Study Guide For Module No. 7

FM-AA-CIA-15 Rev.
0 10-July-2020
Study Guide in Gender and Society Module No.7
STUDY GUIDE FOR MODULE NO. 7
CHAPTER VII: Feminism
MODULE OVERVIEW
The women’s movement made many advances in recent history, yet its scope and
description must be discussed for one to truly grasp current issues of women and gender
studies. This chapter serves as an introduction to the history of women’s movement, both in
the Philippines and abroad.
MODULE LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Outline the development of Western Feminism; and

2. Explain the factors that shaped its development.
LEARNING CONTENTS
Feminism is a way of looking at the world through a woman’s perspective. It is a concept

popularized by Western societies, with many feminist issues articulated by Western-
educated women and even men. It is deeply rooted in the Western concept of liberal
democracy and philosophy of equal rights for all as defined by thinkers such as Kant
and Mill. The evolution of Western women’s movement in recent history can be
summarized in three waves, each wave characterized by particular aspects of the struggle
toward emancipation.
WESTERN WOMEN’S MOVEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

Discussing Western women’s movement involves looking at what many feminist
historians and theorists call as “waves” of feminism. There are three distinct waves of
feminism in the Western World, each associated to a different school of thought. The first
wave of feminism involves the call for women’s equal rights, focusing on the woman’s
right to vote. It is largely rooted in the liberal political thought which prioritized the power of
reason and the mind. The next wave is the radical feminism, a post-World War era of
feminism where women are already recognized as having distinct biological needs from
men, such as for reproductive health and needs that arose from their being socialized as
women. The last wave of feminism is rooted in the recognition of various theories and
various modes of being. To be truly free from patriarchy, the recognition of
intersectionality considers women’s struggle from different parts of the globe – such as
that of the Black or Latin women – to be distinct struggles that are different from women’s
struggles in the Western World. This feminist thought helped shape our own local feminist
thinking, the Philippine Women’s Movement.
PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 1

FM-AA-CIA-15 Rev. 0 10-July-2020
FIRST WAVE: WOMEN AND CIVIL RIGHTS
Theoretical Roots of the First Wave of Feminism –

Liberal Feminism
The first wave of women’s movement is characterized by women’s struggle for
equality. This phase, which occurred from the latter part of the 18 th century until the first half
of the 20th century was the period when women articulated their equality with men. The
development of liberal political thought by philosophers like Kant, Mill, and Roseau
underscoring the equal rights of all men (but not women) inspired women to craft their own
philosophy of equality with men.
One can pinpoint the start of the documented feminist movement during the French
Revolution in the late 1700s. The French Revolution was a movement that overthrew the
Bourbon monarchy, a powerful family that ruled France for over a century and controlled
most of French resources. Under the Bourbon dynasty, most of France was poor and
starving. The right to bread was the starting point of the French Revolution. Thousands of
women in Paris, housewives, mothers and workers, marched to the Paris City Hall in 1789
to demand the right to cheaper bread, a right they were deprived of. The French Revolution
was a triumph for the poor and oppressed, with both women and men fighting for their
rights in this movement, showing the power of the people over the elite. While there was no
woman-specific issue addressed during this movement, it inspired the seminal text for the
Western women’s movement: the Citoyennes Républicaines, Révolutionnaires
(Revolutionary Republican Women Ctitizens).
The Citoyennes Républicaines, Révolutionnaires demanded that women be granted
the right to vote and hold civilian and military positions like men. However, the (male)
revolutionaries ignored these calls. It is evident in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
the Citizen of 1789 which only focused on men and men’s rights. Hence, women still did not
have the same rights as men during the French Revolution.
Olympia de Gouges is a French feminist, writer, and political activist who believed
strongly in justice and equality for all. She responded to the National Assembly’s
Declaration by publishing in 1791 her own Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the
Female Citizen. She included women’s rights in her manifesto, defending the right of
women as sentient human beings. Her progressive thinking also led her to write against
slavery, the discrimination against children borne out of wedlock, and the ill treatment of
orphaned children.
The manifesto of de Gouges inspired what can be considered the keystone text of
liberal feminist thought, A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792 by Mary
Wollstonecraft. Considered the mother of Western and Anglo-Saxon feminism,
Wollstonecraft advocated for the uplifting of women’s rights through the valuation of their
work within the family. Her work highlights the need for women’s education, and that
women are not merely objects to be married off but are also educators and caregivers of

their children. This work declares that women deserve the same fundamental rights as
men. Wollstonecraft’s text is the origin of the Anglo-Saxon feminism that inspired modern
feminist writings. Wollstonecraft was concerned on the elimination of domestic tyranny and
women’s denial of political rights, education and equal work – issues that still permeate
present society. Wollstonecraft connected these concerns to critical issues of her time,
reinforcing her own call for equality. Her ideas influenced other women to press
policymakers in creating woman-inclusive policies for their needs, specifically their
education. Both Wollstonecraft and de Gouges’ works articulate the rights of a Western
woman as a person endowed naturally and equally with human rights. The texts were
written by women, and demanded women’s rights in a male-dominated world where women
seldom had a voice or an identity separate from their husbands.
While these documents show an insight as to why the rights of women were denied
under existing laws, Friedrich Engels, a collaborator of Karl Marx in writing the communist
manifesto, provided a plausible reason why women were oppressed. Given the Marxist
focus on material conditions and the accumulation and production of resources as key
movers of societies, Engels saw the relation between women and goods as the root to
women’s subjugation. Engel’s text, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the
State, published in 1884, describes marriage as a process of gaining control of women.
Monogamy was a creation necessary to pass on wealth to one’s offspring. In non-
communal societies, marriage was a way for groups with more material resources, such as
the bourgeoisie, to keep their money within the family through intermarriage and
inheritance. After all, a woman can be sure of her offspring because she bore them through
her pains of labor. This idea of property and inheritance – of marriage as a social contract –
prevented women from being free to decide on whom to marry. A man needed his wife to
be monogamous to know his kin. Perhaps, this practice reinforced the already dominant
patriarchal system that allowed men to be polygamous and women to be monogamous.
Thus, a woman’s chastity was heavily guarded. This type of oppression guaranteed that
women had no choice on matters concerning their bodies; hence, marriage became a sort
of lifetime slavery.
Women and the Anti-Slavery Movement

The idea that a woman is a property of her husband may explain the strong
connection between women’s liberation movement and the anti-slavery movement in the
Western world. The beginning of the women’s movement drew its spark from the
emancipation movement. Various women, often white with a high social status, attended
forums and seminars on slavery to advocate for the liberation of the slaves. However,
women were not taken seriously during discussions about the rights of slaves. Women had
no political voice in this matter. During the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London,
women delegates were even made to listen to proceedings behind curtains. Two prominent
figures of the American women’s movement who attended the convention – Lucretia Mott
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton – were moved by this insulting experience. Being behind the
curtain highlighted the similarity of women’s situation with that of slaves. Mott ad Stanton’s
involvement in the advocacy against slavery paved the way for them to realize that women

too were oppressed by certain social structures and laws. The active participation of
women in the social issue of anti-slavery incited them to liberate themselves as well from
their perceived limited social status. One such limited status involved the right to participate
in the public sphere.
Women and the Right to Vote

Women’s role in the domestic sphere meant that everyday women were invisible to
the public eye. Those coming from prominent mercantile or royal families, while visible,
were not often given the chance to influence big decisions. These realities pushed women
from Western Europe and Northern America to expand their struggle toward their own
emancipation. Participants in the first wave of the women’s emancipation movement fought
for the right to vote, equal opportunity for employment and commerce, and the right to
education. Women fought for equal access to various opportunities as formalized in the
Declaration of Sentiments that emerged from the Seneca Falls Convention – the first
women’s convention – in New York City in 1848. Stanton enumerated in this declaration
various women’s issues that eventually led to what would be known as the suffrage
movement.
A woman’s right to vote may not seem like a large issue, yet it was controversial
insofar as it was believed that women were too emotional and did not possess the proper
faculties to make rational decisions. Not only that, the numerous movements at that time
seemed to work against and not for each other. Would a movement for women’s rights
hinder the emancipation movement? Or the movement of men of color? Would all women
be able to vote, including uneducated women? Again, this was controversial because not
all women were allowed to study; hence, allowing women to vote meant allowing even
illiterate women and women of color to claim this right. Despite this assumed division, black
women abolitionists still supported the movement. These include Sojourner Truth, Maria
Stewart, and Frances E. W. Harper.
The suffrage movement was the major struggle of women, uniting the Northern
American and Western European’s movements during the 19 th and 20th century. When
upper class women, i.e. householder and college educated, won the right to vote in the
1920s, the movement splintered into various groups like the labor movement and the right
to education movement.
Fundamentally, the first wave of women’s struggle was focused on establishing
equality with men. It borrows its ideology from political liberalism that assumes equality of
all people, regardless of race or gender. The first-wavers not only called for the right to vote
but also the right to smoke, the right to wear pants, and the right to promiscuity like men.
SECOND WAVE & WOMEN’S LIBERATION

Women in the Western world eventually earned the right to vote. While more and
more gains were identified for women, there was still a large gap between women’s and
men’s freedoms. Despite women attaining the right to vote, they were still viewed as
second-class citizens. A new struggle arose, one that involved marginalized sectors such

as black women, lesbians and homosexuals, women in developing countries, and other
marginalized women. The second wave of feminism is more concerned with the idea of
womanhood and the issues that came with social construction of a woman’s role, and
therefore her identity. Thus, a deeper understanding of womanhood, its implications and
the issues surrounding women emerged.
The World Wars I and II greatly influenced the second wave of the feminist
movement. Women stepped in to help with the war effort. For example, the American
propaganda “Rosie the Riveter” became an icon of women. It shows a poster image of a
woman doing mechanical work, a traditional male job, in a bid to invite women to work in
factories as most men were assembled for war. However, when the war ended, men
returned to their roles and women were sent back to the domestic sphere. The 1950s
promoted an image of women as loving housewives and doting mothers.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique describes the growing discontent of white
and middle class housewives during the post-World War II period. Her idea of the “problem
with no name” united housemakers across America regarding the growing helplessness
that women felt due to their lack of power as they remained trapped in the domestic sphere
and lacked representation in the public sphere.
Simone de Beauvoir, a French feminist best known for her work, The Second Sex,
explored how women were seen as unequal by men and that the very realization of
women’s existence as persons were structured to be inferior. They were reduced to an
object at every turn, as a wife, daughter, a lover, a mistress and a whore. Their very
existence was defined, or more precisely reduced, by the male subjectivity. Women were
constructed by society to be servants of men and to be the producers of children. Their very
image, how they act and beautify themselves are all oriented to serving male systems that
do not benefit the flourishing of women as persons. A woman was always and only defined
in relation to man. There is a marked critique on the definition of woman in the essay by de
Beauvoir. It articulates how the essential meaning of woman is a construct that limits the
realization of her existence, but as a construct, this meaning can be re-articulated. Her work
also claims that patriarchy and patriarchal structures further reinforce the wrong notion that
women are secondary to men despite women and men being treated equally in the eyes of
existing laws. Until a woman is seen as a woman in her own right, de Beauvoir asserts that
a woman will not attain true freedom.
Although focused on the personal enslavement of women, this wave of feminism
also tackled that the construction of womanhood was fundamentally political. Shulamith
Firestone and Kate Millett showed how this construction was an outcome of the economy,
the culture, and society at large. The fact that this notion of womanhood was created to be
as such means that the expectations surrounding women could change as well. Firestone,
in her text The Dialectic of Sex, called for a feminist revolution that could help liberate
women from the inequality brought about by their biology, specifically those concerning
conception, childbirth, and child-rearing. Firestone believed that society must change to
help address women’s concerns – the limitation of their biology, specifically child care; the
right to economic independence and self-determination; their integration into all aspects of
society; and their freedom in relation to their sexuality – before women can be liberated.

Kate Millet’s text focuses on politics as power structures and the relation of sex – coitus and
biological sex – thus, creating the fundamental link between gender socialization, the
patriarchal system, and the formation of women as oppressed. The struggle is defined by
power and can be changed if women are able to gain power.
Theoretical Roots in the Second Wave of Feminism –

Socialist Feminism
Socialist feminism was developed after Marxist feminism to address gaps found in
Marxist theories. Unlike Marxist feminists, socialist feminists believe that women are
oppressed in all aspects of their lives, not only in the economic aspect. Socialist feminism
draws a different meaning from the Marxist idea of human productivity: one’s productive
activity is based on the sexual division of labor which is determined by society and human
nature.
Socialism believes that women’s subjugation is rooted in the concept of having a
monogamous family in which monogamous women are confined in their homes and are
discouraged to participate in productive labor. Engels argued that women could be liberated
from their oppression if they entered the productive zone, with their reproductive needs
taken over by the state. Socialism asserts that both productive and reproductive labor must
involve the greater society, as both are responsible for sustaining and maintaining the
society at large. Hence, the state must also prioritize social welfare and structures that
support the reproductive needs of a woman. The second wave of women’s movement was
built on these Marxist and radical feminist principles, which focused on sexuality and
alienation arising from one’s womanhood and motherhood.
Theoretical Roots in the Second Wave of Feminism –

Radical Feminism
The civil rights movement in the US inspired another form of feminism that is
grounded on structural change. This feminist perspective – known as radical feminism –
sought to ensure that women’s differences from men were recognized and celebrated. At
this point, equality no longer meant sameness but being different and equally capable and
valuable. Radical feminism came about as a reaction to the lack of attention given to sex
and sexuality in the women’s struggle. Socialist, Marxist, and liberal feminism focused less
on the body and more on what the mind or body could do. Radical feminism identifies one’s
biology as the root cause of the oppression of women, which lies in the idea that one’s
ability and role could be reduced to his or her sex. The second wave is significant as it
examined not only the need for equality but also the very root of inequality. It explained that
women were oppressed because they were defined as the lesser sex by systems that
shape the society; the most pervasive of which is patriarchy, in which man assumes the
dominant gender role.
THIRD WAVE OF FEMINISM

The 1990s brought about the recognition of the different oppressions women face
around the globe. The rise of communism and the new global order along with biomedical
and technological advances shaped the issues of this era. The feminist movement shifted
focus to include the needs of women from developing countries in light of the effect of
globalization and neoliberal economic policies. The idea of the universal woman’s
experience was challenged, and there was a call for a feminism that embraced the
plurality of women’s experience. This new wave of feminism was deemed more
inclusive, as voices from post-colony and post-socialist countries were involved in the
movement. With these developments, third-wave feminism was born.
Third-wave feminists were “motivated by the need to develop a feminist theory and
politics that honor contradictory experiences and deconstruct categorical thinking”. What
characterizes this feminism is its “local, national, and transnational activism in areas such
as violence against women, trafficking, body surgery, self-mutilation, and the overall
‘pornofication’ of the media”, issues that affect different women from various countries.
Third-wave feminists were raised by second-wave feminists. They lived by the
principles of gender equality and women empowerment. They had access to the resources
that previous movements had won for them. The feminists of this time had numerous
publications on women and gender issues, gained academic niches in universities that
include women’s studies in their curriculum, and had greater opportunities in terms of
economic capabilities and work. This exploration of womanhood and gender came at the
expense of the previous endeavors of women activists. Because of this, the feminist
movement of yesteryears was critiqued and questioned.
The idea of post-feminism manifested during the third-wave of feminism, in which
the second wave was assessed for purporting a universal feminism that created one truth
for all women, with one answer for all issues and directing the movement’s concerns to
target one dominant group – the white and Western feminists. According to the book by
Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake, Third Wave Agenda, post-feminism sought to
critique previous feminisms in regards to what work had yet to be done. Despite the
difference in the experiences of women, the call for sisterhood was present as ever,
embracing the differences of women from around the world.
Feminists of the third wave not only critiqued previous feminisms, they also
questioned the ideas that were present during the previous women’s movement.
Womanhood as an identity was one major movement that was scrutinized. This movement
that questioned, renamed, and reclaimed the concept of womanhood was called
postmodern feminism. Gender, beauty, sexuality, and the concepts of feminine and
masculine were also questioned. The notion that gender is an absolute marker of identity
was suddenly challenged. The theme of “gender as a social construct” was prevalent during
this time due to the pivotal text Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by
Judith Butler published in 1990. The challenge for feminists in this period was to be
conscious of how one could express his or her gender identity in a manner that truly
represented him or her. Identity politics was a driving force for discussion.
The transformation of notions of the self was also supplemented by the
transformation of structures and processes that could be deemed oppressive to women.

There were moves to reclaim other social structure that seemed oppressive, such as the
media that sexualized women, or language that was used to oppress women. The words
“girl”, “bitch”, and other condescending terms used against women were reclaimed by the
feminists of this movement. Different ideas were challenged. Instead of a head-on attack
against these structures, a societal transformation that aimed to reconstruct the idea of
womanhood on a woman’s own light took place.
A notable woman during the third wave of feminism is Judith Butler. She is an
American philosopher and academic whose book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity, brought to light the fluid nature of gender. Here, she challenges
notions of the rigidity and pre-determined nature of gender. She assumed that gender is not
an essence that one’s characteristics and behavior drew its origin from. Instead, the
repetition of certain characteristics created the idea of gendered behavior. Humans are
socialized to repeat these gendered characteristics.
One of the many key words that explain Judith Butler’s philosophy is performance.
Gender is performed, and one’s identity is shaped through the performance of traits that are
gendered. The performance of gender further proved that it was a social construct that
should not limit a person’s identity.
LEARNING ACTIVITY 1
Interview your mother or aunt, as well as your grandmother or an elderly woman and ask
them what they consider the most pressing problems of women in their generation. Also
think about the pressing issues faced by women today.
Form groups of five members and share your observations among each other. Try to
explain the roots of women’s problems in the three generations. Present a gist of your
discussions on the class.
LEARNING ACTIVITY 2
Research, read, and learn how Western women’s movement started. Create a timeline of
how women’s emancipation started noting the important factors that shaped their
development.
SUMMARY
A brief history of the Western feminist movement is presented to show the various
strides that women have made in recent history. Various kinds of feminism with different
viewpoints and priorities emerged, depending on the needs of women at that time. These
movements were created as reactions to historical events or struggles, such as the civil
rights movement. Despite this rich diversity, all the “ists” and “isms” of feminism show that
one thing has been the priority of the movement: uplifting women such that they can fully
participate in society as equals with others, and removing structural barriers that prevent
them from doing so. While much work has yet to be done, it is important to recognize the

heroes of the past for what they have achieved to privilege this generation of a better
future.
REFERENCES
Rodriguez A., & Rodriguez, A., Gender and Society, C & E Publishing Inc., 2018

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FM-AA-CIA-15 Rev.

Study Guide in Gender and Society Module No.7