INTRODUCTION TO FEMINISM

INTRODUCTION TO FEMINISM

Feminism (derived from the Latin femina woman and ism over French féminisme ) is a generic term for spiritual, social, political, religious and academic currents and social movements , on the critical analysis of gender systems (male privileges based, female subordination), for equal rights, human dignity, the self-determination of women as well as against sexism and these goals try to implement it with appropriate measures.in addition, feminism refers to political theories, which - beyond individual concerns - have the totality of social conditions, a fundamental change in the social and symbolic order and gender relations in mind. At the same time, they allow interpretations and arguments for social criticism.

Feminism experienced its upswing in Europe with the emancipation efforts of women during the Enlightenment; worldwide, he repeatedly comes in the context of general civil rights and freedom movements to the train. Feminism makes it clear that the ideal of equality of all people, as it is above all through the bourgeois emancipation from the system Dissemination was not consistent with the everyday experiences of women. Accordingly, a conflict between the enlightened equality claim on the one hand and the reality of the life of women in modern and modern times, on the other hand, is diagnosed. On this basis, feminism also includes the demand not only to formally (legally) postulate equal rights for women and men but also to challenge those concrete conditions in which this promise has still not materially been fulfilled. To this end, feminists and feminists grappled with the philosophical justification for or against the unequal treatment and developed various feminist theories and approaches as critical cultural and societal analyzes. However, a unified feminism, whose definition was universally valid, is not necessarily a worthwhile goal today, as women come from different cultures and social backgrounds, which can shape them more than gender.

Term

The Frenchwoman Hubertine Auclert was the first to describe herself as a féministe (feminist)

Formation

Some historians attribute the term to the social philosopher Charles Fourier (1772-1837). He had first defined the degree of liberation of women as a benchmark for the development of society and put it: "Social progress [...] is due to the progress in the liberation of women. “There but for Fourier himself, and ever before in 1870, without any evidence to use the term, Fourier may not have coined it. This is pointed out by the historian Karen Offend.

In late 19th-century France, the terms féministe and féminisme first emerged as synonyms for women's emancipation and for movements and individuals proclaiming women's rights. The first suffragette, who used the term as self-description, was the Frenchwoman Hubertine Auclert in 1882.At the International Congress for Women's Work and Women's Aspirations in September 1896 in Berlin, among others, Lina Morgenstern, Minna Cauer and Hedwig Dohme 1700 participants from Europe and the United States debated the state of women's issues. The French delegate Eugénie Potonié-Pierre informed the press about the term feminism and what it means. From then on he found increasingly international distribution.

In the Germany of the empire "feminism" was hardly used, with the exception of the feminist thought leader Hedwig Dohm and the radical wing of the bourgeois women's movement to Minna Cauer, Anita Augsburg, Lida Gustava Heymann and Käthe Schirmacher. However, it was rejected by the majority of the German women's movement, on the one hand, because of its demarcation with France, and on the other because the term was already occupied by the opponents of feminism for the devaluation of the emancipation movement.

The first mention of the term in Great Britain is occupied for the years 1894/95. Since 1910 he is in use in the USA. In the 1920s he also found his way into the Japanese and Arabic languages.

In Germany, the term "women's emancipation" was far more common than feminism until the middle of the 20th century. Only with the Second Women's Movement since the 1970s did the term spread as a positive self-description for members of the movement. In the late 1970s, the term "feminism" is more commonly used as a "women's liberation"

"The vision of feminism is not a 'female future'. It is a human future. Without role constraints, without power and violence, without bundling men and femininity mania. "

                                                          Johanna Dohnal, 2004

Demarcation feminism and women's movement

The terms feminist and feminist are Gallicisms: at the end of the 19th century, the words féministe and féminisme were taken from French into German. This led from the beginning to a change of meaning in the form of a narrowing of meaning as meaning deterioration (pejorization).

The basic principles of equal human dignity and equal rights for women, borne by the spirit of the French Revolution, caused "alarm" in German-speaking countries right from the start. The words feminism and feminist had a "smell of radicality" and were rarely used for self-expression, but mostly "pejorative and denouncing by the opponents of women's emancipation." Only with the second wave of the women's movement of the 1970s, the terms were increasingly used for positive self-designation.However, the German terms feminism, feminist and feminist until today still strongly negatively afflicted and few humans like to identify themselves openly with it since this often draws serious devaluations up to today.

By the end of the 19th century, the most commonly used generic term in German was the word Frauenfrage, followed by the word Frauenbewegung. The generic term feminism is much less used in German. In contrast to German, the generic term féminisme or feminism is the main term used in French and in English.

Today the terms feminism and women's movement are often used interchangeably both in colloquial language and in specialist terminology. In technical jargon, there are individual attempts to delimit the content of, for example, feminism as a theory and policy-related part of the women's movement.

Today's intellectual, social, political, religious and academic movements and social movements, which work for the interests of women, hardly use the terms women's movement or women-moving self-description, but rather the terms feminism and feminist. The term women's movement today is not the feminist movement or feminism the present but the past. The "times of the women's movement" are considered as completed and their goals in a sense as "obsolete", but not of feminism in the present times of neoliberalism.

Goals and themes of feminism

Objective: To recognize and respect the equal human dignity of women

The fundamental goal of feminism and women's movement is the redemption of modern social principles, which have become increasingly popular since the French Revolution, even for women. The first is the basic principle of "recognizing their equal human dignity” for women, which emphasizes the fundamental "principles of freedom and equality of all human beings " for women.

The "invocation of human dignity" causes a “de-tabulation” of asymmetrical social gender orders, in which dignity is a "gender-defined concept". On the basis of “role-related decency expectations", the dignity of men is considered honorability, the dignity of women a modesty. In everyday life, the behaviour is then identified as 'worthy' or 'unworthy' using gender role stereotypes .rated. If human dignity, on the other hand, is regarded as inviolable by gender, there is nothing to justify its violation. The basic principle of human dignity thus promotes better respect for fundamental rights to liberty and equality.

The central importance of recognizing and respecting the human dignity of women sarcastically brought British writer and journalist Rebecca West to the point. Their formulation in an article in the British newspaper The Clarion of 1913 became one of the most famous citations to describe the fundamental goal of feminism:

"I never found out exactly what feminism actually is. All I know is that I'm called a feminist whenever I'm not confused with a doormat or a prostitute. "REBECCA WEST (1913)

To date, recognizing and respecting women's human dignity is not only an implicit goal in many subjects, but is often explicitly named - for example, in sexist advertising, sexual harassment and sexual violence, pornography, prostitution, reproductive rights or asylum law.

Subgoals and topics

On the basis of this fundamental feminist goal numerous, sometimes contradictory tendencies have developed, all of which are summarized under the generic term of feminism. The central debates of feminism vary across countries and are subject to change. From the 1960s, the following topics were taken up, among others: for some, the feminist pioneers had already fought at the end of the 19th century:

·         Equal rights (political equality, women's suffrage, education, marriage and divorce law)

·         Economic and social function of housework / reproductive work ( housewife, care work )

·         Gender equality (eg, female quotas, pay discrimination, reconciliation of work and family life )

·         Women's rights as human rights (eg female genital mutilation )

·         Violence against women

·         Women as accomplices in violent relationships, eg. B. Women as accomplices and perpetrators in National Socialism

·         Construction or deconstruction of gender identity

·         Feminist language criticism

·         Woman biographical research

·         Relationship of gender, class, ethnicity ( intersectionality )

·         Sexual self-determination ( rape, sexual abuse, lesbian women)

·         sexism

·         Reproductive self-determination (eg abortion )

·         Feminist critique of science

·         Women's research and gender studies in all scientific fields

·         Women's networks, Women's Peace Movement (since the First Women's Movement).

The history of feminism

Beginnings

Hedwig Dohme , around 1870

Early ideas of European feminism can be found in the writings of Marie Le Jars de Gournay, who proclaimed human rights as early as the 17th century. But also the writings of Christine de Pizan, Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hedwig Dohm are regarded as early works of European feminist philosophy avant la lettre .

Olympe de Gouges, 18th century

Feminism as a theory and worldview first emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when in the wake of the bourgeois revolutions constitutions with catalogues of fundamental rights were passed. However, women were limited in their ability to carry these basic rights. On the other hand, Olympe de Gouges protested in France.  Thus, in 1791, in 17 articles, she compared the 17 articles of the Declaration of Human and Civil Rights relating only to men to her women's rights, which contained the famous sentence:

"The woman has the right to climb the scaffold. Likewise, she must be given the right to board a rostrum”

Political rights of participation, which were initially won or granted in the revolution, were soon restricted again. Olympe de Gouges was in 1793 after Robespierre publicly attacked and had called for a vote on the government, at the instigation of the revolutionary tribunal executed. 1792, the English writer Mary Wollstonecraft published her work Vindication of the Rights of Woman (The Defense of Women's Rights), in which she analyzed the situation of women as trapped in a network of false expectations. She argued that women can train to sustain themselves. For example, women could be doctors as well as men. The basis of marriage should be friendship, not physical attraction. Their goal was to gain full citizenship for all women.

First Wave

British suffragette

Towards the middle of the 19th century, the first wave of feminism and women's movement emerged in many countries in Europe, the United States and Australia. British women's rights activist Josephine Butler has been opposed to the Contagious Diseases Acts since 1869, where prostitutes were state-supervised but the suitors were not controlled. Only the women, but not their male clients, were therefore responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Not only in the UK, but also in other countries, such a double standard was fought. The abolitionist movement internationally and internationally questioned social and sexual conventions that had never been discussed publicly before.

Hubertine Auclert developed the magazine La Citoyenne published by her in 1882 the term feminism as a political leitmotif against the prevailing in her view at that time in French society masculine. In 1892, a congress took place in France, which bore the word feminism in the title, and in 1896 Eugénie Potonié-Pierre reported at the International Women's Congress in Berlin that the term had prevailed in the French press. In the next few years, the term also spread internationally; He was used partly synonymous with women's movement, also by their anti-feminist opponents.

The German socialist Clara Zetkin demanded in 1910 at the Second Congress of the Socialist International in Copenhagen: "No special rights, but human rights". One year later, women in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland took to the streets for the first time. Their central demand: the introduction of women's suffrage and participation in political power. Except in Finland, women were not allowed to vote in any European country at this time, but only after the First World War. The representatives of the First Women's Movement aspired to political equality with men and to an end to the civil law group under father or husband, equal pay for equal work, access for women to university and to all professions and offices.

Almost simultaneously, in 1911, the term androcentrism was developed by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her book "The Man-Made World or Our Androcentric Culture”. It was criticized there as a specific form of sexism in which the feminine is taken as "the other", "the non-normative" one.

The first wave of feminism ebbed in the 1920s. Basic demands such as women's suffrage were met in some countries. As a result of the introduction of women's suffrage, MEPs did not only concern themselves with the further enforcement of access to former male occupations, such as judicial officers, but also with social legislation and the treatment of prostitution and asociality. In the world economic crisis in 1929, the competition for jobs intensified, women were released first in the rule. Now many factors worked together to restore women to their traditional place.

The demands for women's studies were accepted in many countries towards the end of the 19th century, although initially very few women studied, such as Rosa Luxemburg. The first full professor in Germany was Margarete von Wrangell; the second Mathilde Vaerting, she was expelled from the National Socialists in 1933 by the university service as well as among others Marie Baum and Gerta von Ubisch. Lise Meitner became the first physicist in Germany1926 the first professor at the Berlin Humboldt University. Like many other Jewish scientists, she had to emigrate and could not continue her scientific work in Berlin. She fled to Sweden in 1938.

German National Socialism limited the possibilities of women to study; From 1933 to 1945, the National Socialist, and in particular the racial, political laws led to a drastic break in the employment and career opportunities of women.

Women's organizations were dissolved or brought into line. Anita Augspurg and Lida Gustava Heymann, pioneers of the first women's movement and opponents of the Nazi regime, had to live in Swiss exile from 1933; Alice Salomon was forced into exile in 1939.

After two world wars, the restoration of rigid gender roles, as well as the model of marriage and nuclear family as a dominant form of life, was an important component of an alleged "normalization" of living conditions. Although women in the war and post-war years, on their own, had mastered life under the most difficult conditions, this included the clear instruction to return home and family as a true place of female destiny. In all western industrial nations that participated in the Second World War, a restructuring of traditional gender relations took place in the post-war period.

Second Wave

"The feminist movement began in the sixties/seventies with the thesis that women - beyond biology - have something in common, namely, a violent damage and exclusion story that forces them to be marginalized, defined as inferior people, of whom excluded public participation and delivered everyday violence. "

- Christina Thürmer-ROHR, 1997

The formation of women's movements in West Germany and other European countries was preceded by the American women's movement, the Women's Liberation Movement (Women's Lib). When the first autonomous women's groups were reluctantly constituted in the Federal Republic, a wide network of women's organizations and women's groups had already developed in the United States. The first new feminist group was the National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in June 1966.

In order to understand the significance of the feminist upheaval since the 1960s in the Federal Republic of Germany, one has to envision the conditions for women. In the mid-sixties, girls, especially from working-class and rural families, were clearly underrepresented in secondary education, and considerably more men than women studied. There were hardly any female scientists and university teachers at the universities. Women were also barely represented in political representation, although the inclusion of equal rights in the Basic Law was essentially the merit of politicians like Elisabeth Selbert was. Only one in three women was gainfully employed, and the distribution of occupations largely followed gender-specific stereotype attributions, such as the so-called low - wage groups and “women’s professions ". The general legal situation of women was not the same as that of men. Thus, the husband as a legally defined "head of household” could make binding decisions alone. Until 1962, women were not allowed to open their own bank account and dispose of it without the consent of the man. Until 1977, the Civil Code stipulated that a woman needed the permission of her husband for her own professional activity. Even if he allowed it, he managed her wages. In divorce law. The guilt principle applied so that housewives who were "guilty" divorced often stood without any financial support. Rape in marriage was still called "marital obligation", abortion was forbidden, and child care was predominantly the responsibility of women.

The Second Women's Movement in West Germany started with a tomato throw. Helke Sander had in a lecture on September 13, 1968, at the 23rd Delegates Conference of the Socialist German Student Union (SDS), the SDS men accused of not going far enough in their social criticism, because they ignored the discrimination of women. The SDS itself is the reflection of a male-dominated social structure. Since the comrades were unwilling to discuss this speech and move on to the agenda, Sigrid Rüger threw tomatoes in the direction of the boardroom table and met Hans-Jürgen Krahl. That same day, women in the various national associations of the SDS founded "women's councils". Soon after, women's groups split from the SDS, and an autonomous women's movement emerged with new forms of organization such as women's centres. This started a storm on the manifold forms of institutionalized inequality: "division of labour, role attribution, representation patterns, laws, theory and interpretation monopolies, sexual politics and heterosexism. These dimensions of inequality were thematically addressed in the women's movement - autonomously or institutionally; provocative or mediating; radical or moderate.

 "For the equal rights of women, new political models had to be" invented "first. The novelty of the second women's movement was the extent^. One slogan was " The personal is political " (Helke Sander).

Prevention, abortion, sexuality, violence, abuse

In 1971, in protest against the prohibition of abortion in Section 218, a movement was formed that went far beyond the feminist discussion groups: we have aborted! , Action 218, which, however, remained without structures and fixed location; Only the women's centres, which were founded in 1973 in many cities of the Federal Republic of Germany, were the first to introduce the Women's Center West Berlin in 1973.

There, self-determination about female sexuality was a central topic: counselling on abortion, driving the Netherlands (to abortion clinics), campaigns for the gentle extraction method and the deletion of § 218 bound the forces at the beginning. The group "Bread and Roses" around Helke Sander wrote in 1973 the Women's Handbook No.1 on the side effects of birth control pills. In protest against the usual practice of gynaecologists (then only men), women now explored their bodies themselves with speculum and mirror (see: Vaginal self-examination), formed self-help groups Inspired by the work of the Boston group Our Bodies Ourselves. They published this experience in the book Hexengeflüster and founded the Feminist Women's Health Center FFGZ. In addition to the problems with contraception, women in the women's centres discussed their sexual experiences and the essay 'myth of the vaginal orgasm' of the radical feminist Anne Koedt, the women translated from the Women's Center West Berlin and published.

The problem areas rape, domestic violence, sexual abuse, discovered the women's centres in the literal sense: Private they discussed publicly, showed their bruises, took to the victims, named the perpetrators. Attorney Alexandra Goy introduced the co-plaintiff case for battered and raped women who - although "only" witnesses in court - could now interrogate the perpetrator through their lawyer. Activists of the women's centres created protective devices such as emergency call, women's shelters and self-defence for women.

Structures

The orthodox and dogmatic left saw the woman question as a "secondary contradiction ":

"First, the main contradiction - that between wage labour and capital - must be resolved, then the suppression of women would be abolished. Since women's emancipation would later be self- evident, it would not be worthwhile founding women's groups unless it was called a "water heater," as women's education was then called, "to recruit them for the party."- Cristina PERINCIOLI: Berlin becomes feminist. The best that remained of the '68 movement. (2015)

A comrade from a K party oppressed an imminent abortion:

"The women I asked for advice dismissed it as a trifle, but for me, it was a pretty big problem. I could not tell the men I worked with. I realized then, humanly, you cannot do anything with them. Such problems were simply not an issue because there was a strict separation between privacy and political work, and I had to solve this problem in my private sphere. "

- Anonymous Author COLLECTIVE: We Warn the Strongest of the Party - Testimonies from the World of K Groups (1977) 

"These hierarchical and dogmatic structures of the left absorbed and stifled the rebellious potential. [...] The women's movement and citizens' initiatives had to start all over again: in their own interests. [...] The women's movement in the Women's Centers was an enlightenment that, through the means of self-exposure (self-admonition, abortion on television, publicizing sexual abuse), unearthed untenable conditions and broke taboos. "

- Cristina Perincioli (2015)

All these discoveries were only possible because these women's centres were fundamentally different from all the political groups of the 1970s, such as the Socialist Women's League, where all new women had to undergo a one-year training in Marxist texts before they could address self-selected topics.

Theories

In the 1970s, feminists began to theoretically deal with social inequality and the term 'work'. The founders of the women's centres came from the socialist left and read at the beginning of Friedrich Engels The origin of the family, private property and the state and August Bebel's wife and socialism, but criticized them.  Encouraged by Congress pay for housework in Italy in 1971 and the book “The power of women and the overthrow of the society (1973 in German) of the Italian Mariarosa Dalla Costa and the American Selma James began in West Germany a controversial feminist discussion about the nature of housework and its function for reproduction. The women's research that arose at that time was about "making visible the hitherto invisible private work of women". Awareness-raising were the texts of American feminists, notably Kate Millett's Sexus and Domination, and Shulamith Firestone 's Women's Liberation and Sexual Revolution, which analyzed the power gap between the sexes.

Female authors of the First Women's Movement in the German-speaking world first had to be rediscovered by the New Women's Movement, among others Anita Augspurg and Lida Gustava Heymann. Early writings with great influence were also Mathilde Vaerting: Frauenstaat and Männerstaat (1921) and Bertha Eckstein-Diener: Mothers and Amazons (1932). Both texts opened the view to allegedly historical matriarchal societies, which showed that patriarchy and female secondary status are not natural and universal. Both books were from the Women's Center West Berlinas pirated in circulation. They provided arguments, inter alia, against Simone de Beauvoir's assertion: "This world has always belonged to men ...".  Books by contemporary authors to the early history that were received were the beginning was the woman (1977) by Elizabeth Gould Davis and Les femmes’ avant le patriarcat (1976) by Francoise d'Eaubonne. Famous feminist authors like Marielouise Janssen-Jurreit and Ute Gerhard warned against matriarchy escapism, according to Cäcilia Rentmeisterto give time without further historical research or to consider such as contemporary matrilineal societies.

Later, the fundamental feminist currents in West Germany emerged, such as socialist feminism, equality feminism, difference feminism, and separatist lesbian feminism.  The European emancipatory thinking, but also impulses from other Western European countries, especially France, from the USA and the so-called Third World influenced these trends.

Third Wave

While Germany has spoken of the end of the second feminism since 1989, local and global new feminist initiatives have sprung up, referred to as the Third Wave of Feminism. Their starting point was the World Conference on Women held by the United Nations since 1975, which provided a platform for international networking for Third World feminists. Among the feminist thinkers involved in the issues of transnational politics are the philosophers Martha C. Nussbaum and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Several authors also are eco-feminism as a third wave of feminism considered.

In the 1990s, the Riot Grrrl movement emerged from a punk context in the US. Elements of the Riot Grrrl movement were also taken up in Germany and turned into the third wave of feminism. Influential authors and activists are Jennifer Baumgardner, Kathleen Hanna and Amy Richards. The young feminists of the third wave work primarily with the Internet and are goal-oriented in projects and networks with a feminist orientation. In 1992 founded in the US Third Wave Foundation. In the German-speaking Internet, projects emerged as girls team andMissy Magazine, a movement that is called network feminism.

Other groups have been articulating themselves since the middle of 2000 indirect actions with artistic and parodistic means. These include the Slutwalks, One Billion Rising and Femen. According to Sabine Hark, this shows "a decided 'no' [...] to the sexism of any kind" and a connection to the forms of protest of feminism in the 1970s.

Key works of the Second Wave

The other sex

Long before the dawn of the New Women's Movement, Simone de Beauvoir had extensively analyzed the female situation in 1949 in her highly acclaimed work Le Deuxième Sexe (literally: the second sex, 1951 under the German title The Other Sex ). De Beauvoir's initial questions are: What is a woman? Why is the woman the other? The philosophical background of their investigation is existentialism; it fills the gap left by the socialist approach to understanding the situation of women. The diversity of the sexes, which at the same time serves as justification for the oppression of women, is, according to de Beauvoir, not natural but cultural. The construction of women as the opposite sex can only be explained by the prevailing morals, norms and customs of a culture. In her book, Beauvoir calls on women not to be content with their status as a supplement to the man and to claim their equality in society in every respect. She campaigned for a demystification of motherhood and the right to abortion. The other sex is considered the standard work and starting point of the feminist philosophy.

The femininity mania

A book by the US American Betty Friedan marked the international new beginning of the second women's movements: In 1963, The Feminine Mystique appeared in New York (German: Der Weiblichkeitswahn, 1984). In it she designed a critical analysis of American society. She showed that advertising, mass media, and other ideology-making institutions created the notion of a fulfilling existence as a housewife and mother, and testified in numerous interviews how little that ideology matched the actual experience of women. She saw in the reduction of women to their role as housewife and mother the cause of the dissatisfaction and frugality of many middle-class women. Friedan instead advocated that a woman could only realize herself if she also considered her own needs. She saw the key to self-liberation in women's employment, but this does not exclude marriage and motherhood.

"Like a man, a woman's only path to creative work is through her."

- Betty Friedan

Sex and domination

Kate Millett impressed with her work sexual politics (1969, dt. Sexual Politics, 1970) critical discourse of radical feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. For the first time, the relationship between man and woman is understood as a relationship of domination and analyzed under this perspective. Kate Millett looks at patriarchy as the fundamental situation of exploitation and oppression, since it appears as a constant in almost all social formations, even in socialist ones. It is therefore above the class contradiction. Although Millett also described herself as a socialist, she demanded to combat the patriarchy immediately and immediately, without waiting for a socialist revolution that is not on the agenda. In this fight, men and women are irreconcilably opposed. In other parts of her book, she analyzes the anthropological and religious myths that justify the oppression of women. She also criticizes writers like D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer which she accuses of contributing to the humiliation and subjugation of women with her patriarchal eroticism. She addressed another important issue of feminism in the 1970s, namely, its position on sexuality and pornography.

Currents within feminism

Feminism is used in international research as an analytical term for political theories that focus on the abolition of gender hierarchies or gender differences. There is no single feminist theory, but many different approaches and currents. The undisputed core question of all feminist currents is the inequality in the fields of political, economic and intellectual participation as well as the criticism of violence. To lead a self-determined life without violence, consider the theoreticians of feminism from Mary Wollstonecraft to Martha Nussbaum as a condition of the possibility of freedom and equality for women.

The philosopher Herta Nagl-Docekal summarizes the development of European, feminist thought in three stages: the beginning was the emancipation of women, based on the equality of the sexes; The second stage was followed by the perception of the otherness of the feminine in a positive sense, which is at least equal to the masculine if not superior (difference thinking); Subsequently, the goal would be to change society from the point of view of gender equality.

Radical feminism

The European feminist movement was preceded by the American. One of the first organizations in which women and men united in the tradition of reform politics of the first women's movement was the National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in 1966 by Betty Friedan, among others.In contrast, in the 1960s, a radical feminism (radical feminism ), whose representatives from the student New Left and the civil rights movement ( Civil Rights Movement) came. Despite the prevailing equality rhetoric, these movements were as discriminated against as they were in the rest of society and began to form autonomous women's groups in the major cities, including the New York Radical Women, the Women's Liberation group at Berkeley and the Bread and Roses group in Boston, that understood itself as anti-capitalist and anti-racist . The New York Radical Women developed the analytical method of consciousness-raising with which women explored the political aspects of their personal lives. A slogan of the movement was Sisterhood is powerful. One of the main initiators and theoreticians of radical feminism was Shulamith Firestone. She postulated that at the end of the feminist revolution "not simply the elimination of male privileges, but the gender differences" must be. Other influential theoreticians of radical feminism are Catharine MacKinnon and Mary Daly.

Equality feminism

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, 1930

Equality and difference are central categories in feminist discourse. Equality feminist theories are primarily critical of domination. They analyze the social reality of the sexes and examine the social construction of equality and inequality. Inequality feminism (also Egalitarian feminism or social feminism), the representatives of a fundamental equality of the sexes and justify the differences existing between the sexes mainly with social power structures and socialization of the people. This idea was first introduced by Simone de Beauvoir in The Other Gender (1949), according to which the woman is regarded as the "other" and social construct of the men.

"You will not be born a woman, you will become one."- Simone de Beauvoir

According to this theory, there is no "typically male" and "typically female", but only gender-specific socialization and division of responsibilities based behavioural differences between the sexes. The goal of this feminist emancipation struggle is to eliminate all gender-specific social injustices and differences so as to enable people to live according to their individual abilities and preferences, rather than according to socially prescribed gender roles. Known representatives of equality feminism include Elisabeth Badinter and Alice Schwarzer in German-speaking countries.

This idea was radicalized by part of the feminists grouped around the French journal Nouvelles Questions Féministes (NQF). Whereas for Beauvoir anatomy was ultimately considered a given and part of the situation, they interpreted the biological sex itself as a construct with the purpose of marking the balance of power between men and women.

Difference feminism

Indifference feminism or cultural feminism, gender diversity is the dominant category. The spectrum ranges from those who assume a fundamental essential gender difference, which is usually derived from the fact of the biological difference (sex) or the difference that has become due to culture and social processes, to positions that raise the question of the essential Regarding the conditionality of the sexes as irrelevant and make the factual difference that shows up in everyday life, the starting point for theories and political action.

Early theorists of differential feminism (c. 1900), such as Jane Addams and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, argued that the virtues of women are needed in politics and in resolving conflicts in society. For example, the assumption that "women are more compassionate and gentler than men" leads to the conclusion that there would be fewer wars in the world domination of the more pacifist women and that women would provide better parenting. A classic representative of feminist pacifism was Bertha von Suttner.

Among the most important feminist difference thinkers of the present are the French psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Luce Irigaray, whose starting point is the theories of Freud and Lacan, and the writer Hélène Cixous. Her goal is to make visible the special that distinguishes the woman from the man. They call for a revolution in the symbolic order of patriarchy that re-evaluates gender differences. A new symbolic order defined by the mother and other women is also postulated by the Italian philosophers around Luisa Murarowho have joined the group Diotima. In Germany, for example, this approach is represented by Antje Schrupp.

The historian Kristina Schulz summarizes the differences between equality feminism (social feminism) and difference feminism (cultural feminism) in the second women's movement in France and Germany as follows: "Pleaded ... on the side of cultural feminism for a society that recognized the" other ", social feminism aimed at overcoming the "other". If representatives of cultural feminism endeavoured to abolish gender hierarchies, social feminists advocated for the overcoming of gender differences. "

In the recent feminist theory debate, v. a. in France, the supposed pair of opposites "equality and difference feminism" as an invention or construction is discussed, for. By Françoise Collin and Geneviève Fraisse. The strong polarization leads them back to the affiliation of the representatives to certain disciplines. Thus egalitarian feminists lack a theory of the subject, differential feminists a social theory .

Gynocentric feminism

The term was coined by the American political scientist Iris Marion Young (Humanism, Gynocentrism and Feminist Politics, 1985). In the history of feminism, Young distinguishes feminist feminism, which embraces all liberal, socialist, and radical currents, and was widespread in the nineteenth century, as in the Second Wave of feminism in the nineteen-seventies, with gynocentric feminism. This criticizes the lack of appreciation of the female subjectivity in devaluation of female bodies, morality and language expressions and in the universal of supposedly gender-neutral IndividualitätsmodellsHumanism is enshrined. Against the background of this criticism, gynocentric feminism wanted to establish a philosophy of female experience. According to Young, for example, the American psychologist Carol Gilligan developed a gynocentric approach (In a Different Voice, German: Die Andere Stimme, 1982), according to which the woman embodies a different morality than the man because of the experience of being a mother. From this basic assumption, she developed her "Philosophy of Caring": she juxtaposes the male ethics of justice with the feminine ethics of caring. Gilligan broke through the hitherto dominant feminist discourse tradition, according to the determination of caring as a medium of women's oppression was.

Elisabeth Badinter criticized this approach as a new biologism and described it as a naturalistic feminism. Gilligan's differentiated views include French psychoanalyst Antoinette Fouque, who founded the women's group Psychanalyse & Politique in the 1970s and had made difference theory fruitful for classical psychoanalysis (Il ya Deux sexe, 1995). Women are morally superior to men because of their ability to conceive.

Spiritual feminism

Starhawk 2007

In the 1970's, numerous spiritual, esoteric or neo- naganist tendencies, influenced by feminism and sometimes even matriarchal ideas, arose, worshipping the “Great Goddess " in her three forms as a maiden, mother and wise old woman. Some authors interpret this as a gynocentric approach. The historical witch hunt is interpreted from the point of view that it applied to all women. The witch hunt has destroyed women's gynaecology. Depending on the current, witches are also the last followers of a religion of the Great GoddessRoger that. The simultaneous self-identification as a witch or magician is related to the attempt to reappropriate this knowledge. Influential representatives of spiritual feminism are the US American Starhawk ( The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess, 1979) and in Germany Luisa Francia and Ute Schiran. Starhawk's ideas influenced the ritual practice of spiritual feminism in Germany.

By Starhawk and other areas categorized Reclaiming tradition, one created in California 1970 network in which women and men are working to combine spirituality with political responsibility, is American Goddess Movement (German: Goddess movement ) and in Wiccatum justified and integrates eco-feminist ideas.

Ecofeminism

In the course of the international environmental, peace and women's movements from the mid-1970s, the ecofeminism emerged. He argues that there are connections between the oppression of women in patriarchy and the exploitation of nature. Well-known theoreticians include Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva.

Psychoanalytically oriented feminism

In one of the classics of feminist literature, 1969 published Sexual Politics, Kate Millett examines and criticizes, among other things, Sigmund Freud's theories on the nature of women. It formulates the "theory of sexual politics" there, which contrasts the common understanding of politics with a policy of the first person.

One author who uses psychoanalytic categories to search for the causes of the oppression of the female sex is Juliet Mitchell. She developed a "feminist interpretation" of the works of Sigmund Freud and interprets psychoanalysis as a theoretical explanation "of the material reality of ideas in the historical life context of man" and thus sees Freudian theory as the psychological foundation of feminism.

Socialist feminism

Clara Zetkin (left) and Rosa Luxemburg (right), 1910

Socialist feminism starts from a fundamental equality of the sexes and is sceptical of theses of a natural gender difference. He sees women's oppression caused by two cooperative structures: capitalism and patriarchy. In the second women's movement, he organized himself hierarchically and usually in line with a party, according to the Democratic Women's Initiative. He is above all committed to women's rights as a whole and regards them as a condition or element for overcoming the capitalist system. He also raises the question of unpaid home and reproduction work and their function for the system of capitalist production. Socialist or Marxist feminism is often associated with the labour movement.

In theory formation, socialist feminism resorts to Marxist analysis, but below the class contradictions, the gender difference is accepted as the “main contradiction " and included in a "materialistic interpretation of history." The resulting demand for abolishing the biological differences of the sexes is called "cybernetic feminism" (also called "cybernetic communism"). Shulamith Firestone and Marge Piercy demanded that genetic engineering should take over the reproductive process, freeing women from the biological need for childbirth.

Anarchist feminism

Louise Michel

The influences between feminist positions and the history of anarchism have so far been little researched and confined to a few outstanding individuals. For example, for the beginnings of anarchism in the mid to late 19th century, Virginie Barbet and André Léo combine anarchist and feminist positions. Louise Michel (1830-1905) was best known for her work during the Paris Commune. In the United States, feminist Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) represented anarchist positions within the First International. An outstanding figure of American anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940). It stands for a systematic connection between feminism and anarchism, which also distinguished her private life. Personal and political freedom for women belonged to her - a central idea of feminism in the second half of the 20th century. In 1906 she wrote in the anarchist journal Mother Earth: "Emancipation should enable the woman to be human in the truest sense of the word." Emma Goldmann focused on the "natural qualities of women", on "boundless love" and motherly feelings. At the same time she fought for the revolution as Clara Zetkin, but was one of the first to criticize the Russian Revolution; she branded slavery and campaigned for freedom. While Goldman at least temporarily advocated violence as a political tool, Clara Gertrud Wichmann (1885-1922) introduced the principle of non-violence into political discourse in Europe. In the Spanish Civil War in 1936 the feminist anarchist women's organization Mujeres Libres was founded. The Anarcha-feminism is an embossed in the 1970s flow of radical feminism, which expands it by elements of anarchist theory and practice.

Individual feminism

In the US, there is a tradition of unrestricted liberalism, which represents bourgeois freedom as the fundamental value. Individual feminism asserts this for women. It is divided into the currents of classical liberal or libertarian feminism, which seeks to strengthen women's individual rights, and egalitarian liberal feminism, which seeks to emancipate women as individuals and emphasize personal autonomy.

Theoretical connections exist with anarchism or anarcho-feminism. One of the most famous representatives is Wendy McElroy.

Deconstructivist feminism/post-feminism

Judith Butler 2007

Judith Butler, author of The Discomfort of the Sexes, and other feminist deconstructionist and post-feminist commentators, build on Beauvoir's egalitarian feminism and go one step further: both the biological sex and the gender are social constructs Therefore, gender must be rejected as a classification unit.

At the centre of this theory is the difference between people, that is, assumed similarities and gender identities are "dissolved, deconstructed" - the differences of the people of one sex are stronger than the differences between the sexes. Instead, it is assumed that there are as many identities as there are people.

Feminist scientific disciplines

Since the end of the twentieth century, feminist sections have been developed in many scientific disciplines in order to explore the missing women or gender perspectives within the disciplines:

·         Feminist Ethnology

·         Feminist History

·         Feminist communication and media studies

·         Feminist criminology

·         Feminist art history

·         Feminist art science

·         Feminist Linguistics

·         Feminist literature

·         Feminist musicology

·         Feminist economy

·         Feminist education

·         Feminist philosophy

·         Feminist psychology

·         Feminist psychotherapy

·         Feminist jurisprudence

·         Feminist sociology

·         Feminist Theater Studies

·         Feminist theology

Term state feminism

"State feminism" is not a feminist current. In political science, this term refers to the attempts of states to enforce formal equality of women and men with reforms from above, as for example in Turkey in the course of the Kemalist modernization project 1923,  in the GDR or in Tunisia since the 1950s. 

On the other hand, "state feminism" refers to the institutionalization of emancipation aspirations of women in the modern state, as well as a specific strategy for women's politics, which is described as the march through the institutions.  Prototypical for the Scandinavian countries and Australia. The so-called state feminism in Finland, for example, where among other things the intra-party promotion of women has a long tradition, effectively facilitated the political participation of women. Birgit Sauer comes in her study Engendering Democracy. State feminism in the age of restructuring of statehood (2006) concludes that "[...] women have democratized Western liberal democracies relatively successfully from a women's perspective over the past thirty years." This is evidenced by the not only significant increase in the proportion of women in political decision-making bodies, but also the "content-substantial representation could be decisively influenced in the sense of a woman-friendly output". This development was largely due to the establishment of state institutions such as women's ministries, women's offices or equal opportunities officers, who act as mediators between women's groups and women's movements on the one hand, and politics and administration on the other hand.

"The term 'state feminism' refers precisely to this phenomenon [...], namely the emergence of state institutions for the equality of women and the promotion of women."

Effect

Index for Gender Inequality 2008

Feminism has helped improve women's equality with men in Europe and the United States. Since the emergence of the first feminist ideas almost two centuries ago and the resulting women's movement, the situation of women has changed radically. In particular, the introduction of women's suffrage in most European countries at the beginning of the twentieth century marked a turning point that significantly expanded women's participation in women's political and social lives. With the departure of rigid family structures, especially in the second half of the 20th century, the mission statements and lifestyles of many young women changed with traditional masculinity and outdated femininity images did not match anymore. The legal recognition and public scandalisation of gender-based violence against women promoted broad, gender-sensitive awareness of both personal attacks on women and subtle societal violence. At an international level, and based on the United Nations World Conference on Women held since 1975, women increasingly in the Third World have also developed platforms and initiatives that are increasingly interlinked internationally, leading to worldwide attention to the issue of Women's Human Rights excited.

Despite the improvement in many objective indicators of women's quality of life since the 1970s, representative surveys in the US and the EU show a decline in the subjective satisfaction of women compared to men. This paradox has not yet found a satisfactory explanation despite numerous approaches. Thus, feminism could have promoted expectations that have not (yet) been fulfilled. Furthermore, higher labour market participation could also have had a negative impact, for example, the difficulty of reconciling work and family life, although overall working hours for women and men have been decreasing since 1965. Also, the general increase in sexual and family self-determination in men may have led to a greater increase in satisfaction than in women.

With the advent of the new millennium, the public discussion increasingly raised the question of whether feminism was obsolete. Today's women are able "to assert themselves with energy, discipline, self-confidence and courage in a society like ours." As early as the 1990s, many young women tended to regard feminism as boring and outdated. At the same time, however, new public, media-based debates on feminism, gender and sexuality have emerged, especially in the Nordic countries. The protest was directed primarily against the commercialized, stereotypical image of the idealized female body, mainly in the fashion world, against continued homophobia in society, and against unequal educational opportunities. In Germany, a young generation of journalists formulates the claim to a "new" feminism that clearly sets itself apart from traditional political feminism.

The extent to which these currents are indeed the beginning of a completely new feminist self-image, or whether feminism of the last forty years only continues in a transformed form, is still widely disagreed in the current scientific debate.

On the relevance of feminism Nancy Fraser formulated:

"It does not take time to speak of postfeminism until we can legitimately speak of postpatriarchy."

Controversy

Feminism has been criticized from many angles since its inception. Since the term feminism summarizes various - sometimes contradictory - currents and over the years many writings have been published and many prominent representatives of feminism have emerged, one can usually only speak of criticisms of partial aspects of feminism.

Of women's rights activists from Asia, Africa, South America and the Arab region is the US and European feminist organizations repeatedly Eurocentrism accused: the specific needs of women from different cultural regions, particularly from developing countries, will no consideration, the Euro-centric discourse monopolizing the "women's rights question" for the specific needs of women from the European-US-American cultural area.

The negative attitude towards prostitution and pornography, which is shared by many feminists, including Alice Schwarzer, is criticized in part within the movement. In the USA, for example, the so-called sex-positive feminism has formed, which is more open to sexuality and pornography, and regards it as an enrichment for women and men.