Feminism

Feminism is a school of thought that has its origins in the 1800s with the suffragists who fought for women's right to vote. Currently, feminism includes many diverse perspectives, in a range that includes Marxist, race-based, cultural, and post structural feminism. Despite these variations, the central focus of feminism is the study of women's experiences and the elimination of bias and discrimination against women. A common belief that guides feminism is that gender bias exists systemically and is manifest in the major institutions in society, such as schools, the media, business, and government. Feminism examines the intersection of gender, race, class, and sexuality in the context of power (Rosen, 89).

The term feminism made its debut during the later years of the suffrage movement. It represented the break between the campaign for suffrage and the contemporary feminist movement. While some women activists saw the vote as the pinnacle of their efforts, other women saw the achievement of suffrage as a springboard to greater equality and independence from men. Though the years immediately after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment saw a great deal of feminist-organized activism, the various women's groups that had united to win the vote splintered according to their arguments for gender equality or embracing sexual difference.

Like feminist theory anchored in academe, feminism consistently involves “the challenge of social change” (Phelan 1994:31). As such, feminism has spawned social movements spanning the globe from the mid-nineteenth century onward. In the United States, for instance, a women's movement began in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. That first wave of North American feminism ended with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which formalized women's right to vote (Echols, 52). With the publication of Beauvoir's The Second Sex, in 1949, and Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique, in 1963, the ...