Feminism

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Margaret Walters

FEMINISM

A Very Short Introduction

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford o x 2 6 d p

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Published in the United States

by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

© Margaret Walters 2005

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as a Very Short Introduction 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available

ISBN 0–19–280510–X 978–0–19–280510–2

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed in Great Britain by

TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall

Contents

List of illustrations ix

Introduction 1

1

The religious roots of feminism 6

2

The beginning of secular feminism 17

3

The 18th century: Amazons of the pen 26

4

The early 19th century: reforming women 41

5

The late 19th century: campaigning women 56

6

Fighting for the vote: suffragists 68

7

Fighting for the vote: suffragettes 75

8

Early 20th-century feminism 86

9

Second-wave feminism: the late 20th century 97

10

Feminists across the world 117

Afterword 137

References 142

Further reading 149

Index 151

This page intentionally left blank

List of illustrations

1

Quaker women preaching

8 Emily Davison throws

in the 17th century

12

herself under the

© 2005 TopFoto.co.uk

King’s horse, 1913

82

© 2005 TopFoto.co.uk

2 Margaret Cavendish,

Duchess of Newcastle 22

9 Poster showing a

© 2005 TopFoto.co.uk

suffragette being

3 Mary Wollstonecraft

37

force-fed, 1910

84

© 2005 TopFoto.co.uk

© 2005 TopFoto.co.uk

4 Florence Nightingale

51

10

Margaret Sanger

92

© Mary Evans Picture Library

© Bettmann/Corbis

5 Song-sheet of ‘ The March

of the Women’, 1911

76

11

Simone de Beauvoir 100

© 2005 TopFoto.co.uk

© Photos12.com/Keystone

Pressedienst

6 The Pankhursts lead

parade, 1911

79

12

Betty Friedan

103

© Hulton-Deutsch

© J. P. Laffont/Sygma/Corbis

Collection/Corbis

7 Emmeline Pankhurst

13

Demonstration against

arrested outside

the Miss America beauty

Buckingham Palace,

pageant, Atlantic City,

1914

81

1969

109

© J. P. Laffont/Sygma/Corbis

© 2005 TopFoto.co.uk

14

Women’s Liberation

17

South African women

march through

protest against the

London, 1971

111

death sentence of

© Bettmann/Corbis

Amina Lawal, 2003

126

© Juda Ngwenya/Reuters

15

Women’s Liberation

18

Sundanese Muslim girl

rally, New York, 1970 113

with inked finger,

© Ellen Shumsky/The Image

proof of having voted 128

Works/2005 TopFoto.co.uk

© Chris Stowers/Panos Pictures

19

Protest by a women’s

16

Anti-female circumcision

rights group, Jakarta,

poster, Sudan

124

2000

132

© Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures

© Darren Whiteside/Reuters

The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list. If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity.

Introduction

‘I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is’, the writer Rebecca West remarked, sardonically, in 1913. ‘I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.’ The word was a comparatively new one when she wrote; it had only appeared in English – from the French – in the 1890s. Interestingly, the earliest examples of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary carried negative meanings. In 1895 the
Athenaeum
sneeringly referred to a piece about a woman whose ‘coquetting with the doctrines of feminism’ are traced with real humour. ‘In Germany feminism is openly socialistic’, the
Daily Chronicle
shuddered in 1908, and went on to dismiss out of hand ‘suffragists, suffragettes and all the other phases in the crescendo of feminism’.