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Money , Sex and Power New Feminisms: Young Women and Political Activism Today” Week 10

Money , Sex and Power New Feminisms: Young Women and Political Activism Today” Week 10. Lecture outline. Context ‘Waves’ of feminism and feminist activism First wave – feminists and women’s suffrage late 19 th /early 20 th centuries

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Money , Sex and Power New Feminisms: Young Women and Political Activism Today” Week 10

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  1. Money, Sex and PowerNew Feminisms: Young Women and Political Activism Today”Week 10

  2. Lecture outline • Context • ‘Waves’ of feminism and feminist activism • First wave – feminists and women’s suffrage late 19th/early 20th centuries • Second wave – women’s liberation movements 1960s and 1970s • Third wave? – 2000s onwards • Feminist activism in Britain 2010 – 2014 • Internet activism • Organisations • School Femsocs • Why feminism today and what does it mean to young women?

  3. Context 2011 – 2013:years marked by tributes to feminists and by feminist activism(s) • Commemoration of the 100thanniversary of Emily Wilding-Davison’s death. Davison was a militant suffragette who ran onto the racecourse at Epsom, in 1913, as part of the campaign for votes for women. • Caroline Criado Perez and the campaign for a banknote with a female image • Women in revolutions in the Middle East • Feminist protests across India against rape of young woman in Delhi • MalalaYousafzai campaigning in favour of the rights of girls’ to education in Pakistan

  4. ‘Waves’ of feminism and feminist activism – first wave First wave feminism emerged at the end of the 19th century and carried on into the first two decades of the 20th century. It was about the fight for women’s suffrage although it was also concerned with women’s education, employment and equal pay for women, world peace, temperance (i.e. the control or prohibition of alcohol) and social welfare. There were suffrage movements all over the world and the right of women to vote united women across different countries.

  5. Second wave – women’s liberation 1960s /1970s - Emergence of women’s liberation movements (WLMs) in North America and Europe – Why? • After 2WW, women had entered the labour market massively but after 25 to 30 years still weren’t treated equally with men on pay and conditions of work; • Women had gained a certain sense of freedom at work and not tied to home/children. This made them want more freedom in their personal life; they wanted the same sexual freedoms as men. • Women, particularly university students, had become politicised through other movements such as the peace movement and anti-Vietnam war movement etc. They also found that within these movements they less power than men and had to really fight to have their voice heard. These reasons led women to form or join WLMs.

  6. Second wave feminism challenged Male dominated institutions such as: • trade unions • political parties • universities … WLMs • rejected conventional forms of doing politics • engaged in direct action, street campaigns etc • Were driven through grassroots action • assumed that all women were united by similar experiences and a shared identity – this created common interests that could be summed up as ‘women’s interests’.

  7. Some of the demands made by WLMs • Equal education • Equal pay and working conditions • Free contraception and abortion on demand • Free 24-hour nurseries • Financial and legal independence • Ending of discrimination in law against lesbians and the right of women to define their own sexuality • Freedom from violence and sexual coercion regardless of a woman’s marital status.

  8. Fragmentation of WLMs Towards the end of the 1970s, second wave movements began to break up. Why? • Emergence of differences along lines of a specific identity; e.g. black, lesbians, disability, age, class. Not all women shared the same experiences and had the same interests as young, white, middle-class, highly-educated women • Many ideas and demands of WLMs taken up by more progressive political parties and high profile feminist activists encouraged to join parties and other political institutions to seek ‘change from within’. • Others went into academia, NGO sector, trade unions

  9. State feminism The entry of second wave feminists into political parties and other state institutions led to the creation of ministries for women’s issues (and/or rights) in many countries. E.g. • 1975 Netherlands, first ministry for women’s issues as part of the Ministry of Culture, Leisure Time and Social Work with the Department of Emancipation Policy; • 1977 Norway,first ministry for women’s issues; • 1979 Austria, first ministry for women’s issues as part of the Federal Ministry for Women's Affairs and Consumer Protection; • 1976 Britain, Equal Opportunities Commission was created by parliament as expert body on women’s issues and rights. Another lot of ministries for women was set up in the 1980s in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain. (All stats from: European Database: Women in decision-Making, http://www.db-decision.de/).

  10. Dissemination of feminist ideas and practice The fragmentation of WLMs and the entry of feminist activists into state and voluntary sectors meant that feminist ideas and practices spread more widely throughout society. E.g. • the UN decade for women (1975-85) was inaugurated at the first global conference on women in Mexico, in 1975, and raised issues of women’s integration into the development process, leading to the creation of huge numbers women’s organisations world-wide and the formation, in 1979, of CEDAW (the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), a useful tool for feminist activists. • many feminists who didn’t enter state institutions or the NGO sector, entered academia which led to an emergence of women’s studies and gender studies courses in universities across Europe.

  11. Third wave feminism? Grrrl Power • a feminist response to male-dominated music scene • inspired by Punk and DIY activism. DIY activism is creative activism which can be done by anyone, anytime, with little or no money; includes creative techniques/acts such as street painting, flash mobs and street theatre in order to get political messages across to a larger public. • reclaimed terms deemed sexist/derogatory and used them ironically to shock, e.g. ‘slut’, ‘bitch’ • a form of cultural politics involving production of zines, music, art to challenge sexist cultural practices, especially in the music industry. Ladyfests – started in USA about 20 years ago Slut marches – since 2011 (in response to Canadian police officer saying women should protect themselves from rape by not dressing as sluts.

  12. Third wave as a concept • refers to a generational difference between young feminist activists and older feminists who were active in the second wave • a political critique of second wave feminism and a distancing from it • a term that can be and is used in different ways as part of the practice of feminist politics • all about coalition and ‘transversity’ rather than assuming a universal identity shared by women regardless of class, race, age, dis/ability and nation. • concerned to develop a feminist theory and politics that honour ‘contradictory experiences and deconstruct categorical thinking’ (Krolokke and Scott, 2006: 16); i.e. starts from a position of ‘multiple differences rather than from a position that advocates equivalence’ (Budgeon, 2011: 4).

  13. Transversal politics Term coined by Felix Guattari (1974) and developed by feminist scholars Nira Yuval-Davis and Cynthia Cockburn to refer to the creation of alliances across political and cultural boundaries, as in the conflict involving Palestinians and Israelis or between different ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia (Cockburn, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 1997). A politics of ‘dialogue and cooperation’ (Yuval-Davis, 2006: 281) which recognises that women have different identities but also that they can come together around specific issues, such as anti-militarism (Cockburn, 2007). Moreover, it is associated with the recognition that emerged from the UN conference on human rights which took place in Vienna, in 1993, that women’s rights are human rights (Yuval-Davis, 2006).

  14. Feminist activism in Britain Julia Long: A ‘new wave of anti-porn activism’ which began to emerge during the first decade of the 21st century (2012: 5) Kat Banyard: ‘the green shoots of a feminist movement were starting to emerge, if you looked carefully enough’ but ‘fast-forward twelve months, and we [were] witnessing a scale of feminist organising not seen in over a decade’ (Banyard, 2010: 241).

  15. Internet activism Resurgence of feminist activism in the UK has been linked to the establishment of The F-word website in 2001 aimed specifically at younger women in their teens, 20s and 30s According to Jonathan Dean, the F-Word ‘reflects and has facilitated the growing emergence of forms of activism such as the Reclaim the Night campaign, Million Women Rise, Ladyfest, Feminist Fightback, Feminist Activist Forum, Object and several others’ (Dean, 2010: 162). Other internet activist sites include: The Everyday Sexism Project (http://everydaysexism.com/) No More Page 3 (http://nomorepage3.org/) Lose the Lads’ Mags (http://www.losetheladsmags.org.uk/).

  16. Feminist conferences and organisations 1. London Feminist Network (Finn Mackay) 2. 2005 – 2010 series of national feminist conferences leading to creation of UK Feminista Some key organisational /strategic and ideological issues include: • Presence of men/women only spaces • Intersectionality 3. School FemSocs

  17. Why feminism? ‘Feminist triggers’ (Mackay 2011) for young women were: • The experience of domestic or sexual violence; • Being introduced to feminist writing at school or university and discovering that it explained how they’d ‘always felt’ (Redfern and Aune, 2010: 209); • Being brought up in an environment where they had a feminist mother or a role model of a ‘strong woman’ (see also McKay, 2011; Long, 2012); • Being brought up in a family or community where boys/men were all-powerful and women had little say or where gender roles were strictly prescribed and deeply unequal and rebelling against this.

  18. What does feminism mean to young women? • Fun, joyous • Welcomes everyone and consciously provides a supportive environment • emotional dimension of political activism is recognised and nurtured • respect for different views and political positions is encouraged • no programme, no controlled set of demands. Women and men are encouraged to become active in whatever way is appropriate for them and on any issue that concerns them • But not anything and everything that a woman chooses to do is seen as feminist ; feminism is not simply about exercising one’s individual choice.

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