Portal:Feminism
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Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social gender equality. This includes fighting gender stereotypes and seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men.
Feminism portal
Feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to vote, to hold public office, to work, to earn fair wages or equal pay, to own property, to receive education, to enter contracts, to have equal rights within marriage, and to have maternity leave. Feminists have also worked to ensure access to legal abortions and social integration, and to protect women and girls from rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Changes in dress and acceptable physical activity have often been part of feminist movements.
Selected general articles
Women in Switzerland gained the right to vote in federal elections after a referendum in February 1971. In 1991 following a decision by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, Appenzell Innerrhoden (AI) became the last Swiss canton to grant women the vote on local issues; AI is the smallest Swiss canton with c. 14,100 inhabitants in 1990.
A previous referendum on women's suffrage was held on 1 February 1959 and was rejected by the majority (67%) of Switzerland's men. Despite this, in some French-speaking cantons women obtained the right to vote in local referendums. The first Swiss woman to hold political office, Trudy Späth-Schweizer, was elected to the municipal government of Riehen in 1958. Read more...- Some variants of feminism are considered more conservative than others.
Because almost any variant of feminism can have a conservative element, this list does not attempt to list variants of feminism simply with conservative elements. Instead, this list is of feminism variants that are primarily conservative. Read more... 
Venus with a Mirror (c. 1555) by Titian, showing the goddess Aphrodite as the personification of femininity.
Femininity (also called girlishness, womanliness or womanhood) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Femininity is socially constructed, but made up of both socially-defined and biologically-created factors. This makes it distinct from the definition of the biological female sex, as both males and females can exhibit feminine traits.
Traits traditionally cited as feminine include gentleness, empathy, and sensitivity, though traits associated with femininity vary depending on location and context, and are influenced by a variety of social and cultural factors. Read more...- Sex-positive feminism, also known as pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, or sexually liberal feminism, is a movement that began in the early 1980s centering on the idea that sexual freedom is an essential component of women's freedom.
Some became involved in the sex-positive feminist movement in response to efforts by anti-pornography feminists to put pornography at the center of a feminist explanation of women's oppression. This period of intense debate and acrimony between sex-positive and anti-pornography feminists during the early 1980s is often referred to as the feminist sex wars. Other feminists identifying as sex-positive became involved in the debate, not in opposition to other feminists, but in direct response to what they saw as patriarchal control of sexuality. Read more... - A hip-hop feminist is defined as young feminists born after 1964 who approach the political community with a mixture of feminist and hip-hop sensibilities, hip-hop feminism. The term hip hop feminism was coined by the provocative cultural critic Joan Morgan in 1999 when she published the book When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks it Down, which has been described as "seminal".
Hip hop feminism is based on a tradition of black feminism, which emphasizes that the personal is political because our race, class, gender, and sexuality determine how we are treated. In the book Hip Hop's Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Feminist Movement Reiland Rabaka writes, "Seeming to simultaneously embrace and reject the fundamentals of feminism, the women of the hip hop generation, like the hip hop generation in general, have blurred the lines between the 'personal' and the 'political' by critically dialoguing with a culture that commonly renders them invisible or grossly misrepresents them when and where they are visible".
An important idea that came out of early black feminism is that of intersectionality. The term intersectionality was first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw and was first used in a paper where Crenshaw outlines how black women are often marginalized by both anti-racist and feminist movements, because their identity and concerns are not encompassed by only one group. Later in the chapter, Rabaka explains the connection between media, hip-hop, feminism, and intersectionality: "hip-hop feminism is much more than feminism, and it focuses on more than feminist issues, misogyny, and patriarchy. Hip-hop feminists use hip-hop culture as one of their primary points of departure to highlight serious social issues and the need for political activism aimed at racism, sexism, capitalism, and heterosexism as overlapping and interlocking systems of oppression" Read more... - Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the late 1800s, women worked for broad-based economic and political equality and for social reforms, and sought to change voting laws in order to allow them to vote. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts to gain voting rights, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (founded in 1904, Berlin, Germany), and also worked for equal civil rights for women.
Women who owned property gained the right to vote in the Isle of Man in 1881, and in 1893, the British colony of New Zealand granted all women the right to vote. Most independent countries enacted women's suffrage in the interwar era, including Canada in 1917; Britain, Germany, Poland in 1918; Austria and the Netherlands in 1919; and the United States in 1920. Leslie Hume argues that the First World War changed the popular mood:
: The women's contribution to the war effort challenged the notion of women's physical and mental inferiority and made it more difficult to maintain that women were, both by constitution and temperament, unfit to vote. If women could work in munitions factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the polling booth. But the vote was much more than simply a reward for war work; the point was that women's participation in the war helped to dispel the fears that surrounded women's entry into the public arena. Read more...
Dianic Wicca, also known as Dianic Witchcraft, is a neopagan religion of female-centered goddess ritual and tradition. While some adherents identify as Wiccan, it differs from most traditions of Wicca in that only goddesses are honored (whereas most Wiccan traditions honor both female and male deities).
While there is more than one tradition that calls itself Dianic, the best known is the female-only variety, founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the United States in the 1970s. It is notable for its worship of a single Goddess and focus on egalitarian, matriarchal feminism. It is named after the Roman goddess Diana, but Dianics worship goddesses from many cultures, seeing them as "aspects" of a monotheistic goddess. Dianic Wicca is an eclectic combination of elements from British Traditional Wicca, Italian folk-magic as recorded by Charles Leland in Aradia, feminist values, folk magic and healing practices from a variety of different cultures. Read more...
Nasarwasalam, Iraq, January 30, 2005. Iraqi women set out to vote in the first free elections held in Iraq. Security for the polling site was provided by the Iraqi Security Force (ISF) and members of the US Marines Corps.
This timeline lists the dates of the first women's suffrage in Muslim majority countries. Dates for the right to vote, suffrage, as distinct from the right to stand for election and hold office, are listed.
Some countries with majority Muslim populations established universal suffrage upon national independence, such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In most North Africa countries, women participated in the first national elections or soon following. Some dates relate to regional elections and, where possible, the second date of general election has been included. Even countries listed may not have universal suffrage for women, and some may have regressed in women's rights since the initial granting of suffrage. Read more...- This is a piece on history of women in the United States since 1776, and of the Thirteen Colonies before that. The study of women's history has been a major scholarly and popular field, with many scholarly books and articles, museum exhibits, and courses in schools and universities. The roles of women were long ignored in textbooks and popular histories. By the 1960s, women were being presented as successful as male roles. An early feminist approach underscored their victimization and inferior status at the hands of men. In the 21st century writers have emphasized the distinctive strengths displayed inside the community of women, with special concern for minorities among women. Read more...
- Fat feminism is a form of feminism that merges with the fat acceptance movement. This form of feminism specifically addresses how misogyny and sexism intersect with sizeism and anti-fat bias. Body-positive feminists promote acceptance for women of all sizes. Fat feminism originated during second-wave feminism. Now fat feminists main focus is eliminating perceived bias against fat people. Fat Feminist claim sizeists have negative opinions about people who are overweight such as being lazy, and eating unhealthy foods more often than they should. Read more...
- Equality feminism is a subset of the overall feminism movement that focuses on the basic similarities between men and women, and whose ultimate goal is the equality of the sexes in all domains. This includes economic and political equality, equal access within the workplace, freedom from oppressive gender stereotyping, and an androgynous worldview.
Feminist theory seeks to promote the legal status of women as equal and undifferentiated from that of men. While equality feminists largely agree that men and women have basic biological differences in anatomy and frame, they argue that on a psychological level, the use of ration or reason is androgynous. For equality feminists, men and women are equal in terms of their ability to reason, achieve goals, and prosper in both the work and home front. Read more... - Labor feminism is a term used for a movement in the United States that emerged after women gained the right to vote. Labor feminists advocated for protectionist legislation and special benefits for women. They helped pass state laws regulating working conditions for women, expanded women's participation in unions, and organized to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment. Read more...
- Feminism in Thailand is perpetuated by many of the same traditional feminist theory foundations, though Thai feminism is facilitated through a medium of social movement activist groups within Thailand’s illiberal democracy. The Thai State claims to function as a civil society with an intersectionality between gender inequality and activism in its political spheres.
In the Thai state, feminist activism is pivotal upon class structures, which focus on specific facets of public policy based on a woman’s socioeconomic status. The hierarchy of a feminist's issue lies in one's class social strata. The Thai elite focusing on public policy, social equality, and increase in women’s presence within economic confines. The younger Thai generation is depicted as less concerned with their public policy and formal politics; while middle class feminist Thai women express their political concerns through more antiquated and traditional mediums such as artistic performances and published works. Read more...
Women in Trinidad and Tobago are women who were born in, who live in, or are from Trinidad and Tobago. Depending from which island the women came, they may also be called Trinidadian women or Tobagonian women respectively. Women in Trinidad and Tobago excel in various industries and occupations, including micro-enterprise owners, "lawyers, judges, politicians, civil servants, journalists, and calypsonians." Women still dominate the fields of "domestic service, sales, and some light manufacturing."
Women of Afro-Trinidadian mix commonly become "heads of households," thus with acquired "autonomy and power and do sometime abused men
." By participating in Trinidad and Tobago's version of the Carnival, Trinidadian and Tobagonian women demonstrate their "assertive sexuality." Some of them have also been active in so-called Afro-Christian sects and in running the "sou-sou informal rotating credit associations." Read more...
Did you know...
- ... that the English feminist and social reformer Josephine Butler wrote more than 90 books and pamphlets over the course of her career?
- ... that British-Pakistani director Sarmad Masud describes his 2017 film My Pure Land as "a modern-day feminist Western set in Pakistan"?
- ... that Joan Acker and Miriam Johnson of the Center for the Study of Women in Society found that "Do you shave your legs?" was the question most strongly correlated to identifying with feminism?
- ... that despite writing extensively about women's rights and being the first Croatian author to feature a feminist character, Jagoda Truhelka remains best known for her children's literature?
- ... that Ida Sedgwick Proper was a founding member of the feminist group Heterodoxy?
- ... that sociologist, feminist, and campaigner for lesbian and gay rights Mary Susan McIntosh was deported from the U.S. in 1960 for speaking out against the House Un-American Activities Committee?
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Selected images
Feminist Suffrage Parade in New York City, 6 May 1912
Protest against La Manada sexual abuse case sentence in Pamplona
British-born suffragist Rose Cohen became a victim of Stalin's great terror, executed in November 1937, two months after the execution of her Soviet husband.
American jazz singer and songwriter Billie Holiday in New York City in 1947
Feminist, author and social activist bell hooks (b. 1952).
Louise Weiss along with other Parisian suffragettes in 1935. The newspaper headline reads "The Frenchwoman Must Vote."
Octavia Butler, award-winning feminist science fiction author
Chilean feminists protest against the regime of Augusto Pinochet
Participation in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.Signed and ratifiedAcceded or succeededUnrecognized state, abiding by treatyOnly signedNon-signatory
Simone Veil (1927–2017), former French Minister of Health (1974–79). She made easier access to contraceptive pills and legalized abortion (1974–75) – which was her greatest and hardest achievement.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (pictured) wrote these articles about feminism for the Atlanta Constitution, published on December 10, 1916.
Cmdr. Adrienne Simmons speaking at the 2008 ceremony for the only women's mosque in Khost City, a symbol of progress for growing women's rights in the Pashtun belt.
Feminist protest in Donostia (San Sebastián), 2012
A symbol of feminism based on the Venus symbol
"Female Muslims- The tsar, beys and khans took your rights away" – Soviet poster issued in Azerbaijan, 1921
After selling her home, Emmeline Pankhurst, pictured in New York City in 1913, travelled constantly, giving speeches throughout Britain and the United States.
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