Feminism

Résumé du document

"In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: either she's a feminist or a masochist" declared the American feminist icon and journalist Gloria Steinem. Perhaps in less extreme terms, some women established the starting point of the feminist movement in the late nineteenth century. Although it is very difficult to define a such complex concept, Ann Taylor (in Feminist modernism and National tradition, 2002) defines a feminist as a person who recognizes "the validity of women's own interpretation of their lived experiences and needs, protests against the institutionalized injustice perpetrated by men as a group against women as a group, and advocates the elimination of that injustice by challenging the various structures of authority or power that legitimate male prerogatives in a given society". In front of the huge successes feminists have achieved, one can wander if feminism has been far enough. Are those achievements sufficient? If it is true that feminism has achieved a great deal of progressive reforms to promote the rights of women. However, it is clear that there is still a long way to go before gender equality really exists in the facts.

Extraits

[...] One of the greatest concerns and achievements of those women was to gain control over their own body. Thus, their main field of interest was to gain the right to contraception and birth control, restricted almost everywhere until the 1960's. Many feminists saw in the development of the birth control pill a way to free women from the burden of mothering children they did not want, that is to say a high symbol of social expectations put on them. As a result, it was necessary on the way towards full economic independence from their husband. [...]

[...] Bibliography M. Lloyd, beyond identity politics: feminism, power & politics, Thousand Oaks A. Assister, Althusser and feminism, Pluto Press J. Boles, American feminism: new issues for a mature movement, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1991. [...]

[...] Are those achievements sufficient? If it is true that feminism has achieved a great deal of progressive reforms to promote the rights of women. However, it is clear that there is still a long way to go before gender equality really exists in the facts. First and foremost, the feminism movement has doubtlessly achieved the promotion of Western women rights that seem today so overwhelmingly important and “natural” that we often forget the hundreds of years of struggle and the amounts of efforts that the acquisition of those rights required. [...]

[...] Thus, feminists must continue to fight these conditions. There is still a great lack of legislation guaranteeing equitable divorce laws and protections against rape and sexual harassment. Domestic violence against women is it physical or psychological, is still an issue. In France, one woman in three days dies because of her partner's violence. At a larger scale, international feminism hasn't been far enough either. Indeed, feminist movements must face very different challenges, especially in the Islamic world, where the personal status laws make of divorce a male privilege, and allow polygamy and lapidating for cheating on a man. [...]

[...] Indeed, gender inequity is still a burning issue in our societies. In many modern societies women are still paid less than men for equivalent work and the frequency of “glass ceiling” situations, where the advancement of women in the hierarchy of their organization is limited, is not decreasing. In addition, they hold much less political and economic power (they stand for a highly symbolic minority among the important posts of such as chairs and ministers), and are often the subject of intense social pressure to conform to usual gender expectations. [...]