Feminism
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal, to define, establish, and achieve political, economic and social equality of the sexes, particularly in women. Feminists and women have come a long way to achieve equality within the government, department of education and society. However, the will to fight is necessary to continue and maintain equal rights for women.
The first wave of feminism was founded off of the concept of the women’s suffrage, the right to vote. The Seneca Falls convention of 1848 was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in which assembled around three hundred people to discuss the issues surrounding women’s rights. After the Civil War, the thirtieth amendment, fourteenth and fifteenth was passed between the years of 1865 to 1869. These amendments granted African Americans emancipation from slavery, citizenship, and suffrage. However, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment was only applicable to African American men. These newly implemented laws brought outrage in women worldwide due to the fact that African American men were climbing up the “political ladder”, in relation to attaining equality, at a much faster speed than women. This did not necessarily mean that women thought that they were superior to their African American male counterparts but rather they had a desire to be their equals. As a result, the American Woman Suffrage Association was created to fight for women’s political equality. Susan B Anthony, an American women’s activist, attempted to cast her vote in the 1872 election and was arrested for ‘unlawfully voting’ due to the prohibition of women voting at the time. World War I was a didactic time for women as it highlighted the power and solidarity of women. During this period in time, they dedicated their time and energy to their fight for equal citizenship and rights parallel to their male counterparts. In the midst of the WWI, the majority of the workforce was comprised of women while the majority of men were enlisted in the war. Impressed by the women’s work ethic and dedication, the United States government passed the nineteenth amendment of 1920 which states “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” (History Editors,2010)
The second wave of feminism centred on allowing additional rights for women apart from their right to vote. This second wave brought controversy as it gave women the right to run for political office, achieve an education without discrimination, and choice of abortion. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” (U.S Department of Education,1972). Roe vs. Wade, one of the biggest supreme court cases, legalized abortion on January 22, 1973. “Roe v. Wade affirms the constitutional right to access safe, legal abortion.” (Planned Parenthood, 2018).
The third wave of feminism focused on goals that concentrated on a different population of people. Whilst the second wave allowed women’s right to vote, it did not necessarily allow African Americans the right to vote. This is when the term intersectionality came into play. The structures of society not only exist separately but exist together and this creates additional problems. Equality has to be throughout the entire spectrum and not limited to a specific group of people. Intersectionality is further discussed later.
Currently, society is in the midst of its fourth wave of feminism that includes the use of social media to spread the word about feminism, sexual violence, and inequality. While feminists have made great strides in the pursuit of equal rights, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. The use of social media aides in the spread of awareness and education to people who are not educated on this powerful movement. With the use of popular social media platforms such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the worldwide vexation that is sexual violence is live streamed daily and showcases that its occurrence is more common than people think. Social media used to be viewed as a debilitating instrument that allowed women to believe that they were not good enough until they mastered the concept of ‘white aesthetic’. In the present day, feminists are taking back social media and reinventing its use to unify women instead of allowing it to be a portal for insecurity and fear-mongering against women and other groups of people considered to be second class citizens because of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion.
In the early beginnings of this fourth wave, a woman named Lilly Ledbetter decided to take legal action against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, a company she had worked for almost twenty years, due to the unequal salary she was receiving as a result of her gender. It was revealed that she made a substantially lower salary compared to that of a male employee with the same skill set, experience, and education. It took ten laborious years of continuous fighting with the Supreme Court until Barack Obama signed The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, which was just nine years ago.
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, which means the overlap of various social identities such as race, class, sexual orientation, age, religion, gender, disability do not exist separately, but they intersect together “creating many levels of social injustice” (Crenshaw,2016). Women’s right to vote in the 1800’s were not equally treated the same upon one another. While Caucasian women were given the right to vote, that was not the case for African American women. African American women’s right were excluded from this social and political narrative which included the freedom to achieve an education without discrimination.
She was a guest speaker for Ted talk hosted in San Francisco, California, In 2016 was invited to be a guest speaker for a TED talk show in which she stated: “Everywhere, the awareness level of police violence that black women experiences is exceedingly low.” (Crenshaw, 2016). She made a powerful claim that African American women receive little to no attention for the same situations as the Eric Garner travesty that involved police brutality and death. She illustrated this by listing African American men’s names known for their death by police force such as Eric Gardner. Gradually, she continued her list with African American women’s names. To substantiate her claim, she called out names from her list and the audience would stand until they heard a name they did not know. The result was four people standing after the last name was called. Her purpose during this TED Talk was to spread awareness by showing the many African American women involved by police violence. In the end, the audience said the names of the fallen women to bring them recognition. Crenshaw finishes with If we don’t see a problem, we can’t fix the problem.” (Crenshaw, 2016). These intersections, allowed existence and riots between all types of to fight for equality throughout all citizens.
Me Too Movement
Tarana Burke coined the phrase “Me Too” to encourage the support between women of colour who survived sexual violence. The concept of Intersectionality was interwoven with her goal to bring attention to the many African American women who experienced sexual violence on top of the whole population of women. This movement is also included in the fourth wave of feminism due to the use of social media to increase awareness. Just typing the hashtag #MeToo in any social media platform garners countless results that display many women’s narratives that reveal social, economic, and political injustices. Survivors of sexual violence include their experience in their social media accounts and include the hashtag to share with the world and other survivors that they are not alone, it is not okay to experience it and they can speak up to stop sexual violence.
Another example of sex inequality is the sentence difference between Brock Turner and Cynthia Brown for their crime. Brock Turner, a young caucasian male student was known for raping an unconscious woman. He was sentenced to six months in jail, only serving three months. “Cyntoia Brown, a Nashville woman who is serving a life sentence for killing a man who picked her up for sex while she was being trafficked as a teenager” (Hauser,2018). She is a young woman of colour, already served 13 years until this year, she was given a clemency trial. The treatment between these people are extremely different, proving women are continuing to fight
Yes means Yes
California is the first and only state in the United States currently with a state law that requires an affirmative consent when participating in sexual activity. The term “Yes means yes” “goes further than the common ‘no means no’ standard, which has been blamed for bringing ambiguity into investigations of sexual assault cases.” (Chappell, 2014). Affirmative consent is ongoing throughout a sexual activity and the consent has to be ongoing and can be revoked at any given time. Sexual harassment is becoming extremely common but undocumented in the state of California, especially within the education system. The colleges of California, for example, Stanford have been under fire for the increasing amount of sexual misconduct occurring within the college campus that includes student to student and faculty to student sexual misconduct allegations. In an article by The Mercury News, Stanford University reported “nearly 200 reports of sexual harassment, sexual violence and other unwanted sexual conduct involving faculty, staff and students during the 2016-17 academic year, including 29 allegations of sexual assault.” (Deruy, 2018).
The Awakening
Edna was not an ordinary woman. Her mind, soul and heart did not belong where she was. After three kids, she questioned herself the question that women don’t ask themselves at that time, ‘who am I ?’. “Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman.” (Chopin,1860)
She does what other women in the nineteenth century would have not done. “She drank the liquor from the glass as a man would have done” (Chopin,1899) proved that she was turning into the person that she is comfortable as. The colonel tells Mr. Pontellier, “Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife. Take my word for it.”. Men in the nineteenth century believed that women are property and are to be told what to do. Edna did not follow her husband’s orders, instead instructs him “Don’t speak to me like that again; I shall not answer you.” (Chopin,1899).
Purple Hibiscus
This novel by Kate Chopin focuses on domestic violence within a household. Kambili Achike is a fifteen-year-old girl living in Nigeria during. Her papa, Eugene is the factory owner of a newspaper company known in the country for his popularity and worth. He is the head of the household, controlling the family using religion, psychological and physical abuse with the belief of punishing his family are in the best intentions. There is no difference between how men in society view women as property and how Eugene treat his family. Adichie uses religion with no differentiation between society and religion, women are viewed as property. Eugene believed to have the right to control and use violence against his wife and children. He takes religion as his priority and not family love. This is shown by not calling or visiting more often than he should have, allowing his children to see him for only fifteen minutes per year and not asking about his health. At his papa-Nnukwu death, there was no emotion toward his own father’s death except when he questioned his sister if papa-Nnukwu had converted for his death. His family mistakes his punishments for an act of love and throughout the novel, Jaja, Kambili’s brother, separates himself from his abuse faster than Kambili does. Jaja becomes infatuated with the purple hibiscus his aunty Ifeoma have, which represents freedom. Kambili eventually reaches for the freedom as well but she doesn’t attempt as hard as jaja do , and towards the end of the novel, Kambili is free by default. Her mother poisoned his tea, killing their father and Jaja takes the blame for it, imprisoning him for three years.
Real Women Have Curves
This movie held heavy significance to me due to the various similarities between Ana’s story and my story. Ana Garcia is an 18-year-old Mexican-American female whose family struggled to make ends meet in the lavish neighbourhood of Beverly Hills, California. As a first generation Mexican – American, Ana struggled with her identity and her journey to advance in higher education and career due to her mother’s emotional abuse.
Ana and her mother, Carmen, are two extremely different people. They both had conflicting ideologies in what a women’s role was. Carmen’s dream was to have her daughter(s) find a man, get married, and become a stay at home mother. In reality, she recognized that her eldest daughter, Estela, who owns a dress sweatshop, has no interest in marriage. Carmen and Estela accepts the fact that Estela is not going to get married so Carmen precedes to hope for Ana’s future to be how she wanted it to be. Carmen emotionally abuses Ana by calling her fat constantly, explaining to Ana she calls her fat because she cares. One day, the sweatshop is too hot for the workers, Ana starts to strip almost completely naked showing confidence and shut down her mother’s body shaming.
Ana graduates from high school with no plan to continue on to college due to her family’s financial inability to fund her education. Her English teacher, Mr. Gruzman assist her to apply to Columbia University. Although Ana got accepted with a full scholarship, her family doesn’t approve of her moving across the country because her family, her parents specifically believes family is more important than anything else. Ana rebels against her parents and attempts to tell them she’s going to New York for school. Before she goes to her father, he gives his blessing to go. Her mother continues to disapprove of her decision to go to New York and doesn’t say goodbye to Ana leaves for the airport. The movie ends with her walking confidently and happily in Times Square. This walk is significant because her walk is different compared her walk on her last day of high school. Within the span of her summer vacation, Ana has grown to confident mature young women.
Conclusion
The evolution of feminism, in my opinion, and with the provided facts, is a continuing slow evolution. The slow growth of the movement resulted in equal pay, education opportunities, right to vote, right to consent to their own abortion, the creation of the birth control pill and recognition. Life for women have gotten better for women since way back then. I am beyond proud of all of what the feminists have accomplished but it’s still not enough. Society has to accept that women are growing powerful and we are smart to know what they deserve and what they are capable of. Women are capable to get an education, a job, hold a leadership role, hold power in office, anything the women can put her mind into. The government should not prohibit the women what a man can do. It is disappointing that it may have to take years for a federal law to be implemented, an example, Roe vs. Wade took four years. Lilly Ledbetter equal pay act took ten years to be in effect.
Sometimes, our mothers are the first defence to our equality. Some mothers are traditional and want their daughters to experience growth as themselves and not better. Carmen, for example, didn’t want Ana to do what she couldn’t do. She verbalized to her husband “that it’s not fair”. Mothers of female genital mutilation are another example, if they do not stop this ritual cutting for their daughters, it will not stop. My mother is also an example, as an Asian American, she didn’t allow me to explore my choices of college. She also wanted me to go to a college locally, just like Carmen did with Ana.
Women as a population will always have this ongoing battle with men and society for equality. The number of people fights for equality in women will expand while there will also be people working to take those rights away or prevent additional rights for women. Women have to understand and use the value they bring into the world besides just being a housewife. Like J, Howard Miller’s poster, “We Can Do It !”
References
Chappell, Bill. (2014, September 29). California Enacts ‘Yes Means Yes’ Law, Defining Sexual Consent. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/09/29/352482932/california-enacts-yes-means-yes-law-defining-sexual-consent
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. St. Louis: Herbert S. Stone and Co., 1899.
Crenshaw, K. October 2016. The Urgency of Intersectionality. TED Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality
Durey, E. Stanford University report reveals nearly 200 cases of sexual misconduct. The Mercury News. 28 February 2018. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/02/28/stanford-university-report-reveals-nearly-200-cases-of-sexual-abuse/
Hauser, Christine. (3 May 2018). Cyntoia Brown, Trafficking Victim Serving Life Sentence for Murder, Will Get Clemency Hearing. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/us/cyntoia-brown-clemency-hearing-.html
History editors. (2010, March). 19th Amendment. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/19th-amendment-1
Sheber, V. (2017, December 16). Feminism 101: What are the Waves of Feminism? Retrieved from https://femmagazine.com/feminism-101-what-are-the-waves-of-feminism/
