Twentieth Century Feminism And Womens Rights

Twentieth blow feminism And Womens RightsFeminism is defined as the theory of the political, economic, and social comp are of the sexes. Although on that point were some protests, discussions, literary productions, and advancements of womens the decent ways dating back to the third century B.C., what is cognize as the womens reason or feminist front line did not run low an organized movement until the mid to late 1800s (11).Three coils of FeminismA wave metaphor is commonly used to dissimilariate the three main(prenominal) eras in feminism history. However, the metaphor did not come about until the starting signal of the present moment era. The enclosure Second ripple Feminism was starting signal mushy by Marsha Lear (11) in the late 1960s when women of the Womens Liberation Movement were looking for to separate their actor from the movements associated with the freshman era (1), so the terms premiere-wave and second-wave were created at the same time. The us e of this in the buff terminology also seemed to revive the movement in the open eye after lying dormant for few time. Reference to the third wave began to appear in the mid-1980s as discussions and writings on the relationship of racialism to feminism began to appear (11). frontmost loop Feminism, Mid-1800s to 1920The First Wave of feminism was the era spanning from the mid-1800s to 1920, intimatelyly in the join States and the unify Kingdom. Focus was mainly on legal matures for women, primarily the unspoiled to choose.Legalities in the united States and United KingdomIn the United States, the federal official official constitution origin all toldy had no provision for ballot rights, so the finish was left to the individual states. (3) Initially, balloting was granted in some states to revenue enhancement payers or property owners only. Women did become property owners in some states as early as 1939 (3). However, in the mid- 19th century, provisions were also bein g mould in place in just about states which expanded enfranchisement to all free adult anthropoids only. This left American women with twain options to appeal for their rights. They could every appeal to the individual voters in each state to approve decree, or they could appeal for an amendment to the federal constitution.In Great Britain, women saw three right Acts amidst 1832 and 1884 pass through parliament which all granted choose only to men or mens households. (3). The Reform Act of 1832 provided the right to vote to property holding middle class men where it had previously been silent for aristocracy. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 expanded these rights to the male voter at bottom urban and arcadian households (2) and (5). With these reforms, the British parliament was satisfied that the majority of citizens was represented. British women were now set about with a complex parliamentary process which required that all legislation pass through fantan three times before it would be considered. Given the contentment of fantan that the majority was now represented, this would not be an easy task.industrial Revolution Brings ChangeUp to the early nineteenth century, women were in the bendplace that primarily as teachers and other such(prenominal) roles that were considered appropriate for women. The onset of the Industrial Revolution gave rise to jobs in factories, mines, and shops from which work related issues also sprang. In the US, various independent issues of womens rights had arisen around the dry land but not enough to give a voice to all women. It wasnt until the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 that women would have that voice.Seneca Falls Convention 1848The five women who called for a meeting on July 19th and 20th, 1848 in the small town of Seneca Falls, NY did so out of the defeat of their own experiences. Much to their surprise, they would find the support of three hundred people, including at least 40 men, who had come from a 50 nautical mile radius to hear what they had to say. On that first twenty-four hours of the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton began to read the answer of Independence aloud to the audience from which the contract bridge of Principles was born. (6) The Declaration of Sentiments or Declaration of Principles would become the foundation of the Womens Movement for decades to come, and from this moment in history, the Womens Movement began to grow.Organizations born(p) Out of DivisionThe end of the U.S. Civil state of state of war brought division among right to vote supporters. In 1869, the American Woman Suffrage affiliateive (AWSA) was formed by those who supported enfranchising drab males (15th Amendment) and worked at the state level to gain the right to vote. In the same year, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and stood on the platform that all women should be allowed to vote along with black men. This g roup focused on federal constitutional changes, the message of compare in general, and primarily a feminist agenda. In 1890, these dickens groups were have to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) with Stanton as its turn tailer. (3)The British movement started around the time of the Second Reform Act. Parliament Member John Stuart Mill made two moves to ratify the voting rights. In the first attempt, he brought a petition signed by 1500 women to the House of Commons. In the second attempt, he proposed that the wording of the Reform snoot of 1867 be changed to include people instead of men. Although twain attempts failed, these acts became the catalyst for the humanity of several womens complaintings. As was the part in America, British women were divided on how best to begin the issue of enfranchisement. Northern suffragists were more evoke in getting back to basics and campaigning for the cause where London-based suffragists were more intereste d in strategies of parliament. Some believed in a more gradual approach by suggesting, for example, to start by allowing only unmarried women to vote. While others believed that this lineament of approach only served to punish those women who were not included. By the end of the century, most of these organizations became parcel of the umbrella group known as the National summation of Womens Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) centralized under the returnership of Millicent Garrett Fawcett who was also unmatchable of the originators of the first womens organization in Manchester.(3)End of a Century to the Start of WWIThe extent between the end of the nineteenth century and the start of World warfare I saw limited movement in womens rights. This gave women on both sides of the ocean the opportunity to form a kinship in their cause through visiting and writing one another about their disappointments and setbacks. The frustration that ensued from the continued delays also gave rise to a m ore extreme group that would later be known as the Suffragettes.Extremist MovementsThe term Suffragette was first used as a derogatory term to describe a radical splinter group within the British womens suffrage movement, lead by Emmeline Pankhurst, called the Womens Social and Political Union (WSPU) (7). Theirs was a group which had resorted to breakout windows and bedevilment to gain attention for the cause. They would later resort to more free-enterprise(a) style acts such as bombings and arson. As these women were imprisoned for their jurisprudence shift tactics, many of the suffragettes would participate in self-imposed starve strikes. Initially, the government chose to pressure feed the women, but this only served to gain public support for the WSPU. In 1913, Parliament implemented the Cat and Mouse Act which allowed for temporary release of the hunger strikers who would then be jailed again upon their recovery. (7) However, reincarcerating these women proved to be tig ht and again raised further public support for the cause. One of the most famous acts by a Suffragette occurred at the Epsom Derby in 1913. Emily Davison stepped in front of King George Vs horse and was trampeled in the middle of the race. She would die from her injuries iv days later. (7)American supporters of the womens suffrage movement chose not to use the term Suffragette primarily because of the negative connotation that came with the term. Alternatively, they chose to use the term suffragists which was more generic wine and also could be used by male and female supporters of the womens suffrage movement.After World War IThe onset of World War I delayed the womens suffrage movement in both nations as supporters turned their attention to the war efforts. However, this short term concession would lead to long term rewards. In 1917, six states in the U.S. granted women the right to vote in primaries and in municipal and presidential elections. (8) The momentum was building. In 1920, Tennessee would be the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment that gives American women the voting rights that we invoke today.Second Wave Feminism, 1960s through late mid-seventiesIn the United States, women began to become concern about the issue of womens tone remnant which occurred in the late 1960s. They were disappointed with the secondary status given to womens issues on the left and emboldened by the black power rhetoric that had emerged from the civil rights movement these women decided that its the time for them to take care of their own issues and goals to be heard and show their political concerns. For many of women involved in this movement, the supposition those women could work together in the name of women seemed hot, exciting, and without much historical precedent. From their perspective, the ahead womens movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seemed removed and without much relevance to the lives and politics of the new breed of fem inists. While many women were certainly cognizant that a womens movement had existed in the previous century, they looked instead towards the New odd and civil rights movements of the 1960s as the forerunners to their feminism (m).Second Wave Feminism began in 1960s through 1990s which actually started with the protest against the missy America pageant in Atlantic City in 1968 and 1969. Compared with the First Wave, the Second Wave was more focused in the anti-war and civil rights movements and the development self-consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world. The New go forth was on the rise, and the voice of the second wave was increasingly radical. During this period, sexuality and procreative rights were dominant issues, and much of the movements energy was focused on passing the decent Rights Amendment to the Constitution and guaranteeing social equality regardless of sex (a).Second Wave Movement in the USA empha coatd on three different movements Womens m ovement, Feminist movement, Womens Liberation Movement. Feminists viewed the second wave era as ending with the intra-feminism dispute Feminist Sex War over issues such as sexuality and pornography. The Second-Wave Feminism title was coined by Marsha Lear when women of the 1960s sought to connect their ideas to those as reasonable, and by then noncontroversial, as the right to vote second wave implied that the first wave of feminism ended in the 1920s. The labels first wave and second wave, then, were created at the same time as a way of negotiating feminist musculus quadriceps femoris. These terms gave activist women of the late 60s the double-rhetorical advantage of cultivating new ideas while simultaneously rooting them in older, more established ground. Identifying itself as the second wave revived the movement for the public after presumable to lie dormant for some time. Second wavers are often applauded for compensable homage to and drawing from the work of first-wave women , as well they should be. But they did so for reasons far beyond a sense of patriotic duty to love their fore sisters. The second-wave attention to womens rights, and more importantly, to womens liberation, emerged seemingly out of nowhere and infallible to reestablish itself as neither particularly new nor fleeting. The labeling that linked the two periods of feminist movement was a rhetorical strategy that helped give clout to 60s womens activism and positioned it as a further evolution of earlier and larger movement.In 1963, Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique spoke volumes about the lives that middle-and upper middle-class women were leading. Her arguments affirmed their disquietude and motivated them to cure it by moving out of private and into public space, where no such malaise plagued men (n).Womens Liberation Movement likewise known as Second-Wave Feminism, the Womens Liberation Movement (WLM) was a grassroots movement that lasted from approximately 1960 through the ea rly 1980s, seeking for economic, political, and social equality for women in the Americas and Britain. The WLM in Britain is generally considered to have begun in 1969, when a confederation of topical anaesthetic groups formed the Womens Liberation Workshop, followed in 1970 by the establishment of the National Womens coordinate Committee.Feminists articulated four main areas of concerns equal pay, access to birth controls and spontaneous abortion, expanding groomingal opportunity, childcare.The United Nations declared 1975 as the International Year of the Woman and the beginning of a decade for Women (3).Gender Inequality in Laws, Culture, and PoliticsIndustrial feminism doesnt fit into the established categories of American feminist history. There was a popular misconception that feminism was reserved for the middle and upper classes. The four working(a) class women activists, Shavelson, Cohn, Newman and Schneiderman pursued the dream through four strategies that became the blue chump for working-class womens activism in 20th century USA (b). By 1960, the size of the female labor force had nearly doubled, now enrolling more or less one in three women. The majority of women workers, fully 60 percent, were married, over 40 percent of them were suffers of school-age children, and they most often had secured white-collar rather than industrial jobs. (f).In 1979, a group of smart, strong-willed women, fiercely independent, but recognizing the need for corporal action, forged a new organization in New York City, United Tradeswomen (UT). White and black, Hispanic and Asian, UT was also occupationally diverse Entenmann bakery truck drivers, bridge painters, utility workers, firefighters, and hundreds of skilled trades apprentices. From its inception, UT succeeded in providing a space for women to meet and to talk. The majority of women participating in the organization were experiencing significant hardships at work and meeting up with the resistance wit hin their unions. UT flee apart in 1985 as internal divisions grew and the commitment of the original organizers waned (g).Womens RightsIn the US, women have adorned American money since the founding of a new nation. Until 1979, though all women depicted were allegorical representations of republican ideals, such as liberty. The US government created the coin to honor Susan B. Anthony and her efforts to guarantee that American women had the right to vote. The US Mint first released the Anthony dollar on July 2, 1979 in the urban center in which Anthony resided during her politically active years Rochester, New York (j).Gender social occasion and FeminismHistorically, gender relations have rarely been linked to war and peace, and sexuality has seldom been a component of national security. But in the global War of Ideas, womens oppression and ideological marginalization are ingredients not to be ignored. Womens particular position with children and overseeing the very first steps o f education gives them an incredible potential power to initiate and impact massive quick change. Taboos about sexual relations are crumbling worldwide, the vivid contrast between mindsets in free societies and the Taliban-like attitude toward sexual freedom on part of jihadists is playing a part in the psychological conditioning of jihadi violence (h).Reproductive and Abortion Rights (Roe v. wade)Reproductive rights became one of the biggest concerns besides the loose inequalities, official legal inequalities, sexuality, family and the work place.Abortion rights were legalized by the US tyrannical homage in 1973 following the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey where the Court affirmed the abortion right granted in Roe v. Wade while permitting further restrictions (d). The practice of abortion is legal in the United States. This seems simple enough, but just like everything about the abortion conflict, there is no easy way to describe abortion law. The law has many sources con stitutions, legislative statutes, administrative regulations, courts decisions and to become an expert on abortion law one would have to become familiar with all of them. The foundation of abortion law is the US Constitution as interpreted by The imperious Court. Constitutional law does not directly regulate abortion. Rather, it sets limits on the powers of the states and the federal government to regulate abortion. The Court has established this constitutional law of abortion through a series of decisions, called case law, especially Roe v. Wade, vigor v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.Roe v. Wade was a challenge to the constitutionality of the pitiful law that Texas enacted in the 1850s. The law prohibited anyone to procure or attempt an abortion except, based on medical advice, for the purpose of saving the demeanor of the mother.Doe v. Bolton was a challenge to Georgias 1968 reform that criminalized abortion except when the motherhood endangered the life of the mo ther, there was a rave fetal deformity, or the pregnancy was the result of rape. The Georgia reform was very restrictive. In this case the Georgia legislature had added stringent and cumbersome rules including a requirement that the abortion decision must be approved by a committee and the medical judgment must be confirmed by two doctors in addition to the cleaning womans own physician. The justices treated the two cases as a single decision, but it is Roe v. Wade that has become the most famous, the symbolization for what is right and wrong (depending on your point of view) with abortion law in the United States (o).Discrimination Against WomenFrom international perspective, in the context of a highly authoritarian and theocratic state in Iran, womens rights have been framed within an Islamist normative discourse, not only by religious and state authorities, but also by some advocates of womens rights. Such strategies have attracted considerable controversy, almost since the imm ediate aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979 (i).In honoring the womens right throughout the world, The United Nation has formed a commission to watch the inequality treatments against women. International Womens Day has become an official day on March 8, 2010 (e).Third Wave Feminism, 1990 to PresentThird Wave Feminism began around 1990 and continues into today. It arose primarily out of the experiences of Americans born after 1960 who grew up enjoying many of the advantages second wave feminists had to fight to achieve.(9) It is believed that the third wave picks up where the second wave left off and addresses issues such as racism, oppression, organic structure image, gender categories, and sexuality. In 2004, Unilever PLC with its Dove brand soap launched the Campaign for genuinely Beauty aimed at beauty stereotypes and self-esteem (10).Emphasis on racism during the third-wave can be seen in the Thomas-Hill hearings in 1991 where a white male running for Supreme Court Ju stice is accused of sexual harassment by a young black woman. The hearings are credited with livery public awareness to gender discrimination, and Anita Hill is often refered to as the mother of a new wave of gender discrimination awareness by several feminist groups (12).Issues of the third-wave era can have different core for different people around the world. Oppression for a business woman in the United States might mean hitting the glass hood for that long awaited promotion. In Afghanistan, it would mean gender apartheid being scanty of basic human rights and even killed simply because they are women. There are many organization available to address feminist issues on local and global levels.http//feministmajority.org/about/index.asphttp//www.feministing.com/about.htmlaboutFemhttp//www.now.org/