What is Feminism?
— A Historical and Theoretical Inquiry
Feminism is not a static or singular ideology. Rather, it is a historically situated, contested, and
evolving political movement. Juliet Mitchell, Ann Oakley, Rosalind Delmar, Kate Millett, and Joan
B. Landes each offer insights into feminism's changing meanings and strategic orientations.
Drawing from their work, this essay explores how feminism is best understood not as a fixed set of
doctrines but as an ongoing struggle to redefine power, identity, and participation — both politically
and personally. This is demonstrated not only in theory but through historical feminist interventions
in moments of social upheaval such as the French and Russian Revolutions and the U.S. suffragette
movement.
1. The Question of Definition: Feminism as Political Discourse
Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley emphasize that feminism must be approached historically. They
write, “It is a mistake to look for a unitary origin or a coherent theory of feminism” (Mitchell &
Oakley, 1986, p. 4). Feminism has evolved through successive waves and struggles — from
demands for legal equality to critiques of cultural representation and sexual domination.
Rosalind Delmar adds that feminism is a relational discourse — it emerges in response to social
inequalities and political opposition. Rather than a closed ideology, it is “a site of conflict about
meanings” (Delmar, 1986, p. 8). For instance, during the French Revolution, feminists like
Olympe de Gouges penned the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791),
highlighting how Enlightenment ideas of liberty were hypocritically denied to women. Yet she was
guillotined in 1793, reflecting the Revolution’s limits — women could fight in the streets but were
excluded from the public sphere of formal politics. This exemplifies Delmar’s point that feminism
always struggles over inclusion and the meaning of citizenship itself.
2. Patriarchy and the Sexual Politics of Power
Kate Millett, in Sexual Politics, reframes feminism as a struggle not merely for equality but against
patriarchy — a total system of domination. Millett shows how literature, domestic arrangements,
and sexual relationships all naturalize male dominance. “Patriarchy’s chief institution is the family,”
she writes, “designed to maintain male power through socialization and control” (Millett, 1970, p.
33).
Her insights help us understand the repression faced by women in revolutionary movements. During
the Russian Revolution, female Bolsheviks like Alexandra Kollontai fought for radical
transformation of gender relations. Kollontai’s vision of communal childcare and sexual freedom
challenged patriarchal norms. Yet, as the Soviet state stabilized, the early promises of feminist
liberation were reversed: women were pushed back into traditional family roles, and feminist
demands were subordinated to national unity. Millett’s theory explains how patriarchy reasserts
itself even in radical movements unless it is directly confronted.
3. Feminism and the Public/Private Divide
Joan Landes highlights the feminist politicization of personal life: “Feminism offered women a
public language for their private despair” (Landes, 1998, p. 1). This is especially evident in the U.S.
suffragette movement, where figures like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth exposed
how the domestic sphere — once seen as women’s natural domain — was a site of profound
disempowerment. Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments (1848) directly challenged the private/public
split by demanding women’s equal rights in education, employment, and marriage — not just the
vote.
Landes critiques liberal political theory for excluding the body and sexuality from public
consideration. The slogan “the personal is political” thus becomes not merely a rhetorical gesture
but a radical reframing of political life. U.S. suffragists forced private injustices — such as marital
rape, domestic violence, and exclusion from property ownership — into the public arena.
Moreover, Landes points out that feminist critiques of the public/private divide also reveal its
gendered construction. In both the French and American contexts, public participation was
equated with rational male citizenship, while emotion, care, and dependency — attributes tied to
women — were relegated to the private realm. Feminist theory and activism disrupted this
dichotomy
4. Feminism Across Waves and Voices
Feminism is best understood as a movement shaped by successive “waves,” each emerging in
response to specific historical conditions. The first wave focused on legal rights such as suffrage
and property ownership. The second wave, emerging in the 1960s and 70s, broadened feminism’s
scope to issues like sexuality, domestic labor, and reproductive rights. The third wave, from the
1990s onward, brought in postmodern and intersectional critiques — arguing that race, sexuality,
and class must be central to feminist analysis. The fourth wave, developing in the 2010s, is marked
by digital activism, inclusivity, and challenges to sexual violence and workplace discrimination.
This expansion of feminism’s concerns also generated critiques from within. bell hooks, a leading
Black feminist thinker, argued that mainstream feminism often reflected the priorities of white,
middle-class women while ignoring the lived realities of Black and working-class women. In
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, hooks insisted that feminism must fight not only
patriarchy, but also racism, capitalism, and class oppression. For her, feminism is a political
commitment to ending all forms of domination — not just those based on gender.
5. Feminism as Anti-Essentialist Struggle
Rosalind Delmar warns against essentializing “woman” as a stable political subject. She critiques
notions of a universal sisterhood that ignore racial and class differences. For example, in the U.S.
suffrage movement, Black feminists like Ida B. Wells had to fight both racism within the
movement and sexism within Black communities. Wells’ exclusion from segregated suffrage
marches illustrates how dominant narratives of “feminism” often ignored women of color — a
concern still resonant today.
Joan Landes also foregrounds the unequal ability of different groups to define what is public or
private. She cites Nancy Fraser’s insight that not all people have the power to make their concerns
appear political. For instance, working-class women and women of color are often seen as violating
public norms merely by appearing in public or demanding recognition.
Delmar and Landes thus highlight the need for feminism to move beyond one-size-fits-all
definitions. Instead, it must attend to the ways race, class, sexuality, and national context shape how
different women experience and contest power.
Conclusion: Feminism as Historical Intervention and Political Re-imagining
Feminism, as seen through the work of Mitchell, Oakley, Delmar, Millett, and Landes, is best
understood as a dynamic, critical, and historical practice. It interrogates how power operates not
only in formal institutions but in culture, intimacy, and language. It challenges the ideological
structures — such as patriarchy and the public/private split — that sustain gender inequality.
Historical moments like the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, and the U.S. suffragette
movement show that feminist demands often emerge during wider political upheavals. Yet these
same moments also reveal the deep resistance to feminist transformation — illustrating that political
revolution does not guarantee gender liberation. Feminism must therefore remain vigilant,
intersectional, and self-reflexive.
Rather than asking “What is feminism?” in the abstract, it is more productive to ask “What does
feminism do in specific contexts — and for whom?” As these thinkers and historical episodes
demonstrate, feminism is not merely about inclusion but about redefining the terms of political
life itself.
Matriarchy: Myth, Theory, and Historical Debate
The concept of matriarchy has held a curious place in historical and anthropological thought. From
romanticized visions of mother-rule to Marxist critiques of kinship systems, matriarchy has often
served as both a mirror and a myth for imagining alternatives to male-dominated social orders. This
essay examines the intellectual history and critical reassessment of matriarchy through Marxist,
gender-historical, and global-historical lenses, drawing on the works of Fluehr-Lobban, Wiesner-
Hanks, and Gisela Bock. It argues that while empirical evidence for historical matriarchies remains
contested, the idea of matriarchy plays a powerful role in feminist critique, particularly in
rethinking the origins of patriarchy, the gendered nature of power, and the construction of historical
knowledge itself.
1. Matriarchy as Historical Hypothesis and Political Symbol
The modern idea of matriarchy originates with Johann Jakob Bachofen, who in Das Mutterrecht
(1861) proposed that early human societies were governed by maternal kinship and religious
reverence for mother goddesses. Bachofen’s idealist reading of mythology led him to envision a
prehistoric age in which women exercised moral and social authority. This vision found support in
Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), where he, following Lewis
Henry Morgan, argued that matrilineality was part of an early egalitarian communal society that
was later overturned by private property and patriarchy.
As Fluehr-Lobban notes, “The matriarchate has meant different things to different scholars,” and its
ambiguity has made it both a romantic ideal and a problematic category of analysis (Fluehr-Lobban
et al., 1979, p. 341). She clarifies a crucial distinction between matrilineality (tracing descent
through the female line) and matriarchy (actual female governance), noting that many so-called
matrilineal societies remained male-dominated in terms of authority and inheritance (p. 343).
Even the oft-cited Iroquois Confederacy, where women played a vital role in selecting male
leaders, does not constitute a matriarchy in the strict sense, since men retained formal political
control (p. 345). This complexity undermines simplistic claims that matriarchy was a historical
reality, while simultaneously challenging the assumption that patriarchy is universal.
2. Marxist Approaches: From Engels to Fluehr-Lobban
The Marxist tradition has been deeply influential in framing matriarchy not just as a stage in social
evolution but as part of a broader critique of property relations and class society. Engels, using
Morgan’s ethnographic data, proposed that mother-right was overthrown with the rise of surplus
wealth and private property, allowing men to consolidate inheritance through the male line. This
marked the “world historic defeat of the female sex” (Engels, 1884/1972, as cited in Fluehr-Lobban
et al., 1979, p. 344).
However, Fluehr-Lobban’s reappraisal questions whether matriarchy, as defined by female
dominance, ever existed at all. She argues that Marx and Engels’ focus should not be taken as
historical fact, but rather as a theoretical model for understanding shifts in social organization.
Importantly, she asserts: “The existence or nonexistence of the matriarchate is not essential to the
analysis of the historical subordination of women” (p. 342).
These patterns are also seen in the South Asian context. For example, the Satavahana dynasty in
ancient India was matrilineal in terms of inheritance, and women occasionally appeared in
inscriptions. However, scholars note that women were largely absent from actual positions of
state power, suggesting that symbolic importance did not translate into real authority —
reinforcing the argument that matrilineality should not be mistaken for matriarchy.
3. Gender as Historical Category: Insights from Bock and Wiesner-Hanks
Feminist historians have further problematized the matriarchate thesis by shifting attention away
from evolutionary stages to gender as a category of analysis. Gisela Bock, in her influential
article, argues that history has traditionally been written as men’s history, and the task of feminist
historiography is not only to “restore women to history,” but also to “restore history to women”
(Bock, 1989, p. 7). This reframing undermines linear narratives of matriarchy–patriarchy succession
and instead calls for a plural, differentiated history of women’s lives.
Bock critiques both essentialist and universalist views of women’s history. She points out that while
ideas of mother-rule may appeal to some feminist imaginaries, they often project modern political
desires onto the past, risking anachronism. Instead of asking whether matriarchy “really existed,”
Bock urges historians to explore the uses of such myths — how they function as critiques of
patriarchy and as utopian projections of feminist futures.
Merry Wiesner-Hanks complements this critique by highlighting the absence of women and
gender in world historical narratives. She argues that traditional world history has focused on
state-building, trade, and warfare — areas coded as masculine — while relegating women’s roles to
the private sphere. This division reinforces the invisibility of gendered power even in discussions of
early civilizations (Wiesner-Hanks, 2007, pp. 54–55).
In the context of matriarchy, Wiesner-Hanks’ argument helps explain why female-centered
societies have been either dismissed as mythical or idealized beyond evidence. World historians,
focused on systems and empires, often overlook the micro-politics of kinship, reproduction, and
ritual where women may have wielded real influence.
4. Myth and Political Imagination: Uses of Matriarchy in Feminist Thought
The enduring appeal of matriarchy in feminist thought lies not in its historical certainty but in its
symbolic power. It offers an alternative to patriarchy — a way to imagine a society where
cooperation, nurturance, and equality are valued. As Fluehr-Lobban notes, “The idea of the
matriarchal clan does not have the importance it had in 19th-century scholarship,” but its symbolic
role remains (1979, p. 348).
This symbolic function can be seen in ecofeminist and cultural feminist arguments that posit women
as closer to nature, or inherently peaceful. While these ideas have been criticized for biological
essentialism, they also challenge dominant narratives that conflate male authority with rationality
and civilization.
Simone de Beauvoir also challenged the idea of matriarchy as a historical reality. In The Second
Sex, she famously wrote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” stressing that gender
roles are socially constructed, not biologically predetermined. She rejected essentialist claims
about a natural matriarchal order, instead insisting that women’s oppression arose from cultural
and historical forces, not a lost matriarchal past.
At the same time, Marxist and materialist feminists caution against romanticizing the past. As Bock
puts it, “biology” — often invoked to justify both patriarchy and matriarchy — is not a neutral
category, but a cultural construct used to assign value and power (Bock, 1989, p. 12). Thus, even
the idea that women’s rule would be “softer” or “kinder” reflects gendered stereotypes rather than
empirical analysis.
5. Conclusion: Beyond Matriarchy/Patriarchy
The debate on matriarchy continues to provoke important questions about how we write history,
whose experiences we center, and what political futures we imagine. While scholars like Engels
and Morgan saw matriarchy as a real historical phase, more recent critics like Fluehr-Lobban, Bock,
and Wiesner-Hanks argue that the focus should not be on proving or disproving matriarchy’s
existence. Instead, they call for an approach that critically examines power, kinship, and gendered
experience across cultures and time.
In this view, matriarchy serves not as a historical “truth” but as a conceptual mirror — helping us
challenge patriarchy, question assumptions about the naturalness of male dominance, and imagine
other forms of social life. Whether or not a matriarchal past ever existed, its reappraisal forces
historians and feminists alike to confront the politics of knowledge — and to continue the search
for more inclusive, critical, and imaginative histories.
