KANDIVLI EDUCATION SOCIETY’S BK

SHROFF COLLEGE OF ARTS & MH SHROFF

COLLEGE OF COMMERCE

Political Science 

‘Feminism’ 
(Paper 2) 

A project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for 

Semester 4 of the B.A. Course. 

Juili Bhadari
SYBA – B 
Roll No - 20  

Date of Submission – 15 March 2021

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 DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Juili Bhadari, a student of class SYBA B roll no. 20
has successfully completed the project titled- ‘Feminism’ under the
guidance of Miss Amoolya Shenvi during  the year 2020-2021 in
fulfilment of Political Science Examination.  
  

Dr. Sonali Bhide

Course Coordinator.

Miss Amoola Shenvi 

  Subject Teacher  

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 INDEX

  

Sr   Title  Pg No 

No 
1  Introduction to Feminism 4-6

2  Waves of Feminism. 6-8

3 Sharmila Rege. 9 - 10

4 Reference  10

  
 

Introduction to Feminism:

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 Charles Fourier, a utopian socialist and French philosopher, is credited with having coined
the word "feminism" in 1837. The words "feminism" ("feminism") and "feminist"
("feminist") first appeared in France and the Netherlands in 1872, Great Britain in the 1890s,
and the United States in 1910. The Oxford English Dictionary lists 1852 as the year of the
first appearance of "feminist" and 1895 for "feminism". Depending on the historical
moment, culture and country, feminists around the world have had different causes and
goals. Most western feminist historians contend that all movements working to obtain
women's rights should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not (or do
not) apply the term to themselves. Other historians assert that the term should be limited to
the modern feminist movement and its descendants. Those historians use the label
"postfeminist" to describe earlier movements

Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical fields. It

encompasses work in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics,
women's studies, literary criticism, art history, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. Feminist
theory aims to understand gender inequality and focuses on gender politics, power relations,
and sexuality. While providing a critique of these social and political relations, much of
feminist theory also focuses on the promotion of women's rights and interests. Themes
explored in feminist theory include discrimination, stereotyping, objectification (especially
sexual objectification), oppression, and patriarchy. In the field of literary criticism, Elaine
Showalter describes the development of feminist theory as having three phases. The first she
calls "feminist critique", in which the feminist reader examines the ideologies behind literary
phenomena. The second Showalter calls "gynocritics", in which the "woman is producer of
textual meaning". The last phase she calls "gender theory", in which the "ideological
inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system are explored".
 
This was paralleled in the 1970s by French feminists, who developed the concept of scripture
feminine (which translates as "female or feminine writing"). Hélène Cixous argues that
writing and philosophy are phallocentric and along with other French feminists such as Luce
Irigaray emphasize "writing from the body" as a subversive exercise. The work of Julia
Kristeva, a feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher, and Bracha Ettinger, artist and
psychoanalyst, has influenced feminist theory in general and feminist literary criticism in
particular. However, as the scholar Elizabeth Wright points out, "none of these French

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feminists align themselves with the feminist movement as it appeared in the Anglophone
world". More recent feminist theory, such as that of Lisa Lucile Owens, has concentrated on
characterizing feminism as a universal emancipatory movement.

According to 2014 Ipsos poll covering 15 developed countries, 53 percent of respondents

identified as feminists, and 87% agreed that "women should be treated equally to men in all
areas based on their competency, not their gender". However, only 55% of women agreed
that they have "full equality with men and the freedom to reach their full dreams and
aspirations". Taken together, these studies reflect the importance differentiating between
claiming a "feminist identity" and holding "feminist attitudes or beliefs"

According to a 2015 poll, 18 percent of Americans consider themselves feminists, while 85

percent reported they believe in "equality for women". Despite the popular belief in equal
rights, 52 percent did not identify as feminist, 26 percent were unsure, and four percent
provided no response.
Sociological research shows that, in the US, increased educational attainment is associated
with greater support for feminist issues. In addition, politically liberal people are more likely
to support feminist ideals compared to those who are conservative.

Lynn Hankinson Nelson writes that feminist empiricists find fundamental differences
between the experiences of men and women. Thus, they seek to obtain knowledge through
the examination of the experiences of women and to "uncover the consequences of omitting,
misdescribing, or devaluing them" to account for a range of human experience. Another part
of the feminist research agenda is the uncovering of ways in which power inequities are
created or reinforced in society and in scientific and academic institutions. Furthermore,
despite calls for greater attention to be paid to structures of gender inequity in the academic
literature, structural analyses of gender bias rarely appear in highly cited psychological
journals, especially in the commonly studied areas of psychology and personality.
 
One criticism of feminist epistemology is that it allows social and political values to influence
its findings. Susan Haack also points out that feminist epistemology reinforces traditional
stereotypes about women's thinking (as intuitive and emotional, etc.); Meera Nanda further

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cautions that this may in fact trap women within "traditional gender roles and help justify
patriarchy".

Waves of Feminism

Women's activist history can be isolated into three waves. The principal wave, happening in
the nineteenth and mid twentieth century, was for the most part worried about ladies'
entitlement to cast a ballot. The subsequent wave, at its tallness during the 1960s and 1970s,
alludes to the ladies' freedom development for equivalent legitimate and social rights. The
third wave, starting during the 1990s, alludes to a continuation of, and a response to, second-
wave feminism.

First-wave feminism advanced equivalent agreement and property rights for ladies, restricting
responsibility for ladies by their spouses. By the late nineteenth century, women's activist
activism was principally cantered around the option to cast a ballot. American first-wave
feminism finished with entry of the nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1919,
giving ladies casting a ballot rights.

Second-wave feminism of the 1960s-1980s zeroed in on issues of fairness and separation.

The second-wave trademark, "The Personal is Political," distinguished ladies' social and
political disparities as inseparably connected and urged ladies to see how their own lives
reflected misogynist power structures. Betty Friedan was a vital participant in second-wave
feminism. In 1963, her book The Feminine Mystique censured the possibility that ladies
could discover satisfaction just through childrearing and homemaking. As indicated by
Friedan's New York Times eulogy, her book "touched off the contemporary ladies'
development in 1963 and thus for all time changed the social texture of the United States and
nations around the planet" and "is broadly viewed as perhaps the most powerful true to life
books of the twentieth century." Friedan estimates that ladies are survivors of deceptions
expecting them to discover character in their lives through spouses and youngsters. This
makes ladies lose their own personalities in that of their family.

Third-wave feminism started in the mid 1990s, reacting to apparent disappointments of the
subsequent wave and to the reaction against second-wave activities. This philosophy tries to
challenge the meanings of womanliness that outgrew the thoughts of the second-wave,

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contending that the second-wave over-accentuated encounters of upper working class white
ladies. The third-wave considers ladies' to be as interconnected, showing how race, identity,
class, religion, sex, and ethnicity are largely critical variables while talking about feminism. It
looks at issues identified with ladies' lives on a global premise.

As the #MeToo development barrels forward, as record quantities of ladies look for office,
and as the Women's March drives the opposition against the Trump organization, feminism is
arriving at a degree of social significance it hasn't appreciated in years. It's presently a
significant object of social talk — which has prompted some befuddling discussions in light
of the fact that not every person knows about or concedes to the essential phrasing of
feminism. Furthermore, quite possibly the most fundamental and most befuddling terms has
to do with floods of feminism.

Individuals started discussing feminism as a progression of waves in 1968 when a New York
Times article by Martha Weinman Lear ran under the feature "The Second Feminist Wave."
"Feminism, which one may have assumed as dead as a Polish inquiry, is again an issue," Lear
composed. "Advocates consider it the Second Feminist Wave, the first having ebbed after the
magnificent triumph of testimonial and vanished, at last, into the shoal of Togetherness."

The wave representation got on: It turned into a valuable method of connecting the ladies'
development of the '60s and '70s to the ladies' development of the suffragettes, and to
recommend that the ladies' libbers weren't an unusual chronicled abnormality, as their
naysayers jeered, yet another part in a great history of ladies battling together for their
privileges. Over the long run, the wave representation turned into an approach to portray and
recognize various times and ages of feminism.

It is anything but an ideal similitude. "The wave similitude will in general have incorporated
into it a significant figurative ramifications that is truly deceptive and not accommodating
strategically," contended women's activist student of history Linda Nicholson in 2010. "That
ramifications is that hidden certain chronicled contrasts, there is one wonder, feminism, that
joins sex activism throughout the entire existence of the United States, and that like a wave,
tops at specific occasions and retreats at others. In entirety, the wave similitude recommends
the possibility that sex activism throughout the entire existence of the United States has been
generally brought together around one bunch of thoughts, and that set of thoughts can be
called feminism."

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The wave analogy can be reductive. It can recommend that each influx of feminism is a stone
monument with a solitary brought together plan, when truth be told the historical backdrop of
feminism is a background marked by various thoughts in wild clash.

It can diminish each wave to a generalize and propose that there's a sharp division between
ages of feminism, when truth be told there's a genuinely solid congruity between each wave
— and since no wave is a stone monument, the hypotheses that are stylish in one wave are
regularly grounded in the work that somebody was doing uninvolved of a past wave. Also,
the wave allegory can propose that standard feminism is the solitary sort of feminism there is,
when feminism is loaded with splinter developments.

What's more, as waves heap upon waves in women's activist talk, it's become muddled that
the wave illustration is helpful for understanding where we are at the present time. "I don't
think we are in a wave at the present time," sexual orientation examines researcher April
Sizemore-Barber told in a Vox article in January. "I believe that now feminism is intrinsically
interconnected feminism — we are in a position of different feminisms."

Be that as it may, the wave illustration is likewise presumably the best device we have for
understanding the historical backdrop of feminism in the US, where it came from and how it
created. What's more, it's become a key piece of how we talk about feminism — so regardless
of whether we wind up choosing to dispose of it, it merits seeing precisely the thing we're
disposing of.

Sharmila Rege's works.

Sharmila Rege's work should be put in the three areas of human science, ladies' examinations,
and ladies' developments. In an unconventional paper named 'Institutional Alliance among
Sociology and Gender Studies: The Story of the Monkey and the Crocodile', she endeavours
to incorporate human science and sexual orientation via cautiously finding the particular
history of social science in Maharashtra. There existed a risky cooperation between the
women's activist endeavour to use insight as a genuine wellspring of information and the idea
of a worth loaded 'good judgment' that plagued the order of Sociology (established in its man
centric presumptions). Rege distinguishes the three places that the venture of incorporating
human science with sex examines should attempt:

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"The situation of a women's activist going up against male controlled societies in social
science, both at the scholastic and institutional levels; two, the situation of a third world
women's activist and social scientist facing the plans of western feminism and social science;
three, the situation of a sex touchy humanist situated in India, investigating the intricacies of
standing, class, identity and sex."

Maybe, her most bantered upon commitment to the field of Women's Studies would be the
'Dalit-Feminist' Standpoint. She contended that the masculinization of Dalit hood and the
Savarnisation of womanhood delivers the old style rejection and eradication of Dalit
Womanhood. Rege utilizes Ambedkar's meaning of rank as endogamous class supported
through authority over the lady's sexual and conceptive exercises. She clarifies that one can't
consider a sufficient sexual legislative issues without observing the characteristic linkage
among position and sexuality.

The height of position status discovers articulation in the withdrawal of the ladies that hail
from such an area inside the beneficial exercises of the open arena. The debasement of the
Dalit man is advocated through his inability to control the sexuality of 'his' lady. Thusly, rape
over Dalit ladies is a typical practice utilized to subvert Dalit masculinity. Rege further
clarifies how Bramhanism doesn't universalize a solitary male centric mode, yet makes
various man controlled societies.

"A Dalit Feminist outlook is viewed as emancipatory since the subject of its information is
epitomized and obvious (I e, the idea starts from the existences of Dalit ladies and these lives
are available and noticeable in the consequences of the idea). This position contends that it is
more emancipatory than other existing positions and counters pluralism and relativism by
which all information based and political cases are believed to be substantial."

Rege proceeded to contend that 'Dalit ladies' itself can't be considered as a homogenous class.
Rege's paper was a reaction to a paper composed by Gopal Guru named 'Dalit Women Talk
Differently'. Master declares that the self-ruling preparation of Dalit ladies is an exceptional
epistemological outlook.

The attestation that Dalit ladies talk distinctively takes into account the rise of a bona fide
portrayal of social reality. Rege discovered Guru's contention risky to the degree that valid
information claims established in experience can prompt the arrangement of what she

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however to be thin, personality legislative issues restricting the emancipatory capability of
the Dalit lady's associations.

"Dalit women's activist stance which rises up out of the practices and battles of Dalit lady, we
perceive, may begin underway of Dalit women's activist erudite people however it can't
thrive whenever disengaged from the encounters and thoughts of different gatherings who
should instruct themselves about the chronicles, the favored social relations and utopias and
the battles of the minimized. A change from 'their motivation' to 'our motivation' is workable
for subjectivities can be changed. By this we don't contend that non-Dalit women's activists
can 'talk as' or 'for the' Dalit ladies yet they can 're-examine themselves as Dalit women's
activists'. Such a position, hence evades the limited back street of direct experience based
'realness' and thin 'personality governmental issues'."

References: 

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-
fourth
https://scroll.in/article/902839/brahmanical-patriarchy-how-ambedkar-explained-the-links-
between-caste-and-violence-against-women
https://feminisminindia.com/2017/10/17/remembering-sharmila-rege/
http://www.ohiohumanities.org/betty-friedan-the-three-waves-of-feminism/#:~:text=Feminist
%20history%20can%20be%20divided,with%20women's%20right%20to%20vote.&text=The
%20third%20wave%2C%20beginning%20in,to%2C%20second%2Dwave%20feminism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
 

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