Women in Movement (Routledge Revivals)

Feminism and Social Action

Sheila Rowbotham

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415821605
• eBook ISBN: 9781136755835
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1992, this book is an historical introduction to a wide range of women's movements from the late eighteenth-century to the date of its publication. It describes economic, social and political ideas which have inspired women to organize, not only in Europe and North America, but also in the Third World.

Sheila Rowbotham outlines a long history of women's challenges to the gender bias in political and economical concepts. She shows women laying claim to rights and citizenship, while contesting male definitions of their scope, and seeking to enlarge the meaning of economy through action around consumption and production, environmental protests and welfare projects.

1

WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?

Women receive less than one-tenth of the world income, but do two-thirds of the world’s work. Although earning less than men, they work longer hours—2 to 5 hours more in developed countries, 5 to 6 hours more in Latin America and the Caribbean, and as much as 12 to 13 hours more in Africa and Asia. When housework and child care are taken into account, women on average have a 60 to 70 hour week.

Facts such as these suggest a common sense answer to the question what do women want? They also suggest why, throughout the world today, there are women’s movements and organizations that are struggling for better conditions. However, human beings wants and needs are never that simple and women are as capable as men of having contradictory and different desires. Consequently there are many kinds of women’s movements, some aiming to conserve, rather than change women’s position. Moreover, within the movements for change there are many conflicting emphases and perspectives.

From the late 1960s there has been a resurgence of feminism in many countries, making this the movement that most people associate with the effort to change women’s lives. But even if we narrow our question to what is feminism, the replies will vary considerably. “Feminism” itself is a word that has been given a range of shifting meanings, even in the modern women’s movement. There is nothing unique in this of course; every set of political concepts possesses contrary interpretations, and as soon as these are applied to reality they acquire yet more nuances. By looking at ideas historically, it is possible to reveal implicit assumptions that accumulate around a political term, but then become overlaid and forgotten in every day usage.

When women’s groups formed in the late 1960’s, feminism was sometimes regarded with suspicion: the term “women’s liberation” was used. It was thought that feminism was too limited because it had been only about women’s civil and political rights. One early anthology, for example, had the title From Feminism to Liberation.¹ In contrast, when Amanda Sebestyen edited a book in 1988 on the history of the recent movement in Britain, she called it From Women’s Liberation to Feminism, saying that,

Liberation was once something for which a thousand different schools of thought contended. Women’s liberation saw itself as one of those schools.²

The use of the term “feminism” served to highlight women’s specific oppression in relation to men, preventing this from being submerged, amid all the other unequal relationships existing in society. Thus feminism is sometimes confined to women’s struggles against oppressive gender relationships. In practice, however, women’s actions, both now and in the past, often have been against interconnecting relations of inequality and have involved many aspects of resistance around daily life and culture that are not simply about gender.

Some feminists have stretched the meaning of the word and given it a wide span. Judith Astellara, writing on the modern Spanish move-ment, presented this definition of feminism in 1984:

Feminism is a proposal for social transformation as well as a movement that strives to end the oppression of women. In this double aspect, femi-nism has always existed as part of the historical societies in which it has developed: it has been influenced by the specific social, economic and political traits of its society. As a movement, feminism has a long history of rebellion, more or less organised but always expressing opposition to the social institutions that made possible the inferiority of women. This opposition has not been isolated from other forms of social struggle and this relationship has influenced both the ideology and the organisation of the movement.³

Not all women would accept this view. Sometimes feminism is seen as quite separate from any kind of politics in which men are involved. Also it is often regarded as a movement for limited reforms not for social transformation. It has also been characterized as being restricted to a particular group, for example, as expressing the interests of middle class and white women in Western capitalism.

It is not then self-evident what people mean when they speak of “feminism” and within feminist politics there are several differing political perspectives. Very broadly, “radical feminists” emphasize the primacy of women’s subordination to men, which they regard as the key to changing society as a whole. “Liberal feminists” argue that women should have equal opportunities within society to jobs and education and oppose discrimination against women. “Socialist feminists” think women are oppressed not only by men, but by other forms of subordination, such as class and race inequality. None of these divisions is absolute and within each category it would be possible to find rather different emphases. Moreover, these are by no means the only lines of demarcation. Not only have many disputes occurred in the modern movement about what women’s problems are and how they should be changed, but the idea of “women” as a unified group has been brought into question in a series of challenges to perspectives that ignored and denied the experience of groups such as lesbians, black women, working class women, aboriginal women, Jewish women, older women, disabled women, and many others.

Conflict over who has the power to speak for women as a group and disagreement about the meaning of feminism are not peculiar to the contemporary movement. So an historical awareness can enable us to take a wider view of present day disputes. Feminism is not an abstract category but a word that human beings have used over time in various ways. At the height of the women’s suffrage movement in Britain in 1913, a sharp, young feminist journalist called Rebecca West observed,

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is, I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.⁴

The word “feminist” was invented by a French socialist, Charles Fourier, in the early nineteenth century. He imagined a “new woman” who would both transform and be herself transformed by a society based on association and mutuality, rather than on competition and profits. His views influenced many women and combined self-emancipation and social emancipation. Changing oneself was part of changing the world.

“Feminist” appeared for the first time in English to describe women campaigning for the vote in the 1890s. By this time organizations had developed in many places that sought to extend liberal ideas of individual rights to women. These sought a reform within existing societies. However, the demand for the suffrage also involved a more fundamental challenge to the denial of autonomy to women as citizens. Feminists argued that if liberalism meant every individual standing alone endowed with equal rights that were universally comparable, women could not be included within the male franchise. Democracy involved women’s franchise.

In nineteenth-century radical and revolutionary movements the assertion not only of individual equal rights but of popular sovereignty was made. If the people are seen to have the right to shape society then, women argued, this must include them, as half of the people.

Another claim to citizenship was made in terms of women’s service as mothers and workers to society as a whole. The citizen-mother had a right to a democratic political voice and a social right to resources because her reproductive capacity and her labor contributed to material existence.

Some women also believed that women had a moral duty to improve society by gaining power through the franchise. Women’s mission was to bring their specific values into the public arena of politics and make a better society. Definitions of this womanly alternative varied: banning alcohol, redesigning housing, challenging militarism, and improving sanitation.

Redemption had a conservative side; white women or rich women have determined the moral sphere as upholding Anglo-Saxon “civilization.” Women’s mission also had its socialist wing; women were to bring about social well-being and welfare for the working class. The family could be the basis for a better community and the household the model for a benign, homely state.

The meanings of feminism extended beyond the campaign for the vote. In the early twentieth century “feminism” was being used in the United States and Europe to describe a particular strand in the women’s movement that stressed the uniqueness and difference of women rather than seeking equality. Indeed difference was sometimes taken to imply women’s superiority to men. Thus to remake the world in women’s image would be to improve society.

However, there was no unanimity on what these alternative womanly values actually were. Womanliness was at once the conserving of the personal care and responsibility of hearth and home and the adventurous process of a discovery of a potential new womanhood.

Mari Jo Buhle, in her history of Women and American Socialism 1870–1920, quotes a journalist in the early 1900s:

We have grown accustomed in these years to something or other known as the Woman Movement. That has an old sound—it is old. Therefore no need to cry it down. But Feminism!⁵

Feminism in this context was used to describe the cultural assertion of the “new woman.” Personal self-realization was a vital element. It could be linked to the project of social emancipation or it could focus on the unfolding of personality as an end in itself. Drawing on the philosophers of will, Nietzsche and Bergson, this interpretation of feminism maintained that the true subject of enquiry was the human being rather than the attempt to change external social institutions. Opposing reason and progress, this strand of feminism broke with the liberal values and assumptions that had predominated in the nineteenth-century middle-class “Woman Movement.” Instead of the Christian ethic of moral reform that had mingled with the idea of universal rights, the new women were inclined to defy social conventions and were ready to risk unrespectability.

However, it was not difference or bohemianism that upset Arabella Kenealy in 1920. She argued in Feminism and Sex-Extinction (an early “postfeminist” tract) that

Feminism, the extremist—and of late years the predominant cult of the Woman’s Movement, is Masculinism.⁶

She believed feminism denied women’s uniqueness by demanding equality with men. Feminists were endangering the reproduction of healthy children and holding back the evolution of society.

One of her main targets was the South African writer Olive Schreiner whose book, Woman and Labour, in 1911, had stressed the significance of women’s role in production as a source of power in society. Olive Schreiner argued it was not enough to wave the “poor little ‘women’s rights’ flag on the edge of the platform.”⁷ Women were not simply victims of the wrongs done by men. To alter women’s lives a change wider than simply an equal political status with men was necessary. She opened up an approach to women’s material and social existence as a whole that was to influence particularly socialist women who felt equal rights did not tackle the actual economic and social dependence of many working class and lower middle-class women.

They did not, however, have a common strategy. Was improved pay and working conditions the answer or more welfare benefits? Should women have special protection at work because of biological differences and their work in the home?

Feminism came to be an all inclusive term by the 1920s and 1930s, being used to describe not only political campaigns for the vote but also economic and social rights ranging from equal pay to birth control. From around the World War I some young women, convinced that feminism alone was not enough, called themselves “socialist feminists.” Other socialist women opposed feminism, which they saw as exclu-sively expressing the interests of middle-class professional women.

Before “feminism” came into common usage in English phrases such as “Womanism,” “the Women’s Movement,” or “the Woman Question” had been current. Marxists continued to refer to “The Woman Question,” presenting an approach that viewed women’s position historically and within specific social relations. They looked at women’s lives as a whole, rather than seeing emancipation simply as gaining the right to vote. However, inequality between men and women in society was regarded as a problem that would end with class equality.

The emergence of the modern women’s liberation movement in the late 1960s put the stress once more or women struggling to free themselves in an autonomous movement, restoring self-emancipation as a factor. Many ideas have appeared in the modern movements among women that can be found in the past, for example, women’s claim to control their own bodies, or the protest against inequality at home, because women tend to do more housework and child-care even if they go out to work. It is possible to find similar disputes as well; should women demand equality with men or seek reforms from within a different situation? How should biological differences be approached? Are they best minimized or celebrated as a basis for specific needs? These frequently involve a strategic dilemma about whether to enter a male-defined sphere of politics and ideas or to try and reshape the public terrain that has been established in men’s image.

Although looking at women’s movements historically can enable us to situate contemporary preoccupations, it is always important to be sensitive to the contexts in which concepts and opinions have been expressed, rather than simply interpreting them arrogantly in terms of what we might believe. There have been women’s movements, for example, that did not think they were feminist, but in whose ideas and work modern feminist historians have detected feminist aspects. There is a thin dividing line between recognizing elements in past movements that were outside the terms of reference of contemporary definitions and rather condescendingly deciding other people were not capable of making up their own minds and that we know better.

It would be pedantic to deny that awareness of injustice had to await the arrival of the term feminist. On the other hand, there is a danger in approaching the past as colonizers, bearing the superior wisdom of our present day women’s studies departments, as we arbitrarily label all and sundry as feminist. For this reason I have been wary of extending the term, and mainly kept to words people used themselves, stating explicitly when definitions have been created post-humously by historians.

An historical perspective of the differing forms of women’s struggle for emancipation is just as vital in understanding women’s wants as finding a wider tradition of feminist action in the past. Indeed, other forms of inequality besides gender, such as race and class, can be of as much consequence as being born a woman.

Thus there are reasons for women making alliances with men who are affected by social inequality as well. Our needs are not determined by our gender alone. Moreover, feminism has focused on interests between men and women that are dissimilar, but there have been, and continue to be, movements that stress what particular groups of men and women have in common, for instance, trade unions or tenants struggles. Women have played a part in such movements and they have had an important impact upon their lives. Consequently it is necessary to balance t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page 1
• Copyright Page 1
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I Rights, Sovereignty, And Emancipation
• II Changing Personal Life
• III Political Movements and Social Action
• IV Political Power: Reform and Revolution
• V Identity and Difference
• VI Themes for Discussion
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Index