Section Eleven: Social Protest and the Feminist Movement

Section Eleven: Social Protest And The Feminist Movement

Learning Objectives

To recognize the various ways people organize around gender identities and promote changes in gender ideology.
To be aware of the various ways in which women resist domination and inequality at the individual and collective levels.
To understand how race/ethnicity, class, and sexuality interact with gender in social movements and protest.
To understand the history and the demands of the feminist movements.
To recognize the diversity of feminisms and women’s issues.

Section Summary

Contemporary feminist movements are very diverse with varying constituencies, ideas, goals, tactics, and strategies.

Feminism has a long history of attempting to transform gender ideologies.
Women resist forces of domination and inequality through a variety of individual and collective tactics.
Women, and feminists, have often perpetuated various class, racial, and even gender inequalities.
Outside forces such as economics and politics affect feminist activism.
Women may recognize their gendered subordination, but may not necessarily label themselves as feminists.
The focuses of feminists vary by race/ethnicity, class, and other socio-political conditions.
Feminists broadly agree on the ideal of equality, but not necessarily on specific goals or the best means to achieve equality.

Reading 51: Verta Taylor, Nancy Whittier, and Cynthia Fabrizio Pelak, “The Women's Movement: Persistence through Transformation”

The women’s movement has changed forms, but the core concerns with challenging gender hierarchies and norms remain. Broad social changes such as urbanization, industrialization, and changes in demographics alter women’s access to work and education and alter women’s status. These changes made it likely that women will challenge their subordinate position.

Western women’s movements appeared around the same time, with the first wave appearing at the end of the nineteenth through the beginning of the twentieth centuries, and the second wave appearing during the 1960s.
Liberal feminist ideology focuses on gaining equal opportunities for women in the current political and economic structure; this ideology was the focus of the first wave and was a dominant theme during the second wave.
The second wave challenged a broader set of issues. There were various forms of feminist ideology during this period, including radical feminism, which suggests there is a structural basis for women’s oppression that requires a radical reorganization of society. During this period, the line between radical and liberal feminism began to blur, and lesbian feminists and feminists of color challenged feminism to focus on the intersections of oppressions.
Following the waves of women’s activism, periods of doldrums ensued during which feminists were still active, but they were in abeyance. The political climate was less conducive to feminist activism during these times.
The women’s movement has had two primary structures: large, hierarchical and bureaucratic structures that tended to focus on political aspects of the movement; and small, collectively organized structures that focused more on cultural aspects.
Challenges to the gender order include women’s resistance on an individual level and collective challenges at the structural and cultural levels.
Today, feminists continue to be active in a wide variety of movements, including the international women’s movement. The movement has increased dramatically since the 1970s, even though the word “feminism” has been stigmatized.
Countermovements have organized against feminism at every stage of its development, and they continue to oppose feminist gains so feminists must be prepared to continue their activism.

Reading52:Pamela Aronson, “Feminists or “Postfeminists”? Young Women’s Attitudes toward Feminism and Gender Relations”

Contrary to media and other portrayals of young women as uninterested in feminist concerns and unaware of the gains of previous feminists, there is little to support the idea that we live in a “postfeminist” era or that “feminism is dead.” In-depth interviews with a racially and life-experience diverse sample of young women reveal that young women are aware that the feminist (or women’s) movement increased their opportunities and that gender inequality remains. However, young people have varying positions regarding their self-definition as feminists.

Aronson interviewed 42 young women of diverse racial and class backgrounds who had a range of life experiences. Unlike other researchers, Aronson did not assume that the definition of feminism was widely agreed upon and allowed her interview subjects the opportunity to define its meaning in their lives.
The majority of young women expressed a general optimism about the expanded opportunities for women, particularly in education and career choices, and they recognized that older women had struggled to generate these opportunities. The majority were also aware that gendered obstacles persisted.
These young women were very aware of gender discrimination. Nearly all of the young women felt they had experienced minor gender discrimination and only a few felt they had faced blatant discrimination.
Almost one-third of the women were concerned with future workplace discrimination.
Some of the women who had experienced discrimination did not believe that such gendered treatment would impact their lives. Many of the women with this paradoxical approach were reluctant to label their experiences as discrimination because they narrowly defined discrimination in terms of the workplace.
Other women focused on individual solutions to discrimination like facing the perpetrator or their own choices.
Nearly all of the young women were supportive of feminist issues. However,only one-quarter defined themselves as feminists and over half of the women did not want to explicitly define themselves in terms of feminism. Race, class and life paths/life experience in early adulthood were important factors in determining how young women related to feminism.
The women who did not qualify their definition of themselves as feminists were white, college-educated women who came to feminism through women’s studies.
The women who qualified their identification as feminists were women of color or working-class white women. Most had attended college but had no experience with women’s studies. While growing up their families had assumptions of equality.
The young women who did not define themselves as feminists were mostly from privileged backgrounds but had either not attended college or not taken women’s studies courses. These women were supportive of much feminist ideology.
One-third of the young women were “fence-sitters” who refused to position themselves in terms of feminism as an identity. These women came from a variety of backgrounds. These women focused on evaluating the ideologies and stereotypes associated with feminism.
Many of the women who were unsure of their attitudes toward feminism had little time to think about feminism. Most of these women were full-time workers who had not attended college and/or young mothers.
Support of a feminist identity was closely tied with involvement in institutions that support and nurture feminism like women’s studies inside universities which was most available to white women. However, many young women cannot afford the luxury to think about feminism.
Many of the women were aware of the negative stereotypes of feminists.
Although the women were aware of gender discrimination and supported feminist goals, most of these young women stopped short of a collective or activist orientation.

Boxed Insert: Nikki Ayanna Stewart, “Transform the World: What You Can Do With a Degree in Women’s Studies”

Stewart describes the variety of occupations for which women’s studies prepares students and the numerous ways students bring feminism into the real world.

Although people often ask women’s studies majors what they will do with their majors, women’s studies teaches a unique set of skills: empowerment, self-confidence, critical thinking, community building, and the intersectionality of oppression.
There are at least 750 active undergraduate and graduate programs in women’s studies.
Women’s studies education often includes a focus on applied theory and practice, and students are able to ask new important questions in traditional fields and in activism.
Although early women’s studies majors tended to work on gender-specific issues, students today are bringing feminism into a variety of careerswhere they can make large-scale change. Students today are often interested in being public intellectuals and media producers.

Reading 53: Grace Chang, “From the Third World to the “Third World Within:” Asian Women Workers Fighting Globalization”

Chang describes how complex processes of globalization and government policies encourage women to migrate to the United States and Canada as low-paid but often highly skilled workers. Using Filipina nurses as an example, Chang demonstrates how some migrant women have organized against the unfair government policies of their “old” and “new” countries and the global forces that have often trapped them in terrible work conditions.

Globalization has not created new jobs in most Third World countries, but it has instead changed the economies in such a way that many people, especially women, must migrate to the First World to find work.
In order to promote “free trade,” the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have forced neo-liberal policies (like Structural Adjustment Programs) on Third World countries that have hurt working families. As a result many of the Third World women migrate only to become the “Third World within,” people of color living in industrialized countries in poverty and without access to many freedoms. Chang calls this the globalization of poverty: “the creation, perpetuation, and exacerbation of poverty worldwide.”
Thousands of Filipinas who are trained nurses migrate to America where they are excluded from nursing and forced into low-paid care work. These women care for others’ families while economically forced to live apart from their own families.
The Philippine government benefits financially from the exportation of Filipinas through the money sent home and the money paid to emigrate. The United States and Canada benefit because Filipinas provide low-cost care work for middle- and upper-class families.
In Canada Filipina nurses are unable to practice nursing for several years because of restrictive accreditation practices and appalling immigration policies, like the Live-in Caregiver Program that can trap women in abusive work situations. Canada also uses the presence of the Filipina nurses against Canadian citizen nurses in labor negotiations.
In the United States, government immigration policies exclude Filipinas from welfare benefits and worker’s rights making Filipina nurses unable to refuse underpaid service work. However, Filipinas in the United States are in a slightly better position to organize and to escape abusive situations.
Filipina nurses and other mostly immigrant care workers have organized in New York through the Women Workers Project with some success in order to regulate the domestic industry and receive better working conditions. In Canada Filipinas have also organized through the Philippine Women Centre to fight government policies and globalization forces. Chang suggests that these women often have a more sophisticated understanding of the realities of global policies than do educated Western feminists.

Reading 54: Cathy Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics? “

Cohen describes the potential and the limits of queer theorizing and politics for radical social change. While Cohen praises queer politics for making various peoples’ experiences visible, she critiques the movement for ignoring the diversity of people within the category “heterosexual.” Activists and scholars need to focus on the relation of multiple identities to power, not just on dichotomies of particular identities.

The radical potential of queer politics is in its:

ability to create a space in opposition to cultural norms where the marginalized is celebrated;
ability to recognize the fluidity of categories of identity (particularly sexual behavior); and
confrontational challenge to power that is not assimilationist but seeks broad changes in the values, definitions, and structures of society.

The problem with queer theory lies in its:

use of single-identity politics that privilege sexual identity over other categories of oppression;
inability to recognize the intersecting oppressions particularly of people of color; and
monolithic understanding of heterosexuality that fails to understand how some expressions of heterosexuality break sexual norms.

Queer theory has not been able to destabilize heteronormativity because it has focused on the binary of hetero and queer and has failed to grapple with the power differences within and between each of these categories. Some of the people who are heterosexual, like punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens, do challenge heteronormativity.
A leftist framework of politics that focuses on the structural and the cultural oppressions of people based on multiple systems of identity is necessary to recognize the potential of queer politics.
People who have espoused queer politics have often had inherent privileges based on race, class, or gender, and they must grapple with the differences within the queer communities as well as with the possibility of establishing coalitions with heterosexuals.

Boxed Insert:“UN Commission Approves Declaration Reaffirming Goals of 1995 Women’s Conference After U.S.Drops Antiabortion Amendment”

In 2005 the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women proposed a declaration to reaffirm progress toward the platform laid out in the Beijing Declaration. The platform states that abortion should be safe in places where it is legal and that criminal charges should not be brought against women who undergo illegal abortions. The United States sought to add an amendment that would have clarified that the platform does not include a right to abortion or create any new international rights. Most other U.N. member nations rejected even a “watered down” version of the U.S. amendment. According to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., the United States ended its push for the amendment when other countries indicated that the amendment was just redundant considering what was already in the Declaration. Some feminists suggested that the U.S. push for this amendment was an attempt to force American politics into an international consensus.

Boxed Insert:“Fourth World Conference on WomenBeijing Declaration”

Following in the spirit of previous U.N. conferences on the status of women, this declaration was adopted (along witha detailed “Platform for Action” not included here) at the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China. This declaration focused on how to achieve the advancement of women. There are three main goals of the declaration are equality, development, and peace. The declaration focused on women’s rights as “human rights” and the obstacles that poverty and war/conflict presented to women’s lives. Some of the other issues addressed by the declaration include violence against women; sustainable development; men’s involvement in gender equality; and women’s access to economic resources, education, and health care.

Discussion Questions

Reading 51: Verta Taylor, Nancy Whittier, and Cynthia Fabrizio Pelak, “The Women's Movement: Persistence through Transformation”

Describe the three waves of feminism. When did each one occur? What were its primary concerns?
What are the different feminist ideologies? When have these ideologies been prominent?
What is abeyance or the doldrums? What happens to feminism during these periods?
Describe the state of feminism today. Describe the role of intersectionality and the “I am not a feminist but” syndrome.

Reading52: Pamela Aronson, “Feminists or “Postfeminists”? Young Women’s Attitudes toward Feminism and Gender Relations”

What do the media often suggest about feminism today? Is this an accurate representation? Why or why not?
What do the interviews suggest is true regarding young women’s attitudes about feminism? Do the young women appreciate the gains made in the past? Do these young women identify as feminists? Do the young women agree with the goals of feminism? Do these women perceive (or expect future) gender discrimination?
How do life experiences alter how the young women perceive feminism? What experiences are important to those women who identify as feminists? What experiences keep other women from identifying as feminists?
How might a feminist movement successfully engage many of these young women in activism in the future?

Boxed Insert: Nikki Ayanna Stewart,