WAVES OF FEMINISM Important topic from Exam

point of view
 FEMINISM
•Feminism is a collection of political
movements, social movements and
ideologies that defend the political, the
economic, the personal and the social
rights of women.
•Feminist movements aim at achieving
and establishing equality between
women and men.
•Feminists act, speak, write and advocate
on behalf of women's issues and rights
and identify injustice to females in the
social status quo.
WHAT FEMINISM IS NOT!
• Feminism is not the belief that women
are superior
• Feminism is not hating men (misandry)
• Feminism is not male oppression
 FEMINIST MOVEMENT AND FEMINISMS

Feminism is a:
• political and power movement as well
as a
• literary approach
The different phases of the
feminist movement and the
feminist literary development
are not identical but they are
interrelated.
FIRST-WAVE OF FEMINIST
MOVEMENT
(1890’S TO 1960)
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A
Vindication of the Rights of
Woman is regarded as the
earliest and the foundation
work of feminist
movement
 WHAT LED TO THE 1 ST ‘WAVE’ OF
FEMINISM
In 1800s Western world:
An average married female gave birth to seven
children.
Higher education was off-limits.
Wealthier women could exercise limited authority
in the domestic sphere but possessed no property
rights or economic autonomy.
Lower-class women toiled alongside men, but the
same social and legal restrictions applied to this
stratum of society as well.
..CONT
Some social advancements women made at the beginning of the
19th century, like ‘The Second Great Awakening’, which started
in 1790, emphasized emotional experience over dogma, allowing
women more leadership opportunities outside of the home.
Abolition and temperance movements that shared Protestant
undercurrents activated women as well.
Angelina and Sarah Grimke became well-known abolitionists who
defied social custom by publicly addressing the American Anti-
Slavery Society.
In response to the fierce criticism of their speech, Sarah Grimke
penned "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes" in 1838.
A year later, Oberlin College became the first higher-learning
institution in the United States to admit women.
..CONT
Around that time, the exclusion of women in many
abolitionist organizations prompted Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Lucretia Mott to rally together women --
and some men -- to denounce gender inequalities and
demand women's right to vote. (picketing)
In 1848, they organized the Seneca Falls Convention,
where they outlined women's grievances and their
desire for suffrage.
The press responded disdainfully to the convention,
but the event laid the groundwork for the suffrage
movement. Other prominent leaders, including Susan
B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Lucy Stone, joined the
suffrage ranks as well.
 SENECA FALLS CONVENTION
The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights
convention. It advertised itself as
"a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and
rights of woman“
The American women's rights movement began with a meeting of
reformers in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Out of that first
convention came a historic document, the 'Declaration of
Sentiments,' which demanded:
 equal social status and
 legal rights for women, including the right to vote

The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was created to

call upon women to organize and petition to gain the rights and
privileges that they were denied. The intent and purpose was to
achieve equality and to bring change to a sexist society.
..CONT
Suffragists began to make headway in 1860 when
New York passed the Married Women's Property Act.
The bill legalized property ownership, joint child
custody and wage retention for women.
The use of the word "feminism" to describe the
support for women's rights migrated from Europe to
the United States by 1910.
But not all suffragists would refer to themselves as
such; many advocated solely for voting rights and not
complete equality.
IN 1920, Congress ratified the 19th Amendment,
granting women the right to vote
 WHAT WENT ON IN BETWEEN 1 ST AND 2ND
WAVE
After the passage of the 19th Amendment, the National American
Woman Suffrage Association was disbanded & League of Women
Voters and National Women's Party took its place.
But
Three years after women won the vote, suffragist and feminist
factions split over Alice Paul's introduction of the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA) to Congress. The proposed amendment, which
read,
"equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States or any state on account of sex,"
alienated some women who feared that its passage would undermine
legal protection granted to women and children.
 SOME GOOD OUTCOMES OF 1 ST WAVE
MANIFESTED
From that point in the early 1920s until the 1960s, feminism
seemed to stall. But that didn't mean that subtle changes had
stopped taking place.
For instance, in Europe and in US of America:
 during World War II, more women than ever joined the workforce, assuming
industrial and military jobs previously reserved for men.
 Higher education had become a more viable option as well
 the number of female college graduates was rising.

When the troops came home, women's culture experienced a

return to domesticity. Many women continued to work outside
the home, but career options were restrictive with gender-
specific job postings. Women had won the vote but not cultural
independence. This caused dissatisfaction and laid reasons for 2nd
wave.
Discontent surfaced in mainstream middle-class society with the
publication of two influential books.
As Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Women"
fueled activism by voicing her generation's sexual discrimination,
so did Simone de Beauvoir's "Second Sex," published in 1949.
De Beauvoir's book decried women's inferior status in society,
reasoning that cultural distinctions between genders only served
to reinforce patriarchy and the submission of women.
In 1963, Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique," which
described the new generation of overly educated, under-
employed women who gave up promising careers for the service
of hearth and home.
…CONT
A few governments took notice of women's discontent
and reacted to resolve. Eg, The Kennedy
administration in the US passed the Equal Pay Act in
1963 and established the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission in 1964 benefitting women
and blacks.
Yet women earned barely half of men's salaries, and
childcare institutions remained scarce. With the
simmering Civil Rights movement gaining energy at
the time, the cultural atmosphere in the United States
was better recipient for revolution as compared to that
of Europe.
 2ND WAVE OF FEMINISM
In contrast to first-wave feminism, the movement
during the 1970s benefitted from the involvement of
far more organizations, encompassing a broad
spectrum of political beliefs and ideologies.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966
represented one of largest coalitions that sprang from
the second wave.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC) had failed to root out sexism in the workplace,
instead focusing on racial discrimination.
..CONT

When the EEOC refused to ban gender-specific job

advertisements, Betty Friedan and other leading feminist formed
NOW.
The organization, comprised of mostly older, white, middle-class
women, focused on issues including:
 reproductive freedom,
 gender equality in the workplace and
 the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

More than any feminist group before, NOW looked to the law to
institute gender reforms.
Issues of rape, domestic violence, abortion and access
to childcare came to the forefront of the feminist
platforms.
Through consciousness-raising, women could identify
common struggles and receive support while
feminism grew into a mass movement.
From this form of engagement, the slogan "the
personal is political" aptly summed up the goals of
second-wave feminism. What were once private issues
were now in the public realm. This sense also led
towards a strong case for radical feminism.
The term second-wave feminism refers mostly to the radical
feminism of the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and
early 1970s.
Consider for instance that:
Significant feminist protested in 1969 against Miss US/ Miss world
contests; to show how women in pageant competitions were paraded
like cattle, highlighting the underlying assumption that the way
women look is more important than what they do, what they think,
or even whether they think at all.
Carrying posters reading, “Cattle Parades Are Degrading to Human
Beings,” “Boring Job: Woman Wanted,” and “Low Pay: Woman
Wanted,” feminists made their message loud and clear: Women were
victims of a patriarchal, commercialized, oppressive beauty culture.
..CONT (THIS LED TO:…)
Women then formed:
 women-only “rap” groups or consciousness-raising
groups, through which they sought to empower
women both collectively and individually using
techniques of sharing and contesting.
 This approach was explained and advocated in “The
BITCH Manifesto” written by Jo Freeman 1968.
 Also the publication ‘Sisterhood is Powerful’, edited
by Robin Morgan in 1970 talked of separating
pathways from men, abhorring the dominance of
men over women and spoke openly of having
separate education, economy, legislatives and sexual
relations minus men.
..CONT
This type of activity and rhetoric was typical to the second-wave
movement and in particular to the Redstockings, who created their
name by combining bluestockings, a pejorative term for educated
and otherwise strong-minded women in the 18th and 19th centuries,
with red, for social revolution.
The Redstockings was one of the influential but short-lived radical
feminist groups of the 1960 to 1970s and produced many of the
expressions that have become household words in the United States:
•Sisterhood is powerful
•consciousness raising
•The personal is political
•the politics of housework
•pro-woman line
Key to this branch of feminism was a strong belief that women could
collectively empower one other
 FOUR GOALS/AGENDAS OF
SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM

Raise Act
Develop Awareness
a of Female
Organize
• Protest &
Feminist Oppression Activism
Among • Legislative
Theory Changes
Women
FEMINISM WAVES IN
LITERATURE
 PHASES OF LITERARY DEVELOPMENT FOR
WOMAN

Elaine Showalter has identified

three phases of modern women’s
literary development: the
feminine phase (1840-80),
during which women writers
imitated the dominant male
traditions;

Elaine Showalter
Second & third phase of
Literary Development
The second one is the feminist
phase (1880-1920), when
women advocated for their
rights; and the female
phase(1920-present)
emphasizes on the rediscovery of
women’s texts the focus is now on
women’s texts as opposed to
merely uncovering misogyny in
men’s texts.
 THIRD-WAVE FEMINIST MOVEMENT
(1990S ONWARDS )

Today and unlike the former movements, the term

‘feminist’ is received less critically by the female
population due to the varying feminist outlooks, of
which they are convinced.

We have talked about these various kinds already.

…CONT
The main issues feminists face today were prefaced by the
work done by the previous waves of women.
As they are still working to:
vanquish the disparities in male and female pay and the
reproductive rights of women
To end violence against women globally
for acceptance and a true understanding of the term ‘feminism,’
You have to note and portray in your questions that
tremendous progress has been made since the first wave and
that it is a term that has been unfairly associated with a claim
for freedom out of the bondage of marital and kinship nature.
SHOWALTER’S FOUR MODELS OF DIFFERENCE:
Showalter believes the difference
between men and women basically
pillars upon:
biological,
linguistic,
Psychoanalytic and
cultural
Today it seems that two general tendencies, one
emphasizing Showalter’s biological, linguistic,
and psychoanalytic models, and the other
emphasizing cultural model, account for most
feminist theories.
FEMINISM IN PAKISTAN
In their acclaimed 2012 study entitled Position of Pakistani
Women in the 21st Century, Dr Jaweria Shahid and Khalid
Manzoor Butt define feminism as:
equality for women and freedom from gender discrimination in
different aspects of life.
Feminists are those who dare to break the conspiracy of
silence about oppression, unequal relationships between men
and women and who want to change it,” they write.
…CONT
FINDINGS:
There has almost always been some backlash against women
who wish to empower themselves be it by studying, working or
even choosing a spouse for themselves.
NGOs and other institutions that work to help oppressed
women are accused of misleading and ‘brainwashing’ them.
Most of these women internalize their suffering, either out of
fear or a lack of resources to turn to and the relatively
affluent, educated upper class simply turns a blind eye, hoping
to maintain their status quo.
…CONT
Broadly speaking, there are two dominant threads of feminist
discourse in Pakistan:
a modern, Islamic feminism and
a secular feminism.
Modern Islamic feminists such as Riffat Hassan, Amina Wadud and
Asma Barlas seek to further women’s rights by redefining Islamic
views and focusing on the female-centric laws Islam offers. This
form of feminism appeals largely to the lower, middle and upper-
middle strata of society which looks to religion for answers.
Secular feminists like Shahnaz Rouse and Fouzia
Saeed consider feminism as an extension of basic
human rights, regardless of any religious
connotations. Once again, these women are
labelled as protagonists of western culture by
those who misconstrue Islamic teachings to suit feed
their own, chauvinistic principles.
HISTORICIZING FEMINISM IN PAKISTAN
Mention Islamic Values first.( these you can pick from Islamiyat).
Then give political examples like:
Fatima Jinnah who led thousands of women to stand up for their well-
being even before Pakistan was created.
Soon after, Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan founded the All Pakistan
Women’s Association (APWA) in 1949, aiming to further the moral,
social and economic standing of women across the country.
Similarly, the Women’s Action Forum (WMA) was established in
September 1981, lobbying and advocating on behalf of women
without the resources to do it themselves.
…CONT
The real wave of feminist struggle arose in 1980 as a reaction
to General Zia-ul-Haq’s controversial implementation of the
Hudood Ordinance which asked rape victims to present four
eye-witnesses for their claim to be accepted.
The WMA publically opposed the unjust rulings passed under
the bill, raising awareness. The forum included women from all
spheres who spoke against the government in the media,
protested on the streets, conducted educational campaigns in
schools and devised the famous ‘Men, money, mullahs and
military’ slogan.
…CONT
Feminism gained most traction during Benazir
Bhutto’s two terms as Prime Minister (1988-1990
and 1993-1996), during which time NGOs and
focus groups were given considerable power and
urge the government to make amends.
The momentum decreased once Nawaz Sharif took
office in 1997 and women found themselves losing
ground to political conservatism and religious
revivalism, as indicated by Afiya Sherbano in her
study on the History of Pakistani Feminism (2009).
In 1997, the Council of Islamic Ideology recommended making
burqa mandatory and honor killings also rose to new hieghts.
Some lost ground was reclaimed when General Pervez
Musharraf rallied for women’s rights and encouraged their
involvement in media, sports and other socio-political activities.
The movement has continued to this day, albeit with lesser
intensity than before.
 Together, the WMA has successfully enabled many
women-friendly bills such as:
the Criminal Law Amendment Act (2004),
the Anti-Sexual Harassment Bill,
the Criminal Acid Act,
Protection of Women Act,
Status of Women Bill and
sundry regulations condemning honor killings and other
vices faced by women in Pakistani society.