The explosion of woman power
Audity Falguni journeys through an account of feminism
Over the centuries, and in many different countries, women have spoken out for their sex, and articulated, in different ways, their complaints, needs and hopes. In England, right up until the 1960s, the word `feminist' was usually pejorative. Writers like Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf sharply attacked the word `feminism.' American feminist Estelle Freedman argues that right from its origins, the word has carried negative connotations. Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley, in their third collection of essays, Who's Afraid of Feminism?, argued that `attacks on feminism frequently merge into a wider misogyny.' Who is a feminist actually? Margaret Walters has tried to answer the question in her book. This 159-page book contains ten major chapters. These ten chapters include analyses on the religious roots of feminism, the beginning of secular feminism, reforming women, campaigning women, fighting for the vote: suffragists, fighting for the vote, early 20th century feminism, the late 20th century and feminists across the world. In the first chapter of the book, 'The religious roots of feminism,' Walters narrates that how in medieval Europe, middle class families often disposed of 'unnecessary' or `unmarriageable daughters' by shutting them away in convents. It allowed some women to develop a talent for organization and some were able to read and think. Hildegard of Bingen, the 11th century nun and abbess of small Rhineland convent cum writer, the Englishwoman Julian of Norwich in the early 15th century, her contemporary Margery Kempe or the first autobiography writer in the English language were the pioneers. By the late 16th century, the Reformation enabled more women to receive an education and feminists like Jane Anger even took up a challenging position by insisting that Eve was superior to Adam. In 1611, Aemilia Lanyer reminded her readers that Christ was 'born of a woman.' Chapter three dwells on the `Amazons of the pen' in the early 18th century. Mary Astell published her A Serious Proposal to the Ladies in 1694 urging women to be thoughtful. Some Reflections Upon Marriage (1700) by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu questioned the 'superior status' of the husband in the marriage. The greatest of these 'Amazons of the pen' was Mary Wollstonecraft who, in the ground-breaking Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1790, spoke in immense courage: Taught from their infancy that beauty is a woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body and roaming around its guilt cage, only seek to adore its prison. In 1791, in revolutionary France, Olympe de Gouges claimed equal civil status for women citizens of the Republic. Throughout the 18th century, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen and Ann Radcliffe wrote Gothic fiction exploring the possibilties and problems of women's lives. A second-wave feminism in the late 20th century emerged after the Second World War. One of the most influential thinkers here is the French writer Simone de Beauvoir. Her writings add up to a remarkable exploration of women's experiences. The chapters of Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) range over the girl child, the wife, the mother, the prostitute, the narcissist, the lesbian and the woman in love. Betty Freidan's 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, exploded the myth of the happy housewife in affluent, white American suburbs. In America, expressions of feminism ranged from Gloria Steinem's accessible and glossy Ms magazine, first published in 1970, to the Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers. In Sexual Politics (1970), Kate Millett set out to analyze `patriarchy as a political institution.' In England, Australian-born Germaine Greer's lively and provocative The Female Eunuch (1970) challenged the `sense of inferiority or natural dependence' which women have too often accepted placidly and passively. Sheila Rowbotham's Liberation and the New Politics (1970) and Juliet Mitchell's Woman's Estate (1971) were both written in response to the emerging Women's Liberation movement in England. Juliet Mitchell argues that four areas of women's lives must be examined and transformed: production, reproduction, sexuality and the socialization of the children. Protests at the Miss America contest in Atlantic City in November 1968 and 1969, when feminists mockingly crowned a sheep, gave the emerging movement a high visibility. Susie Orbach's Fat is a Feminist Issue (1981) and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (1990) explore the physical self-hatred and fear of ageing that plague so many contemporary women. Kathie Sarachild, an advocate for consciousness-raising, underscored the need to `speak the unspoken.' In 1975, the American Susan Brownmiller published a long, scholarly and ground-breaking study of rape, Against Our Will, which deconstructed the centuries-old male `myth of the heroic rapist' and coined a slogan: pornography is the theory and rape the practice. Susan Griffin, in her Pornography and Silence (1981), argued that pornography expresses `fear of bodily knowledge and a desire to silence eros.' The lives of women in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia and the Middle East have also been profoundly affected by colonialism and neocolonialism. In Latin America, the local feminists had to wage war with the entrenched patriarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, in addition to the regionally specific male sexist attitudes termed `machismo.' Latin American women had to battle a lot for sex education in schools, women's suffrage, right to divorce, need for legal abortion, increased sentencing for rapists and help for battered women. The problems of Africa are particularly complex. Feminism in Africa is heterosexual, pro-natal and concerned with `bread, butter and power' issues. Genital mutilation, as a way of suppressing unruly female sexuality, is still carried out in some African countries. Margaret Walters succeeds well in portraying the brief history of the women's movement in her book. However, as a South Asian woman, this reviewer felt a little discriminated against: there is hardly any discussion on the conditions of women in South Asia.
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