Portal:Feminism

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Feminism Portal

Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern societies are patriarchal—they prioritize the male point of view—and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.

Originating in late 18th-century Europe, feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to vote, run for public office, work, earn equal pay, own property, receive education, enter into contracts, have equal rights within marriage, and maternity leave. Feminists have also worked to ensure access to contraception, legal abortions, and social integration; and to protect women and girls from sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Changes in female dress standards and acceptable physical activities for women have also been part of feminist movements.

Many scholars consider feminist campaigns to be a main force behind major historical societal changes for women's rights, particularly in the West, where they are near-universally credited with achieving women's suffrage, gender-neutral language, reproductive rights for women (including access to contraceptives and abortion), and the right to enter into contracts and own property. Although feminist advocacy is, and has been, mainly focused on women's rights, some argue for the inclusion of men's liberation within its aims, because they believe that men are also harmed by traditional gender roles. Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experiences. Feminist theorists have developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues concerning gender.

Numerous feminist movements and ideologies have developed over the years, representing different viewpoints and political aims. Traditionally, since the 19th century, first-wave liberal feminism, which sought political and legal equality through reforms within a liberal democratic framework, was contrasted with labour-based proletarian women's movements that over time developed into socialist and Marxist feminism based on class struggle theory. Since the 1960s, both of these traditions are also contrasted with the radical feminism that arose from the radical wing of second-wave feminism and that calls for a radical reordering of society to eliminate patriarchy. Liberal, socialist, and radical feminism are sometimes referred to as the "Big Three" schools of feminist thought.

Since the late 20th century, many newer forms of feminism have emerged. Some forms, such as white feminism and gender-critical feminism, have been criticized as taking into account only white, middle class, college-educated, heterosexual, or cisgender perspectives. These criticisms have led to the creation of ethnically specific or multicultural forms of feminism, such as black feminism and intersectional feminism. Some have argued that feminism often promotes misandry and the elevation of women's interests above men's, and criticize radical feminist positions as harmful to both men and women. (Full article...)

View new selections below (purge)

edit

Featured article

Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The Wrongs of Woman was published posthumously in 1798 by her husband, William Godwin, and is often considered her most radical feminist work. Wollstonecraft's philosophical and gothic novel revolves around the story of a woman imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband. It focuses on the societal rather than the individual "wrongs of woman" and criticizes what Wollstonecraft viewed as the patriarchal institution of marriage in eighteenth-century Britain and the legal system that protected it. However, the heroine's inability to relinquish her romantic fantasies also indicts women for wallowing in a false and damaging sentimentalism. The novel pioneered the celebration of female sexuality and cross-class identification between women. Such themes, coupled with the publication of Godwin's scandalous Memoirs of Wollstonecraft's life, made the novel unpopular at the time it was published. Twentieth-century feminist critics embraced the work, integrating it into the history of the novel and feminist discourse. It is most often viewed as a fictionalized popularization of the Rights of Woman, as an extension of Wollstonecraft's feminist arguments in Rights of Woman, and as an autobiography.

More featured articles

More...

edit

Featured picture

Credit: Steven G. Johnson

The "Maid of Orleans", Joan of Arc is a national heroine of France and a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. She helped inspire Charles VII's troops to retake most of his dynasty's former territories, which had been under English and Burgundian dominance during the Hundred Years' War. She later was convicted of heresy (overturned posthumously) and burnt at the stake at the age of nineteen. Pope Benedict XV canonized her on 16 May 1920 and she is now one of the most popular saints of the Catholic Church.

Shown here is a statue of Joan of Arc inside Notre-Dame de Paris, a Gothic cathedral in Paris, where she was beatified in 1909.

More featured pictures

More...

edit

In this month

June 1949 – First publication of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, a detailed analysis of women's oppression which became a foundational text of contemporary feminism
June 1996 – Fauziya Kassindja was granted asylum in the United States in order to escape the tribal practice of female genital cutting. This set a precedent allowing the grant of asylum for gender discrimination.
21 June 1947 – Shirin Ebadi - Iranian lawyer and human rights activist who was the first Muslim woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her pioneering efforts on behalf of women's and children's rights
23 June 1879 – Birth of Hoda Shaarawi (pictured at right), a pioneering Egyptian feminist leader and nationalist; she founded the Egyptian Feminist Union and led protests, notably removing her face veil for the first time in public.
30 June 1966 – Foundation of the National Organization for Women in the United States, which promotes reproductive freedoms; diversity; the end of racism, rape and domestic violence; economic justice; lesbian rights; and constitutional equality for women.

More anniversaries

edit

Selected quote

Susan B. Anthony

We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.

— Susan B. Anthony

More selected quotes

More...

edit

Related portals

edit

Featured biography

Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist and seamstress whom the United States Congress dubbed the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement". Parks is famous for her refusal in 1955 to obey a bus driver's demand that she give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Her subsequent arrest and trial for this act of civil disobedience ignited the Montgomery bus boycott, one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history, and launched Martin Luther King Jr., one of the organizers of the boycott, to the forefront of the civil rights movement. Her role in American history earned her an iconic status in American culture, and her actions have left an enduring legacy for worldwide civil rights movements.

More featured biographies

More...

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that after dying in her daughter's arms in an asylum in 1897, Maria Trubnikova was remembered as the "heart and soul" of feminist activism in Russia?
... that Margareth Rago seeks to establish a methodology for what she calls "feminist science"?

edit

More did you know

...that Lady Florence Dixie (pictured), feminist, big game hunter, war correspondent, and suffragette, was the aunt of Oscar Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas?
...that feminist author Yuriko Miyamoto wrote over 900 letters to her imprisoned husband, defying Japan's draconian Peace Preservation Laws?
...that Shamsunnahar Mahmud and Roquia Sakhawat Hussain were Muslim feminists of the Bengal renaissance?

More did you know facts

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various feminism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Marie Stopes (from History of feminism)
Image 2Florence Nightingale (from History of feminism)
Image 3The vandalized Concepción Feminist Mural in Spain, which was vandalized on International Women's Day 2021. (from International Women's Day)
Image 4Margaret Sanger (from History of feminism)
Image 5Ida B. Wells (from History of feminism)
Image 6Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) and Susan B. Anthony (from History of feminism)
Image 78M 2018 in Pamplona (from International Women's Day)
Image 8Yellow mimosa is the symbol of IWD in Italy as well as in Russia, Ukraine and many other ex-Soviet Union republics (from International Women's Day)
Image 9Sylvia Pankhurst (from History of feminism)
Image 10Lucy Stone (from History of feminism)
Image 11John Neal (from History of feminism)
Image 12Irena Krzywicka (from History of feminism)
Image 13Matilda Joslyn Gage (from History of feminism)
Image 14An Antimonumenta, installed in Mexico City on International Women's Day 2019, as photographed the day after. The circle part says "In Mexico 9 women are murdered daily" and the cross part says "Not one more!" On the opposite side, the Antimonumenta reads "We demand a national gender alert", and in the central part "No + Femicides". (from International Women's Day)
Image 15bell hooks (from History of feminism)
Image 16First edition print of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (from History of feminism)
Image 17Gloria Steinem at news conference, Women's Action Alliance, January 12, 1972 (from History of feminism)
Image 18A veil-burning ceremony in Andijan on International Women's Day in 1927. (from International Women's Day)
Image 19Women on the street celebrating International Women's Day in Cameroon (from International Women's Day)
Image 20Clara Zetkin (left) and Rosa Luxemburg (right) in January 1910 (from International Women's Day)
Image 21Christine de Pizan presents her book to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria. (from History of feminism)
Image 22Cover of WSPU's The Suffragette, April 25, 1913 (after Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, 1830) (from History of feminism)
Image 23Huda Shaarawi, founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union (from History of feminism)
Image 24Emily Davison (from History of feminism)
Image 25Bessie Rayner Parkes (from History of feminism)
Image 26
  Official holiday
  Holiday for women
  Non-official holiday
(from International Women's Day)
Image 27Nellie McClung (from History of feminism)
Image 28Betty Friedan 1960 (from History of feminism)
Image 29Simone de Beauvoir (from History of feminism)
Image 30The Nineteenth Amendment (from History of feminism)
Image 31María Elena Oddone holding a banner, on International Women's Day in 1984 in Argentina. The banner says "No to motherhood, yes to pleasure". (from International Women's Day)
Image 32Suffrage parade in New York, May 6, 1912 (from History of feminism)
Image 33Frances Cobbe (from History of feminism)
Image 34Female members of the Australian Builders Labourers Federation march on International Women's Day 1975 in Sydney (from International Women's Day)
Image 358M 2020 in Spain (from International Women's Day)
Image 36Catharine MacKinnon (from History of feminism)
Image 37Wealthy Chinese women with bound feet (Beijing, 1900). Foot binding was a symbol of women's oppression during the reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. (from History of feminism)
Image 38Author and scholar Helen Kendrick Johnson opposed women's suffrage. (from History of feminism)
Image 39Board of directors of "Jam'iat e nesvan e vatan-khah", a women's rights association in Tehran (1923–1933) (from History of feminism)
Image 40Germaine Greer in June 1972 (from History of feminism)
Image 41Camilla Collett (from History of feminism)
Image 42Women's Liberation march in Washington, D.C., 1970 (from History of feminism)

edit

WikiProjects

edit

Topics

edit

Featured content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Feminism}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.

Featured articles

Featured lists

Good articles

Featured pictures

Alice Manfield - Guide Alice, Mt Buffalo, c1900-30, SLV
Alice Park - Records of the National Woman's Party
Alice Paul (1915) by Harris & Ewing
Angela Davis in a half-length portrait by Bernard Gotfryd - crop
Anne Dallas Dudley LOC
Avril de Sainte-Croix - Restored, cropped
Bertha Lutz 1925
Cabinet Card of Sojourner Truth - Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Convicts Lunatics and Women! Have No Vote for Parliament, ca. 1907-1918
Dr. Caroline Spencer 275029v
Ethel Smyth
Frances Benjamin Johnston, Self-Portrait (as "New Woman"), 1896
Fredrikke Mørck
George Charles Beresford - Virginia Woolf in 1902 - Restoration
Henrietta Rodman from the George Grantham Bain Collection
Henry Mayer, The Awakening, 1915 Cornell CUL PJM 1176 01 - Restoration
Hester Jeffrey
Hubertine Auclert 1910
Iris Calderhead
Joy Young Rogers outside the White House
Lucretia Mott, signed photo, by F. Gutekunst
Mabel Vernon, c. 1917, by Edmonston, Washington, D.C.
Marguerite Durand 1910 - Restoration
Marie Stopes in her laboratory, 1904 - Restoration
Mary Garrity - Ida B. Wells-Barnett - Google Art Project - restoration crop
Millicent Fawcett
Mrs. Crystal Eastman Benedict by Edmonston, Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Lillian Ascough, chairman of the Connecticut branch of the Woman's Party
Mrs. Pauline Adams 147002v
Portrett av Gina Krog (6276081582) - Restoration
Poster by Anna Soós Korànyi for the Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance
Ray Strachey restored
Sojourner Truth, 1870 (cropped, restored)
Victoria Claflin Woodhull by Mathew Brady - Oval Portrait
Voltairine de Cleyre (Age 35)
We Can Do It! NARA 535413 - Restoration 2