Introduction to Women in World Thought and Literature

1. Introduction to Women in World Thought and Literature

2. Course Focus • Literature, Theory and Philosophy from around 1945 to the present, with a few exceptions in the Theory category. • Feminism of the post WWII decades profoundly changed women’s lives • Upheavals in law • Shifting customs • Altered consciousness of women

3. First Wave Feminism • Elizabeth Cady Stanton was “nerved” to speak at the convention in Seneca Falls in 1848 because it was time to lay before the public “the question of women’s wrongs” and by her belief that “woman herself must do this work; for woman alone can understand the height, the depth, the length, and the breadth of her own degradation.”

4. Women in the U.S. in 1848 • Barred from all but a few institutions of higher ed. • Couldn’t vote or be members of legislative bodies or serve as jurors. • Lived under a sexual double standard. • Married women’s husbands controlled their finances and their activities. • Divorced women lost custody of their children. • Single women were denied opportunities for lucrative employment and were at the mercy of fathers and brothers.

5. 1920 – Women’s Suffrage • 1920 – U.S. • 1928 – Britain • 1945 – France, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Korea • From 1920 until 1945 public agitation for women’s rights subsided. There was a lull in the action. There was no vote splitting along gender lines, as predicted. Women’s issues did not make their way into party platforms and convention speeches.

6. 1945 – UN Charter • The UN charger reaffirmed the equality of men and women and second wave feminism began to surge. • Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique • Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex • Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics • Women employed in greater numbers outside the home • Kennedy’s official govt. commission to study the status of American women

7. 2nd Wave Feminists • Track 1: NOW and the campaign for equality in employment, law, education and politics founded and supported by business and professional women • Track 2: Less centralized organization combating sex role stereotypes and working to reshape sexist institutions lead by anti-war and civil rights activists and movement veterans

8. 1st and 2nd Wave Comparisons • Early movement activists lacked formal education and opportunities for financial independence and meaningful work • Later feminists were well educated and gainfully employed

9. 1st and 2nd Wave Comparisons • Many early feminist scholars were men – John Stuart Mill, Henrick Ibsen, Fredrick Engles • Later scholars and writers are predominantly women

10. 1st and 2nd Wave Comparisons • Early movement mostly white, upper or middle class. • Later movement international, multi-classed, multi-racial. This shifted the focus in terms of issues.

11. 1st and 2nd Wave Comparisons • Early movement focused on the economic and political. • Later movement on the psychological and the psychoanalytic; on the importance of liberation on women’s consciousness. There was an emphasis on consciousness raising to help women overcome negative feelings about themselves and their place in the world.

12. 1st and 2nd Wave Comparisons • Early movement didn’t focus on bodies, though pioneers like Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger and the New Woman Flapper of the 20’s challenged people’s notions. • Later movement deals explicitly with childbirth, abortion, homosexuality, rape, sexuality.

13. Fundamental Question linking both groups • What is the essential nature of woman? • Stanton says that “women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream.”

14. Questions • Do the sexes basically think, behave and speak differently from one another? • Do women have a closer connection to the earth and natural phenomena? • Are women less aggressive, more peace loving? • Do women understand and respond differently than men to ethical issues? • Are women sexually purer than men?

15. Naomi Weisstein – feminist psychologist • “I don’t know what immutable differences exist between men and women apart from differences in their genitalia; perhaps there are some other unchangeable differences. . . . But it is clear that until social expectations for men and women are equal, until we provide equal respect for both men and women, our answers to this question will simply reflect our prejudices.”