Senior Assistant Professor Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith Feminism Dr. Nisha Singh Senior Assistant Professor Dept. of English Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith

Feminisms and Gender Studies

Feminist Movement and Feminisms Feminism is a partisan and power movement as well as a literary methodology The different phrases of the feminist movement and the feminist literary development are not identical but they are interrelated.

First-wave of feminist movement (1890’s to 1960) Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is regarded as the original and the basis work of feminist movement

First-wave of feminist movement The emphasis of the first phrase of the movement is on suffrage and procurement of rights that was earmarked for men, such as the right to work and most prominently, the right to vote, and property rights  first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to gender equality (e.g., voting rights and property rights), 1932 Soviet poster for International Women’s Day

First phrase of literary Development Woman: Created or Constructed? Elaine Showalter has acknowledged three phases of modern women’s literary development: The Feminine phase (1840-80), during which women writers imitated the dominant male traditions; The Feminist phase (1880 – 1920) in which radical and often separatist positions are maintained and when women advocated for their rights; Female Phase (1920 onwards) particularly female writing and experience. Elaine Showalter

Second-wave Feminist Movement (1960s-1990s) Second-wave feminism, a period of feminist activity and thought that began in the United States in the early 1960s, lasted roughly two decades. It quickly spread across the Western world, with an aim to increase equality for women by gaining more than just enfranchisement. Second-wave feminism broadened the debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities.  Second-wave feminism also drew attention to the issues of domestic violence and marital rape, engendered rape-crisis centers and women's shelters, and brought about changes in custody laws and divorce law. Feminist-owned bookstores, credit unions, and restaurants were among the key meeting spaces and economic engines of the movement.

Carol Hanisch’s essay “The Personal is Political” is the representation of second-wave feminism. “Women’s Liberation” is the slogan of the second-wave movement

Third-wave feminist Movement (1990s onwards ) The third wave is traced to the emergence of the Riot grrrl feminist punk subculture in Olympia, Washington, in the early 1990s, and to Anita Hill's televised testimony in 1991—to an all-male, The term third wave is credited to Rebecca Walker, who responded to Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court with an article in Ms. magazine, "Becoming the Third Wave" (1992 Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second-wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which (according to them) over-emphasized the experiences of upper middle class white women.

Third-wave feminist Movement (1990s onwards ) A post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality is central to much of the third-wave's ideology. Third-wave feminists often focus on "micropolitics," and challenged the second-wave's paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for females.

Showalter’s four models of difference: biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural Today it seems that two general tendencies, one emphasizing Showalter’s biological, linguistic, and psychoanalytic models, and the other emphasizing cultural model, account for most feminist theories.

Certain theories may be said to have an essentialist argument for inherent feminine traits that have been undervalued, misunderstood, or exploited by a patriarchal culture because the genders are quite different.

These theories focus on sexual difference and sexual politics and are often aimed at defining or establishing a feminist literature (and culture, history and so forth) from a less patriarchal slant.

Opposed to this notion is constructivist feminism, which asks women (and men) to consider what it means to be a woman, to consider that inherently female traits are in fact culturally and socially constructed.

Feminism and Psychoanalysis The famous type of monster-madwoman figure is the madwoman in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre. Many essentialist feminists make the argument that female writers often identify themselves with the literary characters they detest through such types as the monster-madwoman figure counterposed against and angel/heroine figure.

Jacques Lacan comes to the notion of the Imaginary, a pre- Oedipal stage in which the child has not yet differentiated her- or himself from the mother and as a consequence has not learned language, which is the Symbolic Order to be taught to be the father. Like Freud, Jacques Lacan describes the unconscious as structured like a language; like language its power often arises from the sense of openness and play of meaning.

Luce Irigaray etymologically links the word “matter” to “maternity” and “matrix,” the latter being the space for male philosophizing and thinking. Luce Irigaray. No matter how theoretical and abstract French feminists’ prose becomes, French feminist do not stay far from the body.

Julia Kristeva, in her Desire in Language, presents a mother-centered realm of the semiotic as oppose to the symbolic. She argues that the semiotic realm of the mother is present in symbolic discourse as absence or contradiction. Julia Kristeva’s latter work moves toward a more direct embrace of motherhood as the model for psychic female health.

Chakravorty Gayatri Spivak Related to the rise of feminisms among women of color is the area of postcolonial studies. Chakravorty Gayatri Spivak examines the effects of political independence upon subaltern , or subproletarian women, in Third World countries. Chakravorty Gayatri Spivak

The status of women is still very low in some countries in the world Although the feminist movement is already over 100 years old, there are still a lot to be done. The status of women is still very low in some countries in the world Even in the West, gender equality is still only apparent

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