Portal:Feminism

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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. Some have argued that feminism often promotes misandry and the elevation of women's interests above men's, and criticize radical feminist positions as harmful to both men and women. (Full article...)

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The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the English author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" (that is, homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as having a debilitating effect on inverts. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence". The Well became the target of a campaign by the editor of the Sunday Express newspaper, who wrote "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." Although its only sex scene consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided", a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women". In the United States the book survived legal challenges in New York state and in Customs Court. Although few critics rate The Well highly as a work of literature, its treatment of sexuality and gender continues to inspire study and debate.

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Credit: J. Howard Miller

J. Howard Miller's poster for Westinghouse, entitled "We Can Do It!", is often associated in modern times with Rosie the Riveter, a cultural icon of the United States. The poster was not widely seen during World War II, nor was it connected to Rosie the Riveter. It was displayed only in Westinghouse factories for two weeks in early 1943, shown to female and male workers to increase worker morale and reduce labor problems for management. After it was rediscovered in 1982, the poster soon became famous. It was credited with goals it never had during the war, such as the recruitment of women workers. Modern viewers see it as a symbol of feminist solidarity, an American icon of feminism.

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In this month

May 1892 – Publication of "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (pictured), a prominent American writer, and utopian feminist who argued for women's economic independence in Women and Economics
16 May 1929 – Birth of Adrienne Rich, award-winning lesbian American poet and feminist
20 May 1806 – Birth of John Stuart Mill, British philosopher whose essay The Subjection of Women argued for the equality of women
21 May 1970 – First Women's studies program established in the United States at San Diego State College after a year of intense consciousness raising, rallies, petitions, and unofficial classes
24 May 1990 – Judi Bari Day, honoring the American ecofeminist and labor leader who worked to protect the redwood forests of Northern California

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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 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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More did you know

...that Leyla Mammadbeyova (pictured) was the first Azerbaijani female aviator and the second parachutist woman in the former Soviet Union?
...that Erica Larson, a chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, won the Pikes Peak mountain marathon five times in six years between 1999 and 2004, more than any other woman in the event's history?
...that Labour Member of Parliament Ellen Wilkinson organised the 1936 Jarrow March of 200 unemployed men and women from Tyneside to London to demand jobs?

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

Image 1Betty Friedan 1960 (from History of feminism)
Image 2Frances Cobbe (from History of feminism)
Image 3Yellow mimosa is the symbol of IWD in Italy as well as in Russia, Ukraine and many other ex-Soviet Union republics (from International Women's Day)
Image 4Christine de Pizan presents her book to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria. (from History of feminism)
Image 58M 2020 in Spain (from International Women's Day)
Image 6The Nineteenth Amendment (from History of feminism)
Image 7Lucy Stone (from History of feminism)
Image 8Huda Shaarawi, founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union (from History of feminism)
Image 9Germaine Greer in June 1972 (from History of feminism)
Image 10Bessie Rayner Parkes (from History of feminism)
Image 11Female members of the Australian Builders Labourers Federation march on International Women's Day 1975 in Sydney (from International Women's Day)
Image 12Irena Krzywicka (from History of feminism)
Image 13Catharine MacKinnon (from History of feminism)
Image 14Gloria Steinem at news conference, Women's Action Alliance, January 12, 1972 (from History of feminism)
Image 15Wealthy 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 16First edition print of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (from History of feminism)
Image 17Suffrage parade in New York, May 6, 1912 (from History of feminism)
Image 18Florence Nightingale (from History of feminism)
Image 19Sylvia Pankhurst (from History of feminism)
Image 20Women's Liberation march in Washington, D.C., 1970 (from History of feminism)
Image 21
  Official holiday
  Holiday for women
  Non-official holiday
(from International Women's Day)
Image 22Simone de Beauvoir (from History of feminism)
Image 23Nellie McClung (from History of feminism)
Image 248M 2019 in Spain (from International Women's Day)
Image 25Camilla Collett (from History of feminism)
Image 26Author and scholar Helen Kendrick Johnson opposed women's suffrage. (from History of feminism)
Image 278M 2018 in Pamplona (from International Women's Day)
Image 28Clara Zetkin (left) and Rosa Luxemburg (right) in January 1910 (from International Women's Day)
Image 29Emily Davison (from History of feminism)
Image 30Board of directors of "Jam'iat e nesvan e vatan-khah", a women's rights association in Tehran (1923–1933) (from History of feminism)
Image 31Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) and Susan B. Anthony (from History of feminism)
Image 32Women on the street celebrating International Women's Day in Cameroon (from International Women's Day)
Image 33Margaret Sanger (from History of feminism)
Image 34Matilda Joslyn Gage (from History of feminism)
Image 35Ida B. Wells (from History of feminism)
Image 36Cover of WSPU's The Suffragette, April 25, 1913 (after Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, 1830) (from History of feminism)
Image 37Marie Stopes (from History of feminism)
Image 38bell hooks (from History of feminism)
Image 39John Neal (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