RELIGION AND (DIS)ABILITY IN EARLY FEMINISM

Socialist Register, 1989

Being a socialist-feminist activist has never been easy. We occupy a stony ground between the popularity of liberal (and social-democratic) feminism's apparently practical reformism and the heady appeal of radical feminism's claim to a female moral/spiritual superiority. Especially ...

2000

WOMEN'S STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY has never been easy nor has it been uncontroversial. More than one hundred years ago, women in Canada formed organizations and joined forces in order to achieve a modicum of social justice for themselves, their families and their communities. While maternal feminists claimed that by virtue of their sex women were a source of rectitude that both distinguished them from men and enabled them to make a unique and important contribution to public life, they also demanded rights equal to those enjoyed by men. The private duties owed by women to their families and the public rights claimed by women to participate in politics and employment have created a dynamic tension through which successive waves of the women's movement have had to navigate. But one enduring feature of feminist politics has been the demand for women's equality. Just as tenacious has been the resistance to this struggle. Six of the seven books featured in this essay illustrate how women's struggle for equality, the most prominent leitmotif of 20th-century feminism, has changed in meaning, goals and strategies. All but one of them, Irene Howard, The Struggle for Social Justice in British Columbia: Helena Gutteridge, the Unknown Reformer (Vancouver, UBC Press, 1992) has an institutional focus. By focusing on the life of one "unknown reformer", a suffragist and trade unionist who emigrated from England to British Columbia in 1911, Howard demonstrates that the early 20th-century women's movement was not exclusively, although it was predominantly, the bailiwick of middle-class women of relative leisure and economic privilege. Gutteridge's life illustrates that it has long been possible, though difficult, for women to advocate feminism and socialism simultaneously. N.

Shamim Meer (2013): Feminist contributions, challenges and claims, Agenda: Empowering women for gender equity, DOI:10.1080/10130950.2013.798958

This Article highlights key contributions of second wave feminism, arguing that these are of relevance today, as we struggle to deal with questions of social justice within a context of increasing poverty and inequality. I look at feminist understandings of expanded social justice which highlighted crucial links between the economic, political and the cultural, and which stressed that the personal was political. I look at feminist strategies which stressed women’s agency and the need for separate women’s movements even as feminist women challenged men alongside whom they worked in trade unions, liberation movements and radical social movements. I look at how feminist struggles have fragmented over the decades alongside an increasing hegemony of economic and political neoliberalism, and the demobilisation of emancipatory movements. While women made gains within state institutions and the United Nations (UN) system in the 1990s, alongside these gains was the co-option and depoliticisation of feminist concepts forged in the throes of struggle of the earlier decades. Women’s agency too came under threat and was challenged as men’s movements came to be promoted as vehicles for gender equality. I argue that while men can play a vital role in struggles for gender equality it is women’s movements that need to be advanced and supported as key actors in repoliticising feminism today.

Ecminism Insurgent: Radicalizing C ritique in the Era o f Social D em ocracy * I am grateful to Jo h n Brenkm an, T h o m a s M cC a rth y, C a ro le Patem an and M artin Sch w ab for helpful com m ents and criticism ; to Dee M arq u ez and M arin a Rosiene for crackerjack w ord processing; and to the Stanford H um anities Center for research support. 1 Karl M arx, " Letter to A . R u g e , Septem ber 1843," in K arl M a rx : Early Writings, trans. R o d n e y Livingstone and G regor Benton, N e w York: Vintage Books, 1975, 209. 20 FEMINISM INSURGENT 2 Jiirg en H ab erm as, T h e T heory o f C om m unicative A ction, Vol. I: R eason and the R a tio n aliza tio n o f Society, trans. T h o m a s M cC a rth y, B o ston: B e aco n Press, 1984. H ereafter, T C A I. Ju rg e n H aberm as, T heorie des kom m unikativen Handelns, Vol. II: Z u r K ritik der fu nktion alistischen Vernunft, Frankfurt am M ain : Suhrkam p Verlag, 19 8 1. H ereafter T C A II. I shall also draw on som e oth er writings b y H aberm as, especially Legitim ation C risis, trans. T h o m a s M cC arth y, B oston: B e aco n Press, 19 75: " Introduction," in O bservations on " T h e S p iritu al Situation o f the A g e " : Contem porary G erm an Perspectives, ed. Ju rg e n H aberm as, trans. A n d re w Bu ch w alter, C am b rid ge, M A : M I T Press, 19 8 4 ; and " A R e p ly to m y C ritics," in H aberm as: Critical Debates, ed. D a vid H e ld and Jo h n B. T h o m p so n , C a m b rid ge , M A : M I T Press, 19 8 2. I shall draw likewise on tw o helpful overview s o f this m aterial: T h o m a s M cC arth y, " Translators Introduction," in H aberm as, T C A I, v -x x x v ii; and Jo h n B. Th o m p so n , " R atio n a lity and Social Rationalisation: A n Assessm ent o f H aberm as's T h e o r y o f C o m m u n ica tiv e A ctio n ," Sociology 1 7 :2 , 19 8 3, 2 7 8 -9 4 . Habermas, I am trying to link structural (in the sense o f objectivating) and interpretive approaches to the study o f societies. Unlike him, however, I do not do this by dividing society into two components, " system" and " lifeworld." See this section below and especially note 14. 1 7 Pam ela Fishm an, " Interaction: T h e W o rk W o m en D o ," Social Problems 25 :4 , 1978, 397-4 06 . 18 N a n c y H enley, B o d y Politics, E n g le w o o d Cliffs, N J: Pren tice-H all, 1977-2 7 Ibid., 8. 28 Judith H icks Stiehm , " T h e Protected, the Protector, the Defender," in Women and M e n ' s Wars, ed. Judith Hicks Stiehm , N e w York: Pergamon Press, 1983. 29 Pateman, " T h e Personal and the Political " 10. 42 C f. Zillah Eisenstein, The Radical Future o f Liberal Feminism , Boston: Northeastern U niversity Press, 198 1, especially Chapter 9. W h at follows has some affinities with the perspective o f Ernesto Laclau and Chantal M ouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, N e w York: Verso, 1985. * I am grateful for helpful com m ents from Sandra Bartky, Lin da G o rd o n , Paul M attick , Jr ., Frank M ich elm an , M a rth a M inow , Linda N ich o lso n , and Iris Young. T h e M a r y Ingraham Bunting Institute o f R adcliffe C o llege provided generous research support and a utopian w o rk in g situation. i Foucault, D iscipline and Punish: The Birth o f the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, N e w York: Vintage, 1979, 26. 7 Ifthe previous point was Bakhtinian, this one could be considered Bourdieusian. There is probably no contem porary social theorist w h o has worked more fruitfully than Bourdieu at understanding cultural contestation in relation to societal inequality. See his Outline o f a Theory o f Practice, trans. Richard N ice, Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1977, and Distinction: A Social Critique o f the Judgm ent o f Pure Taste, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. For an account o f Bourdieu s enduring relevance, see N an cy Fraser, " Bourdieu: U n e reflexion pour l'ere postindustrielle," L e monde, January 24, 20 12. Accessible at lemonde.fr. 8 Here the model aims to m arry Bakhtin with Bourdieu. 9 I owe this formulation to Paul M attick, Jr. For a thoughtful discussion o f the * N an cy Fraser is grateful for research support from the C en ter for Urban Affairs, N orthwestern University; the N e w b e r ry Library/N ational End ow m ent for the Humanities; and the A m erican C o u

2006

When you hear the words “feminist activism,” what images come to your mind? Who are the feminists? What age are they/we? What are the strategies of activism, and which issues are worthy of feminist activism? How inclusive are the movements of feminist activism, and how important is it to participants that their own identity and/or their organizations be labeled as feminist or associated —or not — with a specific kind of feminism? Any discussion of women’s movements and organizing would put something called “feminist activism” at the core of that work, but how often do we take the time to think about how the term is used differently by various groups in different historical moments? An unexpected reward of reviewing four new books on feminist activism was the reminder of how important and even inspiring it is to examine the changing meanings and struggles of feminist activism and the changing voices and faces of feminist activists. The four books reviewed here were written for differ...

Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2003

Economic and Political Weekly, 2003