Embracing feminism

Rihab Khalid 

DAWN

March 22, 2024


FEMINISM often sparks debate. It is hailed by some as a beacon of equality and derided by others as a divisive ideology. It is almost taboo in Pakistan, especially since the Aurat March that began in 2018 raised critical issues of gender equality and faced a fierce backlash. While it was accused of emphasising minor issues and controversial slogans, the division went beyond placards. Rather than uniting people under a common cause, the marches inadvertently widened the gap between many Pakistanis and the feminist movement, highlighting a crucial misunderstanding of what feminism entails.

This piece explores a deeper, research-informed understanding of feminism, that aims to foster a more inclusive dialogue to move towards a more equitable society.

What is feminism?: 

Feminism is a sociopolitical movement that champions equality, tackling systemic discrimination and oppression by challenging power imbalances. It advocates for a society where everyone, irrespective of identity, is free from discrimination, by dismantling underlying oppressive social structures (such as patriarchy) through empowering marginalised voices and advocating for equitable access to resources.

Feminism has evolved in various waves: 

from legal rights and suffrage of first-wave feminism, to broader societal issues of second-wave feminism, to postcolonial thought in third-wave feminism, and now emphasising ‘intersectionality’ that recognises that oppression can intersect across gender, race, class, and more. Feminism is not limited to a single gender or to women alone. Though historically focused on women’s rights due to greater discrimination against women, contemporary feminism aims to eradicate systemic inequalities that harm everyone, promoting solidarity among all who aim for universal equity and justice.

Contemporary feminism aims to eradicate systemic inequalities that harm everyone.

Feminism: a Western ideal? 

Often misperceived as a Western, liberal, or anti-religious movement, feminism has evolved into a diverse, global phenomenon that includes Islamic feminism, advocating for gender equity within Islamic teachings and challenging patriarchal norms. In Pakistan, since 1947, the feminist movement has navigated between secular/ liberal and Islamic perspectives but shares the goal of advocating for women’s rights and empowerment. While feminist groups like the Women’s Action Forum have advocated for women’s equal rights and access to the public sphere, contemporary Islamic feminists leverage Islamic principles for advocating reforms in marriage, divorce, and inheritance rights. Both unite under the common cause of women’s emancipation and rights.

Why choose feminism?

 Feminism means opposing pervasive injustices and violence in daily life, and recognising that while such injustices manifest across socio-spatial demographics, they are deeply influenced by gender. In Pakistan, about 32 per cent of women have experienced gender-based violence and over 90pc face domestic violence in their lifetimes. Pakistan ranks 142nd out of 146 on the Global Gender Gap Index. Of the 23 million children not attending school, the majority are girls — 58pc in Sindh and 78pc in Balochistan. Additionally, while only 50pc of women own a mobile phone compared to 81pc of men, women are also 49pc less likely to use mobile internet, highlighting significant gaps in access to education, communication, and digital resources.

Women constitute only about 25pc of the formal workforce (compared to 83pc of men) and hold merely 4.5pc of senior positions. Additionally, they occupy only 20pc of the national parliament seats, underscoring the struggle to meet gender quotas. Even when women participate in the formal economy, they fail to secure equal wages and benefits for the same amount of work. A UNDP report notes that the country’s gender wage gap results in a cumulative wage loss of Rs500 billion, across women’s lifetime earnings. Women undertake four times more unpaid and undervalued care work than men, highlighting the critical need for feminism to address and dismantle the systemic barriers women face.

My research reveals that in Pakistan, access to energy and services is significantly gendered. Ru­­ral women often bear compounded burdens of agricultural and household responsibilities without clean energy access, thus causing their health, well-being and climate resilience to be adversely af­­fe­c­ted. Urban low-income women face similar disparities, balancing income work with household chores, and experiencing limited mobility and socioeconomic opportunities.

Such disparities extend bey­ond income levels, and are rooted in women’s intersectional identities — including class, religion, edu­cation, occupation, and location — and household roles as caregivers, household managers, mothers- and daughters-in-law, income-generators, housemaids, etc, highlighting the need to address such gendered disparities across all social strata. Femi­nist approaches also reveal how many such disparities result from cultural conservatism, entrenched patriarchy, gender blindness and stereotypes, rather than religion. By exposing and challenging these oppressive systems, feminism seeks to dismantle rigid gender roles, improving the visibility and understanding of gender disparities.

Feminism for all: 

Feminism has grown into a diverse movement of plurality beyond any single ideology. While the Aurat March faces the challenge of uniting diverse feminist thoughts, it has succeeded in spotlighting critical issues like gender violence and socioeconomic inequalities — issues of justice with sound basis in Islamic jurisprudence, like women’s right to assets, land ownership, safety, education and basic services. Undermining these rights perpetuates discrimination, contradicting the principles of both religion and humanity. Focusing on these issues, the Aurat March offers a potent platform for all women and feminists to advocate for these fundamental rights. Success lies in celebrating diversity and uniting to achieve the common good.

At its core, being a feminist means opposing oppression and supporting equitable policies for all individuals to pursue their aspirations free from discrimination and violence. Therefore, if you are an advocate of equal pay for equal work, if you champion every individual’s right to education and development, if you stand against sexual harassment, and if you believe in equal access to safe and inclusive spaces free from intimidation, then you too are a feminist.

The writer is a feminist energy researcher working on the gender-energy-space nexus with a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK.
X: @rihab_khalid

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2024

Anti-racism, anti-discrimination

Rafia Zakaria – feminism is not only white

Pakistani-American author and lawyer Rafia Zakaria advocates for a broad-based feminism that doesn't just address the concerns of white women. By Christine Lehne

Rafia Zakaria has followed a life path that may seem unusual for a U.S. feminist: born and raised in Pakistan, she seized an opportunity to emigrate to the States aged 17 through an arranged marriage.

"One night after dinner, sitting on the edge of my bed in mid-1990s Karachi, I agreed to an arranged marriage," she writes in the opening pages of her book, Against White Feminism. Her motivation? She wanted to go to college. "My life until then had been restricted in all sorts of ways, hardly extending beyond the walls that surrounded our home. I had never experienced freedom, and so I gladly signed it away," she continued.

Zakaria begins her celebrated book with this confession, before recounting how she went on to study law against her husband's wishes. She eventually left him and became an expert in immigration law. But this is background to the main story: how Western feminism is shaped by the dominant priorities of white women.

Western feminism is shaped by the dominant priorities of white women: white, affluent, often university-educated women determine what feminism should be – and its political goals. Black women, on the other hand, should only appear as victims, cowering in women's shelters or toiling in factories. Zakaria says that some white feminists cannot conceive that Women of Colour might have different political goals than white women

What is 'white' feminism?

In Rafia Zakaria's life, feminism is not abstract theory, but sheer necessity. If there had been no women's shelters, she might not have been able to leave her husband. If women were still denied access to universities, Zakaria might not have been able to study law.

Contrary to the provocative title, it is a sensitive, delicate, precise observation of the weaknesses of U.S. feminism. But while the book lauds feminism's achievements, Zakaria's personal experiences also reveal its failings in her adopted home.

Zakaria recounts being invited to give a talk on the status of women in Pakistan. On arrival, she learns that she is not to stand on a stage in front of a microphone, but behind a table with printed pictures of rural Pakistani women in traditional dress and a table of small handicrafts – which could be bought from her to raise money for projects abroad.

The organiser was appalled when Zakaria didn't show up in her "traditional" garb like some other Nepal women in attendance. Zakaria says she felt like an animal in a zoo.

Her point is that white, affluent, often university-educated women determine what feminism should be – and its political goals. Black women, on the other hand, should only appear as victims, cowering in women's shelters or toiling in factories. She says that some white feminists cannot conceive that Women of Colour might have different political goals than white women.

Zakaria cites the example of a western NGO encouraging Indian rural women – so they would have more time to seek waged labour outside the home – to use more efficient "clean-cook stoves", which they neither needed nor wanted, in part because they could not repair the stoves locally. Many of the women simply "rejected the notion that the path to empowerment was to make themselves available for wage labour".

What's more, she draws attention to the way white feminists co-opted the war in Afghanistan in the name of feminism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Feminists from the U.S. such as Gloria Steinem and Hollywood actors Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep signed letters that promised to liberate Afghani women from the Taliban.

"White" feminism – past and present

Zakaria also sheds light on historical cases in her compelling book: as early as the 19th century, British suffragettes demanded that women in colonial India campaign for women's suffrage. When Indian feminists did not comply, white suffragettes wanted to fight for Indian women's suffrage but did not attempt to liberate them from colonial subjugation. "Indian women wanted the vote, but in a country that was no longer under the colonial rule of the British," Zakaria writes. "What power did a vote have in an enslaved country?"

Zakaria's 250-page analysis of white feminism is as precise as it is empathetic. Its consequences, says Rafia Zakaria in interview, can be observed in many places today, including Afghanistan. "The U.S. used feminism as a cover when it invaded Afghanistan, so women's rights in Afghanistan are no longer considered legitimate, but a sign of pro-Western collaborators," she said. "This deeply saddens me." The U.S. knew from the beginning that it would leave the country again, she added, but did nothing to protect women afterwards.

Young feminism in Bangladesh: What does feminism mean to you?

Which topics really matter to Generation X and young millennials? Seven women and a man, participants in a DW Academy/Goethe-Institut Bangladesh project, explain what feminism means to them. By Author: Priya Esselborn and Nina Molter

123456789

Arifur Rahman, independent filmmaker: Arifur became interested in filmmaking while studying anthropology at Jahangirnagar University. His projects have been featured at various film festivals, including the ones in Berlin, Venice, Busan, Seattle, Locarno, Singapore and Shanghai. “I want to discuss the idea of feminism in my films because I believe that film is a strong medium that can impact people’s lives and leave a positive mark"

From rights to political mobilisation

Ciani-Sophia Hoeder, journalist and author of the book "Wut und Böse" (Rage and Evil), published in 2021, says that the feminist movement in Germany is also shaped by the views of white women. She refers to white feminism's "exclusionary criteria" and says she is not drawn to participate in "feminist issues that do not correspond with my everyday life," Hoeder admitted in interview. Questions about women's work almost never refer to the precarious work of migrant women. "German feminism is about bringing white, affluent women forward," she said.

But Rafia Zakaria professes to be hopeful about the future: she believes in the power of feminism. What matters now, she says, is listening to each other and getting involved politically. "It's nice to have rights," said Zakaria. "But we can't keep our rights if we don't organise politically – otherwise our rights will just be taken away again by new governments."

Christine Lehnen

© Deutsche Welle 2022

SASKATCHEWAN

4 women explain what feminism looks like to them in 2023

Wed, March 8, 2023 

On March 8, 1979, Iranian women’s celebrations of International Women’s Day turned into protests against a new decree by Khomeini about mandatory veiling. (Hengameh Golestan - image credit)

The meaning of feminism has changed over the years — from fighting for rights to vote and own property, to equality and anti-discrimination, to now a push for more inclusivity beyond white, cisgender women.

On Tuesday, one day before International Women's Day, CBC Saskatchewan's Blue Sky hosted a discussion on feminism in 2023. Guests shared their unique experiences and spoke about what feminism means to them.

"When I had a same sex partner in the late '90s and was in the process of coming out, the personal definitely became political," Nicole White said on the program.

"The fight isn't over yet. There has been an active attack on particular marginalized communities and it's been really disconcerting. We have to constantly be looking around the table and asking ourselves who isn't here and why aren't they here and creating space for them and amplifying those voices whenever possible."

White said her version of feminism is different as it was 20 years ago and hopes it will continue to evolve.

Submitted by Nicole White

White founded Moontime Sisters, an organization that supplies free menstruation products to people in Northern Saskatchewan.

"A menstrual product that I would pay $5 for in Saskatoon could be upwards of $20 in northern Saskatchewan communities, and that is absolutely considered a luxury product for a family," she said, noting access and equity remain as hurdles.

After consultation with two-spirit elders, White said the organization has started the process of changing its name to Moontime Connections.

"To honour two-spirit and trans menstruators in Canada and recognizing that we can still honour the sisterhood and the kinship when it comes to menstruators across the province. We never ever want to turn someone away with the use of language that's not inclusive."

She is now the project leader of Enough Already, an organization that challenges sexual harassment in the workplace, and said the situation with gender-based and sexual violence is still fairly dire.

Responding to a Blue Sky listener's question about ageism, White said more safe spaces should be created for female seniors.

'Equity more than equality'

Yashica Bither says she faced microaggressions throughout elementary school in Regina, and found feminism in high school.

Bither is now women's centre co-ordinator at University of Saskatchewan Student Union. She spoke about intersectional feminism, which looks at how different elements of a person's identity — their race, gender, orientation and others — inform their experience.

"My definition of intersectional feminism is looking at equity more than equality. Feminism is all about equality. That intersectional lens allows all members of the community to benefit from that and not just a particular group," they said.

"We do need an intersectional lens to feminism. White folk are not the only people who should be at the forefront. Especially as Saskatchewan gets more diverse, we need to acknowledge that these voices need to be amplified."

Bither said the centre offers peer support, menstrual products, pregnancy tests, contraceptive products and a listening ear.

"Allyship is important to the movement, especially to the trans folks," Bither said, noting in many such movements, Black trans voices led the fight.

"They deserve safe spaces as much as we do. Trans people are not confused.… They are who they are and they need to be listened to."

Submitted by Yashica Bither

Tasnim Jaisee agreed, saying trans women are women and that everyone needs "to protect our sisters."

Jaisee is a USask undergraduate student in political studies and women's and gender studies, with a research interest in intersectional feminism and critical disability studies.

She said she grew up facing a combination of "sexism, racism and ableism," as she is a woman of colour who uses a wheelchair.

"Pop feminism is the first step of girls empowering girls, women empowering women. It's a feel-good version of feminism. But moving into intersectional feminism is a bit different, because it is essentially becoming more critical of the system of power."

Jaisee said intersectional feminism unpacks how identity has layers, like how women of colour experience racial and gender-based systemic barriers.

"That intersectional layer is very, very critical to understanding some of those unique experiences."

Submitted by Tasnim Jaisee

Jaisee's mother fled Bangladesh to Canada after the outbreak of the Bangladesh Liberation War.

"Her feminism was different from mine. Her feminism was to seek opportunities of education and that again was quite revolutionary."

Disability activism work within intersectional feminism has helped Jaisee feel more included.

"My racial and disability identities have impacted everything I do. Intersectional feminism makes me realize that the systemic barriers I face are not my fault."

She said women mentors — like her professors, supervisors and bosses — have been pillars of support.

'The only way forward is with compassion and empathy and love in our hearts'

Cecilia Rands said growing up with a single father who identified as a feminist helped her immensely with embarking on her own feminist journey.

Rands said she realizes the privilege she has, being a white cisgender woman.

"Having those privileges never means you can't fight for the rights of others. My father always worked to be an ally and that gave me a good push," she said.

Rands's work focuses on education around gender based violence and allyship, and involves working with men and boys to make them realize their role in helping end oppression and violence.

"The only way forward is with compassion and empathy and love in our hearts," she said.

"We can't expect men and boys to take up that mantle if they don't feel that love and compassion and acceptance just as much as we want women and everyone to feel."

Submitted by Cecilia Rand

Rands, who has also worked at a Planned Parenthood, said demystifying abortion is also very important.

"Abortion is health care. It's that simple. Saskatchewan has a really tragic situation of access to reproductive health care," she said.

She said access to medical abortion is not equitable in the province, especially for communities in the northern communities.

She also spoke about violence against women.

"As many strides as we've made as women and feminists, particularly in Saskatchewan, the rates of intimate partner violence and gender based violence are still incredibly staggering and serious. There's still a lot of work to do," Rands said.

"It's hard for me not to worry about my daughter's future in terms of safety."

 

Does Your Feminism Include Palestine?

by Nour Jaghama and Grace Siegelman  / October 15th, 2024

Women’s Marches are being planned across the country ahead of Election Day to “show the strength of our feminist movement.” However, curiously missing from the talking points around the strength of the feminist movement is the women of Palestine – who have endured the brutality of anti-feminist policies for decades under the illegal occupation by Israel.

Nour, CODEPINK’s Palestinian-American organizer, shares a story of her grandmother’s sacrifice to take care of her children under occupation:

In Palestine, Israeli forces routinely impose curfews on Palestinian villages, forcing Palestinians to stay confined in their homes after dusk. The penalty for the slightest movement outside — or even within their homes — can mean immediate arrest or being shot on sight. My mother often recounts a story of my grandmother risking her life during curfew one night. My uncle, who was an infant at the time, was crying for milk, and my grandmother, with no other choice, had to slip out into the night. She moved silently through the shadows, hiding from Israeli soldiers as she crossed the village to find milk for her baby. My mother still remembers the fear she felt, thinking it might be the last time she’d see her mother alive. But my grandmother returned safely because Palestinian women, shaped by decades of occupation and resistance, have learned to navigate the militarized reality that surrounds them, finding ways to perform even the most basic acts of care under unimaginable conditions.

This story is not new or singular; Palestinian families have faced it on a daily basis for decades. It sparked our reflection on the co-option of feminism in the belly of the beast—where we’re writing from.

Nadia Alia wrote about the 2014 Israeli invasion in Gaza, citing many reporters detailing the “disproportionate” number of women and children victims during this violent attack. She then begged the question, what is a proportionate amount of women and children harmed during war and conflict? When did gender-based violence and violence towards the oppressed become an inevitable part of world relations? And if simply men were killed, would the crime scream quieter? When did we start weighing the scale of a tragedy based on gender — and when did we decide Palestinian men being murdered and imprisoned doesn’t impact their entire community?

Feminism may not be definitive, but at its heart is a commitment to family and community care — a stark contrast to militarism, which injects itself into every aspect of human life and erodes these fundamental values. Palestinian women embody this incompatible relationship between feminism and militarism through their constant resistance to the occupation’s infringement on their health, education, and ability to provide for their families. When the women of Palestine are forced to become breadwinners and protectors because Israel has murdered or imprisoned every man in their family, the necessity for feminism to include the women of Palestine is undeniable. To narrowly define feminism is to be inherently anti-feminist, as we are building new ways to be just, to be equitable, and to show up for our community every day — just as the women of Palestine do. However, co-opting feminism to enact harm and destruction to people and the planet is against all feminist principles and praxis. And to further assume a false sense of superiority over the communities that have been harmed by imperialism is not only inherently anti-feminist, it’s anti-human. Feminism, at its core, is antithetical to all forms of oppression, exploitation, and violence. Feminism devoid of intersectionality becomes a weapon for imperialists by depriving it of its otherwise inherently liberatory nature.

Alia’s writing from 2014 still rings clear today. We just passed a year marker of the October 7 act of resistance from Gazans defending their homeland and 76 years of Palestinians living in an open-air prison inside their own homes. Meanwhile, we head into an election season using feminism as a gateway towards further surveillance, policing, and genocide, both at home and in all corners of the earth. Women’s marches throughout the country won’t even utter the names of the hundreds of thousands of women killed in Palestine to date. What is feminist about wanting to be the most lethal force in the world? What is feminist about continuing to arm a genocidal war against Palestine and Lebanon? What is feminist about using our tax dollars that should go towards natural disaster relief and healthcare to fund murder? Supplying militarism under the guise of women’s empowerment is again not new. Still, the complacency and ignorance we see from elected officials here in the U.S. and those who appear to care for the well-being of women is always horrific and devastating. It cannot be overstated: there are no feminist bombs, feminist prisons, feminist cops, or feminist wars. There are only paid actors who have convinced people that their eventual demise and the demise of the planet is what will empower their lives today.

Israel’s occupation of Palestine creates a constant state of fear and instability, eroding the rights, safety, and dignity of millions, particularly Palestinian women who bear the weight of war and imperial feminism in devastating ways. CODEPINK started as an immediate reaction to the 2002 Bush Administration creeping closer to invading Iraq based on ‘saving women and children’ only to cause over 15,000 women in Iraq to be killed. The ‘rescue’ narrative we have seen play out in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, and all across the globe from imperial players like the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel has truly shown the lengths that liberal, western feminism will go to justify the oppression of the women and children it claims to save. It reveals the true intent this movement has for feminism: to keep the status quo and to keep marginalized lives, as Marc Lemont Hill describes it, “directly tied to the needs and interests of the powerful.” Feminist education, activism, and community care must always come from a place of love and understanding but must also be in steadfast values of abolition and divestment. We cannot let ourselves be co-opted to kill Palestinians. We cannot allow our work to be undermined to kill the people of the Congo, of Sudan, of Yemen, of Ukraine, of Russia. And we must not let our lives and choices be tied to a small group of people reaping the benefits of war.

To support Palestinian liberation means embracing a vision of feminism that stands firmly against militarism, imperialism, and colonialism. It means committing to fight for the rights of Palestinian women and all women who are oppressed in the name of advancing imperialist interests. Feminism calls us to see the connection between the liberties we fight for at home and the rights denied to women and girls across the globe. A genuinely feminist stance fights for a world where no woman, no child, and no community live under the constant threat of violence. Supporting Palestine is about embodying this vision, standing in solidarity, and fighting for a world where imperialism and colonialism are universally resisted.
il

Nour Jaghama is CODEPINK’s Palestine and Iran Campaigner. Nour graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in International Studies in June 2022. She has been advocating for Palestinian liberation for over 5 years, including organizing within her university. She also organizes around related issues, such as abolition. Grace Siegelman is CODEPINK’s digital engagement manager and feminist foreign policy project coordinator. Her organizing and research focus on prison and police abolition, queer theory, gendered violence and anti-war efforts. She connects her own work to the communities in Chicago and communities across the globe, in Palestine, Yemen and Cuba. Read other articles by Nour Jaghama and Grace Siegelman .

Five Things Feminism Has Done For Me

I got tagged in the Five Things Feminism Has Done For Me meme by John Murney, thanks John. You can read here to find out what its about.

Also Today the Progressive bloggers will be doing a pro feminist blog burst...october is women's history month, a call to post or re-post "5 things feminism did for me" anytime on the 2nd

I won't blog about five things rather I will blog about feminists I consider historically important. Feminism has been essential in the development of my libertarian and pagan perspective.

I will blog about those who did not take State funding to fight for womens rights and against patriarchical society. In fact their autonomous activity showed that women had to organize despite the State, academia, capitalism, and Christianity. I am not here to support the Status of Women or the State. It is reformism pure and simple. That being said I donot support the attempts by the vile rightwhing to get rid of the Status of Women. This is political correctness from the right, attempting to impose their Christian fundamentalist values on secular society.

I think Status of Women is a liberal sop and it is irrelevant to historically authentic feminism and to women organizing for themselves as the proletariat.

Since it is womens history Month I thought I would post my selection of Greatest Feminists Not Supported By the State in historic waves of Feminism. And my waves fit historic periods. While mainstream Feminism says there are three waves of Feminism historically there are actually six. And those who claim we are in some sort of post-feminist period are deluded as are the post-modernists.

I look at when these women were active or published. When dealing with their ideas and influence it is interesting to note when they actually published. Margaret Mead for instance published her works on Samoa back in the late 1920's while her influence continues right through till today.

And yes I have included liberated women who embrace sexuality as a positive affirmation of themselves. "Yes, I am a revolutionist. All true artists are revolutionists." Isadora Duncan.

And in keeping with this meme I tag the following five:

Larry Gambone

CathiefromCanada

RustyIdols

Daveberta

DearKitty



Feminist Wave 1 1790-1899

1. Mary Wollstencroft

2. Sojourner Truth

3.Victoria Woodhull

4. Anne Besant

5. Lucy Parsons

6. Eleanor Marx

7. Mother Jones

8. Voltairine de Cleyre

9. Florence Farr

10. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

11. Sophia: British Feminism in the Mid Eighteenth Century


Feminist Wave 2 1900-1950

1. Jane Ellen Harrison

2. Emma Goldman

3. Margaret Sanger

4. Alexandra Kollanti

5. Dr. Margret Murray

6. Sylvia Pankhurst

6. Mary Beard

7. Helen Keller

8. Mujeres Libres

9. Simone de Beauvoir

10. Margaret Mead

11. Dion Fortune

12. Isadora Duncan

13. Gypsy Rose Lee

14. Bettie Page

15. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn


Feminist Wave 3 1960-1970

1. Gloria Steinem

2. Betty Friedan

3. Evelyn Reed

4. Raya Dunesevkeya

5. Madalyn Murray O'Hair

6. Clara Fraser

7. Rachel Carson

8. Jayne Mansfield




Feminist Wave 4 1970-1980

1. Jane Godall

2. Shulamith Firestone

3. Selma James

4. Maria Della Costa

5. Kate Millet

6. Sheila Rowbotham

7. Angela Davis

8. Barbara Ehrenreich

9. Sharon Presley

10. Robin Morgan

11. Ti-Grace Atkinson

12. Betty Dodson

13. Jo Freeman

14. CWLU

15. Marge Piercy


Feminist Wave 5 1980-1999

1. Maria Gimbutas

2. Wendy McElory

3. Camilia Paglia

4. Stephanie Coontz

5. StarHawk

6. Annie Sprinkle

7. Nina Hartley

8. Dawn Passer


Feminist Wave 6- 2000-200?

1. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards

2. Kathy Pollitt



For more lists of women see:

Women in Science.

WOMEN WRITERS

Literary Resources -- Feminism and Women's Literature (Lynch)



For my blog articles see:

Feminism


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
feminism, women, blog, writers, scientists, feminist, US, Canada, UK,

#OXYMORON
No, There’s No Such Thing As “Conservative Feminism”

Natalie Gontcharova Refinery29
29/9/2020

© Provided by Refinery29

In his most recent New York Times editorial, Ross Douthat suggested that Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court was exciting, and represents a new “conservative feminism that’s distinctive, coherent, and influential.” He then waxed poetic about the reprioritization of things like “sex and romance and marriage and child rearing,” all of which were apparently lost thanks to feminist advancements in the 1970s.

Rather than using the classic conservative tactic of invoking feminism as a liberal plot to destroy the nuclear family, Douthat is also using feminism to defend her nomination, and making it seem like it’s a victory for all women. He is not the only conservative pundit to do so this week, and he won’t be the last. Conservatives are seemingly taking pleasure in trolling us both with the fact that their latest right-wing extremist Supreme Court pick is a woman — meaningless, since her entire record is so anti-woman — and with her transparently laughable portrayal as a new type of “feminist.” They’re even trying to make the nickname “Notorious ACB” happen.

The trouble is, “conservative feminism” is not only a nonsensical term, but an oxymoron. Feminism at its core is about dismantling long-standing patriarchal power structures and protecting women’s freedom in the pursuit of gender equality. This is not what Barrett’s judicial history reflects. Rather, she has a firmly anti-choice judicial abortion record, and has referred to abortion as “always immoral,” indicating she does not seem to believe in women’s freedom to make their own choices about their bodies. There’s no philosophical wiggle room here.

Douthat, though, doesn’t care about what feminism actually stands for, and instead distorts its meaning, claiming that its “victories were somewhat unbalanced,” which is why “conservative feminism is needed, so that it can ignore women’s “professional ambition” in favor of “other human aspirations,” like getting married and having children. But this is nonsense: Feminism is pro-motherhood and pro “work-life balance” because it advocates that women should choose whether and when to bear children, and fights for their equal treatment in the workplace and public sphere. RBG, a working mother and wife, certainly ascribed to that type of feminism and fought to make it possible for people across America. To suggest that Barrett’s far-right record and hostility to abortion rights and healthcare access are a form of feminism, or an adequate successor to RBG, is not only disingenuous, but dangerous.

A Judge's Group Inspired "The Handmaid's Tale"

You Owe Ruth Bader Ginsburg More Than You Know

Mitch McConnell Wasted No Time Being Human Garbage

Despite stark gender inequality in South Korea, hostility to feminism is growing

Ambivalence and hostility to feminism exists despite stark inequality in South Korea, where women face the greatest wage gap of the 38 mostly high-income, developed member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Pedestrians are silhouetted as they walk in Seoul, South Korea, on May 4, 2022. 

Lee Jin-man / AP file


Dec. 4, 2022,
By Haeryun Kang

SEOUL, South Korea — Lee Yunju has poked her head in the feminism aisle of the library at her university in Daegu, South Korea. But she is hesitant to do more than that.

“I feel cautious even picking up a feminist book,” said Lee, 22, a student in robotics engineering. “Lots of Koreans feel very antagonistic toward feminists and feminism, so we don’t even talk about it.”


Lee is one of 16.3 million people who voted for Yoon Suk Yeol this year as president of South Korea, a U.S. ally and the world’s 10th-largest economy. The country has long struggled to address gender inequality, ranking 99th out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2022 report. Now, women’s rights groups and opposition parties worry the country’s gender inequality could worsen under the conservative government, saying Yoon has capitalized on anti-feminist backlash.

Experts say Yoon struck the biggest nerve among younger male voters by pledging to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, arguing that discrimination is now an individual issue, not structural, and that the ministry no longer has reason to exist. The subject is one of the most polarizing of Yoon’s presidency, creating an uncertain future for a government body that supporters say is vital for promoting the rights of women, children and families.

In October, the Yoon administration unveiled plans for a new Health Ministry department that would absorb the functions of the gender ministry, part of a broader organizational shake-up that is now being considered by South Korean lawmakers

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President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol.

DPA via Getty Images file

“It is time for the country to shift from a paradigm of women’s policies, focusing on improving discrimination against women, to a paradigm of gender equality for both men and women,” Interior Minister Lee Sang-min said in the government’s announcement.

The plan may have difficulty passing in the national legislature, where the opposition Democratic Party has a majority. Public opinion polls on the issue are mixed, including among people Lee’s age.

“I don’t think any of my friends support keeping the ministry,” said Lee, who lives in one of South Korea’s most conservative regions, referring to both male and female friends. Lee said she felt ambivalent as well.

This ambivalence exists despite stark inequality in South Korea, where women, though highly educated, face the greatest wage gap of the 38 mostly high-income, developed member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In South Korea, women make up 19% of lawmakers, compared with 27% in the U.S. Congress, and 4.8% of executives at the country’s top 100 companies, according to a study by headhunting firm Unicosearch. There are currently three women in Yoon’s 19-member Cabinet.

Gender and feminism played an unprecedented role in the presidential election in March, which Yoon won by less than 1%, the closest in South Korean history. Both Yoon and his main opponent, Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, used gender issues to appeal to young voters who have become a crucial swing bloc.

Yoon, a former prosecutor, blamed feminism for the country’s low birth rate, said he would increase penalties for false accusations of sexual crimes, and denied the existence of “structural discrimination based on gender.” He accused the gender ministry of treating men like “potential sex criminals.”

“When Yoon became president, I felt devastated,” said Woo Ah-young, a 30-year-old office worker in Seoul who identifies as a feminist. “I’m not exactly sure what will happen in the future ... But I feel like my life will become more tiresome.”

 

31Days of Feminism: ‘Fighting to Make the World a Better Place’1:56

Just five years ago, during the 2017 election, endorsing feminism was a bipartisan trend. Moon Jae-in, who won by a record 17 points, declared himself a feminist in his campaign, as did his conservative rivals. But by the end of his term this year, the tides had turned drastically. Anti-feminist voters, particularly young men in their 20s, emerged as a political force, rooting for Yoon and his People Power Party.

According to a 2019 survey by local news outlet SisaIN, 60% of men in their 20s showed a considerable to extreme aversion to feminism.

“They believe they are being discriminated against,” Cheon Gwan-yul, the journalist who led the survey, said at the time. Like opponents of feminism in other parts of the world, respondents argued that the movement promotes female supremacy and misandry.

“Aversion to feminism is shared across generations, but men in their 20s express it most aggressively,” said Park Jeonghoon, author of “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Man,” a book that discusses the anti-feminist backlash among young men in South Korea. “I think it’s because of a uniquely Korean situation: They have to go to the military.”

South Korea, which technically remains at war with neighboring North Korea, requires all able-bodied men ages 18 to 28 to serve at least 18 months in the military, causing delays in their education and early career that are perceived as giving women an advantage.

“I felt similarly in my 20s,” Park, now 34, told NBC News. “I was forced by the state to serve. I couldn’t resist against the state … I became angry that women weren’t going.”

Another common theory for the anti-feminist backlash points to Moon’s failure to curb youth unemployment and runaway housing prices, along with the rise in inequality.

“The sentiment now is, ‘Who took what’s mine?’” said Chung Hyun-back, a former gender minister for Moon. “People are frustrated with the economic inequalities and their worsening personal situations — where do these frustrations go? In some countries, it’s refugees or migrant workers. In South Korea, it’s the gender issue.”

To some, the gender ministry is a symbol of what they see as the excesses of feminism. In a public petition earlier this year that received over 50,000 votes, the ministry was described as being “unconstitutional” and “inciting gender conflict.”

“Maybe the ministry’s policies benefit women, but I don’t feel it as a man,” said Daniel Kim, a 33-year-old office worker in Seoul who agrees the ministry should be abolished but does not identify as anti-feminist.

The gender ministry was founded in 2001 under the Kim Dae-jung administration, South Korea’s first left-leaning government. For the past two decades, it has championed women’s rights, including playing a key role in the 2008 abolition of South Korea’s “hoju” system of family registration, which had been criticized as male-dominated.

The ministry has fewer than 300 employees and the smallest budget of any department: 1.47 trillion won ($1 billion), about 0.24% of all government spending. According to a study last year by the Korea Women’s Development Institute, 80% of that budget is allocated to family-related projects, including supporting single parents, while 9.2%t is used for victims of sexual and domestic abuse. Only 7.2% goes to policies specifically targeting women.

Supporters of the ministry say its work benefits a range of people, including men.

“Of course women in some classes, especially the upper levels, are well off, even superior to some men,” said Woo, the feminist office worker. “But women don’t live monolithic lives. There are different women in a variety of situations. The gender ministry aims to protect the marginalized in our society. This protection must continue.”

Chung, the former gender minister, said Korean society has benefited from discussing the ministry’s future: “People are now more aware of how important this gender issue is.”
Haeryun Kang

Fighting for a Decolonial Feminist Europe

By Françoise Vergès

March 18, 2024
Source: Green European Journal

Françoise Vergès | Image credit: 9th International Degrowth Conference



From the idea of blood purity to the “Great Replacement” conspiracy, from colonial slavery to the risk of a new green colonialism, Europe’s prosperity is built on segregation and exploitation. Françoise Vergès, a decolonial feminist active in the environmental struggle, argues that the collective fight for liberation can only succeed if it confronts all forms of dispossession.

Green European Journal: You are amongst other things a political scientist and historian. Could you say a bit more about who you are and what you work on?

Françoise Vergès: I’m based in Paris but I come from Réunion island, a small island in the Indian Ocean, which was a French colony and is still under French rule. I now write books and essays on feminism, the aftermath of slavery, the question of colonialism, and the question of environmentalism. I also curate and work with young artists of colour in Europe and elsewhere.

In your work you talk about decolonial feminism – tell us more about what this means.

It started with a very simple question: who cleans the world? For any society – anywhere in the world – to function, it needs to be cleaned. Banks, schools, restaurants, they all need to be cleaned and it is very likely that the people doing the cleaning will be Black women, women of colour, or racialised poor women. This work is today totally made invisible, underpaid, and exploitative. If we start from these women and their struggle, we can begin to imagine a decolonial feminism.

White bourgeois feminism has never really looked at these issues; it considers housework as alienating and boring, which it is, and so has not looked at the work these women are doing. So let’s start from cleaning and see how it has been organised historically, why it was assigned to women of colour, and what it means. From here, we can work towards a decolonial feminism which would be radically anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist. It’s not just about equality and certainly not just about equality with men, because men are also dispossessed and exploited. Decolonial feminism is against all regimes and structures of dispossession and exploitation.


Decolonial feminism is against all regimes and structures of dispossession and exploitation.

So it goes beyond pulling some women up so they can enjoy the same opportunities as the most successful men in business and politics?

A woman who becomes a CEO can do so by relying on the same exploitation. Behind a successful female CEO, there lies the invisible work of women taking care of her kids, cleaning and doing the housework, and stitching her clothes. That kind of equality is not the objective of decolonial feminism. The objective is to dismantle the system of oppression, domination, and exploitation.

What you are talking about is systemic and structural. Yet the very idea of structural racism is controversial in public debate, even in the United States with its history of slavery and in Europe with its history of colonialism. Why do so many people deny the idea of structural racism?

The idea that racism is a matter of bad people or poor education is an idea that serves to protect the West from looking at the way in which it arrived at the “good life”. The reason that life in Europe is much better than anywhere else is because of racism, and, by racism, I mean how exploitation and domination through slavery and colonisation were justified.

To this day, so many things that arrive on the table in Europe, that make for the good life, are taken, extracted, from the Global South. Once you look at the way that Europe has constructed itself on exploitation and domination, it becomes clear that racism is not just a matter of bad people but is something that is structural and associated with how you live.


To this day, so many things that arrive on the table in Europe, that make for the good life, are taken, extracted, from the Global South.

You must confront what made Europe. Why is Europe wealthy? Why is the United States so wealthy? It is not because of some incredible talent. No, we are not talking about exceptionalism. We are talking about domination and exploitation.

Some people in Europe argue that the idea of structural racism is not relevant for Europe. They argue that it is a debate imported from the United States. Are there differences? Or is it the same? Are we talking about whiteness?

Of course, a major difference between Europe and America was that those enslaved by European powers were in their colonies in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and North and South America, while in the United States, slavery was there, and Africans were among the first Americans. The genocide of the Native American peoples marks another difference with Europe: it was done on American soil.

However, that is not to say that the question of racism applies any less to Europe and its history. Europe saw processes of racialisation well before colonisation, against Jewish people and Roma people for example. I’m not talking about Europe as in people living in Europe, but when you talk about the idea of Europe, it is based on a common identity with two elements: whiteness and Christianity. This common identity can be seen reflected in historical documents such as the Treaty of Utrecht from the early 18th century and it has nothing to do with the United States. Historians have shown that the very idea of blood purity came from Spain, whose monarchs expelled the Jewish and Muslim population in 1498. We need to recognise this, and then understand those racial structures that were born in Europe and then exported elsewhere.

In his Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire explains and shows how even the worst crimes of fascism and Nazism in Europe had already been perpetrated elsewhere in the world by white Europeans. Remember that the contemporary idea of the “Great Replacement” [the theory that the ethnic white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-white peoples] that provided the ideological basis for massacres in New Zealand and the United States, is from France. Its inventor Renaud Camus is a French man. Europe is still providing racist ideologies to the world and European countries and the European Union support some of the most murderous anti-migrant policies in the world.

A supporter of the EU and today’s Europe might say, yes, Europe has this past, but the European project today represents human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Can that humanist Europe extricate itself from the civilisational Europe or will it always be tied up?

There are people in Europe who are fighting against structural racism, helping refugees, and opposing racist laws and Islamophobia. We must distinguish between the people in Europe – the activists, writers, journalists, and underground associations – and today’s political and institutional structures.


The idea of Europe as it has been conceived and set up needs to be deconstructed.

The idea of Europe as it has been conceived and set up needs to be deconstructed. Any new Europe must be based on listening to the people excluded from today’s Europe. After all, all the progressive laws in Europe, even its ideas of equality and liberty, are only there because people fought for them.

The environmental movement is one of the important social movements in Europe, not the only one by any means but one of the most vibrant. How does decolonial feminism connect with the environmental crisis that the world and everyone living in it is going through?

Decolonial environmentalism is today one of the most important struggles, as long as it always connects with the question of race, class, and gender and how people are and will be impacted differently.

There is a risk that we see the emergence of a form of environmentalism constructed in Europe that will be both greenwashing and that will also ignore the role of European colonialism in the destruction of other parts of the world in ways that are only emerging clearly today. Because understanding the impact of what regimes of extraction and dispossession do on the environment can take centuries. Historians today are for example uncovering the link between desertification and sugar and coffee plantations.

Be careful about greenwashing. Be careful about corporate-washing. Because recycling, while important, cannot solve everything while capitalism produces more waste than can ever be recycled. Decolonial environmentalism should not only be about the Global South but also about Europe. The Global South must do its part, but it is not Europe’s place to say how or what that is. Meanwhile, Europe has a lot of work to do to break with its imperial mode of living and oppose the megaprojects in France, in Germany, in Serbia, that will only accentuate devastation.

You are involved with Earth Uprising, the struggle based in France against the construction of mégabassines, these huge industrial reservoirs described as “water grabbing” that have led to large-scale protests. Why did you get involved?

Earth Uprising is a vast platform. The French government thinks that it is an organisation, but it is much more. This vast platform connects people who have been organising against agribusiness for 40 years with more urban, younger people who can see the damage that megaprojects are doing and oppose more and more motorways and reservoirs. They’re fighting against mégabassines, these huge open reservoirs for water, and are also opposed to industrial cattle farms.

I became involved because I am from Réunion, which was a French slave colony. I saw how our geography had been shaped by colonialism and slavery. Our roads run the way they run because they connected the sugarcane plantations to the port. The ownership of the land was shaped by the same questions. Some people have huge gardens and beautiful homes, and other poor people are parked where the government put them. Living in different places, I always questioned the environment and patterns of what we would now call environmental racism. Cities are segregated in terms of trash collection and exposure to pollution, and this can be mapped out. The environment in the larger sense is organised by class, gender, and race, and the territorial struggles of Earth Uprising are about this.

Are you an eco-feminist?

I wouldn’t say that I am an eco-feminist. I mean, there are many eco-feminisms but for me the most important thing is to make sure that feminism is about the liberation of all. Paraphrasing Black feminism, the essence of decolonial feminism is that only when the most oppressed and most exploited woman is free will all women be free.

Rather than eco-feminism or any other kind of feminism, we need to remember that the name does not matter. What’s important is what you are doing, how you are doing it, and with whom.

What is the most important lesson of decolonial feminism?

Colonial slavery lasted four centuries, between the 15th and 19th century. In all those years, there was not a day when the enslaved did not resist and fight back. The first insurrections and rebellions were usually terribly crushed, but the enslaved never gave up. It was a day by day, by day, by day struggle. This is how progress is won. Constant fighting back.

Of course, it’s going to be difficult. Of course, we have enemies. We have seen how the oil industry and the tobacco industry lie. We have seen how they use their billions to lobby and buy people. And we have seen the devastation that they inflict on people and places before they leave. They make their profit and leave behind a wasted land. But we do not have their dream of escaping to Mars. All we have is the earth.

As an indigenous artist told me, we have no choice but to fight back and appropriate that land. Don’t do that by yourself. Whether you’re an artist, a student, a journalist, the struggle must be collective. Then take the situation you are in and ask, okay, what can we do? From there, we multiply the places of action, and fight.
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Françoise Vergès is a decolonial feminist active in the environmental struggle. She is from Réunion island, a small island in the Indian Ocean, which was a French colony and is still under French rule.

Feminisms: A Global History

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Book:

Feminisms: A Global History
Lucy Delap
London, Pelican (imprint of Penguin), 2020, ISBN: 9780241398142; 416pp.; Price: £20.00

Reviewer:

Dr Anne Cova
University of Lisbon

Citation:

Dr Anne Cova, review of Feminisms: A Global History, (review no. 2445)
DOI: 10.14296/RiH/2014/2445
Date accessed: 20 August, 2022

The historian Lucy Delap, author of The Feminist Avant-Garde: Transatlantic Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century  (CUP, 2007), winner of the 2008 Women’s History Network Prize, has now published another book—Feminisms: A Global History (Penguin in the UK, and the University of Chicago Press in the US). This book, at nearly 400 pages, is a truly global history, dealing with 250 years of feminisms. Readers will find here a profound analysis of feminism across Africa, Asia, Australasia, the Americas, and Europe, though Delap takes a non-Eurocentric approach.

This journey across the globe is eloquently accomplished and begins with the assertion of an unknown African woman who published an article in a local newspaper in 1886: ‘We Ladies of Africa […] Although we have not white or angelic faces we are capable of as high a degree of culture as any white lady’ (p.1). Following recent events in the Black Lives Matter movement, this quotation provides an echo and sets the tone for the book, which travels back and forth from 1886 as it traces the complex history of feminisms. To de-centre (Delap does not use this term, leading this reader to wonder why) the historiography and focus on those countries that have received less attention is a challenge to which this book rises very well.

Divided into eight thematic chapters, titled Dreams, Ideas, Spaces, Objects, Looks, Feelings, Actions, and Songs (the plural is important just as is the use of the plural, feminisms, is in the title), this global history examines feminisms across a broad canvas, alternating ‘between wide-angle summaries of different feminist beliefs or campaigns, and close scrutiny of the lives of individual women who fought against gender inequities’ (p. 21).

Three apparently simple questions are asked on the cover of the book: How has feminism developed around the world?; What have feminists achieved?; and, What can we learn today from global histories of feminism? The book then demonstrates that the answers to these questions are not homogeneous, with Delap managing to clearly draw out the complexities of feminisms in different global contexts. Benefiting from a flurry of recent historical publications available at the Cambridge University Library, which the author describes in the acknowledgements as a ‘treasure trove of histories of feminisms’ (p. 349), this well-written book offers a sophisticated approach to the plurality of feminisms.

Delap explores the multiple facets of feminisms through the metaphor of the mosaic, which is: ‘built up from inherited fragments but offering distinctive patterns and pictures […] And like mosaics, feminist coalitions were built up from the bits and pieces available—other movements, committed individuals, actions and ideas. Some mosaics have been long-lived; others have crumbled, and their tiles have been reused, or have disappeared from view’ (pp. 20–21). She also notes another metaphor on conversations: ‘Metaphors of mosaics and conversations give a sense of the richness of feminist debates’ (p. 22). In doing so, Delap engages with the debate on the many metaphors used by scholars in discussion of feminisms, and challenges the best-known one, which employs the image of ocean waves: ‘The historical organizing frame of “feminist waves” has not proved up to the job of making sense of the complexities of feminist history’ (p. 5). Instead, she highlights the significance of a metaphor employed by the historian Nancy Hewitt, which uses the imagery of feminist radio waves:

Hewitt suggests that rather than seeing successive “ocean waves” of feminism, we might imagine competing, simultaneous broadcasts, some loud and clear, others disrupted by static. This helps capture the global multiplicity and inequality of voice that was poorly captured by tired talk of first, second and third wave feminism. Radio broadcasts are not neutral but can be creative, innovative and even vitriolic. The “radio waves” metaphor is suggestive of the disagreements between feminisms. But it reminds us that we can literally or imaginatively hear feminisms, through their shouts, keening, music and song (pp. 331–2).

Delap is also keen on the feminist radio waves metaphor because it allows us to hear the many voices of feminists, which is the topic of her last chapter: Songs. This is not an easy task for historians: ‘Trying to recapture what the women’s movement “sounded like” is difficult at a historical distance. Nonetheless, refusing to see feminism only as a textual affair is important’ (p. 331). Following this approach, Delap also provides insights into objects and looks, through chapter four and five, respectively. These chapters lead the reader onto the matter of archives, which are fundamental for historians.

The book questions the classification and content of archives: ‘Archival materials, where they document feminism at all, tend to lean towards the story that more powerful and privileged feminists have wanted to tell’ (p. 6). This assertion applies particularly to the first chapter, Dreams: ‘Very few dreams are recorded in historical archives […] And, of course, those written down are those the dreamer chooses to share’ (p. 49). These thoughts about the enormous dependence historians have on archives recalls the mosaic metaphor:

But mosaic pieces may be lost, destroyed or buried, and their survival is not just a matter of chance—it depends on access to power and resources. The records of feminist protest and ideas are not well archived for the poor, working-class, migrant or ethnic-minority activists who sought change. That means that all feminist histories will be partial affairs, skewed towards those who wanted to or were able to claim the mantle of feminism and who could make their voices heard. The more marginalized, or those who were wary of being termed a “feminist”, are obscured. Nonetheless, a self-consciously global, critical history can attend to and preserve what has survived, and point to the missing mosaic tiles (p. 342).

Inspired by the growing scholarly interest in how locations and spaces shape social movements, chapter three explores the idea of feminist places: the libraries, women’s centres and bookshops ‘such as the Women’s Press in London (1977), Women and Children First in Chicago (1967), the Shokado Women’s Bookstore in Kyoto, Japan (1975), the Libreria delle Donne di Milano (1975), Streelekha in India (1984) and Binti Legacy in Nairobi (1996) have formed a powerful network for the distribution of feminist ideas’ (p. 127). Chapters two (Ideas) and seven (Actions) respectively, analyse the theoretical resources that feminists have created, and their many means and methods of protest.

Intersectionality is at the core of this book and has influenced it deeply: ‘The idea of “entangled histories” has been used by global historians to capture the ways in which ideas, people and texts crossed and re-crossed borders to create multiple “intersections”’ (p. 20). Though the term ‘transnational history’ is not used even once in the book—and it would be interesting to know the reason for this—the words ‘transnational’, ‘transnationalism’, and ‘transnationally’ appeared sporadically, while some important works on transnational history are referenced in the notes and further reading sections. From the perspective of this reader, the book makes a fascinating contribution to transnational history:

...historians of feminism must take care not to erase the local specificity of struggles and activism. However, it would be a mistake to simply look at all these debates and movements in isolation; they often shared key ideas or drew inspiration from each other’s struggles. We can chart the rich interweaving of global debates on the relationship between gender and power, at the same time as recognizing feminism as a deeply historical and context-specific phenomenon (p. 10).

This value placed on the study of the specificities as well as on global debates is at the heart of the transnational approach. This approach is also evident when Delap argues: ‘histories of feminism cannot be located only within single nation states, regions or empires. Global influences have been based on the migration of individuals, as refugees, students, exiles and workers […] Historians have become newly attentive to the deliberate cultivation of transnational spaces, in the pages of globally circulating periodicals, in conventions, conferences, alliances and federations’ (pp. 18–9). Delap insists on local diversities: ‘Local diversity has meant that the emergence of organized demands for change happened in very different ways all over the world. Where they existed, “feminists” spoke for different groups, and in diverse registers. ‘“The women’s movement” or “woman question” was the terminology of nineteenth-century Europe and the Americas, while “women’s awakening” was widely debated in Middle Eastern and North African countries in the early twentieth century’ (p. 10). Delap’s preference for the expression ‘global history’ is obvious throughout the book, as in the title: ‘A global history approach also allows us to see the interactions between globally famous texts and local intellectual or activist traditions’ (p. 19).

Conflicts within feminisms are not put aside: on the contrary, they form a cornerstone of the book, and Delap’s encourages the normalisation of conflict: ‘A global history of feminism, as historian Mrinalini Sinha has insisted, will not simply pluralize our picture so that we think in terms of “feminisms”. Instead, our account of feminisms must acknowledge what Sinha terms the “discrepant histories of different women’s movements”, marked by contests, conflicts and power-play’ (p. 22).

Regarding the definitions of feminisms, Delap seems skeptical and prefers to emphasise the varieties of meanings that may change over time: ‘Though it was often defined in highly various ways, “feminism” as a term was adopted globally in the early twentieth century. It might refer to women’s “rights” as well as to campaigns of women’s advancement, protection and equality’ (p. 10). She notes that: ‘Across the world, there was fascination with this new concept, as well as suspicion of European or American influences. […] The meaning of “feminist” has continued to evolve, and to be controversial. Activists in the 1970s and 80s often preferred to talk of “women’s liberation”, since they associated “feminist” with reformist “liberal” politics of parliamentary rights and suffrage’ (p. 12). Delap insists on the pluralities of feminisms, while noting:

Despite the many varieties of feminisms, one of the overarching feminist dreams has been of a movement that could span all women: ‘‘Helping each other, all of one mind”, as the Chinese banner declared at the 1913 conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. This fantasy has carried with it the paradox of an abstract political agenda that, in its very inclusivity, ignores concrete exclusions (p. 13).

Delap rises above such quarrels as ‘who can be considered feminist?’, ‘who was the first in their domain?’, etc. She argues, convincingly, that: ‘We need not engage in a competitive struggle to identify the first, or the truest, feminists. Instead, we can trace out experiences of exclusion and difference amongst gender and social justice activists, and chart their passionate, painful or strategic coalitions’ (p. 14). She also properly questions ‘the problematic idea of “backwardness”’ (p. 17), and makes us aware of anachronism and the need to avoid measuring the past by today’s standards, even if ‘there may be aspects of the feminist past that make us uncomfortable today’ (p. 23).

Another important insight worth mentioning is the emphasis on non-linear history. The book is not a narrative of the various demands raised and gradually met through the years. Delap reminds us that: ‘Rights won did not always stay won, and often needed defending or regaining after setbacks’ (p. 335). It is important to take the different political contexts into account:

Yet women’s experiences around the globe during the twentieth century were of painfully slow reform, withdrawal of rights when they experienced wars, coups and dictatorships, pervasive everyday violence, and the mockery or outlawing of feminist voices’ (p. 263). She uses feminism as ‘an entry point to understand better how campaigns over “women’s rights”, “new womanhood”, “the awakening of women” or “women’s liberation” might have shared concerns and tactics. But I will also be telling the story of the limits of feminism, its blind spots and silencings, its specificities and complicities (pp. 2–3).

Once again, Delap alerts the reader to the complexities of feminisms that cannot be summarised simply through successive struggles and achievements, and she refers to the work of historian Kathryn Gleadle, who ‘invites us to think of feminist history as a non-linear rhizome root structure, full of unexpected growth points, dead ends and patterns of influence’ (p. 20).

Throughout the book, Delap wants to demonstrate the importance of male figures because ‘to ignore men’s and women’s cooperation would be a deliberate historical effacement, as well as a loss of hope for future change’ (p. 339). Consequently, she notes that, in this book: ‘we will meet men who have worked to advance women’s rights, often through deep personal investment in feminist goals as also benefiting men’ (p. 8). One paradigmatic case is that of John Stuart Mill, even if justice is done also to his wife Harriet Taylor Mill.

 The book fully achieves the challenge its author sets, to trace ‘the evolution of global feminist themes that span a remarkable range of concerns: women’s rights to property, education and citizenship; pacifism, antifascism, the welfare and protection of mothers and children; social justice, labour rights and human rights; sexual autonomy, cultural expression and reproductive rights’ (p. 334). Delap concludes that a ‘recognition that feminists have not agreed on a single programme in the past can help reduce the toxicity of today’s disputes’ (p. 344).

This path-breaking book is an essential read for those who believe ‘we should be suspicious of attempts to flatten and simplify the landscape of feminisms, or to ignore its irredeemable ideological differences’ (p. 343). As such, it is a masterful contribution to ‘some important new ways of reading feminist practices and ideas across historical time’ (p. 21). Delap’s understanding of feminisms around the world offers fascinating insights, based on innovative sources, establishing this volume as a landmark work in the current historiography, and one that is both accessible to the experts in the field and inspiring for a broader audience.

Additional image: Women gathering for the1956 Women’s March, Pretoria, South Africa

April 2021