Introduction to feminism

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (/ˈwʊlstən.krɑːft/; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an eighteenth-century English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

Wikipedia

What is Feminism?

Rebecca West says,

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people”

Feminism is the belief that women should have equal rights to men

Elaine Showwalter

Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics.

Best known in academic and popular cultural fields,[1] she has written and edited numerous books and articles focused on a variety of subjects, from feminist literary criticismto fashion, sometimes sparking widespread controversy, especially with her work on illnesses. Showalter has been a television critic for People magazine and a commentator on BBC radio and television

Wikipedia

Towards a Feminist Poetics

Woman as Readers: The consumer of male produced Literature. Its subject includes the images and literary stereotypes of women in Literature, omissions and misconceptions and the fissures in male-constructed literary history.

Feminist Poetics

Woman As Writers

Woman as the producer of textual meaning, with the history, themes, genres and structures of Literature by Women.

Subjects Include: Psychodynamics of female creativity: linguistics and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career; literary history; and of course, studies of particular writers and works.

La gynocritique

OR“Gynocritics”

CONTD

The feminist critique is essentially polemical and political, with theoretical affiliations to Marxist sociology and aesthetics.

According to Showalter gynocritics is more self-contained and experimental, with connections to other modes of new feminist research.

Gynocritics

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847)

Pen Name: Currer Bell

Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (1847)

Pen Name: Ellis Bell

George Eliot (Pen Name): Middlemarch (1872)

Mary Ann Evans

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Aurora Leigh (1856)

Feminism and Three Waves

The Feminine Phase (1840-1880)Used Pen Names

Women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture, internalized its assumptions about female culture.

Distinguishing sign of this period is the male pseudonym became national characterstic of English women writers

American women during the same period adopted superfeminine names like Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood.

The Feminist Phase 1880-1920

From 1880-1920 led to

Winning of Vote

Enabled to reject the accomodating postures of femininity

Used Literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood e.g Elizabeth Gaskell, Frances Trollope.

Female Phase 1920 -----to Present

Women reject both imitation and protest

Turn to female experience as the source of an autonomous art

Extended the feminist analysis of culture to the forms and techniques of Literature

Virginia Woolf started thinking in terms of male and female sentences and divided their work into “masculine journalism” and “feminine fictions”

Redefined internal and external experiences

Their experiments were both enriching and imprisoning retreats into the celebration of consciousness.

“A luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end” (Showalter)

Three Waves and Woman Situation

The first Wave:

19th and 20th Century UK and US

Won improved rights for women in Marriage and property

Biggest achievement was winning political power

Suffragetes and suffragists campaigned for the women’s vote

CONTD

In 1918: Women over 30 who owned property won the vote and in 1928 it was extended to all women over 21.

Feminism and Pakistan

Under Colonialism Literature was produced all around the world

Pre -Partition: Twilight in Delhi(1948) Woman Situation

Post -Partition: The Heart Divided (1948) The beginning of Pakistani Feminist writings in English.

Women were doubly colonized (a) by colonizers

(b) by patriarchal society

After independence women were confined and restricted

Spivak: “As Subalterns”.OR “Othered”

Mohanty: “Produced as Subjects”

Women are shown as oppressed as well as fighting oppression

Feminism -Politics -Pakistan

Rana Liaquat founded the united front for women’s rights. Had the right to vote Representation reserved for them in Parliament

Woman Movements ignored the role of socio/political forces of feudals, tribals and military. Pakistan Vs India

In the decade of 70’s efforts were made to modernize the State Representation increased to 10% in National Assembly and 5% in

Provincial Assembly. No substantial forum was provided to woman

Zia regime proved quite discriminatory as women were restricted and confined

CONTD

In 1988 Bhutto became the first woman Prime minister of Pakistan. Not much was done for woman.

On her return to power again in 1993-0nwards efforts were made to make domestic violence a crime

Musharraf Era : Women Friendly

Women Protecion Act 2006: Facilitated release of women detained on various charges

CONTD

Zardari Era: Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace (2011)

Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act (2011)

The Prevention of Anti Women Practices 2011

To deprive women of rightful inheritance

To give girls in badle-e- sulha to settle disputes

Force the women to marriage with Quran

Domestic Violence Act 2012

National Commission on the status of women Act 2012.

To promote legal, economic and political , social rights of women.

Voices From Pakistan

Bilquis Jamal, Kaneez Fatima, Safia Shamim, Deputy Nazir Ahmed, Asmat Chughtai

Fehmida Riaz, Kishwar Naheed, Farzana Bari,

Mumtaz Shaheed

Feminism Types

Liberal Feminism

This is the variety of feminism that works within the structure of mainstream society to integrate women into that structure. Its roots stretch back to the social contract theory of government instituted by the American Revolution.

Radical Feminism:

This term refers to the feminist movement that sprung out of the civil rights and peace movements in 1967-1968. The reason this group gets the "radical" label is that they view the oppression of women as the most fundamental form of oppression, one that cuts across boundaries of race, culture, and economic class.

Marxist and Socialist Feminism

Marxism recognizes that women are oppressed, and attributes the oppression to the capitalist/private property system. Thus they insist that the only way to end the oppression of women is to overthrow the capitalist system. Socialist feminism is the result of Marxism meeting radical feminism.

Cultural Feminists:

As radical feminism died out as a movement, cultural feminism got rolling. In fact, many of the same people moved from the former to the latter. They carried the name "radical feminism" with them, and some cultural feminists use that name still. (Jaggar and Rothenberg [Feminist Frameworks] don't even list cultural feminism as a framework separate from radical feminism, but Echols spells out the distinctions in great detail.) The difference between the two is quite striking: whereas radical feminism was a movement to transform society, cultural feminism retreated to vanguardism, working instead to build a women's culture. Some of this effort has had some social benefit: rape crisis centers, for example; and of course many cultural feminists have been active in social issues (but as individuals, not as part of a movement).

Eco-Feminism

This branch of feminism is much more spiritual than political or theoretical in nature. It may or may not be wrapped up with Goddess worship and vegetarianism. Its basic tenet is that a patriarchal society will exploit its resources without regard to long term consequences as a direct result of the attitudes fostered in a patriarchal/hierarchical society. Parallels are often drawn between society's treatment of the environment, animals, or resources and its treatment of women. In resisting patriarchal culture, eco-feminists feel that they are also resisting plundering and destroying the Earth