Portal:Feminism

The Feminism Portal

Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern societies are patriarchal—they prioritize the male point of view—and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.

Originating in late 18th-century Europe, feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to vote, run for public office, work, earn equal pay, own property, receive education, enter into contracts, have equal rights within marriage, and maternity leave. Feminists have also worked to ensure access to contraception, legal abortions, and social integration; and to protect women and girls from sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Changes in female dress standards and acceptable physical activities for women have also been part of feminist movements.

Many scholars consider feminist campaigns to be a main force behind major historical societal changes for women's rights, particularly in the West, where they are near-universally credited with achieving women's suffrage, gender-neutral language, reproductive rights for women (including access to contraceptives and abortion), and the right to enter into contracts and own property. Although feminist advocacy is, and has been, mainly focused on women's rights, some argue for the inclusion of men's liberation within its aims, because they believe that men are also harmed by traditional gender roles. Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experiences. Feminist theorists have developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues concerning gender.

Numerous feminist movements and ideologies have developed over the years, representing different viewpoints and political aims. Traditionally, since the 19th century, first-wave liberal feminism, which sought political and legal equality through reforms within a liberal democratic framework, was contrasted with labour-based proletarian women's movements that over time developed into socialist and Marxist feminism based on class struggle theory. Since the 1960s, both of these traditions are also contrasted with the radical feminism that arose from the radical wing of second-wave feminism and that calls for a radical reordering of society to eliminate patriarchy. Liberal, socialist, and radical feminism are sometimes referred to as the "Big Three" schools of feminist thought.

Since the late 20th century, many newer forms of feminism have emerged. Some forms, such as white feminism and gender-critical feminism, have been criticized as taking into account only white, middle class, college-educated, heterosexual, or cisgender perspectives. These criticisms have led to the creation of ethnically specific or multicultural forms of feminism, such as black feminism and intersectional feminism. (Full article...)

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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to the educational and political theorists of the eighteenth century who wanted to deny women an education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men. Wollstonecraft was prompted to write the Rights of Woman by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the French National Assembly which stated that women should only receive a domestic education; she used her commentary on this specific event to launch a broad attack against sexual double standards and to indict men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion.

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Credit: Maya Lin

Maya Lin's original competition submission for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.. Originally designed as a student project at Yale University's School of Architecture in 1981, the memorial is a black granite wall, in the shape of a V, on which the names of American servicemen killed or missing in action from the Vietnam War are inscribed. The architect hoped that "these names, seemingly infinite in number, [would] convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying these individuals into a whole."

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In this month

March 1918 – First publication of Married Love, an important and influential sex manual by Marie Stopes, a Scottish author, eugenicist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of family planning
March 1976 – First Take Back the Night march was held in Belgium by women attending the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women
2 March 1897 – Birth of Shidzue Katō, Japanese feminist who was a pioneer in the birth control movement and one of the first women elected to the Diet of Japan
8 March – International Women's Day (pictured) is a day to celebrate the economic, political, and social achievements of women
28 March 1794 – Marquis de Condorcet, who died during the French Revolution, argued for free and equal public education as well as for equal rights for women and people of all races

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What we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions. Women do not change institutions simply by assimilating into them. We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no - not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself. We need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

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Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and early feminist. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, travel narratives, a conduct book, a history of the French Revolution, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in which she argued that women are not naturally inferior to men, but only appeared to be because they lacked education. She suggested that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagined a social order founded on reason. Among both the general public and feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has often received as much, if not more, interest than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, relationships. After two unsuccessful affairs with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. She was also the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. Today, Wollstonecraft is considered a foundational thinker in feminist philosophy. Her early advocacy of women's equality and her attacks on conventional femininity and the degradation of women presaged the later emergence of the feminist political movement.

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... that the retelling of stories can focus on female characters to reflect the feminist perspective?
... that after dying in her daughter's arms in an asylum in 1897, Maria Trubnikova was remembered as the "heart and soul" of feminist activism in Russia?
... that Margareth Rago seeks to establish a methodology for what she calls "feminist science"?

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...that in the Big Runaway during the American Revolution in Pennsylvania in 1778, Rachel Silverthorn (pictured) rode to warn settlers on Muncy Creek of impending attack when no man would?
...that the role of Kanephoros was the most prominent public office a girl or woman could hold in ancient Athens?
... that Henry Fielding praised Jane Collier, author of An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting and The Cry, for her "understanding more than female, mixed with virtues almost more than human"?

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The following are images from various feminism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Author and scholar Helen Kendrick Johnson opposed women's suffrage. (from History of feminism)
Image 2Sylvia Pankhurst (from History of feminism)
Image 3Women's Liberation march in Washington, D.C., 1970 (from History of feminism)
Image 4Female members of the Australian Builders Labourers Federation march on International Women's Day 1975 in Sydney (from International Women's Day)
Image 5Emily Davison (from History of feminism)
Image 6
  Official holiday
  Holiday for women
  Non-official holiday
(from International Women's Day)
Image 7Catharine MacKinnon (from History of feminism)
Image 8Margaret Sanger (from History of feminism)
Image 9Marie Stopes (from History of feminism)
Image 10Yellow mimosa is the symbol of International Women's Day in Italy as well as in Russia, Ukraine and many other ex-Soviet Union republics (from International Women's Day)
Image 11The vandalized Concepción Feminist Mural in Spain, which was vandalized on International Women's Day 2021. (from International Women's Day)
Image 128M 2020 in Spain (from International Women's Day)
Image 13Lucy Stone (from History of feminism)
Image 14Florence Nightingale (from History of feminism)
Image 15María Elena Oddone holding a banner, on International Women's Day in 1984 in Argentina. The banner says "No to motherhood, yes to pleasure" (from International Women's Day)
Image 16Cover of WSPU's The Suffragette, April 25, 1913 (after Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, 1830) (from History of feminism)
Image 17First edition print of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (from History of feminism)
Image 18Board of directors of "Jam'iat e nesvan e vatan-khah", a women's rights association in Tehran (1923–1933) (from History of feminism)
Image 19Women on the street celebrating International Women's Day in Cameroon (from International Women's Day)
Image 20John Neal (from History of feminism)
Image 21Frances Cobbe (from History of feminism)
Image 22bell hooks (from History of feminism)
Image 23Giorgia Meloni, first female prime minister of Italy at a 2024 Women's Day event in Rome (from International Women's Day)
Image 24Simone de Beauvoir (from History of feminism)
Image 25Germaine Greer in June 1972 (from History of feminism)
Image 268M 2018 in Pamplona (from International Women's Day)
Image 27Huda Shaarawi, founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union (from History of feminism)
Image 28Clara Zetkin (left) and Rosa Luxemburg (right) in January 1910 (from International Women's Day)
Image 29Matilda Joslyn Gage (from History of feminism)
Image 30Betty Friedan 1960 (from History of feminism)
Image 31Ida B. Wells (from History of feminism)
Image 32Irena Krzywicka (from History of feminism)
Image 33Nellie McClung (from History of feminism)
Image 34Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) and Susan B. Anthony (from History of feminism)
Image 35A veil-burning ceremony in Andijan on International Women's Day in 1927 (from International Women's Day)
Image 36Wealthy Chinese women with bound feet (Beijing, 1900). Foot binding was a symbol of women's oppression during the reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. (from History of feminism)
Image 37The Nineteenth Amendment (from History of feminism)
Image 38An Antimonumenta, installed in Mexico City on International Women's Day 2019, as photographed the day after. The circle part says "In Mexico 9 women are murdered daily" and the cross part says "Not one more!" On the opposite side, the Antimonumenta reads "We demand a national gender alert", and in the central part "No + Femicides" (from International Women's Day)
Image 39Christine de Pizan presents her book to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria. (from History of feminism)
Image 40Bessie Rayner Parkes (from History of feminism)
Image 41Suffrage parade in New York, May 6, 1912 (from History of feminism)
Image 42Camilla Collett (from History of feminism)
Image 43Gloria Steinem at news conference, Women's Action Alliance, January 12, 1972 (from History of feminism)

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This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Feminism}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.

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Alice Manfield - Guide Alice, Mt Buffalo, c1900-30, SLV
Alice Park - Records of the National Woman's Party
Alice Paul (1915) by Harris & Ewing
Angela Davis in a half-length portrait by Bernard Gotfryd - crop
Anne Dallas Dudley LOC
Avril de Sainte-Croix - Restored, cropped
Bertha Lutz 1925
Cabinet Card of Sojourner Truth - Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Convicts Lunatics and Women! Have No Vote for Parliament, ca. 1907-1918
Dr. Caroline Spencer 275029v
Ethel Smyth
Frances Benjamin Johnston, Self-Portrait (as "New Woman"), 1896
Fredrikke Mørck
George Charles Beresford - Virginia Woolf in 1902 - Restoration
Henrietta Rodman from the George Grantham Bain Collection
Henry Mayer, The Awakening, 1915 Cornell CUL PJM 1176 01 - Restoration
Hester Jeffrey
Hubertine Auclert 1910
Iris Calderhead
Joy Young Rogers outside the White House
Lucretia Mott, signed photo, by F. Gutekunst
Mabel Vernon, c. 1917, by Edmonston, Washington, D.C.
Marguerite Durand 1910 - Restoration
Marie Stopes in her laboratory, 1904 - Restoration
Mary Garrity - Ida B. Wells-Barnett - Google Art Project - restoration crop
Millicent Fawcett
Mrs. Crystal Eastman Benedict by Edmonston, Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Lillian Ascough, chairman of the Connecticut branch of the Woman's Party
Mrs. Pauline Adams 147002v
Portrett av Gina Krog (6276081582) - Restoration
Poster by Anna Soós Korànyi for the Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance
Ray Strachey restored
Sojourner Truth, 1870 (cropped, restored)
Victoria Claflin Woodhull by Mathew Brady - Oval Portrait
Voltairine de Cleyre (Age 35)
We Can Do It! NARA 535413 - Restoration 2