Women Feminism - What does It mean To You?

Women feminism is a term which is used as cultural, political and even economic purposes with the aim of establishing women rights and legal provisions in the society. Historians suggest that feminism has been in three faces. The first phase extended from the late 18th century to the 19th century, while the second lasted between the nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies. The third wave of feminism started in the nineteen nineties and is ongoing to date.

Throughout history, women Feminism revolved around the legal rights available or unavailable to women. Right after the Second World War, the women started petitioning for the earn wages in the work place just as the men did. Later, they would lodge petitions seeking to have the right to enter into binding contracts in business, own property and even vote. As years went by, the feminism movement took up issues that represented the bodily integrity and independence of the woman. Such include the right to productive rights. This included the right to access contraception, the right to abort and the right to access prenatal care.

For younger girls, the women feminism movement sought to protect them by petitioning the enactment of laws that would prohibit domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment. The feminism movement always took issues of women rights to the work place, where they demanded equal treatment between the female and male gender, equal pay and maternity leave among the gender specific discrimination that was common in those days.

In the 1960s, the second women feminism led to the entrant of more racial diversity. As such, much of the women petition during this time targeted ending discrimination. During this time, women craved for more inclusion in the political and economic arenas. Women were especially opposed to the sex-based power structures that favored men in most patriarchal societies across the world.

The women feminism movement was vital to analyzing women oppression in the past and suggesting ways through which the gender imbalance would be corrected. However, this was not always easy especially because women were operating in societies that had deep rooted stereotypes of what women should or should not do. Unfortunately, these stereotypes not only affected how the larger society viewed women, but it also affected how women perceived their own abilities against the male abilities.

Women feminism therefore not only had the responsibility of proving that the woman indeed would do more than sit at home doing domestic chores, giving birth and waiting for the man to provide for her, but had the enormous responsibility of convincing women that they would attain more fulfillment from utilizing their capabilities outside the home.
 
Even today, and especially in the conservative or developing cultures, women feminism is still involves petitioning for more rights to be granted to the girl child, young mothers and career women. The argument of feminism is that women through out the world had been socialized to believe that they could only find meaning and identity in a family setting where they would take up their husbands name, bear him children and live their entire lives looking after the children.

Women Feminism - What does It mean To You?