Do We Need Feminism Anymore?: Is Feminism Becoming More Social Than It Is Political?
Is feminist theory still relevant in today’s world?
30 years ago, the conversation of gender equality and feminism would have been some form of locker room joke with men ridiculing the idea of a ‘career woman. People would have said that the feminist movement was nothing but diminishing women’s roles in the home due to the pursuit of a career and the extirpation of femininity through women being encouraged to wear suits (Gibbs, 2001) but now with people in this day and age, carrying protest signs with snarky feminist tag-lines and more and more people attempting to integrate gender into the conversation and with this essay, the writer will give a critical comparison of the waves of feminism and whether feminism is becoming more of a social movement than a political movement.
Society has made us view the social idea of Herrschaft, theorized by Max Weber which is the theory of dominance and submission and the phallic domination of men over women (Millet,1970). The term domination is associated with masculinity while submission is associated with femininity and while gender is merely a social construct, men have seized this and choose to reap the benefits that this‘ inherent dominance’ and with the conditioning of children under the patriarchal rule to make men seem superior to women, making our society characterized by gender hierarchies. As Kate Millet wrote in her work, Sexual politics, she defines the inequalities of women to men into three characteristics; temperament, role and status(Millet,1970).
According to her, the differences in temperament between genders have been placed by society and have been a hindrance for women who are trying to develop a life of their own (Millet,1970) as for role, a woman and a man’s role has already been socially defined as well as the importance of a man’s likes, dislikes and career is made more important than a woman’s (Millet,1970) and for status, this is defined by the patriarchy as no matter what a woman’s economic status is, she is always going to be valued less than a man (Millet,1970)
First-wave feminism was focused on women’s suffrage, the promotion of equal contract, property rights for women as well as opposing chattel marriage(Brunell and Burkett,2019 ) However, the first wave lacked inclusivity. People tend to cite figures such as Emmaline Pankhurst, Olympe de Gouge and Mary Wollstonecraft as the grandmothers of the first-wave feminist movement but the origins of feminism date back to the ancient Romans where women protested against the laws set by Marcus Porcius Cato to repel laws against women purchasing expensive goods (Augustyn,2017).
While most countries, particularly countries in the West are liberated from the clutches of the patriarchy through the woman’s right to speak their minds through women’s marches in countries such as the US and UK yet first-wave feminism has failed women in many countries such as Pakistan where violence against women such as rape, acid attacks and domestic violence is a serious problem and there is an estimate of about 1000 “honour killings” every year (HRW,2018).
Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government. (Wollstonecraft)
Despite Wollstonecraft writing that women have the right to express themselves politically since governance affects them as well, women in patriarchal societies such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Kenya have very little rights when it comes to participating in public elections due to the patriarchal dominance which is evident in such societies but alas, progress is made particularly in Saudi Arabia wherein 2015, a royal decree was made by King Abdullah where women could not only vote but could also stand as candidates where 978 women registered as candidates while 130,000 women could vote for the first time (BBC,2015) which is big progress from women being treated as “fully dependent” on a man for everything.
“Change is a big word but the election is the way to make sure we are really represented.” (Al-Rashed,2015)
Comparing Saudi Arabia with the UK where women could express their rights freely. The UK which earned the right to vote in 1918, Saudi Arabia is nowhere near the progress that the UK has made, Saudi Arabia still has a strong patriarchal influence as women still cannot work with men (BBC,2015). So feminism is relevant to securing the rights of women in many developing countries.
The Personal is Political was the tagline of the second wave as Second wavers worked to outlaw marital rape, build shelters for women fleeing rape and domestic violence, and fought for reproductive freedom for a woman to be able to make the choice for her reproductive status without interference.(Brunell and Burkett,2019 ) while black women also wanted to fight not just for the right to contraception and abortions, but also to stop the forced sterilisation of people of colour and people with disabilities.
With second-wave feminism, it saw the rise of prominent figures such as Gloria Steinem who not only fought for the core tenets of feminism but she also addressed systemic issues such as racial disparities amongst women and the involvement of queer women in the fight for equality (Steinem2018). Feminism in the West also challenged the ever-popular Playboy Mansion and with Gloria Steinem’s expose, A Bunny’s Tail , it propelled the woman’s sexual liberation movement even further in which the article depicts Steinem’s own account of what it was truly like to be a part of Hefner’s so called claim of “the Emancipation Proclamation of the sexual revolution” in which the cost was the exploitation of women (Steinem,2018).
In the fight for bodily autonomy, the case of Roe vs Wade which overturned the many existing state and US government laws heavily controlled a woman’s right to seek an abortion without government control. The feminist movement also had racial disparities in which while white women are addressing systemic racism in the fight towards equality, the experiences of black women tended to be side-lined into the ‘black female experience’ (hooks, 1981, pg 6) and notably, black women not only had to face the challenges of being dominated by the white patriarchy but also by the black patriarchy due to women, even in the Black panther party tended to be side-lined and oppressed by the black males demands for submission because to them, the great could not take precedence over male pain (hooks,1981,pg 6).
In developing countries such as Malaysia which is ranked 104 out of 153 countries in the world for gender equality (Economist,2020) as Malaysia’s sexual laws are very patriarchal and chauvinistic as there is no law against marital rape and child marriage is also very common in Malaysia as girls can get married at 16 unlike boys who can only get married at 18 (Economist,2020) and in Malaysia, women can be charged for sexual assault but not with rape.
Not only that, the cases of domestic abuse are on the rise in Malaysia as 1,986 cases of domestic violence have been reported in Malaysia during the1st COVID 19 lockdown in April (WOA,2020). With the patriarchal norms that are rooted in many societies, primarily in Malaysia as ministers tend to defend sexist behaviour which is rooted in the netizens themselves, with rape as well as the possession of child porn being justified especially in the recent case of the 25-year old preacher who is accused of rape in which one netizen stated that the girls most probably enjoyed being raped by him because of his good looks but they only sought to complain when he (the preacher) raped other women as well (Velusamy,2020).
The second wave of feminism is relevant in developing countries such as Malaysia to give women the autonomy that is written in their rights as free and independent citizens.
Unlike the First and Second Waves of Feminism, the Third and Fourth Waves of Feminism tended to focus on issues such as sexual harassment, equal pay in the workplace and bringing queer women and transgender women into the feminist conversation. Third-wave feminism started with Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony of sexual harassment against a supreme court nominee, which brought forth the issue of sexual harassment, specifically of black women, to global attention (Brunell,2019).
While third-wave feminism brought about great media attention, that was all it was.. a stunt for the media. The aesthetics of punk women such as Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna, with their coloured hair, unshaved armpits and gothic and androgynous clothes which protested the misogynists during the 80s who thought of feminists as unhappy, hairy and shrill women (Grady,2018). Despite the claims of third-wave feminism being more inclusive to all races yet the voice of third-wave feminists of the West did not echo to the developing countries who were and are still stagnant.
Feminists of the third-wave also had nothing to claim as their own unlike first-wave feminism which has the success of suffrage in their belt and the second-wave claiming the success of Roe vs Wade, the third-wave feminism is deemed as irrelevant in the political sphere but culturally, it brought about a shift in the misogynistic cultural norms.
Fourth-wave feminism brought about the advocation of gender equality in a more online sphere with campaigns such as HeForShe and the #METOO and the Time’s Up movement as well as body shaming, rape culture, and heteronormative gender norms. When the UN made the ‘hunky’ Venezuelan actor, journalist and activist Édgar Ramírez, the ambassador for the HeforShe campaign, the conversations of toxic masculinity were brought up especially when he talked about how men are suppressed and tend to not show any form of emotions (Revesz,2016).
While fourth wave feminism does tackle many of the problems faced in our society, it is nothing but a social movement which highlights the capitalist privilege of using technology to fight and advocate for their rights in the Western world (RÖK JÓNS,2013) and fourth-wave feminism is also a marketable, profit-making ideology due to the idea of intersectionality being used to market many feminine products such as Calvin Klein and Dove.
So, is feminism becoming more of a social movement than a political movement? We can define a social movement as a collective movement that is loosely organized but it is a sustained campaign in support of a social goal, typically either the implementation or the prevention of a change in society’s values (Turner,2020) while a political movement, usually defined as a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values (Rochon T,1990). While the first and second waves of feminism promoted a sense of collectivity to achieve a common cause which altered legislation and achieved some part of the UN sustainable goal of gender equality in the western world, in the developing world, however, many countries are still stagnant at the second-wave or worse, many societies are still patriarchal-dependent.
Third-wave and fourth-wave feminism have become more or less like the ‘Mean-Girls’ of feminism where it has become a competitive system of always competing for a “one-up” in terms of knowledge and these groups of feminists tend to ridicule those who pertain less knowledge than others, or who share other non-discriminatory opinions (Simpkins,2014) which has in a way turned feminism into a more social movement than a political one since feminism is no longer something that is fought in government but instead subject of feminism which once was something so political but instead it is just reduced to something that is debated on social media.
So, is feminism relevant? It is as many countries around the world, primarily countries in the developing world still depend on feminism due to the massive gender disparities in those countries. WEF’s Gender Gap Report shows the years it will take to close the gender gap in the area of political empowerment & the overall global gender gap and even though the gap has lessened because the female representation has increased since 2018 (WEF,2018), but it will still take 94.5 years until we reach global gender parity (WEF,2020).
With the waves of feminism, it is a form of feminism that practices inclusion and discrimination as the narrative of other feminists such as Marxist feminists, queer feminists and ecofeminists are ignored which makes people lose faith in feminism but if we focus on the core tenets and truly step into the prism of intersectionality, feminism can be made relevant again.
( For References, please ask the author)
( this was an assignment for a Year 1 module: Approaches to Global Politics taught by Dr Athanasios (Thanos) Gkoutzioulis.
