myths, often unwittingly. 16 But her future-oriented, crucial chapter “The Independent Woman” centers on a discussion of women writers and even addresses women writers. Having sketched out a history of women’s writing, she turns to young writers to offer advice, based on her analysis of women’s “situation.” 17 To overcome women’s socially imposed apprenticeship in “reasonable modesty,” they need to undertake a counter-practice of “abandonment and transcendence,” “pride” and boldness; they need to become “women insurgents” who feel “responsible for the universe.” 18 Her call, “The free woman is just being born” energizes new women writers to live and write freely—and has been answered by many. 19 But this is not triumphalist empty rhetoric; women writers also need to understand the “ambiguity” of the human condition and of truth itself. 20

Iris Marion Young returns to Beauvoir’s description of women’s social situation and lived experience in “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality” ( 1980 ). Young takes Beauvoir’s description as the starting point for her own phenomenology of women’s project-oriented bodily movement in “contemporary advanced industrial, urban, and commercial society,” arguing that their movement is inhibited, ambiguous, discontinuous, and ineffective. 21 Women exhibit a form of socially induced dyspraxia. Young contends that women’s movement “exhibits an ambiguous transcendence, an inhibited intentionality, and a discontinuous unity with its surroundings.” 22 Young turns to women’s bodies in their “orientation toward and action upon and within” their surroundings, particularly the “confrontation of the body’s capacities and possibilities with the resistance and malleability of things” when the body “aims to accomplish a definite purpose or task.” 23 It will be remembered that the phenomenological tradition theorizes the human body as a lived body that is the locus of subjectivity, perception, and action, a capable body extending itself into the world rather than a thing; this is especially the case with Merleau-Ponty. Young’s description of the deviation of women’s bodily experience from this norm is a powerful indictment of women’s social situation.

Firstly, Young identifies that women experience their bodies as ambiguously transcendent: both as a “capacity” and as a “ thing ”; both striving to act upon the world and a “burden.” 24 Secondly, they experience an inhibited intentionality: while acting, they hesitate, their “hesitancy” resulting in “wasted motion . . . from the effort of testing and reorientation.” 25 Thirdly, they experience their bodies as discontinuous with the world: rather than extending themselves and acting upon their surroundings, which is the norm, they live their bodies as objects “ positioned in space.” 26 Or rather, the “space that belongs to her and is available to her grasp and manipulation” is experienced as “constricted,” while “the space beyond is not available to her.” 27 In other words, she experiences her surroundings not as at-hand and within-reach for her projects but as out-of-reach. This discontinuity between “aim and capacity to realize” it is the secret of women’s “tentativeness and uncertainty.” 28 Even more ominously, they live the “ever-present possibility” of becoming the “object of another subject’s . . . manipulations.” 29 In the very exercise of bodily freedom—for example, in opening up the “body in free, active, open extension and bold outward-directedness”—women risk “objectification,” Young argues. 30

Young describes the situation of women as one in which they have to learn “actively to hamper” their “movements.” 31 If this has been the norm of genderization in modern Western urban societies, is it still at work and is it lived differently depending on one’s class, race, sexuality, and so on? 32 Similarly with Beauvoir’s theorization of the situation of women: does it continue to be relevant and useful?

The emergence of “sexual difference” feminism or écriture féminine in France in the mid-1970s, with landmark publications by Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous, brought with it a critique of Beauvoir. 33 In view of the present discussion of Beauvoir, one might argue that Beauvoir’s aim is the abolition of gender. Her horizon is the abolition of gender binarism and an end to the oppression of women. However, in “Equal or Different?” ( 1986 ) Irigaray reads this as a pursuit of equality through women’s adoption of male norms, at a great cost, that of “suppress[ing] sexual difference.” 34 In Irigaray’s eyes, Beauvoir’s work is assimilationist, while her own work is radical—it aims to redefine femininity in positive terms. Irigaray insists on the political autonomy of women’s struggles from other liberation movements and, controversially, the priority of feminism over other movements because of the priority of gender over class, race, and so on. Gender is “the primary and irreducible division.” 35

In 1994 feminist literary critic Toril Moi compares Beauvoir to Irigaray and Frantz Fanon, one of the founders of postcolonial theory. Like Fanon who redefined blackness positively and viewed anticolonial struggles as autonomous, Irigaray aims to redefine femininity and mobilize it autonomously, while Beauvoir failed to “grasp the progressive potential of ‘femininity’ as a political discourse” and also “vastly underestimated the potential political impact of an independent woman’s movement.” 36 However, Moi sides with Beauvoir against Irigaray and other “sexual difference” feminists, when comparing their aims. Beauvoir’s ultimate aim is the disappearance of gender, while difference feminists “focus on women’s difference, often without regard for other social movements,” claiming that “women’s interests are best served by the establishment of an enduring regime of sexual difference.” 37

Aiming toward the disappearance of gender does not mean blinding oneself to the situation and lived experience of women. In a 2009 piece on women writers, literature, and feminist theory, Moi turns to Beauvoir to analyze the social situation of women writers. Importantly, Beauvoir focuses on what happens “ once somebody has been taken to be a woman ”—the woman in question might or might not be assigned female at birth and might or might not identify as a woman. 38 While the body of someone taken to be a man is viewed as a “direct and normal connection with the world” that he “apprehends objectively,” the body of someone taken to be a woman is viewed as “weighed down by everything specific to it: an obstacle, a prison.” 39 Concomitantly, male writers and their perspectives and concerns are associated with universality—women writers associated with biased particularity. But if women writers adopt male perspectives and concerns to lay claim to universality, they are alienated from their own lived experience. This is how a “sexist (or racist) society” forces “women and blacks, and other raced minorities, to ‘eliminate’ their gendered (or raced) subjectivity” and “masquerade as some kind of generic universal human being, in ways that devalue their actual experiences as embodied human beings in the world.” 40 All too often women writers have declared “I am not a woman writer,” but this has to be understood as a “ defensive speech act”: a “ response ” to those who have tried to use her gender “against her.” 41

In 2001 feminist philosopher and Beauvoir scholar Michèle Le Doeuff announces a renaissance in Beauvoir studies, in her keynote for the Ninth International Simone de Beauvoir Conference: “It is no longer possible to claim, in the light of a certain New French Feminism, that Beauvoir is obsolete.” 42 She prioritizes the need for scholarship on the conflicts between Sartre and Beauvoir, with a view to making the case for Beauvoir’s originality as a philosopher, in spite of Beauvoir’s self-identification as a writer and reluctance to clash with Sartre philosophically.

Feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker returns more than once to the question of whether Beauvoir is a philosopher or a writer. In 2003 Fricker locates Beauvoir’s originality in her understanding of ambiguity and argues that life-writing has been the medium most suited to her thought, focusing on Beauvoir’s The Prime of Life ( La Force de l’age , 1960 ). 43 Beauvoir found in the institution of philosophy, as she experienced it, a pathological, obsessional attitude—a demand for abstract theorizing that divorces thinkers from their situation to lend their thought universal applicability. This imperious, sovereign role was seriously at odds with Beauvoir’s sense of reality, history, and the self. For Beauvoir, reality is “full of ambiguities, baffling, and impenetrable” and history a violent shock to the self: “History burst over me, and I dissolved into fragments . . . scattered over the four quarters of the globe, linked by every nerve in me to each and every other individual.” 44 Beauvoir uses narrative, particularly life-writing, to connect with her past selves but also to appeal to the reader: “self-knowledge is impossible, and the best one can hope for is self-revelation” to the reader. 45 Fricker claims that Beauvoir primarily addresses female readers; and Beauvoir’s alliance-building with her readers—her “feminist commitment to female solidarity”—promises to bring out, through the reader, “the ‘unity’ to that ‘scattered, broken’ object that is her life.” 46

An example of the role of the reader is Fricker’s 2007 reading of Beauvoir’s under-written account of an early epistemic clash with Sartre. 47 Beauvoir’s first-person narrative voice doesn’t quite say that Sartre undermined her as a knower, but Fricker interprets this incident as an epistemic attack by Sartre that Beauvoir had the resilience to survive, and which contributed to her self-identification as a writer rather than a philosopher. Here the violence of history and the institution of philosophy take very concrete, embodied, intimate form. But the incident also serves as a springboard for Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice and its two forms: testimonial injustice, and hermeneutical injustice and lacunas. For Fricker, Sartre in this instance does Beauvoir a “testimonial injustice” in that he erodes her confidence and her credibility as a knower. 48 This process might also be “ongoing” and involve “persistent petty intellectual underminings.” 49 Hermeneutical (or interpretive) injustice, on the other hand, has to do with a gap in collective interpretative resources, where a name should be to describe a social experience. 50 For example, the relatively recent term “sexual harassment” has described a social experience where previously there was a hermeneutic lacuna, according to Fricker. Such lacunas are often due to the systemic epistemic marginalization of some groups, and any progress (for example, in adopting a proposed new term) is contingent upon a “virtuous hearer” who will try to listen without prejudice but also requires systemic change. 51 In George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss Maggie Tulliver suffers both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. 52

This article will now turn to feminist phenomenology within queer theory and critical race theory. Sara Ahmed, in Queer Phenomenology ( 2006 ), offers not a phenomenology of queerness but rather a phenomenological account of heteronormativity as well as a feminist queer critique of phenomenology. In an important reversal of perspective, Ahmed denaturalizes being straight—denaturalizes heteronormativity—by asking: how does one become straight? This is not simply a matter of sexual orientation and choice of love-object. Rather heteronormativity is itself “something that we are oriented around, even if it disappears from view”; “bodies become straight by ‘lining up’” with normative “lines that are already given.” 53 Being straight is “an effect of being ‘in line.’” 54 Unlike earlier phenomenologists such as Heidegger, what is usually being backgrounded and thus invisible is a naturalized system that Ahmed hopes to foreground and bring “into view”: heteronormativity. 55 Ahmed thus extends Beauvoir’s and Young’s analyses of the systematic oppression and incapacitation of women, respectively. 56 Ahmed puts Young’s language to use in order to talk about lesbian lives: heteronormativity “puts some things in reach and others out of reach,” in a manner that incapacitates lesbian lives. Ahmed searches for a different form of sociality, “a space in which the lesbian body can extend itself , as a body that gets near other bodies.” 57 Her critique of even the most promising phenomenologists is that in their work “the straight world is already in place” as an invisible background. 58

Ahmed extends her analysis of the production of heteronormativity to the production of whiteness in “A Phenomenology of Whiteness” ( 2007 ), asking: how does one become white? Ahmed thus furthers her critique of phenomenology from within. Phenomenologists such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty define the body as “successful,” as “‘able’ to extend itself (through objects) in order to act on and in the world,” as a body that “‘can do’ by flowing into space.” 59 However, far from this being a universal experience, it is the experience of a “bodily form of privilege” from which many groups are excluded. 60 Ahmed does not here acknowledge Young’s analysis of women’s socially induced dyspraxia but turns instead to Fanon’s “phenomenology of ‘being stopped.’” 61 Ahmed calls “discomfort” the social experience of being impeded and goes on to outline its critical potential in “bringing what is in the background, what gets over-looked” back into view. 62 More than a negative feeling, discomfort has the exhilarating potential of opening up a whole world that was previously obscured. 63 Ahmed’s subsequent work has focused on institutional critique, especially of universities in their continuing failure to become inclusive, hospitable spaces for certain groups, in spite of their managerial language of diversity. 64

Where Ahmed calls for critical and transformative “discomfort,” Alia Al-Saji calls for a critical and transformative “hesitation” in “A Phenomenology of Hesitation” ( 2014 ). Al-Saji’s concept of hesitation revises the work of Beauvoir and Young and enlarges their focus on gender to include race. Beauvoir’s analysis of patriarchy as a system that projects and naturalizes fixed, oppositional, hierarchical identities is redeployed toward a “race-critical and feminist” project, though Al-Saji does not acknowledge Beauvoir explicitly but credits Fanon’s work. 65 The systematic and “socially pathological othering” of fluid, relational, contextual, contingent differences into rigid, frozen, naturalized hierarchies remains “hidden from view.” 66 Experience, affect, and vision, in their pathological form, are closed and rigid; in their healthy form, they have a “creative and critical potential . . . to hesitate”—they are ambiguous, open, fluid, responsive, receptive, dynamic, changing, improvisational, self-critical. 67 Al-Saji argues that the “paralyzing hesitation” analyzed by Young can be “mined” to extract a critical hesitation, as Young’s own work exemplifies. 68 By contrast, the “normative ‘I can’ – posited as human but in fact correlated to white, male bodies”—rigidly “excludes other ways of seeing and acting”; it is “objectifying – racializing and sexist[,] . . . reifying and othering .” 69 The alternative to both thoughtless action and paralyzing inaction is: “ acting hesitantly ” and responsively. 70

Feminist philosopher Pamela Sue Anderson’s last writings on “vulnerability” build on Michèle Le Doeuff’s critique of unexamined myths and narratives underlying the Western “imaginary.” One values and strives for invulnerability and equates vulnerability with exposure to violence and suffering. One projects vulnerability onto “the vulnerable” to disavow their own vulnerability: “a dark social imaginary continues to stigmatize those needing to be cared for as a drain on an economy, carefully separating ‘the cared for’ from those who are thought to be ‘in control’ of their lives and of the world.” 71 Furthermore, members of privileged groups often exhibit a “wilful ignorance” of systemic forms of social vulnerability and social injustice. 72 But Anderson also outlines “ethical” vulnerability as a capability for a transformative and life-enhancing openness to others and mutual affection—occasioned by ontological vulnerability. Ethical vulnerability is envisaged as a project where reason, critical self-reflexivity, emotion, intuition and imagination, concepts, arguments, myths and narrative all have a role to play, while also needing to be reimagined and rethought.

African American Feminisms (Morrison, Lorde, Walker, Spillers, Hartman): Race, Intersectionality, Differences among Women and among Black Women

African American and postcolonial feminists have struggled to create space for themselves, caught between a predominantly white women’s movement on the one hand, and male-led civil-rights and anticolonial struggles and postcolonial elites on the other hand. They have fought against assumptions that “All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men” and that white women are “saving brown women from brown men.” 73 African American and postcolonial writers and thinkers (from Toni Morrison to Chandra Talpade Mohanty) have hesitated to self-identify with a primarily white movement that, they argued powerfully, effectively excluded them in unthinkingly prioritizing the concerns of white, middle-class women. Some have avoided self-identifying as a feminist, self-identifying as a “black woman writer” instead. Alice Walker invented the term “womanism” to signal black feminism. “Intersectionality” was coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, and other African American feminists to highlight the intersections of gender and race, feminist and antiracist struggles, creating a space between the white women’s movement and the male-led civil-rights movement. 74 Postcolonial feminists (Assia Djebar, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chandra Talpade Mohanty) similarly created a space between Western feminists and male-led anticolonial struggles and postcolonial elites.

African American feminists have been critical of Beauvoir and of the women’s movements of the 1960s. They have been reconstructing oral, written, and activist traditions of black women such as abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs, and modernists Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen—all previously neglected and marginalized. 75 These traditions prioritize: collectivism; the need to critique and resist internalized but unlivable white middle-class norms; waywardness or willfulness rather than individualism; differences among women; difference among black women; and friendship and solidarity among black women across their differences. (By contrast, contemporary white American feminist critics such as Elaine Showalter emphasized self-realization and self-actualization. 76 ) African American women writers—rather than literary critics—have led the way, inspired by orators, musicians, and collective oral forms, as critics have acknowledged. 77

Toni Morrison, as a self-identified black woman writer, announces these strategic priorities in her first novel, The Bluest Eye ( 1970 ). 78 In The Bluest Eye she revises Beauvoir’s analysis of patriarchy as a binary opposition—man/woman—that projects onto “woman” what men disown in themselves. She examines a related binary opposition: white, light-skinned, middle-class, beautiful, proper lady vs. dark-skinned, poor, ugly girl (the racialized opposition between angelic and demonic woman). The first novel to focus on black girls, The Bluest Eye shows the systemic propagation and internalization of white norms of beauty and femininity, leading to hierarchical oppositions between black and white girls as well as between black girls (light-skinned middle-class Maureen, solidly working-class Claudia and Frieda, and precariously poor Pecola). The projection, by everyone, of all ugliness onto poor, dark-skinned Pecola, combined with white norms that are impossible for her, lead to Pecola’s madness. Her attempts at existential affirmation are crushed by the judgment of the world. Pecola’s Bildungsroman turns out naturalist tragedy. However, Claudia, the narrator, develops anagnorisis and shares her increasingly complex critique with the readers.

In “What the Black Woman Thinks about Women’s Lib” ( 1971 ) Morrison uses Beauvoir’s language to bring attention both to the situation of African American women and to their traditions of resistance. Reminding readers of two segregation-era signs—“White Ladies” and “Black Women”—she asserts that many black women rejected ladylike behavior and “frequently kicked back . . . [O]ut of the profound desolation of her reality” the black woman “may very well have invented herself.” 79 Black women have been working and heading single-parent households in a hostile world. If ladies are all “softness, helplessness and modesty,” black women have been “tough, capable, independent and immodest.” 80

Audre Lorde explores similar themes. Her poem, “Who Said It Was Simple” ( 1973 ) illustrates the hierarchy between white “ladies,” in their feminist struggle for self-realization, and black “girls” on whose work they rely. Sister Outsider , Lorde’s essays and speeches from 1976 to 1984 , theorizes intersections of race, sexuality, class, and age that are particularly binding and threatening for black lesbian women. 81 White feminists are ignorant of racism and wrongly assume their concerns to be universally shared by all women, thus replicating the patriarchal elevation of men to the universal analyzed by Beauvoir; they need to drop the “pretense to a homogeneity of experience,” educate themselves about black women, read their work, and listen. 82 In “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” delivered during a Beauvoir conference, Lorde argues that Beauvoir’s call to know “the genuine conditions of our lives” must include racism and homophobia. 83 Black men misdirect their anger for the racism they encounter toward black women, who, paid less and more socially devalued, are easy targets. Falsely equating anti-sexist with anti-Black, black men are hostile to black feminists and especially lesbians; so black men’s sexism is different from the sexism of privileged white men analyzed by Beauvoir. 84 Black women have also been hostile toward each other, due to internalized racism and sexism, projected toward the most marginalized among them; identifying with their oppressors, black women suffer a “misnaming” and “distortion” in their understanding of their situation. 85

But Lorde also exalts traditions of black women’s solidarity across their differences. Once differences among women and among black women are properly understood and named, they can be creative and generative. To achieve this, she extols recording, examining, and naming one’s experience, perceptions, and feelings, as a path to clarity, precision, and illumination, leading to concepts and theories but also to empowerment. Anger, unlike hatred, is potentially both full of information and generative. 86 Affect, more broadly, can be a path to understanding, as affect and rationality are not mutually exclusive: “I don’t see feel/think as a dichotomy.” 87 Particularly innovative is Lorde’s theorization of the “erotic.” In contrast to the pornographic, the erotic is a power intrinsically connected to (and cutting across) love, friendship, self-connection, joy, the spiritual, creativity, work, collaboration, and the political—especially among black women. 88 But relations of interdependence and mutuality among women are only possible in a context of non-hierarchical differences among equals and peers, Lorde stresses repeatedly. 89

Alice Walker attends to many of these themes in Color Purple ( 1982 ). 90 In her collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose ( 1983 ), she pays tribute to black women’s traditions of resistance, due to which “womanish” connotes “outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior.” 91 Her term “womanism” honors these collectivist traditions and their commitment to the “survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female.” 92 But she also calls for the reconstruction of a written tradition of forgotten black women writers, resurrecting Zora Neale Hurston from oblivion in “Looking for Zora,” initially published in Ms . magazine in 1975 . 93

In 1979 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination established the enforced privatization and entrapped idleness of 19th-century white middle-class women. 94 In 1987 Hortense J. Spillers powerfully added that this was made possible by the enforced hard labor of black women, as house or field slaves and later as domestic servants who often headed single-parent households. 95 Furthermore, the gender polarization within the white middle-class family was accompanied by the ungendering of African American slaves, who were not allowed to marry and raise their children, and the structural rape of black women. In the late 1980s Crenshaw and Collins formally introduced the concept of intersectionality, though intersectionality-like ideas—that the black woman is the “mule uh de world”—have been a part of black women’s thought for a long time. 96

“Slavery and gender” has been a core topic since the 1980s, with publications such as Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death ( 1982 ), Toni Morrison’s Beloved ( 1987 ) and Playing in the Dark ( 1992 ), and Saidiya V. Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection ( 1997 ). 97 Hartman’s abiding topic has been a lost history of black girls and women that can only partially be retrieved and that requires new methodologies. Archives and official records are full of gaps, systematically “dissimulate the extreme violence” of slavery, and “disavow the pain” and “deny the sorrow” of slaves. 98 Even while reading them “against the grain,” Hartman underlines the “ impossibility of fully recovering the experience of the enslaved.” 99 In Lose Your Mother ( 2006 ) Hartman’s concept of the “afterlife of slavery” describes the persistence of “devalued” and “imperiled” black lives, racialized violence, “skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment. I, too, am the afterlife of slavery.” 100 In “Venus in Two Acts” ( 2008 ), Hartman defines her method as “critical fabulation”: mixing critical use of archival research, theorization, and multiple speculative narratives, in an experimental writing that acknowledges its own failure and refuses “to fill in the gaps” to “provide closure.” 101 This writing is:

straining against the limits of the archive . . . and . . . enacting the impossibility of representing the lives of the captives precisely through the process of narration . . . [in order] to displace the . . . authorized account, . . . to imagine what might have happened[,] . . . to listen for the mutters and oaths and cries of the commodity[,] . . . to illuminate the contested character of history, narrative, event, and fact, to topple the hierarchy of discourse, and to engulf authorized speech in the clash of voices. 102

In “The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner” ( 2018 ) Hartman returns to “critical fabulation” and offers a “speculative history” of Esther Brown, her friends, and their life in Harlem around 1917 . 103 Their experiments in “free love and free motherhood” were criminalized as “Loitering. Riotous and Disorderly. Solicitation. Violation of the Tenement House Law. . . . Vagrancy.” 104 Questions such as “ Is this man your husband? Where is the father of your child ?”—meant to detect the “likelihood” of their “future criminality” and moral depravity—might render them “three years confined at Bedford and . . . entangled with the criminal justice system and under state surveillance for a decade.” 105 In official records, these measures were narrated as rescuing, reforming, and rehabilitating, therapeutic interventions for the benefit of young black women.

Reading such records against the grain, Hartman tells the story of a “ revolution in a minor key ”: of “ too fast girls and surplus women and whores ” as “social visionaries, radical thinkers, and innovators.” 106 Their “wild and wayward” collective experiments, at the beginning of the 20th century , were building on centuries of black women’s “mutual aid societies” conducted “in stealth.” 107 Their aspiration has been “singularity and freedom”—not the “individuality and sovereignty” coveted by white liberal feminists. 108

Hartman’s work emerges out of African American feminist traditions but also out of postcolonial feminists, whose work pays particular attention to impossibility, failure, aporia, and the limits of representing the subaltern, as well as the heterogeneity and specificity of women’s agency.

Postcolonial Feminisms (Djebar, Spivak, Mohanty, Stratton, Mahmood, Puar): The Subaltern, Specificity, Agency

Colonized women had to contend not only with the “imbalances of their relations with their own men but also the baroque and violent array of hierarchical rules and restrictions that structured their new relations with imperial men and women.” 109 Furthermore, they were central to powerful orientalist fantasies that rendered their actual lives invisible. The relation of colonized land to colonizer was figured as that of a nubile, sexually available woman waiting for her lover, as in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines where the map of the land centers around “Sheba’s Breasts” and “Mouth of treasure cave.” 110 Algerian writer Assia Djebar exposes this colonial fantasy in Fantasia ( 1985 ). 111 The city of Algiers is seen by the arriving colonizers as a virginal bride waiting for her groom to possess her. She is an “Impregnable City” that “sheds her veils,” as if this was “mutual love at first sight” and “the invaders were coming as lovers!” 112 The Victorian patriarchal, hierarchical nuclear family, ruled by a benign and loving husband and father, was key to the colonial “civilizing mission” because it was the perfect metaphor for the relation between colonizer and colonized in colonial ideology. 113 However, in Women of Algiers in Their Apartment ( 1980 ; mirroring the title of Eugène Delacroix’s orientalist paintings) Djebar reminds her readers that women took part in large numbers in the Algerian anticolonial struggle and suffered torture, rape, and loss of life, but that their contribution was marginalized in post-independence narratives, while they were expected to return to a patriarchal mold ostensibly for the good of the new nation. 114 By contrast, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment foregrounds Algerian women’s heterogeneity but also the intergenerational transmission of their socially repressed, traumatic history, which cannot be fully recovered—hence the self-conscious aporia of Djebar’s project.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” ( 1983 , 1988 , 1999 ) is a subtle theorization of what remains outside colonial, anticolonial, postcolonial, neocolonial, and even “liberal multiculturalist” elites and discourses. 115 Spivak’s starting point is the unpresentability of the “subaltern” (those most marginalized and excluded). The subaltern exceeds any representation treating it as a full identity with a fixed meaning. The subaltern is an inaccessible social unconscious that can only be ethically presented in its unpresentability—fleetingly visible in fragments.

Rather than documenting “subaltern” resistance in its “taxonomic” difference from the elite and rather than assuming that political forces are self-conscious and already constituted identities, Spivak assumes that political identities are being constituted through political action. 116 Many subaltern groups are highly articulate about their aims and their relations to elites and other subaltern groups, but Spivak understands the “subaltern” as singular acts of resistance that are “irretrievably heterogeneous” in relation to constituted identities. 117 Rather than asking for the recognition of “subjugated” and previously “disqualified” forms of knowledge, Spivak is intent on acknowledging her privileged positionality and insists that what she calls the “subaltern” is irretrievably silenced; the “subaltern” is what escapes—or is excluded from—any discourse. 118

Spivak’s heterogeneous subaltern is a (Derridean) singularity that cannot be translated fully or repeated exactly but can only be repeated differently. 119 The singularity in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is Talu’s suicide, as retold by Spivak. Spivak interprets it as a complex political intervention, by a young middle-class woman activist, that remained illegible as such. Entrusted with a political assassination in the context of the struggle for Indian independence, Spivak claims that Talu’s suicide was a complex refusal to do her mission without betraying the cause. Talu questioned anticolonial nationalism, sati suicide, and female “imprisonment” in heteronormativity, but her “Speech Act was refused” by everyone because it resisted translation into established discourses. 120 Spivak iterates Talu’s singularity differently: as a postcolonial feminist heroine. She does not present her version of Talu’s story as restoring speech to the subaltern. Speech acts are addressed to others and completed by others; they involve “distanced decipherment by another, which is, at best, an interception.” 121 To claim that Talu has finally spoken through Spivak would be a neocolonial “missionary” claim of saving the subaltern. 122 To avoid this, Spivak self-dramatizes her privileged institutional “positionality” and calls for “unlearning” one’s privilege. 123

Postcolonial feminists have been telling the story of the marginalization of women of color within anticolonial movements, postcolonial states, and within Western feminist movements. In “Three Women’sTexts and a Critique of Imperialism” ( 1985 ), Spivak argues that Gilbert and Gubar, in their reading of Jane Eyre in Madwoman in the Attic , unwittingly reproduce the “axioms of imperialism.” 124 For Spivak, in Jane Eyre Bertha, a dark colonial woman, sets the house on fire and kills herself so that Jane Eyre “can become the feminist individualist heroine of British fiction”; she is “sacrificed as an insane animal” for her British “sister’s consolidation” in a manner that is exemplary of the “epistemic violence” of imperialism. 125 Gilbert and Gubar fail to see this and only read Jane and Bertha in individual, “psychological terms.” 126 By contrast, Jean Rhys’s rewriting of Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea ( 1966 ) makes this visible and enables Spivak’s critique. 127 Rhys allows Bertha to tell her story and keeps Bertha’s “humanity, indeed her sanity as critic of imperialism, intact.” 128 In “Does the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak articulates the value of postcolonial feminism but refuses to defend it as a redemptive breakthrough. Instead she issues a call for self-reflexivity.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, in “Under Western Eyes” ( 1984 ), calls for studies of local collective struggles and for localized theorizing by investigators. 129 The category of “Third World Woman” is an essentialist fabrication reducing the irreducible “heterogeneity” of women in the Third World. 130 Mohanty’s call for specificity is a rejection of white middle-class feminists’ generalizations on “women” and “Third World women” as neocolonial:

Women are constituted as women through the complex interaction between class, culture, religion and other ideological institutions and frameworks. . . . [R]eductive cross-cultural comparisons result in the colonization of the conflicts and contradictions which characterize women of different social classes and cultures. 131

Mohanty is here remarkably close to African American feminists. What is at stake for Mohanty is for groups of marginalized women to represent themselves and to retrieve forms of agency within their own traditions. As she stresses in Feminism without Borders ( 2003 ): the “application of the notion of women as a homogeneous category to women in the Third World colonizes and appropriates the pluralities” of their complex location and “robs them of their historical and political agency .” 132

Saba Mahmood, in “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival” ( 2001 ), argues that rather than reading a specific cultural phenomenon through an established conception of agency, agency should be theorized through the specific phenomenon studied. 133 Her target is the Western feminist equation of feminist agency with secularism, resistance, and transgression, which she finds unhelpful when studying the “urban women’s mosque movement that is part of the larger Islamic revival in Cairo.” 134 While in some contexts feminist agency might take the form of “dramatic transgression and defiance,” for these Egyptian women it took the form of active participation and engagement with a religious movement. 135 It would be a neocolonial gesture to understand their involvement as due to “false consciousness” or internalized patriarchy. 136 Mahmood’s “situated analysis” thus endorses plural, local theories and concepts. 137

Florence Stratton focuses on gender in African postcolonial literature and criticism. She analyses the multiplicity of “ways in which women writers have been written out of the African literary tradition.” 138 They have been ignored by critics, marginalized by definitions of the African canon that universalize the tropes and themes of male writers, and silenced by “gender definitions which . . . maintain the status quo of women’s exclusion from public life.” 139 Particularly pernicious has been the “iteration in African men’s writing of the conventional colonial trope of Africa as female.” 140 Stratton discerns a ubiquitous pattern in African postcolonial men’s writing. Women are cast as symbols of the nation, in sexualized or bodily roles: as nubile virgin to be impregnated or as mother (Stratton calls this the “pot of culture” trope); or, alternatively, as degraded prostitute (the “sweep of history” trope). 141 So women are figured either as embodiments of an ostensibly static traditional culture (trope 1) or as passive victims of historical change (trope 2). This is coupled with a male quest narrative, where the male hero and his vision actively transform prostitute into mother Africa. Underlying this is a patriarchal division of active/passive and subject/object, which denies women as artists and citizens and neglects women’s issues (so actual sex work is totally obscured by its metaphorical role). Stratton goes on to show how African women writers have been “initiators” of “dialogue” with African male writers in order to self-authorize their work and make space for it in the African literary canon. 142 Stratton is also critical of white feminists who read African women writers through their own formal and thematic priorities, oblivious to African feminist traditions. 143

Jasbir K. Puar analyses how the “war on terror” and rising Islamophobia in the West, particularly the United States, have coopted feminist and queer struggles. While colonial orientalist fantasies projected sexual license onto the Middle East, 21st-century orientalist fantasies are “Islamophobic constructions” othering Muslims as “homophobic and perverse,” while constructing the West as “‘tolerant’ but sexually, racially, and gendered normal.” 144 On the one hand, Muslims are presented as “fundamentalist, patriarchal, and, often even homophobic.” 145 On the other hand, a “rhetoric of sexual modernization” turns American queer bodies into “normative patriot bodies.” 146 This involves the loss of an intersectional perspective and the “fissuring of race from sexuality.” 147 Muslims are seen as only marked by race and “presumptively sexually repressed, perverse, or both,” while Western queers are seen as only marked by sexuality and “presumptively white,” male, and “gender normative.” 148

Queer and Transgender Feminisms (Butler, Halberstam, Stryker): Performativity, Resignification, Continuous Transition, Self-Identification

Queer theory emerged in the period from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, in the midst of the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. 149 Queer theory, as an academic field, can be located at the intersection of poststructuralism (especially the work of Michel Foucault, but also Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze), Francophone feminism from Beauvoir to Irigaray, and African American feminism. Queer theorists have negotiated this genealogy variously; some are predominantly influenced by Foucault, less by feminist thought. The present account will focus on feminist queer theory, especially the work of Judith Butler, and its relation to earlier and subsequent feminist, queer, and transgender thought. As queer theory evolved, postcolonial feminists also became increasingly influential.

In brief, feminist queer theory, while indebted to “sexual difference” feminists such as Irigaray, critiques them through African American feminism. A core theoretical insight of African American feminism is that gender must not be considered on its own or as primary in relation to other social categories and hierarchies. Queer theorists adopt this insight. For queer theorists, sexual orientation is at least as important as gender. Indeed, they contend that what underpins the gender binary (the polarization of two genders) is the institution of “compulsory heterosexuality” or heteronormativity.

Transgender theory emerged in the mid to late 1990s, within the orbit of queer theory but also through its critique. The crux of this critique is that, despite queer theorists’ best intentions, the queer subject is primarily or implicitly white, Western, gender-normative, and cisgender. In attending to sexual orientation, queer theory neglected the spectrum of gender identities and translated issues of gender identification into issues of sexual orientation. Strands of queer activism—for example, figures such as Sylvia Rivera or Stormé DeLarverie in the United States—were marginalized by a politics of respectability led by affluent, white, cisgender queers. 150 This is particularly ironic, given the aspirations invested in the term “queer.”

In queer theory, the term “queer” was intended as an appropriation and resignification of a term of abuse but also as a floating signifier without a fixed meaning or definition and thus open to multiple and changing uses, in keeping with poststructuralist theory. “Queer” has been defined as beyond definition, transgressive, excessive, beyond polar opposites, and exceeding false polarization. So “queer” is both a particular social identity but also exemplary of a potential for openness, fluidity, and transformation in all identities (what poststructuralist theory calls the infinite deferral of the signified). It is important to point out that Spivak defined the “subaltern” and Irigaray the “feminine” in similar terms, also within a poststructuralist frame. A problem with such terms is that, though they are intended to be inclusive, they are exclusive in some of their effects. The chosen term is privileged as the only term that stands for marginality, potential for change, or openness to the past or future. In the process, the privileged term also loses specificity and becomes a metaphor. This is perhaps replicated in some uses of the term “trans” or “trans*,” where once again the term becomes a metaphor for the element of fluidity and openness in all identities.

Retracing one’s steps back to the beginnings of queer theory, while Beauvoir called for equality and the disappearance of gender, “sexual difference” feminists, such as Irigaray and Cixous, called for autonomous women’s struggles and a radical, utopian revisioning of the “feminine” to be performed by their écriture féminine . Judith Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity ( 1990 ), one of queer theory’s inaugural texts, questions Irigaray’s utopianism and takes as her starting point Beauvoir’s “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” 151 Forty years after The Second Sex , Butler contends that societies continue to systematically produce two “discreet and polar genders,” as a prerequisite of heteronormativity; two “[d]iscreet genders are part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals within contemporary society; indeed, we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right.” 152 One is produced as a recognizably human individual in their very repetition of genderizing practices, performance of gender norms, and iteration of speech acts that bring about gender and its effect of timeless naturalness. But the performativity and iterability of gender show up the “ imitative structure of gender ” and its historical “ contingency .” 153 In spite of the pervasiveness of genderizing practices and the unavailability of a position outside gender, the very performativity and iterability of gender open up the possibility of repeating it slightly differently. Butler hopes for destabilized and constantly resignified genders: “a fluidity of identities,” “an openness to resignification,” and “proliferating gender configurations.” 154 While gender is a normalizing, disciplinary force, it is possible to engage consciously with gender norms and open them to resignification. However, the success or failure of an attempt at resignification also depends on its audience or addressees and the authority they are prepared to attribute to it.

In the context of feminist theory, Butler’s call for continuous resignification takes the form of resignifying “woman” and “feminism” itself. As part of her “radical democratic” feminist politics, she aims to “release” the term “woman” into a “future of multiple significations.” 155 In resignifying feminism, she writes against those feminists who assume that there is an “ontological specificity to women. . . . In the 1980s, the feminist ‘we’ rightly came under attack by women of color who claimed that the ‘we’ was invariably white.” 156 Not only heterogeneity but contentions among feminists ought to be valued: “the rifts among women over the content” of the term “woman” ought to be “safeguarded and prized.” 157 Furthermore, Butler distrusts the utopianism of those feminists who believe they are “beyond the play of power,” asking instead for self-reflexive recognition of feminists’ inevitable embeddedness in power relations. 158

One of the targets of Butler’s critique is Irigaray. Her nuanced reading of Irigaray in Bodies That Matter defends her from accusations of essentialism but rejects the primacy of sexual difference over other forms of difference—race, class, sexual orientation, and so on—in Irigaray’s work. For example, Butler finds that Irigaray’s alternative mythology of two labial lips touching and being touched by each other is a self-conscious textual “rhetorical strategy” intended to counter established understandings of women’s genitals as a lack, a wound, and so on. 159 Rather than describing an essential sexual difference, Irigaray’s reparative, positive figuration of the two lips is a deliberately improper and catachrestic form of mimicry akin to Butler’s resignification; it is “not itself a natural relation, but a symbolic articulation.” 160 Irigaray distinguishes between the false feminine within gender binaries and a true feminine “excluded in and by such a binary opposition” and appearing “only in catachresis .” 161 The true feminine is an “ excessive feminine” in that it “exceeds its figuration”; its essence is to have no essence, to undermine binary oppositions and their essences, and to exceed conceptuality. 162 Irigaray’s textual practice is intended as the “very operation of the feminine in language.” 163 Butler seems to endorse Irigaray’s purely strategic essentialism. However, it is troubling that Irigaray’s true feminine is a name for all that escapes binary oppositions and social hierarchies.

Butler’s critique of Irigaray is that her exclusive focus on the feminine is an implicitly white, middle-class, heterosexual position attending to the marginalization of women qua women but neglecting other forms of social marginalization. Since Irigaray’s true feminine is “exactly what is excluded” from binary oppositions, it “monopolizes the sphere of exclusion,” resulting in Irigaray’s “constitutive exclusions” of other forms of difference. 164 For Irigaray “the outside is ‘always’ the feminine,” breaking its link to race, class, sexual orientation, and so on. 165 By contrast, Butler embraces intersectionality. Whereas for Irigaray sexual difference is “autonomous” and “more fundamental” than other differences, which are viewed as “ derived from” it, for Butler gender is “articulated through or as other vectors of power.” 166

Butler acknowledges her debt to African American literature and feminist thought, in a rare foray into literary criticism, her close reading of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, Passing . She also pays tribute to feminists of color, such as Chicana feminist Norma Alarcón, who similarly theorized women of color as multiply rather than singly positioned and marginalized. In Passing and in related African American literary criticism by Barbara Christian, Hazel Carby, Deborah McDowell, and others, Butler finds valuable theoretical insights that “ racializing norms ” and gender norms are “articulated through one another.” 167 But these texts also identify the value of solidarity among black women and the many obstacles to this solidarity. Versions of “racial uplift” adhering to the white middle-class nuclear family have been obstructive; they have been “masculine uplift” whose disproportionate “cost . . . for black women” has been the “impossibility of sexual freedom” for them. 168 Larsen’s critique of “racial uplift”—and its promotion of white middle-class gender norms, marriage, nuclear family, and heteronormativity—grasps the interimplication of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. By contrast, Larsen’s Passing and Toni Morrison’s Sula uphold the precarious “promise of connection” among black women. 169

If “racial uplift” has been obstructive, Irigaray’s exclusive focus on the feminine is equally obstructive, according to Butler. Irigaray seems to assume that sexual difference is “unmarked by race” and that “whiteness is not a form of racial difference.” 170 By contrast, Larsen highlights historical articulations “of racialized gender, of gendered race, of the sexualization of racial ideals, or the racialization of gender norms.” 171 In Passing Clare passes as white, and Butler’s reading particularly traces the convergence of race and sexuality. Clare’s “risk-taking” takes the dual form of “racial crossing and sexual infidelity” that undermines middle-class norms, questioning both the “sanctity of marriage” and the “clarity of racial demarcations.” 172 Sexual and racial closeting are also interlinked: “the muteness of homosexuality converges in the story with the illegibility of Clare’s blackness.” 173 The word “queering” in Passing is “a term for betraying what ought to remain concealed,” in relation to both race and sexuality. 174

If some early commentators interpreted Butler’s theory of the performativity of gender and her call for gender resignification as a voluntarist, individualist, consumerist lifestyle choice for privileged Westerners, this article has tried to show just how constrained gender resignification is, and how inextricable from other social struggles. In Butler’s more recent work, issues of gender and sexual orientation are situated in interlocking frames of social exclusion and social precarity. Neither gender nor sexual orientation on their own can determine what counts as a human, livable, and grievable life. 175

Susan Stryker, one of the founders of transgender theory, addresses her first publication, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix” ( 1994 ), to feminist and queer communities and exposes their exclusion and abjection of the “transgendered subject” as a monster. 176 Through a close reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , she expresses her affinity with Frankenstein’s monster. 177 She criticizes the medical discourse that “produced sex reassignment techniques” for its “deeply conservative attempt to stabilize gendered identity in service of the naturalized heterosexual order” and insists on the disjunction between the “naturalistic effect biomedical technology can achieve” and the “subjective experience” of this transformation. 178 She rejects the continuing pathologization of the transgendered subject by psychiatrists, with the effect that “the sounds that come out of my mouth can be summarily dismissed.” 179 Notable here is an emphasis on self-identification and lived experience, which inherits the insights of phenomenological feminists that the body is not an object but a center of perception. To honor this emphasis, Stryker enlists a mixed form that combines criticism, diary entry, poetry, and theory.

Jack Halberstam’s 1998 Female Masculinity is a complex negotiation between feminist theory, queer theory, and the emerging field of transgender theory. While in medical discourse the approved narrative for the authorization of hormones and gender confirmation surgery is that of being in the wrong body and transitioning toward the right body, Halberstam warns that the “metaphor of crossing over and indeed migrating to the right body from the wrong body merely leaves the politics of stable gender identities, and therefore stable gender hierarchies, completely intact.” 180 Indeed he endorses the very “refusal of the dialectic of home and border” in Chicana/o studies and postcolonial studies. 181 Taking a broadly intersectional position, he argues that “alternative masculinities, ultimately, will fail to change existing gender hierarchies to the extent to which they fail to be feminist, antiracist, and queer.” 182

In his 2018 “Preface to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition” of Female Masculinity Halberstam defines “female masculinity” and “the butch” in a manner that bears a family resemblance to Irigaray’s “feminine,” Spivak’s “subaltern,” and queer theory’s “queer.” “Female masculinity” includes “multiple modes of identification and gender assignation” without “stabilizing” their “meanings.” 183 “The butch” is a “placeholder for the unassimilable, for that which remains indefinable or unspeakable within the many identifications that we make and that we claim”; “let the butch stand as all that cannot be absorbed into systems of signification, legitimation, legibility, recognition, and legality.” 184 The butch is “neither cis-gender nor simply transgender” but a “bodily catachresis . . . the rhetorical practice of misnaming something for which there would otherwise be no words.” 185 In Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability ( 2018 ) Halberstam defines trans* in similar terms. In keeping with his commitment to gender identity as “continuous transition,” the term trans* “embraces the nonspecificity of the term ‘trans’ and uses it to open the term up to a shifting set of conditions and possibilities rather than to attach it only to the life narratives of a specific group of people”; the asterisk “keeps at bay any sense of knowing in advance what the meaning of this or that gender variant form may be.” 186 His 2018 “Theory in the Wild,” co-written with Tavia Nyong’o, folds a “range of concerns” in addition to gender and sexuality—“race, coloniality, ecology, anarchy”—in a language that stretches from academic to creative writing. 187

In “Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s Evil Twin” ( 2004 ), Susan Stryker launches transgender studies as an academic field “born of the union of sexuality studies and feminism” but distinct from them. The rationale for this autonomization is that “all too often queer remains a code word for ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian,’” while “transgender phenomena are misapprehended through a lens that privileges sexual orientation.” 188 Transgender studies is intended to disrupt the “privileged . . . narratives that favor sexual identity labels” at the expense of “gender categories.” 189 But Stryker is keen to acknowledge her own Western privilege: transgender studies is “marked by its First World point of origin” and the new field risks reproducing the “power structures of colonialism by subsuming non-Western configurations of personhood into Western constructs of sexuality and gender.” 190

In “(De)Subjectivated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies” ( 2006 ), Stryker continues to argue that, within queer theory, “the entire discussion of ‘gender diversity’” was “subsumed within a discussion of sexual desire—as if the only reason to express gender was to signal the mode of one’s attractions.” 191 While the term transgender “began as a buzzword of the early 1990s,” in the 21st century it is established as the name for a “wide range of phenomena that call attention to the fact that ‘gender,’ as it is lived, embodied, experienced, performed, and encountered, is more complex and varied” than previously thought. 192 As this definition suggests, transgender studies draws on the insights of all the strands of feminist theory discussed in this article—phenomenological, poststructuralist, intersectional, and postcolonial. Stryker reminds readers that, since at least Sojourner Truth, “fighting for representation within the term ‘woman’ has been . . . a part of the feminist tradition,” and “the fight over transgender inclusion within feminism is not significantly different.” 193 As with African American and postcolonial feminisms, transgender theory calls for feminists’ examination of their “exclusionary assumptions.” 194 In turn, transgender theorists need to reckon with the “whiteness” of their academic field and the “First World origin” of the term transgender, as it is being exported globally across “racial, ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic communities.” 195 Arundati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness explores the clash, in India, between the terms of transgender theory—emanating from the United States and disseminated by NGOs, magazines, and other publications—and the terminology, self-understanding, and practices of hijras . 196

Stryker is particularly critical of the modern Western correlation of biological or bodily sex (particularly genital status) and gender identity, where gender is taken to be merely the “representation of an objectively knowable material sex.” 197 Stryker is adamant that “Sex . . . is not the foundation of gender.” 198 Nor is sex as self-evident as it appears to be, in that the different components of sex—chromosomal, anatomical, reproductive, and morphological—do not necessarily line up. (For example, one’s chromosomal status might not line up with their anatomical sex.) This supposedly “objective” correlation is based on the “assumed correlation of a particular” component of “biological sex with a particular,” normative “social gender,” with the result that transgender people (among others) are forever viewed as making “false representations of an underlying material truth.” 199 Many feminist strands have shed light on the correlation of biological sex and “gender normativity,” and Stryker promises that transgender theory will continue to analyze the “operations of systems and institutions that simultaneously produce various possibilities of viable personhood, and eliminate others.” 200 In recognizing diversity beyond “Eurocentric norms,” Stryker notes that “relationships between bodily sex, subjective gender identity, social gender roles, sexual behaviors, and kinship status” have varied greatly. 201 Of central importance to transgender theory is subjective gender identity, which Stryker understands within the tradition of feminist phenomenology.

It is important to distinguish between gender as a social category within social classifications and hierarchies and gender as one’s self-identification and sense of self. Stryker focuses on the latter and connects it to the body, as the “contingent ground of all our knowledge.” 202 The antidote to fake objectivity is the recognition of “embodiment,” “embodied experience,” and “experiential knowledge”; one’s “gendered sense of self” and “lived complexity” of gender are “inalienable.” 203 All voices are embodied and no voice should be allowed to “mask” its “particularities and specificities” under the cloak of “false universality.” 204 It is therefore imperative to either speak from “direct experience” or to represent others “in an ethical fashion.” 205 It is equally vital to include forms of knowledge previously “disqualified as nonconceptual[,] . . . naïve” and “hierarchically inferior.” 206 Once again, Stryker here joins several strands of feminist theory that have practiced formal innovation—for example, in mixing theory, literature, and life-writing—not for its own sake but in the pursuit of truth and justice.

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Julie Rak and Jean Wyatt for their suggestions for revision, John Frow for his comments, and Ian Richards-Karamarkovich for his in-house editorial support.

277 Feminism Topics & Women’s Rights Essay Topics

Icon Calendar 18 May 2024
Icon Page 2272 words
Icon Clock 11 min read

Feminism topics encompass a comprehensive range of themes centered on advocating for gender equality. These themes critically address the social, political, and economic injustices primarily faced by females, aiming to dismantle patriarchal norms. Feminism topics may span from intersectional feminism, which underscores the diverse experiences of women across various intersections of race, class, and sexuality, to reproductive rights that advocate for women’s bodily autonomy and healthcare accessibility. They also involve the examination of workplace discrimination through concepts, such as the gender wage gap and the glass ceiling. Violence against women, including work and domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment, is a hot aspect, providing many discussions. In turn, one may explore the representation of women in media, politics, and STEM fields. Explorations of gender roles, gender identity, and the significance of male feminism are integral parts of these discussions. As society continues to evolve, feminism topics persistently adapt to confront and address emerging forms of gender inequality.

Best Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Achievements of Women in Politics: A Global Perspective
Emphasizing Gender Equality in the 21st-Century Workplace
Evolving Representation of Women in Media
Fight for Women’s Voting Rights: The Historical Analysis
Intersectionality: Examining its Role in Feminism
Unpacking Feminism in Third-World Countries
Dissecting Misogyny in Classical Literature
Influence of Religion on Women’s Rights Worldwide
Unveiling Bias in STEM Fields: Female Experiences
Gender Pay Gap: Global Comparisons and Solutions
Probing the Historical Evolution of Feminism
Reshaping Beauty Standards Through Feminist Discourse
Importance of Reproductive Rights in Women’s Health
Exploring Women’s Role in Environmental Activism
Glass Ceiling Phenomenon: Women in Corporate Leadership
Trans Women’s Struggles in Feminist Movements
Empowering Girls: The Role of Education
Intersection of Race, Class, and Feminism
Effects of Feminism on Modern Art
Impacts of Social Media on Women’s Rights Movements
Deconstructing Patriarchy in Traditional Societies
Single Mothers’ Challenges: A Feminist Perspective
Dynamics of Feminism in Post-Colonial Societies
Queer Women’s Struggles for Recognition and Rights
Women’s Contributions to Scientific Discovery: An Underrated History
Cybersecurity: Ensuring Women’s Safety in the Digital Age
Exploring the Misrepresentation of Feminism in Popular Culture
Repositioning Sexuality: The Role of Feminism in Health Discourse
Women’s Economic Empowerment: The Impact of Microfinance
Investigating Sexism in Video Gaming Industry
Female Leadership During Global Crises: Case Studies

Feminism Topics & Women’s Rights Essay Topics

Easy Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Power of Women’s Protest: A Historical Study
Feminist Movements’ Role in Shaping Public Policy
Body Autonomy: A Key Aspect of Feminist Ideology
Cyber Feminism: Women’s Rights in Digital Spaces
Violence Against Women: International Legal Measures
Feminist Pedagogy: Its Impact on Education
Depiction of Women in Graphic Novels: A Feminist Lens
Comparing Western and Eastern Feminist Movements
Men’s Roles in Supporting Feminist Movements
Impacts of Feminism on Marriage Institutions
Rural Women’s Rights: Challenges and Progress
Understanding Feminist Waves: From First to Fourth
Inclusion of Women in Peace Negotiation Processes
Influence of Feminism on Modern Advertising
Indigenous Women’s Movements and Rights
Reclaiming Public Spaces: Women’s Safety Concerns
Roles of Feminist Literature in Social Change
Women in Sports: Overcoming Stereotypes and Bias
Feminism in the Context of Refugee Rights
Media’s Roles in Shaping Feminist Narratives
Women’s Rights in Prisons: An Overlooked Issue
Motherhood Myths: A Feminist Examination
Subverting the Male Gaze in Film and Television
Feminist Critique of Traditional Masculinity Norms
Rise of Female Entrepreneurship: A Feminist View
Young Feminists: Shaping the Future of Women’s Rights

Interesting Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Roles of Feminism in Promoting Mental Health Awareness
Aging and Women’s Rights: An Overlooked Dimension
Feminist Perspectives on Climate Change Impacts
Women’s Rights in Military Service: Progress and Challenges
Achieving Gender Parity in Academic Publishing
Feminist Jurisprudence: Its Impact on Legal Structures
Masculinity in Crisis: Understanding the Feminist Perspective
Fashion Industry’s Evolution through Feminist Ideals
Unheard Stories: Women in the Global Space Race
Effects of Migration on Women’s Rights and Opportunities
Women’s Land Rights: A Global Issue
Intersection of Feminism and Disability Rights
Portrayal of Women in Science Fiction: A Feminist Review
Analyzing Post-Feminism: Its Origins and Implications
Cyberbullying and Its Impact on Women: Measures for Protection
Unveiling Gender Bias in Artificial Intelligence
Reimagining Domestic Work Through the Lens of Feminism
Black Women’s Hair Politics: A Feminist Perspective
Feminist Ethical Considerations in Biomedical Research
Promoting Gender Sensitivity in Children’s Literature
Understanding the Phenomenon of Toxic Femininity
Reconsidering Women’s Rights in the Context of Climate Migration
Advancing Women’s Participation in Political Activism

Feminism Argumentative Essay Topics

Intersectionality’s Impact on Modern Feminism
Evolution of Feminist Thought: From First-Wave to Fourth-Wave
Gender Wage Gap: Myths and Realities
Workplace Discrimination: Tackling Unconscious Bias
Feminist Theory’s Influence on Contemporary Art
Intersection of Feminism and Environmental Activism
Men’s Roles in the Feminist Movement
Objectification in Media: A Feminist Perspective
Misconceptions about Feminism: Addressing Stereotypes
Feminism in the Classroom: The Role of Education
Feminist Analysis of Reproductive Rights Policies
Transgender Rights: An Extension of Feminism
Intersection of Feminism and Racial Justice
Body Shaming Culture: A Feminist Viewpoint
Feminism’s Influence on Modern Advertising
Patriarchy and Religion: A Feminist Critique
Domestic Labor: Feminist Perspectives on Unpaid Work
Sexism in Sports: The Need for Feminist Intervention
The MeToo Movement’s Influence on Modern Feminism
Feminism and the Fight for Equal Representation in Politics
Women’s Rights in the Digital Age: A Feminist Examination
Feminist Critique of Traditional Beauty Standards
Globalization and Its Effects on Women’s Rights
The Role of Feminism in LGBTQ+ Rights Advocacy
Popular Culture and Its Reflection on Feminist Values

Controversial Feminist Research Paper Topics

Intersectionality in Modern Feminist Movements: An Analysis
Representation of Women in High-Powered Political Roles
Cultural Appropriation Within the Feminist Movement: An Inquiry
The Role of Feminism in Defining Beauty Standards
Women’s Reproductive Rights: A Debate of Autonomy
Feminism and Religion: The Question of Compatibility
Male Allies in the Feminist Movement: An Evaluation
Shift in Traditional Gender Roles: Feminist Perspective
Impacts of Media on Perceptions of Feminism
Dissecting the Wage Gap: A Feminist Examination
Menstrual Equity: A Battle for Feminist Activists
Feminism in Popular Music: Power or Appropriation?
Climate Change: The Unseen Feminist Issue
Education’s Role in Shaping Feminist Beliefs
Power Dynamics in the Workplace: A Feminist Scrutiny
Cyber-Feminism: Harnessing Digital Spaces for Activism
Healthcare Disparities Faced by Women: An Analysis
Transgender Women in Feminist Discourse: An Exploration
Feminist Perspectives on Monogamy and Polyamory
Feminist Analysis of Modern Advertising Campaigns
Exploring Sexism in the Film Industry through a Feminist Lens
Debunking Myths Surrounding the Feminist Movement
Childcare Responsibilities and Their Feminist Implications
Women’s Sports: Evaluating Equity and Feminist Advocacy

Feminist Research Paper Topics in Feminism Studies

Evaluating Feminist Theories: From Radical to Liberal
Women’s Health Care: Policies and Disparities
Maternal Mortality: A Global Women’s Rights Issue
Uncovering Sexism in the Tech Industry
Critique of Binary Gender Roles in Children’s Toys
Body Positivity Movement’s Influence on Feminism
Relevance of Feminism in the Fight Against Human Trafficking
Women in Coding: Breaking Stereotypes
The Role of Women in Sustainable Agriculture
Feminism in the Cosmetics Industry: A Dual-Edged Sword
The Influence of Feminism on Modern Architecture
Bridging the Gap: Women in Higher Education Leadership
The Role of Feminism in Advancing LGBTQ+ Rights
Menstrual Equity: A Key Women’s Rights Issue
Women in Classical Music: Breaking Barriers
Analyzing Gendered Language: A Feminist Approach
Women’s Rights and Humanitarian Aid: The Interconnection
Exploring the Role of Women in Graphic Design
Addressing the Lack of Women in Venture Capitalism
Impact of Feminism on Urban Planning and Design
Maternal Labor in the Informal Economy: A Feminist Analysis
Feminism’s Influence on Modern Dance Forms
Exploring the Role of Women in the Renewable Energy Sector
Women in Esports: An Emerging Frontier
Child Marriage: A Grave Violation of Women’s Rights

Feminist Topics for Discussion

Feminist Criticism of the Fashion Modelling Industry
Domestic Violence: Feminist Legal Responses
Analyzing the Success of Women-Only Workspaces
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Human Rights Issue
Women’s Role in the Evolution of Cryptocurrency
Women and the Right to Water: A Feminist Perspective
Gender Stereotypes in Comedy: A Feminist View
Intersection of Animal Rights and Feminist Theory
Roles of Feminism in the Fight Against Child Labor
Representation of Women in Folklore and Mythology
Women’s Rights in the Gig Economy: Issues and Solutions
Revisiting Feminism in Post-Soviet Countries
Women in the Space Industry: Present Status and Future Trends
The Influence of Feminism on Culinary Arts
Unraveling the Impact of Fast Fashion on Women Workers
Feminist Perspectives on Genetic Engineering and Reproduction
Assessing the Progress of Women’s Financial Literacy
Sex Work and Feminism: A Controversial Discourse
Women in Cybernetics: An Untapped Potential
Uncovering the Women Behind Major Historical Events
The Impact of the #MeToo Movement Globally
Women’s Rights in the Cannabis Industry: Challenges and Progress
Redefining Motherhood: The Intersection of Feminism and Adoption
Roles of Feminist Movements in Combatting Child Abuse

Women’s Rights Essay Topics for Feminism

Evolution of Women’s Rights in the 20th Century
Roles of Women in World War II: Catalyst for Change
Suffrage Movement: Driving Force Behind Women’s Empowerment
Cultural Differences in Women’s Rights: A Comparative Study
Feminist Movements and Their Global Impact
Women’s Rights in Islamic Societies: Perceptions and Realities
Glass Ceiling Phenomenon: Analysis and Impacts
Pioneering Women in Science: Trailblazers for Equality
Impacts of Media Portrayal on Women’s Rights
Economic Autonomy for Women: Pathway to Empowerment
Women’s Rights in Education: Global Perspective
Gender Equality in Politics: Global Progress
Intersectionality and Women’s Rights: Race, Class, and Gender
Legal Milestones in Women’s Rights History
Inequities in Healthcare: A Women’s Rights Issue
Modern-Day Slavery: Women and Human Trafficking
Climate Change: A Unique Threat to Women’s Rights
Body Autonomy and Reproductive Rights: A Feminist Analysis
Globalization’s Effect on Women’s Rights: Opportunities and Threats
Gender Violence: An Erosion of Women’s Rights
Indigenous Women’s Rights: Struggles and Triumphs
Women’s Rights Activists: Unsung Heroes of History
Empowerment Through Sports: Women’s Struggle and Success
Balancing Act: Motherhood and Career in the 21st Century
LGBTQ+ Women: Rights and Recognition in Different Societies

Women’s Rights Research Questions

Evolution of Feminism: How Has the Movement Shifted Over Time?
The Workplace and Gender Equality: How Effective Are Current Measures?
Intersectionality’s Influence: How Does It Shape Women’s Rights Advocacy?
Reproductive Rights: What Is the Global Impact on Women’s Health?
Media Representation: Does It Affect Women’s Rights Perception?
Gender Stereotypes: How Do They Impede Women’s Empowerment?
Global Disparities: Why Do Women’s Rights Vary So Widely?
Maternal Mortality: How Does It Reflect on Women’s Healthcare Rights?
Education for Girls: How Does It Contribute to Gender Equality?
Cultural Norms: How Do They Influence Women’s Rights?
Leadership Roles: Are Women Adequately Represented in Positions of Power?
Domestic Violence Laws: Are They Sufficient to Protect Women’s Rights?
Roles of Technology: How Does It Impact Women’s Rights?
Sexual Harassment Policies: How Effective Are They in Protecting Women?
Pay Equity: How Can It Be Ensured for Women Globally?
Politics and Gender: How Does Women’s Representation Shape Policy-Making?
Child Marriage: How Does It Violate Girls’ Rights?
Climate Change: How Does It Disproportionately Affect Women?
Trafficking Scourge: How Can Women’s Rights Combat This Issue?
Female Genital Mutilation: How Does It Contradict Women’s Rights?
Armed Conflicts: How Do They Impact Women’s Rights?
Body Autonomy: How Can It Be Safeguarded for Women?
Women’s Suffrage: How Did It Pave the Way for Modern Women’s Rights?
Men’s Role: How Can They Contribute to Women’s Rights Advocacy?
Legal Frameworks: How Do They Support or Hinder Women’s Rights?

History of Women’s Rights Topics

Emergence of Feminism in the 19th Century
Roles of Women in the Abolitionist Movement
Suffragette Movements: Triumphs and Challenges
Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Advocacy for Women’s Rights
Impacts of World War II on Women’s Liberation
Radical Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s
Pioneering Women in Politics: The First Female Senators
Inception of the Equal Rights Amendment
Revolutionary Women’s Health Activism
Struggle for Reproductive Freedom: Roe vs. Wade
Birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement
Challenges Women Faced in the Civil Rights Movement
Women’s Roles in the Trade Union Movement
Intersectionality and Feminism: Examining the Role of Women of Color
How Did the Women’s Rights Movement Impact Education?
Sexuality, Identity, and Feminism: Stonewall Riots’ Impact
Influence of Religion on Women’s Rights Activism
Women’s Empowerment: The UN Conferences
Impact of Globalization on Women’s Rights
Women’s Movements in Non-Western Countries
Women in Space: The Fight for Equality in NASA
Achievements of Feminist Literature and Arts
Evolution of the Women’s Sports Movement
Advancement of Women’s Rights in the Digital Age
Cultural Shifts: The Media’s Role in Promoting Women’s Rights

Feminism Essay Topics on Women’s Issues

Career Challenges: The Gender Wage Gap in Contemporary Society
Examining Microfinance: An Empowering Tool for Women in Developing Countries
Pioneers of Change: The Role of Women in the Space Industry
Exploring Beauty Standards: An Analysis of Global Perspectives
Impacts of Legislation: Progress in Women’s Health Policies
Maternity Leave Policies: A Comparative Study of Different Countries
Resilience Through Struggles: The Plight of Female Refugees
Technology’s Influence: Addressing the Digital Gender Divide
Dissecting Stereotypes: Gender Roles in Children’s Media
Influence of Female Leaders: A Look at Political Empowerment
Social Media and Women: Effects on Mental Health
Understanding Intersectionality: The Complexity of Women’s Rights
Single Mothers: Balancing Parenthood and Economic Challenges
Gaining Ground in Sports: A Look at Female Athletes’ Struggles
Maternal Mortality: The Hidden Health Crisis
Reproductive Rights: Women’s Control Over Their Bodies
Feminism in Literature: Portrayal of Women in Classic Novels
Deconstructing Patriarchy: The Impact of Gender Inequality
Body Autonomy: The Battle for Abortion Rights
Women in STEM: Barriers and Breakthroughs
Female Soldiers: Their Role in Military Conflicts
Human Trafficking: The Disproportionate Impact on Women
Silent Victims: Domestic Violence and Women’s Health

To Learn More, Read Relevant Articles

385 Odyssey Essay Topics & Ideas

Icon Calendar 1 August 2023
Icon Page 3601 words

415 Rogerian Essay Topics & Good Ideas

Icon Calendar 30 July 2023
Icon Page 3224 words

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Expository Essay

Related Papers

Bishun Kumar

Bloomsbury Companion to Political Philosophy

Anca Gheaus

Yuusuf Cabdi

Caolan Walsh

Stanley Nnaso

My research focuses on feminist activism, by which I mean the practices that feminists engage in individually and collectively to try to change society to reduce gender inequality. The topic of men and gender equality is seen as somewhat ambiguous within the gender equality discourse. On the one hand, for a long period gender equality policies have been contextualized mainly as a ‘women’s issue’ as women have been the driving force behind gender equality strategies and have been seen as the only ones who benefit from a more equal society (European Commission:2013). This research responds to ongoing debates amongst feminists about whether and how men should be involved in the feminist movement. However, in the last decade there has been more debate on how to engage more men in gender equality initiatives and how gender inequality affects different groups of men.

Perspectives

Cynthia F Epstein

CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research - Zenodo

Dr. Reni Francis

RELATED PAPERS

Epigraphy, Philology, & Hebrew Bible

Aren M . Wilson-Wright , Na'ama Pat-El

Journal of Glaciology

Julio Ordoñez

Marin Lukas

The Pan African medical journal

Thomas Egwang

Patrizia Fattori

Περιοδικό ΔΙΚΑΙΟ ΕΠΙΧΕΙΡΗΣΕΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΩΝ

Ioannis Lixouriotis

Journal of Corporate Citizenship

Anke Schwittay

Trends in Medicine

Julieta Lomeli

Artery Research

Pascal Verdonck

isabelle Ville

Pauline Garvey

NERS Jurnal Keperawatan

Indah Putri sari

REMHU : Revista Interdisciplinar da Mobilidade Humana

William Mejia

Derecho, empresa y administración pública en Japón

Carmen Tirado

European Journal of Pain

Madelon Peters

Liviu Cojocaru

SUT毕业证成绩单斯威本科技大学毕业证

Biogeosciences

Leila Bagaço

Marie Leclaire

Nuclear Medicine Communications

Kai-Yuan Tzen

International Journal of Applied Information Systems

Sangeeta Mangesh

15 Feminist Perspectives in Global Studies

International Affairs Program, Northeastern University

Published: 11 December 2018
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

In highlighting the contributions that feminist scholars have made to global studies in recent decades, this chapter focuses on three prominent areas of research: the gendered nature of globalization; violence against women, armed conflict, and the interstate system; and women’s, feminist, and gendered social movements. These three areas of research are interconnected, in that “globalization-from-above” generates or exacerbates inequalities, tensions, and conflicts, whereas social movements are manifestations of “globalization-from-below.” The overview of feminist perspectives on, and critiques of, globalization and gender-based violence is accompanied by a discussion of how women’s movements, especially feminist movements, have responded to global economic and political developments and how the appropriation of feminist language for the promotion of the global neoliberal agenda has raised objections.

What has feminist scholarship contributed to global studies? How do feminist approaches differ? To what extent do feminist contributions meet what Steger identified in Chapter 1 of this volume as the four central pillars or framings of global studies: globalization, transdisciplinarity, space and time, and critical thinking? This chapter addresses these questions through a focus on three areas of feminist research: (gendered) globalization, violence against women and armed conflict, and transnational social movements. As will be evident, the three areas of research are interconnected in that “globalization-from-above” generates or exacerbates inequalities, tensions, and conflicts, whereas social movements—including transnational feminist networks and locally based women’s rights groups that ally with them—are manifestations of “globalization-from-below.” Feminist economists (both macro- and micro-economists), sociologists (largely those associated with world society, world-systems, or gender stratification theories), and political scientists (comparativists, theorists, and those in the international relations field) have been the most prominent contributors to global studies. Their research has spanned micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis, tackling the gender dynamics of the global economy and the interstate system; social movements, feminist organizations, and international organizations; and the individual and household effects of larger socioeconomic and political processes. Methods of feminist research in global studies range from quantitative to ethnography, but in general feminist researchers are cognizant of the “intersectionality” of gender, class, and race/ethnicity. In examining processes associated with globalization, feminist scholars also have addressed the persistent conundrum of structure and agency: How does change occur, by whom, and under what conditions?

This chapter examines feminist perspectives, critiques, and contributions to global studies during the past three decades, including my own research, with a focus on the feminist political economy approach. To anticipate the analysis, I note here that the era of neoliberal globalization has given rise to a number of contradictory and paradoxical developments. These include ever-increasing female educational attainment and greater female labor force participation amid widening income inequality, periodic crises, rising unemployment, wage stagnation, and continued violence against women; democracy promotion alongside the “war on terror,” imposed regime changes, and the relative decline of US hegemony; and the proliferation of women’s movements supported by the United Nations’ (UN) global women’s rights agenda notwithstanding the persistence of hypermasculinity and patriarchy.

To begin, I explain the global women’s rights agenda as it frames some of the discussion that follows. It consists of a large and growing number of initiatives, notably world conferences and international treaties, sponsored by the UN, signed by governments, and embraced by women’s rights groups. An important treaty and norm is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, known by its acronym CEDAW (which is also the acronym for the committee that reviews signatory-government periodic reports as well as non-governmental organization [NGO] shadow reports). Adopted in 1979, following the first World Conference on Women (Mexico City, 1975) and during the Decade for Women (1976–1985), CEDAW came into force in 1981 and to date has been ratified by nearly all states, although its provisions have not necessarily been implemented in full. Antecedents to CEDAW include the 1952 UN Convention on the Political Rights of Women; the 1957 Convention on the Nationality of Married Women; the 1960 UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education; and the 1962 UN Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriage. Since then, other international standards and norms concerning women’s rights include Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security; ILO Convention 183 on maternity protection (2000; revised from the 1952 version); and Goal 3 of the Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015), which pertained to ending gender gaps in education and political participation. Since 2010, UN Women—the agency that incorporated the three preceding entities on women—has been tasked with monitoring, researching, and advocating for women’s rights and gender equality. One task is to monitor the integration of gender issues across the 16 new Sustainable Development Goals.

The many standards, norms, and treaties that constitute the global women’s rights agenda have been adopted in varying degrees across countries and are the subject of considerable feminist inquiry. However, they are vulnerable to the volatilities of the global economy and of the interstate system. The neoliberal era has in fact both undermined and exacerbated patriarchal forms of gender relations, in at least two ways. First, by drawing more women into the global economy, it has removed many women from local and household patriarchal controls, allowing for the formation of a professional class of employed women and a female working class. At the same time, much of the work available to women—especially working-class women and today’s educated young people—is irregular, precarious, temporary, or exploitative. In addition, patriarchal backlashes have occurred in some areas, especially where men have been left behind or otherwise threatened by women’s gains.

Second, both the UN’s global women’s rights agenda and democracy-promotion initiatives by the United States and European Union have encouraged women’s political participation and representation. In August 2016, 46 countries had met or exceeded the UN’s recommended 30% benchmark; among that group were Algeria and Tunisia (the United States ranked 96th; see Interparliamentary Union 2016 ). As these efforts have coincided with the emergence of large populations of educated and assertive women engaged in both civil society and political society, the result has been to weaken patriarchal gender relations and bring about pro-women legislative and policy reforms. At the same time, competition and rivalries among male-dominated states and militant movements have generated invasions and occupations, armed conflicts, and horrific forms of violence against women. Paradoxically, these conflicts have been supported by some women, whether in government or in the society at large (discussed later).

As a result of the contradictions and paradoxes, progress and setbacks, and the push and pull of collective action and entrenched structures, feminist global studies have themselves revealed different emphases. Some studies have emphasized women’s agency and empowerment, whereas others highlight the structures of constraint and oppression; some advocate for policy reforms in line with institutional imperatives, whereas others stress the need for systemic change; and some scholars engage in innovative theoretical work that may or may not be welcomed or acknowledged by colleagues in the mainstream of their disciplines. This chapter can make references only to a small number of those studies and scholars in the three sections that follow—on the gendered nature of globalization, violence, and social movements—while also underscoring the compelling nature of the more radical critiques and proposed alternatives to the prevailing global order.

Gendering Globalization

Globalization is a complex and multidimensional process whereby the mobility of capital, products, ideas, organizations, and movements takes on an increasingly global form ( Moghadam 2005 : 35). Although it has come under attack in recent years, it remains the current stage of the capitalist world-system, characterized by the global expansion of capitalist relations of production, the spread and promotion of democracy, the diffusion of the UN-promoted women’s rights agenda, the worldwide growth of feminist movements and networks, the speed of communications, and the spread of Islamist movements and political parties. It is perhaps an irony of history that neoliberalism, feminist movements, Islamist movements, and anti-globalization movements spread at roughly the same time ( Moghadam 2013a ).

A key postulate of feminist global studies is that globalization in its varied dimensions is gendered. The economic dimension—privatization, the introduction of “flexible” labor markets, outsourcing, financialization, and the emphasis on entrepreneurship—affects women and men differently, while the political dimension can be imbued with culture-laden concepts of masculinity and femininity ( Marchand and Runyan 2000 ). The study of globalization reveals possibilities for change in gender relations, with opportunities for cross-border collective action, domestic coalition-building, and progressive legal and policy reforms. But it also reveals the entrenchment of structural or systemic obstacles.

Since the 1970s, a prodigious literature has emerged on the effects of economic processes on working women’s lives, and we may identify three “waves” of such feminist global studies. The first set of studies focused on modernization, development, and female labor; the second focused on structural adjustment policies and women; and the third focused on globalization and women’s work and domestic lives. Early modernization marginalized women from the productive process, creating “housewifization” and marginalization ( Mies 1986 ; Saffioti 1978 ), but subsequent development processes not only integrated female labor but also relied on it for industrial growth and exports, especially in Southeast Asia and along the US–Mexico border ( Elson and Pearson 1981 ; Joekes 1987 ; Nash and Fernandez-Kelly 1984 ; Sen and Grown 1985 ). Structural adjustment policies intensified women’s productive and reproductive burdens and were marked by male bias ( Elson 1990 ). Neoliberal globalization was accompanied by flexible and “feminized” labor markets (Standing 1989 , 1999 ), along with an outflow of female migrant workers and the persistence of unacceptable levels of violence against women ( True 2012 ). Financialization led to growing income inequalities and reckless market behavior that culminated in the 2008 Great Recession and new austerity measures, all of which had specific effects on women, work, and welfare ( Moghadam 2011 ; Rubery 2015 ; Walby 2015 ).

When feminist research on globalization emerged in the 1990s, two approaches began to define the field. One was the materialist and political economy approach that brought attention to how states, multinational corporations, and institutions of global governance have created a global economy in which female labor plays a distinct role, albeit in different ways across regions and within societies ( Dunaway 2001 ; Peterson 2003 ). The other was the postcolonial and post-structuralist approach emphasizing the signs, symbols, and representations of globalization as a masculine project in which scattered hegemonies subsumed subordinate sectors, countries, and social groups, but where women were able to act toward self-empowerment ( Bergeron 2001 ; Grewal and Kaplan 1994 ; Marchand 2000 ; Marchand and Parpart 1995 ). The field of gender and globalization has expanded, but many studies continue to be characterized by the two approaches; in both, scholars examine the interplay of structure and agency, although with different emphases and methodologies. For example, in the first approach, the economic zones of the capitalist world-system constitute the analytical point of departure, within which women’s collective action toward resistance and self-empowerment takes shape in different ways, with the implicit or explicit assumption that a sort of global social democracy would be a solution to contemporary gender and social inequalities ( Moghadam 2005 ; Walby 2009 ). The second approach evinces a tendency toward methodological individualism, without broad recommendations of epochal shifts but with examples of ways that women in particular settings have negotiated globalized structures to their own advantage ( Desai 2009 ; Sylvanus 2016 ). A third approach, currently largely confined to feminist studies of the democratic welfare states of the European Union, is to focus on particular institutions—national or supranational—as sites of contestation, change, and empowerment ( Krook and Mackay 2015 ; Rai and Waylen 2008 ). Across these approaches, therefore, we find feminist analyses of macro-level structural processes, meso-level institutions, and micro-level forms of action.

Precarity, Care, and Class

New research on the changing global class structure has included investigations into the so-called “precariat” ( Standing 2011 ), where a large part of the world’s female labor force is located. The era of globalization compelled a shift from manufacturing to services as the main source of employment; along with the spread of information-based systems and technologies, this shift generated a new economy emphasizing flexibility in the labor market and in employment relations. Flexibility entailed the erosion of the standard (industrial) employment relationship and an increase in precarious work, which is poorly paid and insecure. Researchers may use “precarity” in a broad sense, but for Guy Standing (2011) , the precariat is located in the services sector, in irregular/insecure forms of labor such as retail and hospitality, temp agencies, and call centers. The precariat includes part-time or fixed-term workers, those on “zero contracts” and subcontracted workers, along with interns. Educated young people with university education have few, if any, prospects of the kind of stable, full-time jobs or careers that their parents and grandparents were guaranteed during the “golden age” of Third World development or the “golden age of capitalism” in Western countries. Educated young women may have the necessary training and credentials as well as civic skills, but they face either very high unemployment rates or “flexible” jobs that do not enable them to embark on professional careers. In some countries, they face the burden of traditional gender bias and are either excluded from certain positions in the public sector or face quotas that limit their access (because men are favored). Standing rightly notes that precarious workers have rights insecurity in that they are not beneficiaries of pensions or other social benefits. This has been a characteristic of vast sections of the global labor force generally, and the female labor force specifically, but in recent years it has encompassed populations that in the past would be guaranteed stable work and good benefits.

If we accept world-system theory’s postulate that the contemporary capitalist world-system consists of the three economic zones of core, periphery, and semi-periphery ( Chase-Dunn 1998 ), we can acknowledge that forms of the female labor force—including the female precariat—will vary by world-system location, country, and social class. In the core, many working-class and lower middle-class women have lost the decent jobs and benefits they may have previously enjoyed, a condition exacerbated by the Great Recession. But even before that, Barbara Ehrenreich’s (2001) celebrated ethnographic study Nickel and Dimed elucidated the precarious employment conditions of working-class and low-income American women. What might be called the Americanization of the global economy occurred with economic globalization, as non-standard and precarious jobs spread across Europe as well as in developing countries. Women in such jobs remain outside social security programs because the state does not extend benefits that private employers will not or cannot cover. In Bangladesh, a peripheral country, women account for almost 85% of workers in the garment industry ( Oxfam 2014 ). These jobs, although often better for women than subsistence farming, offer minimal job security or physical safety: Most of those killed by the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in April 2013 were women.

Bangladesh is also famous for the microcredit revolution. There remains some disagreement as to the extent of microcredit’s contribution to poverty alleviation in Bangladesh or elsewhere. What seems clear, however, is that the goals of privatization and poverty reduction underpin the promotion of entrepreneurship and microfinancing, targeted in large measure to women. Many income-generating projects that focus on low-income women largely operate on the basis of a market approach notwithstanding the claim of women’s empowerment as the goal. Such projects do not enable the establishment of productive women-owned businesses with growth potentials; rather, they keep women in what the International Labor Organization (ILO) calls the “vulnerable worker” category. Because women are often oriented toward traditional homemaking occupations that generate little income, they are trapped in survivalist activities ( Beneria 2001 ).

The economic problems and burdens that working-class and lower-income women face are exacerbated by the growing inequality that numerous countries have been experiencing across the neoliberal era. Studies show that in more economically unequal societies, fewer women complete higher education, fewer women are represented in the legislature, and the pay gap between women and men is wider ( Oxfam 2014 ; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009 ). The recent rapid rise in economic inequality in most countries, therefore, is a serious blow to efforts to achieve gender equality. At the same time, women’s lower wages, precarity, and unemployment both reflect and contribute to overall social and income inequality.

As neoliberal globalization was unfolding across the past decades, women’s labor force participation increased, whether for labor supply-side reasons (women’s economic need, educational attainment, and fewer children) or for demand-side reasons (employers’ preference for low-cost non-unionized labor in manufacturing, the need for professionals in certain public and private services, or equal-opportunity laws mandating the hiring of women). In the wake of the Great Recession, however, data show that young women’s labor force participation decreased, globally, from 50.5% in 1992 to 40.5% in 2012 (ILO 2012: Table 5, p. 19). In countries of the Middle East and North Africa, where there had been a slow but steady increase in female involvement in manufacturing in countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey, more recent data show declines, suggesting a contraction of the female working class. Women may be withdrawing because of precarious work conditions and the absence of supports for maternal employment in the expanding private sector (Ilkkaracan 2012; Moghadam 2016 ).

As Johanna Brenner (2001) has pointed out, Marx and Engels knew that capitalism would have the tendency to draw women into wage labor and that this would create the material basis for their independence from men. But they overlooked the limitation that women’s role in biological reproduction placed on women’s independence. Feminist political economy has detailed how women’s care work underpins both production and social reproduction and in many instances compensates for the state’s inadequate welfare provisions (Folbre 1997, 2012 ). Cooking and cleaning, childcare, and elder care are the responsibility of all but the wealthiest women, and neither value nor status is attached to caregivers within the household. As such, the sexual division of labor has remained remarkably resilient. Studies show that women’s care work is a causal factor in the gender differences in leisure time, income, promotions, and pensions ( UN Women 2015 ).

Another aspect of the changing global class structure that is also tied to the gender dynamics of globalization is paid care work by female migrants. Such labor may be beneficial to sending countries such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, in that remittances support families at home while also contributing to the national income. But migrating women workers often encounter oppressive working conditions as well as the perverse reality of caring for other people’s children and elderly relatives while their own remain thousands of miles away.

Women’s domestic and caring responsibilities shape women’s labor force participation and influence employment arrangements; the availability of migrant female labor does the same. For example, studies by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) find that European women’s labor force participation aligns with the presence or absence of child care facilities ( Thévenon 2013 ). In the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf, rates of female labor force participation are now the highest in the region of the Middle East and North Africa—at approximately 40–50%—because in these very small countries all the (educated) women who want to work find jobs in the public sector and because they all have nannies, imported from Southeast Asia. What is more, the labor force statistics include migrant workers. Elsewhere in the region, women’s labor force participation is low, certainly because of weak economic conditions, discriminatory legislation, the contraction of public sector employment and the absence of decent work in the private sector, but crucially because women from low-income and working-class households do not have access to either paid maternity leave of a culturally acceptable duration or affordable and quality childcare facilities ( Moghadam 2016 ).

If working women throughout the world are concentrated at the lower rungs of the stratification ladder, those at the top may enjoy far better living standards and life options, although not compared to their male peers. As a number of studies have shown, men are over-represented at the top of the income ladder and hold more positions of power as ministers and business leaders. In 2014, just 23 chief executives of Fortune 500 companies and only 3 of the 30 richest people in the world were women ( Oxfam 2014 ). Nonetheless, a kind of “1% feminism” may be identified, exemplified by Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, whose book, Lean In (2013) , was addressed to highly paid professional women who did not make as much as their male peers. The recommendation that women “lean in” to demand the kinds of promotions, bonuses, and pay raises their male colleagues more easily obtain is found in texts and speeches geared toward highly paid professional women (in legal and medical services, the entertainment industry, media, and the corporate world), but it is less relevant to women in low-paid service jobs. Equal pay for equal work is certainly a valid feminist demand, but so is the presence of precarious work, low or stagnating wages, and the lack of institutional supports for working mothers. Structural inequalities systematically prevent progress for large segments of the world’s current or potential female labor force. Economic advantages and disadvantages spill over into the domain of “human capabilities” (Drèze and Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000 : 70–110). The presence of very wide income inequalities that characterize many areas of the world would call into question the validity of the notion of “equality of opportunities.”

Violence, Armed Conflict, Peace, and Security

Feminist studies on violence against women (VAW) have been both prodigious and prominent. Starting with second-wave US feminist concerns with “wife battering,” research and advocacy has spread across the world to encompass sexual harassment at the workplace and on the streets, harmful traditional practices, and sexual abuse during armed conflict. Feminist scholarship has sought to show how gender inequality is inextricably tied to both intra- and interstate violence ( Caprioli 2005 ; Hudson et al. 2012 ; womanstats.org ) and how women’s involvement in peace movements should be recognized and rewarded ( Cockburn 2010 ). This approach examines VAW within micro and macro processes to assert that gender inequality correlates with VAW as well as with violence generally and also to postulate that the presence or absence of women in political life matters for the propensity of a state to engage in war.

Violence against women is present across cultures, historical periods, and political systems; it occurs in contexts of the politicization of ethnicity, wars, and criminal activity. Wife battering and sexual harassment have been documented in countries throughout the world, but culture-specific forms of VAW include date rape/campus rape, compulsory veiling, forced marriage, honor killings, female feticide, dowry deaths, bride fattening, acid attacks, and virginity tests. Such violence takes place within the home, on the streets, and at workplaces, universities, clinics, and prisons; some, such as compulsory veiling or punishments for adultery or premarital sex, may be state-sanctioned. Intimate partner violence (IPV) accounts for the majority of women’s experience of violence. Resources remain limited even though VAW has become a major focus of feminist advocacy and mobilization. Studies have shown that in most countries, less than half of the women who experienced violence sought help of any sort, and among those who did, most looked to family and friends as opposed to the police and health services ( McCleary-Sills 2016 ; see also Klugman et al. 2014 : Chap. 3).

Scholarly interest in domestic and sexual violence blossomed in the 1970s when feminist movements in the United States and Great Britain called attention to the high rates of men’s violence against their wives. Feminist scholars suggested that patriarchy reinforced men’s unequal access to power and material resources through both subtle and overt forms of violence. Wife abuse, within this tradition, is viewed as both a byproduct and a producer of unequal gender relations: Violence prevents women from challenging men’s authority in the home and reinforces their subordinate position within the gender hierarchy. A feminist analysis of domestic violence focuses on the contexts within which men hurt women; the physical and non-physical forms of violence that maintain men’s power over women; and the gendered implications of VAW for individual survivors, their families, and society ( Moghadam and Fahlberg 2017 ). In other words, women’s inequality is the central explanatory variable in feminist scholarship on domestic violence, although not the exclusive one.

The varied forms of VAW are regarded by many scholars as examples of structural violence —that is, rooted in unequal gender relations, patriarchal laws and norms, geopolitics, and economic inequalities rather than solely in individual pathology. Feminist social theory locates VAW in (gendered) power asymmetries that manifest themselves at micro, meso, and macro levels. Across time and space, men have been socialized into hegemonic masculinity or hypermasculinity and accorded privileges and entitlements, whereas women have been subject to men’s supervision or control within the family, placed in subordinate roles in other societal domains, and often considered as sexual objects. One line of inquiry suggests that violence by men against women is not solely a resource for reinforcing men’s dominance over women but also a strategy for men to claim and maintain power over other men. Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) contend that the patriarchal social structure produces a hierarchy among men that shapes conceptions of hegemonic masculinity and requires that individual men adopt particular, often aggressive and competitive, behaviors in order to assert their dominant status in relation to other men. Although idealized notions of masculinity and the legal or normative resources for enacting these vary across communities, masculinity scholars argue that in every society women’s bodies have become a common vehicle through which men perform their dominance over other men as well as over women ( Moghadam and Fahlberg 2017 ). One need only think of wars, gangs, and authoritarian state policies as sites for such hypermasculine competition and power struggles and the fallout for women. As a result, sexual assault, IPV, femicide, sexual harassment, and other forms of gender-based violence continue to remain high, even as feminist notions of equality between men and women seep into social norms and public policies. As Walby (2009) has argued, violence is entrenched in the economy, polity, and society, perpetrated by state and non-state actors alike.

The interstate system of the current era of neoliberal globalization is complicit in VAW in at least three ways. First, it produces conflicts and wars. Second, it produces economic pressures and crises, or “economic violence” ( Fabián 2010 : 18). Macroeconomic policies that induce unemployment may generate tensions in households or communities, exacerbate hegemonic masculinities, and increase IPV. Third, numerous states retain discriminatory laws or laws that expressly place women in a subordinate position in the family or society at large. Feminist scholarship further examines how geopolitical interests and interventions by regional or global powers in support of contested states or non-state rebels ignites hypermasculinity and thus controls over women in the family or the household ( Winter 2017 ); this is quite apart from the pervasive sexual abuse that typically accompanies armed conflicts and refugee waves ( Leatherman 2011 ). Examples since just the late twentieth century abound and include Afghanistan, Liberia, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, northern Nigeria, and Syria. Scholarship in the field of feminist international relations has examined both sexual misconduct in peacekeeping operations and the “uniformly shallow approach to gender” on the part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and even the UN, especially in connection with peacekeeping, and it emphasizes the long-standing privileging of militarized states in the international system ( Hebert 2012 ). In these ways, macro-level processes intersect with pre-existing gender inequalities and forms of male privilege to perpetuate VAW, including domestic violence.

Palestinian feminist researchers have tied the persistence of “honor killings” and the spread of veiling to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the economic stranglehold of the impoverished Gaza Strip ( Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2001 ). Zahia Smail Salhi (2010) has argued that the Algerian state’s patriarchal laws as well as what she defines as “private violence” indirectly enabled the “Islamist femicide” of the 1990s when Islamist extremists took up arms against the state. The unprecedented violence experienced by Syrian women since 2012 is a direct consequence of a protracted internationalized civil conflict in which the Syrian state, supported by Iran and Russia, and the armed rebels, supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and a number of Western countries, battle for supremacy. The rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and now also in Libya, only occurred in the wake of destabilization policies of Western countries and regional allies. (Similarly, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and now Pakistan as well, is a result of the US policy of destabilizing the modernizing Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s.) “Femicide” in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez may be associated with US immigration and deportation policies, economic difficulties within communities, and weak or complicit state responses to criminal activity ( Godoy-Paiz 2008 ; Olivera 2006 ; Staudt 2008 ).

As noted previously, the political economy of VAW ( True 2012 ) locates much of the violence that women encounter and the male dominance that underpins it in state policies and economic crises, as well as in armed conflict, militarism, invasions, occupations, and wars. As a result, the sexual abuse of women during periods of armed conflict has been a long-standing practice of state and non-state combatants. Furthermore, sex trafficking—certainly rooted in patriarchy and male entitlement—has been enabled by globalization’s porous borders, ease of communication and travel, and periodic economic crises.

Buvinic et al. (2012) argue that there are first-round and second-round differential impacts of violence on gender relations, inequality, and equality. First-round channels include an increase in mortality and morbidity, especially of men and children, along with a higher incidence of widowhood; forced displacement and migration; asset and income loss due to disruption of markets, infrastructure destruction and damage, and deaths of household members; and sexual and gender-based violence. Second-round impacts, which may be viewed as household coping strategies, are changes in marriage and fertility; political and civic participation; labor reallocation; and children’s human capital. The conflicts in Cambodia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, East Timor, and Guatemala generated massive male deaths; the same occurred earlier in Germany and Russia during World War II. The resulting unbalanced sex ratios could lead to later marriage and lower fertility; widowhood also contributes to lower fertility. The shocks of conflict produce specific coping strategies that may include women assuming primary responsibility for ensuring the survival of families. Women and girls may increase their labor, especially in areas with a low sex ratio, thus adding to their productive and reproductive burdens; or they may lose their livelihood and descend into destitution or prostitution. Buvinic and colleagues cite a study of 50 countries that found significant increases in gender-based violence following conflict (Buvinic et al., 2102: 120). To compound the tragedy, women in sub-Saharan Africa who were raped became HIV-positive. Such forms of VAW can lead to, or perpetuate, individual and household poverty. Poverty also results from the inevitable infrastructural destruction that occurs during periods of armed conflicts and wars ( Moghadam 2013b ).

In that connection, the violence that some women perpetrate on other women cannot be denied. Certain women in positions of political power have been complicit in invasions, occupations, civil wars, coups d’état, and the arming of rebels (sometimes in the name of “humanitarian intervention”), as well as nuclear arms development. Their counterparts in violent extremist movements include the misguided groupies of ISIS, the Chechen “Black Widows,” and the suicide killers of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers. It is some consolation, however, that such women represent a very small proportion of the world’s politically active and empowered women. And for every female warmonger or terrorist there are countless women activists, trade unionists, and political party members who eschew violence by both state and non-state actors. For such women, ensuring security at home should not come at the expense of the undermining of women’s security elsewhere.

Ending Violence Against Women

Advocacy and activism have taken various forms: awareness-raising through various media; the passage of laws and training of law enforcement; Take Back the Night marches; the establishment of battered women’s shelters and hotlines for women victims of domestic violence and workplace harassment; the strengthening of Title IX offices and protocols at US universities; measures to prosecute rapists and traffickers at national and international levels; women’s peace movements; and transnational networks dedicated to ending sexual abuse during armed conflict, supporting women victims, and advocating for an end to militarism. In short, strategies to prevent or eliminate VAW involve complex responses for a complex problem, including social protection; access to justice, media, education, economic opportunities; and engaging men, communities, and families.

Recognizing the pervasive reality of VAW, and in response to both scholarship and advocacy, the UN has issued a number of recommendations throughout the decades. In 1985, the UN General Assembly adopted the Resolution on Domestic Violence; 1989 was the year of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a focus on sexual exploitation and trafficking. In 1993, galvanized by the violence against women occurring in Bosnia and Rwanda, the UN’s General Assembly issued a Declaration on Eliminating Violence against Women (EVAW) and also established the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. Echoing feminist research, the UN defined violence against women as

a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which has led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women, and that violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men. ( http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/48/a48r104.htm )

The year 1994 saw many steps taken on EVAW: the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its causes and consequences; the International Conference on Population and Development; the adoption of the Convention of Belém do Pará, which was legally binding at the regional level in Latin America; and the US Violence Against Women Act, which also created services for survivors. Later in the 1990s, the UN established the Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women; the International Criminal Court was founded; and in 1999 the UN International Day for EVAW was designated for November 25, which has become an important tool for advocacy and activism.

In October 2000, the Security Council passed Resolution 1325: Women, Peace, and Security. As Josephine Beoku-Betts (2016) notes in her analysis of its application to the case of Sierra Leone, SCR 1325 rests on the four pillars of women’s participation, prevention of violence, protection of women, and promotion of a gender perspective. It designates rape by combatants a war crime, stipulates that UN peacekeepers must ensure the protection and integrity of women and girls as well as civilians in general, and encourages the participation of women’s organizations in post-conflict and peacebuilding strategies. SCR 1325 was followed in later years by a number of other resolutions focusing on conflict and post-conflict, notably SCR 1820, adopted in June 2008, with the main goal of strengthening the commitments already made.

The role of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women has been an important part of the UN’s global women’s rights agenda; it is also a significant way of highlighting the global problem and its structural and ideational foundations. Radhika Coomaraswamy (1994–2003) criticized the academic discipline of anthropology for the concept of “cultural relativism,” which had been used by community and national leaders as a way to reject notions of women’s human rights, including freedom from domestic violence. Her successor, Yakin Erturk of Turkey (2003–2009), submitted a report in 2007 on the intersection of culture and violence against women that acknowledged a new anthropological conceptualization of culture but reiterated the critique of cultural relativism ( Dauer 2014 : 3, 5). Succeeding Erturk in 2009, Rashida Manjoo of South Africa highlighted the relevance of concepts of intersectionality and structural violence to analyze and interrogate VAW, and in September 2014 she issued a report examining the problem through the lens of citizenship.

As a result of the UN’s global women’s rights agenda, as well as feminist mobilizations across countries, at least 119 countries have passed laws on domestic violence, 125 have laws on sexual harassment, and 52 have laws on marital rape. Availability of data on VAW has increased significantly ( Alarcon 2016 ; see also The World’s Women statistical database at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/worldswomen.html ). Today, the problem of domestic violence and VAW is recognized throughout the world, and it continues to be the subject of scholarship, advocacy, and policy initiatives. In July 2017, for example, the Tunisian parliament passed its strongest law yet on violence against women, the result of years of Tunisian feminist advocacy. Women’s rights groups throughout the world call for ending VAW through implementation of the UN’s women’s rights agenda to facilitate cultural and normative changes; legal and institutional measures, including more effective prosecution of perpetrators; socialization and education for gender equality and non-violence; reduced military spending; and the realization of human development and human security to end some of the material bases for VAW.

Women’s Movements/Women in Movement

The women’s rights movement has been the subject of considerable scholarly analysis ( Basu 1995 ; Beckwith 2007 ; Chafetz and Dworkin 1986 ; Ferree and Hess 2000 ; Moghadam 2005 ; Molyneux 2001 ; Taylor 1989 ; Walby 2011 ; West and Blumberg 1990 ). Feminist theorizing has focused on national-level factors such as the growth of the population of educated women with grievances about their second-class citizenship; waves and varieties of feminism; the evolution of women’s movements and campaigns; and cross-regional similarities and differences in mobilizing structures, cultural framings, and strategies. Research also distinguishes feminist movement as a social movement guided by feminist ideas from women’s movement as defined by a demographic group or constituency, with the former being a subset of the latter.

West and Blumberg (1990) identified the following forms of women’s mobilizations: in grassroots protests for economic survival; in racial/ethnic and nationalist struggles (see also Jayawardena 1986 ; Tétreault 1994 ; L. West 1997 ); in “social-nurturing/humanistic protests”; and in women’s rights or feminist protests. In each of these types, and also in each individual case, cultural framings are crafted in ways that resonate not just with the activists themselves but also with the state, society, and potential recruits in mind. One common frame is that of maternalism (West and Blumberg’s “social-nurturing/humanistic” category), which is found in women’s peace, anti-war, and anti-militarist movements and organizations throughout the world. Also known as social motherhood ( Di Marco 2009 ) and activist motherhood ( Naples 1998 ), it is a surprisingly universal, resilient, and versatile way of framing problems, claims, and goals ( Carreon and Moghadam 2015 ). As with the anti-authoritarian Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina ( Arditti 1999 ), the audacious anti-war American group Code Pink: Women for Peace ( Moghadam 2015 ), and Israel’s anti-occupation Machsom Watch ( Kutz-Flamenbaum 2012 ), women’s organizations may strategically leverage traditional gender roles to frame their activism and participation in political and civic life in socially acceptable terms, but such activism can also extend far beyond traditional gender roles as mothers, wives, and daughters to challenge the political status quo. In other cases, women’s rights groups eschew the maternalist discourse in part because of its entrenchment in state policies or the wider culture; they will instead deploy the discourse of “gender equality,” “equal citizenship,” or “women’s human rights.” Women’s rights or feminist activists may strategically adopt the motherhood frame, just as they may strategically deploy religious frames, but scholars recognize these as fault lines that may divide women’s movement activists. Complexity within women’s activism and organizations remains an understudied aspect of women’s movements, whether local or transnational. Indeed, research on women’s movements and feminist activism must reconcile what may appear to be parallel phenomena: women’s experiences and activism at the local or grassroots level ( Basu 1995 ) and transnational responses to economic and political globalization (Moghadam 1996 , 2005 , 2015 ).

Throughout the world, self-defined feminist or women’s rights mobilizations have tended to adopt the UN’s women’s rights agenda. As scholarship and the historical record show, feminist movements respond to women’s oppression or subordination or second-class citizenship, and they aim for women’s autonomy or legal equality or enhanced participation. In this connection, they engage with states, civil-society actors, fellow citizens, and supranational institutions. These engagements and encounters are not without tensions and ambivalences. As noted previously, the state may be complicit in VAW. Civil society organizations may follow the dominant cultural script and promote male leadership, or they may be hostile to the feminist agenda. Certain supranational organizations may be responsible for the promotion of economic policies that harm working-class and poor women. The UN may be less influential than in the past. Nonetheless, women’s movements recognize these as institutional forces, in what I have previously called a kind of critical realism ( Moghadam 2005 : 29). Whereas social movements—in all their diversity otherwise—are generally thought to act in opposition to the state, women activists maintain a dual positioning, which enables them to pursue both confrontational and assimilative strategies of engaging with the state as well as with institutions of global governance. A similar set of approaches may be found among transnational feminist networks (TFNs), which bring together women from three or more countries around a common critique and goal. TFNs may focus their research and advocacy on economic policies and their adverse effects on women; on religious fundamentalisms and women’s human rights; or on militarism, war, and peace. The Women’s World March/Marche Mondiale des Femmes, which began as an initiative of feminists in Québec, Canada, has a more expansive mandate as it stands against patriarchy, violence, and capitalism. A number of TFNs engage with supranational institutions such as the World Bank, despite their criticism of its economic policies (Moghadam 2005 , 2013a , 2015 ).

Research on forms of women’s collective action shows that women’s movements are not “identity movements” but, rather, democratic and democratizing movements. Women’s organizing tends to be inclusive, and women’s movement activism often involves the explicit practice of democracy ( Barron 2002 ; Beckwith 2007 ; Eschle 2000 ; Ferree and Mueller 2004 ; Moghadam 2005 ). This is especially the case with women’s rights or feminist movements, which often practice democracy internally as well as ally themselves with other democratic movements, organizations, networks, and parties. Women’s movement activism and advocacy—whether in the form of social movements, transnational networks, or professional organizations—contribute to the making of vibrant civil societies and public spheres, which are themselves critical to sustaining and deepening democracy. In Morocco and Tunisia, the presence of numerous women in the 2011 Arab Spring protest movements, along with the demands of women’s rights groups and their record of promoting pro-women legal and policy changes, shaped the non-violent nature of those protests and ensured egalitarian and democratic outcomes, certainly compared with other countries that experienced the Arab Spring ( Moghadam 2017 ).

To reconnect this section to the chapter’s first section, contemporary women’s rights movements are linked to globalization in at least three ways. First, the diffusion of the UN’s global women’s rights agenda creates an environment conducive to women’s movements, their legitimacy, and their access to resources. CEDAW, for example, is clear that its provisions obtain across cultures and religions, stating in Article 2 that “States Parties . . . undertake . . . to take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women.” 1 Activists refer to CEDAW as an international norm because it is an important source for defining gender inequalities and relations in order to legitimize the claims of the movement in opposition to the state. Many Muslim-majority countries signed and ratified CEDAW with reservations that pertained to conflicts with Sharia or with national legislation. For that reason, a key objective of many women’s rights groups has been to pressure governments to remove the reservations and to comply with all CEDAW provisions.

Second, the emergence of transnational feminist networks and collective action across borders were responses to the adverse effects of structural adjustment and neoliberal economic policies; the spread of various forms of religious fundamentalism; and the persistence of patriarchy, violence, and conflicts. In this example of globalization-from-below, activist groups take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the spread of the new information and computer technologies as well as the political space for feminist activism created by the UN’s global women’s rights agenda.

Third, many nationally based women’s groups have formed to protest patriarchy and VAW, which activists view as reinforced or exacerbated by aspects of globalization. As noted previously, economic hardships have been accompanied by spikes in domestic violence, while the spread of religious fundamentalism has led many governments to compromise women’s human rights ( Di Marco and Tabbush 2011 ; Moghadam 2005 ). Globalization also has engendered reaction in the form of right-wing populist movements, secular and religious alike, which are inimical to the feminist agenda.

Critiques and Alternative Visions

Whether as ideology, movement, or academic study, feminism has encountered some self-criticism. A number of scholars have argued that feminism has lost its way—especially in the United States, where it has colluded with neoliberalism and war as well as the dominant ideology of individualism. Johanna Brenner (2001) argues that second-wave American feminism has been co-opted by reliance on state policy or by such institutionalized forms as women’s studies programs and feminist journals. Brenner focuses on the constraints that capitalism and patriarchal culture alike place on American working-class women, calling for a revitalization of a movement to challenge both patriarchy and capitalism. Similarly, Hester Eisenstein (2009) asserts that feminism has become de-radicalized and co-opted into the capitalist project. Through the promotion of strategies such as microcredits, she maintains, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs not only use gender expertise for their own purposes but also undermine the developmental state, public sectors, and social provisioning. Globalizing institutions seek to remake women after their own image—to make and proliferate neoliberal subjects amenable to markets. Asserting that the post-structuralist, post-Marxist turn in feminism was the pathway to this co-optation, Eisenstein calls on academic feminists to eschew analyses that focus on “individual and private acts of resistance” and turn toward a “structural analysis of global capitalism” (p. 212). Similarly, Angela McRobbie (2009) critiques a “faux feminism” and de-politicized feminism that applauds such spectacles as young women “acting out” and becoming aggressive and even violent as purported marks of feminism. Highlighting what she calls a patriarchal ownership of feminism, she argues that governance feminism, especially in the form of gender mainstreaming, as well as other forms of institutionalized feminism, renders feminist movement politics unnecessary, even passé. Marysia Zalewski and Anne Runyan (2013) discuss feminist “imbrication in the violences of neoliberalism and global governance” (p. 293). While using the term “feminist violences” in a broader perspective to include feminist disruptions of the status quo, they critically examine the way some prominent women leaders who self-define as feminists are “implicated in propping up and giving cover to international neoliberal policies, program and militarized ‘humanitarian’ interventions” (p. 299).

Nancy Fraser (2013) also has critiqued “lean in” feminism. She writes of her “fear that the movement for women’s liberation has become entangled in a dangerous liaison with neoliberal efforts to build a free-market society.” Her critique of “a one-sided focus on ‘gender identity’ at the expense of bread and butter issues” was entirely apt, as was the statement that “we absolutized the critique of cultural sexism at precisely the moment when circumstances required redoubled attention to the critique of political economy.” American feminism in particular contributed three ideas to the development of neoliberalism, she writes: the critique of the family wage, the rejection of “economism” in favor of the politicization of the personal and individual expression, and the critique of welfare state paternalism. All of these were in line with neoliberalism’s promotion of flexible labor markets, the sidelining of social justice and equality demands, and the end of the developmental state. 2

It was therefore inevitable that American feminists would find themselves on opposing sides of the Democratic nomination race in the run-up to the November 2016 presidential election. The dividing line was between those who supported the socialist candidate Bernie Sanders and those who supported the mainstream Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, regarded by many left-wing feminists as too closely aligned with neoliberalism and militarism.

A number of gender-and-development scholars have similarly cast a critical eye on strategies that call for integrating women in labor markets not for the sake of gender equality or women’s empowerment but, rather, to make markets operate more effectively and efficiently and also to stimulate growth. Sylvia Chant (2012) criticizes the World Bank’s heralded World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development for its promotion of “smart economics” and obfuscation of how its own macroeconomic policy prescriptions have generated economic difficulties and crisis. Adrienne Roberts and Susanne Soederberg (2012) criticize the report for “the central role accorded to leading financial corporations like Goldman Sachs in the formulation of the key World Bank recommendations.” They view the goal of the report as “to deepen and consolidate the fundamental values and tenets of capitalist interests” (p. 949). Sakiko Fukuda-Parr (2016) has noted that the MDGs put the focus on poverty eradication to the neglect of income inequality and ignored the role of the developmental state in implementing the goals. My own review of the celebrated book, Half the Sky , by Kristoff and WuDunn (2010) is critical of its neglect of macroeconomics and the international state system ( Moghadam 2010 ). I argue that the book’s emphasis on individual action, local efforts, and small-scale activities makes the authors overlook the larger structural and systemic dynamics that prevent poverty eradication, stall or set back development efforts, and perpetuate or create gross inequalities within and across countries. A better alternative is a return of the developmental state, this time feminist and egalitarian.

In Chapter 1 of this volume, Steger does not refer to any feminist studies of globalization. The present chapter, however, has elucidated the extent of feminist contributions to global studies, with a focus on studies of globalization, violence and armed conflict, and women’s social movements. It is indeed difficult to imagine global studies without analysis of the way that gender is inscribed in power relations, social inequalities, economic development and growth, state policies, and war-making. This chapter also has drawn attention to the varied feminist approaches to global issues. Perhaps most cogent is the feminist political economy approach that elucidates both the pervasive nature of gender inequality and the capacity of feminist and women’s movements to challenge the status quo toward a more egalitarian social order. Feminist scholars within the political economy approach may strategically deploy language akin to the “business case” for women’s participation and rights, especially in their policy-oriented work, but they are cognizant that real change comes about through social movement activism and concerted coalition-building.

CEDAW ( http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention) .

A rather harsh rejoinder, “White Feminist Fatigue Syndrome,” by Brenna Bhandar and Denise Ferreira da Silva (2013) , actually confirms Fraser’s argument in that it is steeped in a postmodernist discourse, refers to “White feminists” versus “Black” and “Third World” feminisms, and erroneously charges “Marxist and socialist feminist thought that continues to fail, in many ways, to account for race, histories of colonization, and the structural inequities between the so-called developed and developing nation-states.” Evidently, Bhandar and Ferreira da Silva have not encountered the world-systems scholar Wilma Dunaway or read the devastating anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist critiques by “White” feminists in transnational feminist networks such as Marche Mondiale, Madre, and Code Pink.

Alarcon, Diana. 2016. “Women’s Empowerment in the UN Development Agenda.” Paper presented at the Conference on Women’s Empowerment and International Organizations: Achievements, Opportunities, and Constraints, Northeastern University, Gender and Development Initiative (April 22). Available at https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/internationalaffairs/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/05/GAD-Conference-Report-short-17-May-2.pdf

Arditti, Rita. 1999 . Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Barron, Andrea. 2002 . “ The Palestinian Women’s Movement: Agent of Democracy in a Future State? ” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 11 (1): 71–90.

Basu, Amrita. 1995 . The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women’s Movements in Global Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Beckwith, Karen. 2007 . “ Mapping Strategic Engagements: Women’s Movements and the State. ” International Feminist Journal of Politics 9 (3): 312–338.

Beneria, Lourdes. 2001 . “ Shifting the Risk: New Employment Patterns, Informalization, and Women’s Work. ” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 15 (1): 27–53.

Beoku-Betts, Josephine. 2016 . “ Holding African States to Task on Gender and Violence: Domesticating UNSCR 1325 in the Sierra Leone National Action Plan. ” Current Sociology 64 (6): 654–670.

Bergeron, Suzanne. 2001 . “ Political Economy Discourses of Globalization and Feminist Politics. ” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26 (4): 983–1006.

Bhandar Brenna , and Denise Ferreira da Silva . 2013. “White Feminist Fatigue Syndrome.” Critical Legal Thinking , October 21. http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/10/21/white-feminist-fatigue-syndrome .

Brenner, Johanna. 2001 . Women and the Politics of Class. New York: Monthly Review Foundation.

Buvinic, Mayra , Monica Das Gupta , Ursula Casabonne , and Philip Verwimp . 2012 . “ Violent Conflict and Gender Inequality: An Overview. ” World Bank Research Observer 28: 110–138.

Caprioli, Mary. 2005 . “ Primed for Violence: The Role of Gender Inequality in Predicting Internal Conflict. ” International Studies Quarterly 49 (2): 161–178.

Carreon, Michelle , and Valentine M. Moghadam . 2015 . “ ‘Resistance Is Fertile’: Revisiting Maternalist Frames Across Cases of Women’s Mobilization. ” Women’s Studies International Forum 51: 19–30. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2015.04.002

Chafetz, Janet Saltzman , and Gary Dworkin . 1986 . Female Revolt: Women’s Movements in World and Historical Perspective. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld.

Chant, Sylvia. 2012 . “The Disappearing of ‘Smart Economics’? The World Development Report 2012 on Gender Equality : Some concerns about the preparatory process and the prospects for paradigm change.” Global Social Policy 12(2): 198–218.

Chase-Dunn, Christopher. 1998 . Global Formation: Structures of the World-Economy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Cockburn, Cynthia. 2010. “Getting to Peace: What Kind of Movement?” OpenDemocracy . April 19. www.opendemocracy.net .

Connell, Raewyn , and James Messerschmidt . 2005 . “ Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. ” Gender & Society 19 (6): 829–859.

Dauer, Sheila. 2014 . “Introduction: Anthropological Approaches to Gender-Based Violence.” In Anthropological Approaches to Gender-Based Violence and Human Rights , edited by Sheila Dauer , Melissa A. Beske , Janet Chernela , Rebecka Lundgren , Melissa K. Adams , and Shannon Speed , eds., Working Paper no. 304: 1–15. Lansing: Michigan State University, Gender, Development, and Globalization Program.

Desai, Manisha. 2009 . Gender and the Politics of Possibilities: Rethinking Globalization . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Di Marco, Graciela. 2009 . “ Social Justice and Gender Rights. ” International Social Science Journal 191: 43–55.

Di Marco, Graciela , and Constanza Tabbush , eds. 2011 . Feminisms, Democratization and Radical Democracy . Buenos Aires: UNSAM EDITA.

Drèze, Jean , and Amartya Sen . 1991 . Hunger and Public Action. Oxford, UK: Clarendon.

Dunaway, Wilma A. 2001 . “ The Double Register of History: Situating the Forgotten Woman and Her Household in Capitalist Commodity Chains. ” Journal of World-Systems Research 7 (1): 2–29.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2001 . Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America . New York: Holt.

Eisenstein, Hester. 2009 . Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World . London: Zed.

Elson, Diane , ed. 1990 . Male Bias in the Development Process. London: Macmillan.

Elson, Diane , and Ruth Pearson . 1981 . “ Nimble Fingers Make Cheap Workers: An Analysis of Women’s Employment in Third World Export Manufacturing. ” Feminist Review (Spring): 87–107.

Eschle, Catherine. 2000 . Global Democracy, Social Movements, and Feminism . Boulder, CO: Westview.

Fabián, Katalin , ed. 2010 . Domestic Violence in Postcommunist States: Local Activism, National Policies, and Global Forces. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ferree, Myra M. , and Beth Hess . 2000 . Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement Across Four Decades of Change. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.

Ferree, Myra M. , and Carol Mueller . 2004 . “Feminism and the Women’s Movement: A Global Perspective.” In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements , edited by D. Snow , S. Soule , and H. Kriesi , 576–607. London: Blackwell.

Folbre, Nancy. 1994 . Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint. London: Taylor & Francis.

Folbre, Nancy , ed. 2012 . For Love and Money: Care Provision in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Fraser, Nancy. 2013 . “ How Feminism Became Capitalism’s Handmaiden—And How to Reclaim It. ” The Guardian , October 13.

Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko. 2016 . “ From the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals: Shifts in Purpose, Concept, and Politics of Global Goal Setting for Development. ” Gender & Development 24 (1): 43–52.

Godoy-Paiz, Paula. 2008 . “ Women in Guatemala’s Metropolitan Area: Violence, Law, and Social Justice. ” Studies in Social Justice 2 (1): 27–47.

Grewal, Inderwal , and Caren Kaplan , eds. 1994 . Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hebert, Laura. 2012 . “Analyzing UN & NATO Responses to Sexual Misconduct in Peacekeeping Operations.” In Making Gender, Making War: Violence, Military and Peacekeeping Practices , edited by Annica Kronsell and Erika Svedberg , 107–120. New York: Routledge.

Hudson, Valerie M. , Mary Caprioli , Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill , and Chad F. Emmett . 2012 . Sex and World Peace. New York: Columbia University Press.

İlkkaracan, İpek. 2012 . “ Why so Few Women in the Labor Market in Turkey? ” Feminist Economics 18 (1): 1–37.

International Labour Organization. 2012 . Global Employment Trends for Women 2012. Geneva: International Labour Organization.

Interparliamentary Union. 2016 . Women in National Parliaments . Geneva: Interparliamentary Union.

Jayawardena, Kumari. 1986 . Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. London: Zed.

Joekes, Susan. 1987 . Women and the World Economy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Klugman, Jeni , Jennifer McCleary-Sills , Julieth Santamaria , et al. 2014 . Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Kristof, Nicholas D. , and Sheryl WuDunn . ( 2010 ). Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide . New York: Vintage.

Krook, Mona , and Fiona Mackay , eds. 2015 . Gender, Politics and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kutz-Flamenbaum, Rachel V. 2012 . “ Mobilizing Gender to Promote Peace: The Case of Machsom Watch. ” Qualitative Sociology 35: 293–310.

Leatherman, Janie L. 2011 . Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict . Medford, MA: Polity.

Marchand, Marianne. 2000 . “Reconceptualizing ‘Gender and Development’ in an Era of ‘Globalization.’” In Poverty in World Politics: Whose Global Era? edited by Sarah Owen Vandersluis and Paris Yeros , 119–147. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.

Marchand, Marianne , and Jane Parpart , eds. 1995 . Feminism, Postmodernism, Development. London: Routledge.

Marchand, Marianne , and Anne Sisson Runyan , eds. 2000 . Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites and Resistances . London: Routledge.

McCleary-Sills, Jennifer. 2016. “Progress and Pitfalls in Expanding Voice and Agency: The Case of Violence Against Women.” Paper presented at the Conference on Women’s Empowerment and International Organizations: Achievements, Opportunities, and Constraints, Northeastern University, Gender and Development Initiative, April 22. https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/internationalaffairs/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/05/GAD-Conference-Report-short-17-May-2.pdf

McRobbie, Angela. 2009 . The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage.

Mies, Maria. 1986 . Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 1996 . “ Feminist Networks North and South: A Case Study of DAWN, WIDE, and WLUML. ” Journal of International Communication , special issue on International Feminism(s) 3 (1): 111–126.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2005 . Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2010 . Review of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Perspectives on Politics 8 (1): 284–286.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2011 . “ Women, Gender, and Economic Crisis Revisited. ” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 10: 30–40.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2013 a. Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2013 b. “Toward Human Security and Gender Justice: Reflections on Afghanistan and Iraq.” In Globalization, Social Movements and Peacebuilding , edited by Jackie Smith and Ernesto Verdeja , 97–133. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2015 . “Transnational Feminism and Movement Building.” In The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements , edited by Rawwida Baksh and Wendy Harcourt , 53–81. New York: Oxford University Press.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2016. “A Female Precariat in the Middle East?” Paper presented at the RC-02 session on “Changes in the Global Class Structure: The Precariat in the North and South,” International Sociological Association Forum, Vienna, Austria, July 10–14.

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2017 . “ Explaining Divergent Outcomes of the Arab Spring: The Significance of Gender and Women’s Mobilizations. ” Politics, Groups, and Identities (online), January 31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2016.1256824 .

Moghadam, Valentine M. , and Anjuli Fahlberg . 2017 . “Domestic Violence and Violence Against Women.” In Wiley–Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory , edited by Bryan Turner , C. Kyung-Sup , Cynthia Epstein , et al. New York: Wiley–Blackwell.

Molyneux, Maxine. 2001 . Women’s Movements in International Perspective: Latin America and Beyond. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Naples, Nancy A. 1998 . Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work, and the War on Poverty. New York: Routledge.

Nash, June , and Maria Fernandez-Kelly , eds. 1984 . Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor . Albany, New York: SUNY Press.

Nussbaum, Martha. 2000 . Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Olivera, Mercedes. 2006 . “ Violencia Feminicida: Violence Against Women and Mexico’s Structural Crisis. ” Latin American Perspectives 33 (2): 104–114.

Oxfam. 2014 . Even It Up: Time to End Extreme Inequality. London: Oxfam.

Peterson, V. Spike. 2003 . A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Productive, Reproductive, and Virtual Economies. New York: Routledge.

Rai, Shirin , and Georgina Waylen , eds. 2008 . Global Governance: Feminist Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Roberts, Adrienne , and Susanne Soederberg . 2012 . “ Gender Equality as Smart Economics? A critique of the 2012 World Development Report. ” Third World Quarterly 33 (5): 949–968.

Rubery, Jill. 2015 . “ Austerity and the Future of Gender Equality in Europe. ” ILR Review 68 (4): 715–741.

Saffioti, Heleith. 1978 . Women in Class Society. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Salhi, Zahia Smail. 2010 . “Gender and Violence in Algeria: Women’s Resistance Against the Islamist Femicide.” In Gender and Diversity in the Middle East and North Africa , edited by Zahia Smail Salhi , 161–184. London: Routledge.

Sandberg, Sheryl. 2013 . Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. New York: Knopf.

Sen, Gita , and Caren Grown . 1985 . Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera. 2001 . Femicide in Palestinian Society . New York: UNIFEM.

Standing, Guy. 1989 . “ Global Feminization Through Flexible Labor. ” World Development 17 (7): 1077–1095.

Standing, Guy. 1999 . “ Global Feminization Through Flexible Labor: A Theme Revisited. ” World Development 27 (3): 583–602.

Standing, Guy. 2011 . The Global Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury.

Staudt, Kathleen. 2008 . Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear, and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juarez . Austin: University of Texas Press.

Sylvanus, Nina. 2016 . Patterns in Circulation: Cloth, Gender and Materiality in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Taylor, Verta. 1989 . “ Social Movement Continuity: The Women’s Movement in Abeyance. ” American Sociological Review 54: 761–775.

Tétreault, Mary Ann , ed. 1994 . Women and Revolution in Africa, Asia, and the New World. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Thévenon, Olivier. 2013. “Drivers of Female Labour Force Participation in the OECD.” OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, no. 145. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

True, Jacqui. 2012 . The Political Economy of Violence Against Women. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

UN Women. 2015 . Progress of the World’s Women 2015–16: Transforming Economies: Realizing Rights. New York: United Nations.

Walby, Sylvia. 2009 . Globalization and Inequalities: Complexity and Contested Modernities. London: Sage.

Walby, Sylvia. 2011 . The Future of Feminism. London: Polity.

Walby, Sylvia. 2015 . Crisis. London: Sage.

West, Guida , and Rhoda Lois Blumberg , eds. 1990 . Women and Social Protest. New York: Oxford University Press.

West, Lois , ed. 1997 . Feminist Nationalism. New York: Routledge.

Wilkinson, Richard , and Kate Pickett . 2009 . The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Winter, Bronwyn. 2017 . Women, Insecurity, and Violence in a Post-9/11 World . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

World Bank. 2012 . World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Zalewski, Marysia , and Anne Sisson Runyan . 2013 . “ Taking Feminist Violence Seriously in Feminist International Relations. ” International Feminist Journal of Politics 15 (3): 293–313.

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Supported by

Why Are Divorce Memoirs Still Stuck in the 1960s?

Recent best sellers have reached for a familiar feminist credo, one that renounces domestic life for career success.

Share full article

An illustration of a laptop computer dropping inside a stew pot, along with a tomato, an apron, a spoon and a spice shaker.

By Sarah Menkedick

Sarah Menkedick’s most recent book is “Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America.”

“The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own,” Betty Friedan wrote in “ The Feminine Mystique ,” in 1963. Taking a new role as a productive worker is “the way out of the trap,” she added. “There is no other way.”

On the final page of “ This American Ex-Wife ,” her 2024 memoir and study of divorce, Lyz Lenz writes: “I wanted to remove myself from the martyr’s pyre and instead sacrifice the roles I had been assigned at birth: mother, wife, daughter. I wanted to see what else I could be.”

More than 60 years after Friedan’s landmark text, there remains only one way for women to gain freedom and selfhood: rejecting the traditionally female realm, and achieving career and creative success.

Friedan’s once-provocative declaration resounds again in a popular subgenre of autobiography loosely referred to as the divorce memoir, several of which have hit best-seller lists in the past year or two. These writers’ candid, raw and moving exposés of their divorces are framed as a new frontier of women’s liberation, even as they reach for a familiar white feminist ideology that has prevailed since “The Problem That Has No Name,” through “Eat, Pray, Love” and “I’m With Her” and “Lean In”: a version of second-wave feminism that remains tightly shackled to American capitalism and its values.

Lenz, for example, spends much of her book detailing her struggle to “get free,” but never feels she needs to define freedom. It is taken as a given that freedom still means the law firm partner in heels, the self-made woman with an independent business, the best-selling author on book tour — the woman who has shed any residue of the domestic and has finally come to shine with capitalist achievement.

It is not the freedom for a woman to stay home with her child for a year, or five. The freedom to stop working after a lifetime toiling in low-wage jobs. The freedom for a Filipina nanny to watch her own children instead of those of her “liberated” American boss. The freedom to start a farm or a homestead or engage in the kind of unpaid work ignored by an economy that still values above all else the white-collar professional labor long dominated by men — and in fact mostly fails to recognize other labor as valuable at all.

One of the paradoxes the divorce memoir highlights is that women’s work is made invisible by a society that disparages it, and the only way it becomes visible is through the triumphant narrative of a woman’s escape from it — which only reinforces its undesirability and invisibility.

In Maggie Smith’s 2023 memoir “ You Could Make This Place Beautiful ,” Smith details the critical inflection point when her poem “ Good Bones ” goes viral, her career takes off and her marriage begins to implode. She tells a reporter from The Columbus Dispatch: “I feel like I go into a phone booth and I turn into a poet sometimes. Most of the other time, I’m just Maggie who pushes the stroller.”

Nothing threatening, nothing meaningful. Just a mom pushing the stroller in the meager labor of women — until she slips into the phone booth and transforms into an achieving superhero.

This is not to diminish Smith’s work, a unique and highly refined series of linked essays that build into an emotional symphony about marital breakdown. Her intention is not, like Lenz’s, to condemn the institution of marriage or to rejoice in her release from hers, which is complicated, excruciating and tender. Her depictions of divorce clearly resonate with readers and offer solace and insight into a common experience of heartbreak. But it’s worth asking what exactly is being celebrated in the huge cultural reception her memoir, and other popular divorce memoirs, have received.

Leslie Jamison’s book “ Splinters ,” published the same day as “This American Ex-Wife,” is an exquisite, textured and precise articulation of the collapse of her marriage, all nuance and interiority where Lenz’s writing is blunt and political. But here, too, we get a female narrator for whom freedom and acceptance ultimately signify professional success. Jamison is much more vexed about this formula, but in the end she settles for lightly querying rather than assailing it. She jokes about how her editor is stressed about book sales while she’s stressed about her baby sleeping on airplanes, and mocks this as a “humblebrag”: “ I don’t care about ambition! I only care about baby carriers! ” She rushes to clarify in the next sentence, “Of course I cared about book sales, too.”

Herein lies the ultimate paradigm, the space no woman wants to explore: What if the modern woman didn’t actually care about book sales? About making partner? About building a successful brand? That would be unthinkable. Embarrassing. Mealy, mushy, female.

But later in “Splinters,” Jamison skewers the cult of male, capitalist achievement: “My notion of divinity was gradually turning its gaze away from the appraising, tally-keeping, pseudo-father in the sky who would give me enough gold stars if I did enough good things, and toward the mother who’d been here all along,” she writes. I felt an electric optimism reading this. If feminism wants to tackle patriarchy, it needs to start with that pseudo-father and his metrics of a person’s worth.

Jamison struggles toward this in “Splinters.” She wants so badly to be remarkable. To banter about the Russian G.D.P. while she spoon-feeds her toddler, or to impress arrogant lovers who critique her conversation as only “85 percent as good as it could be.” At the same time, she yearns “to experience the sort of love that could liberate everyone involved from their hamster wheels of self-performance,” a love that will “involve all your tedious moments.”

Yes , I found myself saying, I want to read about this love . A mother love that is radical, creative, affirming, even and especially in its difficulty and tedium. Jamison almost gets there, but returns ultimately to the affirmation that it’s OK to want more: “quiet mornings at my laptop, tap-tap-tapping at my keyboard.”

It is certainly OK, and natural, to want more. But what I find most exhilarating in this beautiful book is the possibility that it’s also OK to let go of wanting. It’s OK to not write a best seller, to not hold a prestigious title, to not start your own brand. It’s OK, even, to not try to find yourself, that most American of quests.

Divorce, sure. Ditch the toxic men, strike out on your own. But there’s nothing new or radical there. The radical is in a feminism that examines care as profound, powerful work and centers rather than marginalizes mothering, as both a lived act and a metaphor. We must let go of this half-century-old notion that the self can be “found” only after the roles of “mother, wife, daughter” have been rejected.

With friends, Jamison recounts lively anecdotes from a trip to Oslo with her daughter in order to prove that her life had not “‘gotten small,’ a phrase I put in quotes in my mind, though I did not know whom I was quoting.” Yet in this phrase lies another way of living: letting things get small, in a world that sees and celebrates mostly superlatives, and getting down to the level of the local, the intimate, the granular, the home.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

John S. Jacobs was a fugitive, an abolitionist — and the brother of the canonical author Harriet Jacobs. Now, his own fierce autobiography has re-emerged .

Don DeLillo’s fascination with terrorism, cults and mass culture’s weirder turns has given his work a prophetic air. Here are his essential books .

Jenny Erpenbeck’s “ Kairos ,” a novel about a torrid love affair in the final years of East Germany, won the International Booker Prize , the renowned award for fiction translated into English.

Kevin Kwan, the author of “Crazy Rich Asians,” left Singapore’s opulent, status-obsessed, upper crust when he was 11. He’s still writing about it .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — Rape — Feminist Theory on Marital Rape

Feminist Theory on Marital Rape

Categories: Rape Theory

About this sample

Words: 966 |

Published: Apr 30, 2020

Words: 966 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

Expert in: Law, Crime & Punishment Science

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4 pages / 1624 words

3 pages / 1528 words

1 pages / 569 words

3 pages / 1166 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Rape

Imagine being sentenced to a life behind bars, not just for a crime you committed, but for a crime committed against you. This is the harsh reality facing many inmates who have been convicted of rape and are now serving life [...]

In the annals of legal history, certain cases stand out for their profound impact on society. The Glen Ridge Rape is one such case, an event that shook a small New Jersey town to its core and ignited a national conversation [...]

The climax of Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire occurs in “Scene Ten,” when Stanley ultimately rapes Blanche, his sister-in-law. Many audiences and readers have debated whether or not this act was premeditated or [...]

Rape is a major problem when it comes to the modern world. Around 321,500 cases of sexual assault happen every year in the United States for women aged 12 or older. (RAINN) Just recently a lady spoke about being sexually [...]

Youth is considered as the soul of any nation, as it will define the position of a nation in the near future. The economic progress, the educational growth, and security perfection is depended on the percentage of youth present [...]

The villagers gather in the town square. Whispers of murder, mayhem, and an uprising fill the courtyard. Some even wonder at plots of uprooting the King from the throne! A man with a commanding voice climbs the steps of the [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

IMAGES

Margaret Atwood- Feminism Essay Example
Feminist Essay
📚 Paper Example on Feminism
Feminism Essay Examples
Assignment Feminism
Feminist Essay

VIDEO

Expository Essay Brainstorming Video
Expository Essay
Expository Essay
8th Expository Essay- Introduction/ Research/ Prewrite
How David Spent His Summer Vacation
Why Expository Essays?!

COMMENTS

5 Essays About Feminism
5 Essays About Feminism. On the surface, the definition of feminism is simple. It's the belief that women should be politically, socially, and economically equal to men. Over the years, the movement expanded from a focus on voting rights to worker rights, reproductive rights, gender roles, and beyond. Modern feminism is moving to a more ...
Essay On Feminism in English for Students
500 Words Essay On Feminism. Feminism is a social and political movement that advocates for the rights of women on the grounds of equality of sexes. It does not deny the biological differences between the sexes but demands equality in opportunities. It covers everything from social and political to economic arenas.
Topics in Feminism
Important topics for feminist theory and politics include: the body, class and work, disability, the family, globalization, human rights, popular culture, race and racism, reproduction, science, the self, sex work, human trafficking, and sexuality. Extended discussion of these topics is included in the sub-entries to feminism in this ...
Essay on Feminism in Society
Feminism, a term that may conjure up a myriad of emotions and opinions, is a powerful movement that has been shaping society for centuries. At its core, feminism is the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. It is a movement that advocates for the rights of women and challenges the patriarchal structures that have ...
The Impact of Feminism on Society: [Essay Example], 592 words
Feminism's Impact on Society. The impact of feminism on society can be seen in the advancements made in women's rights and gender equality. The feminist movement has contributed to changes in laws and policies, such as the right to vote, access to reproductive healthcare, and protection from gender-based violence.
expository essay
This essay is an inspiring conjunction of the facts of feminism, "Feminism is a body of social theory and political movement primarily based on and motivated by the experiences of women" (Parker 1). This essay tells about the everyday struggles women have to face in the workplace, school, the economy, and the world in general.
The Beginnings of Feminism : Analysis Essay Sample
The Beginnings of Feminism Essay Sample, Example. Though feminism is seen as a modern-day perspective and philosophy, its history extends far back. In fact, feminism does not have, like many movements, a linear history. Its beginnings are difficult to trace, but in the following paragraphs, I will do my best to unravel the earliest recorded ...
Feminist Theory
Mapping 21st-Century Feminist Theory. Feminist theory is a vast, enormously diverse, interdisciplinary field that cuts across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. As a result, this article cannot offer a historical overview or even an exhaustive account of 21st-century feminist theory. But it offers a genealogy and a toolkit for 21st ...
Introduction: Writing and Resisting Violence against Women
Language, both written and visual, plays a key role in these processes, from gendered grammar rules to the representation of women as victims. 9 Gendered language systems and male language, specifically, often continue to distort descriptions of violence against women, revealing, as Giordana Masotto stated in 2009, an 'incontrollabile ...
What Is Feminist Philosophy?
This chapter is the editors' introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy. It offers an introduction to feminist philosophy and discusses the field's relation to both feminism and philosophy. Readers get a glimpse of some of the history of the field of feminist philosophy and its current state. Just as feminism is not ...
277 Feminism Topics & Women's Rights Essay Topics
277 Feminism Topics & Women's Rights Essay Topics. Feminism topics encompass a comprehensive range of themes centered on advocating for gender equality. These themes critically address the social, political, and economic injustices primarily faced by females, aiming to dismantle patriarchal norms.
Feminism Argumentative: [Essay Example], 652 words GradesFixer
Feminism Argumentative. In today's society, the concept of feminism has sparked heated debates and discussions, with proponents and opponents passionately defending their beliefs. This essay aims to delve into the multifaceted nature of feminism, exploring its various interpretations and implications for gender equality.
(DOC) Expository Essay
Feminism, although young in age, has been in practice much longer than the Women's suffrage movement, and it will continue to be a prominent force in American's lives. Whether you're watching a movie, attending worship, or voting, you're bound to be influenced by feminism in some way. Jenkins 3 Works Cited Humm, Maggie. Feminism And Film.
The Feminism Essay: Definition and Significance in 500 Words
Feminism is a social and political movement that voices out for the rights of women. The biological difference between genders has nothing to do with feminism. This movement calls for equality in terms of opportunities available to women. Opportunities cover social, political, and economic sectors. Feminism is not a gender-specific movement; it ...
15 Feminist Perspectives in Global Studies
Feminist economists (both macro- and micro-economists), sociologists (largely those associated with world society, world-systems, or gender stratification theories), and political scientists (comparativists, theorists, and those in the international relations field) have been the most prominent contributors to global studies. ...
How to Write an Expository Essay
The structure of your expository essay will vary according to the scope of your assignment and the demands of your topic. It's worthwhile to plan out your structure before you start, using an essay outline. A common structure for a short expository essay consists of five paragraphs: An introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Essays on Feminism
Feminism essay topics normally analyze the importance of women's rights depicted in novels or the society, highlighting female characters, and particularly their roles in the story. You can focus on various aspects as you examine the author's perspective of women. You might want to check a few samples of feminism persuasive essay topics before you start jotting the introduction.
Feminist criticism Essay Example [1040 Words]
The following essay describes feminist criticism as expressed by different authors. In the book "Hills Like White Elephants" Hemingway describes that there is an individual evolution in a female protagonist. Firstly in the text, he describes that women are expected to be submissive and less active in making decision.
Expository Essay on Feminism and Women.edited.docx
2 Expository Essay on Feminism and Women's Rights Historically, discrimination based on either gender, race, or religious difference has been an adamant issue globally. However, in this modern age, many people have been vocal and highly speaking against all sorts of discrimination. Contextually, discrimination based on gender is one form of gender that is widely fought globally.
Expository Essay
The expository essay I wrote is connected to my research and topic because it addresses the information on feminism and its wages. Feminism is a very serious issue that needs to be dealt with right now, because a small step can go a long way, and my essay helps explain this. "Even though many people think the fault is all on men, it really is ...
What does Feminism Really Mean: [Essay Example], 600 words
Feminism had a huge impact on the lives and roles of women in the society. Many women got sick of the strict home life that had been implicated on them by men. Women wanted equality between men and women in addition to equal opportunities in education, and employment opportunities. Feminism has played a great role on the everyday role of women ...
Why Are Divorce Memoirs Still Stuck in the 1960s?
May 25, 2024. "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own," Betty Friedan wrote in " The Feminine Mystique ," in ...
Feminist Theory on Marital Rape: [Essay Example], 966 words
Feminist Theory on Marital Rape. Rape is an issue that feminist across the globe have had their legal, social, and philosophical perspectives on in the past years. For many years, the interpretation of rape as well as the laws pertaining to it has been based on traditional sexist perspectives that define the relations between women and men in ...

5 Essays About Feminism

“Trickle-Down Feminism” – Sarah Jaffe

“What No One Else Will Tell You About Feminism” – Lindy West

“Toward a Trans* Feminism” – Jack Halberstam

“Rebecca Solnit: How Change Happens” – Rebecca Solnit

“Bad Feminist” extract – Roxane Gay

You may also like

16 Inspiring Civil Rights Leaders You Should Know

15 Trusted Charities Fighting for Housing Rights

15 Examples of Gender Inequality in Everyday Life

11 Approaches to Alleviate World Hunger

15 Facts About Malala Yousafzai

12 Ways Poverty Affects Society

15 Great Charities to Donate to in 2024

15 Quotes Exposing Injustice in Society

14 Trusted Charities Helping Civilians in Palestine

The Great Migration: History, Causes and Facts

Social Change 101: Meaning, Examples, Learning Opportunities

Rosa Parks: Biography, Quotes, Impact

Essay on Feminism

Importance of Feminism

Impact of Feminism

Conclusion of the Essay on Feminism

FAQ of Essay on Feminism

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Download the App

Bibliography

Topics in Feminism

1. Introduction

Related Entries

2. What is Feminism?

Other Internet Resources

“Waves” of Feminism

Marxist, Socialist, and Materialist Feminisms

Feminist Economics

Women and Labor

General Resources

African-American/Black Feminisms and Womanism

Asian-American and Asian Feminisms

Chicana/Latina Feminisms

American Indian, Native, Indigenous Feminisms

Feminism, Sex, Sexuality, Transgender, and Intersex

Acknowledgments

Most Popular

Can You Start a Sentence with Because?

Is It Bad to Be an Average Student? Redditors Weigh In with Support

Comments (0)

Cancel reply

More from Essay on Civil Rights Examples and Samples

Why Is Of Mice And Men Banned

Pride and Prejudice Themes

George Washington as Military Leader and President – views and attitudes Essay Sample, Example

Forgotten Password?

Article contents

Mapping 21st-Century Feminist Theory

Feminist Phenomenology (Beauvoir, Young, Moi, Fricker, Anderson, Ahmed, Al-Saji): Situation, Lived Experience, Embodiment, Orientation

African American Feminisms (Morrison, Lorde, Walker, Spillers, Hartman): Race, Intersectionality, Differences among Women and among Black Women

Postcolonial Feminisms (Djebar, Spivak, Mohanty, Stratton, Mahmood, Puar): The Subaltern, Specificity, Agency

Queer and Transgender Feminisms (Butler, Halberstam, Stryker): Performativity, Resignification, Continuous Transition, Self-Identification

Acknowledgments

Further Reading

Related Articles

277 Feminism Topics & Women’s Rights Essay Topics

Best Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Easy Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Interesting Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Feminism Argumentative Essay Topics

Controversial Feminist Research Paper Topics

Feminist Research Paper Topics in Feminism Studies

Feminist Topics for Discussion

Women’s Rights Essay Topics for Feminism

Women’s Rights Research Questions

History of Women’s Rights Topics

Feminism Essay Topics on Women’s Issues

To Learn More, Read Relevant Articles

385 Odyssey Essay Topics & Ideas

415 Rogerian Essay Topics & Good Ideas

Expository Essay

Related Papers