On a general level, feminism can be defined as the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. A feminist is then someone who articulated and fought for this belief.
Karen Offen has defined feminism in her book “European Feminisms” as, ‘the name given to a comprehensive critical response to the deliberate and systematic subordination of women as a grop by men as a group within a given cultural setting.’
Feminists in the nineteenth century werent primarily interested in womens suffrage rather were more interested in achieving womens rights in the home or in expanding womens access to education and work.
Individuals of all classes, men and women, became feminists in the nineteenth century. Although all believed that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities, not all believed that men and women were equal.
Offen describes two types of feminists.
i)Relational – They essentialized women; arguing that qualities that distinguished women from men justified their acccess to work, education and politics. This position relies heavily on the language of domesticity.
- Individual – They argued that in the debate over rights and opportunities, sex was irrelevant. Women should have rights, independence and autonomy because they were human beings. This position drew upon the Enlightenment concept of individual rights.
Joan W. Scott identifies a paradox in the Individual feminist argument. Acc to Scott, ‘Feminism was a protest against womens political exclusion; its goal was to eliminate ‘sexual difference’ in politics, but it had to make ts claims on behalf of women (who were discursively produced through ‘sexual difference’). To the extent that is acted for “women”, feminism produced the ‘sexual difference’ it sought to eliminate.
The FR planted the seeds of feminism. The democratic nature of the FR meant that individuals began to see women as a group that deserved equal rights and opportunities with men. It was the first time the case for equal opportunities for women was made for all women.
As reaction against the Rev. Grew in the start of the nineteenth cent., feminist arguments became even fainter. Whereas the discussion on womens rights was restricted to certain groups and places in the beginning of the cent by cents end it was a loud and boisterous debate,one that focused on all aspects of womens relationships to family and society.
The raising of the issue of womens rights in the FR initiated debate throughout Europe.
People were forced to reflect on the position of women in soiety due to certain key events of the pd.
- The decision to limit active citizenship to men in 1791
- The execution of the queen on the basis of her supposed failure as a mother
- The outlawing of womens clubs in 1793
- The reorganisation of sister and satellite republics beginning in 1795.
In the early part of the century, people drew upon arguements concerning natural human rights – arguments that underlay much of the revolutionary legislation – to argue for womens inclusion in society. They also drew on the concepts of motherhood and domesticity to demand for greater rights for women.
The FR demonstrated that changes in all areas, including womens status, could be made. The possibility of change was made further apparent due to the continued spread of industrialization. As production moved from the home to the factory and as members of a family were no longer longer as a unit, but as individuals, the question of womens relation to the workforce was increasingly discussed. The development of domestic ideology along with gendered arguments used to protest innovations such as mechanization, made men and women more aware of how a persons sex could affect her job opportunities and her wages.
The continued development of democracy meant that the question of citizenship for women was repeatedly brought before the public. Perhaps because feminism arose in a time of great change, its proponents couched their arguments in terms of creating a better world. A better future depended on women gaining their rights.
The first part of the nineteenth century – esp before 1840 – was marked by the strong involvement of women of all classes in politics. Women’s role in such protest(like the food riots in France, 1857 or in the Poor Law Officials attack in England), which often turned violent and in some cases led to their arrest and even execution, was justified by their role as guardians of the family. Throughout Europe, noble women sought positions and power for members of their families, petitioning those that could help and maintaining extensice networks of contacts. Although these practices survived the FR, the equation of women and politics with chaos and terror made many question their appropriateness. Under assault from public opinion, traditional forms of womens political activism declined from mid century, as parliamentary democracy took firmer hold in Europe. As this occurred, women of all classes became increasingly aware of the way in which their sex influenced their life and chances and experiences. It was out of such awareness that feminism was born.
The 1832 Reform Act, included, for the first time in British law, specific use of the word ‘male’ when describing voter qualifications. As a result, women like M K Reid realized the neccessity of organizing for the cause of womens rights.
The experience of radical women in the early part of the century was commo to many women who became feminists. In fighting for a common cause, they became aware of the new importance of sexual difference in modernizing and democratizing states. This experience led them to fight for the rights of women as a group.
In the years before 1848, many women who became feminists were drawn to alternative social and religious movements. The most important of these movements was the Owenite movement.
The Owenite Movement emerged around the 1820’s. Owen created a model workers community that included shorter working hours for children, schools and good housing. He also advocated retail cooperatives. While many criticized the Owenites for their belief that women should be independent of their husbands, women were attracted to his vision of a sicety in which a community, cooperation, and mutual respect were priviledged. Significant numbers of the middle and working classes became members of the Rational Society, the organization created to promote Owenism; they participated in the establishment of cooperative workshops and stores, and joined his model communities, inclding those in New Lanarck, Scotland and New Harmony, Indiana.
Women also wrote for and read the owenite paper, the poineer, which equated husbands and employers, and criticized them both for exploiting others.
In france, the saint simonian movement offered many women an alternative community. This movement advocated industrial and technological progress through cooperation rather than competition.
Enfantin(who led the movement in the 1830’s) argued that womens love was key to social harmony. Enfantin encouraged his male counterparts to develop their feminine side by doing housework aand urged his male disciples to take an active role in the movement.
As the movement evolved Saint Simonians realized that theyv had the right to live independently. As a result, they began to question the inequality of laws that defined them as legal minors, subservient to their husbands. They challenged assumptions that women didn’t need well paid work because men would take care of them. Motivated by the conviction that marriage was primarily an economic arrangement that degraded women and made men tyrants, the Saint Simonians advocated free unions based on love and companionship. However, such women were ostracised socially and impoverished economically.
The primary vehicle for these critiques both of society and the movement was a newspaper founded by several working class women. Published intermittently from 1832 to 1834, and taking a number of different titles over this time, this newspaper celebrated, La Femme Libre(the free woman), one of its more notorious titles due to the sexual connotations that many contemporaries saw in it.
Contributers to the paper referred to the same set of demands repeatedly, equality in marriage, education and employment. True to SS convictions they called for rich and poor women to unite behind the banner of motherhood.
These movements because of their radical nature antagonised large sections of society and hence were short lived and involved a relatively small number of women and men.
Chartism on the other hand was a major pol mov that involved hundreds of thoudands of english men and women.
The Great Charter, which was drawn up by radicals in response to the 1832 Reform Bill. The great charter demanded, among other things, the vote for all men, and regular meetings of parliament . Women were active in the Chartist Movement. Women constituted 1/3rd of the signatories of the 1839 and ’41 petitions. They participated in demonstations, set up schools for children and org campaigns to shop only from merchants who supported the Charter. Some in the mov also argued that women should get the vote. In addition, there is evidence that many women considered the vote of the male head of household to be a family vote that would represent their views as well.
In each of these instances, radicals and utopian socialists developed, what Ann T Allen has called, ‘maternal feminism’, referring to the idea that the duties and character of a mother enabled her to take action in a wider sphere than that of the household. Also called, “civic motherhood” or “republican motherhood”, this ideology provided women with a place in the nation, a place different from men’s and based on their essential difference as women and mothers.
Feminists spread their ideas through written works as well as through organisations. What Gisela Bock referred to as “literary and journalistic feminism” flourished in the 1830’s and ’40’s.
ACTIVISM
Womens involvment in a variety of pol and philanthropic causes was key in laying the foundation for the organized feminist mov that would come in the second half of the century. Women’s increased awareness of their status, their frustration with their exclusion, and their cont desire for a betterworld created an explosive situation when revolutions broke out throughout Europe in 1848. For almost 2 yrs, upheaval throughout eur provided women an opening for speaking and organising. In those countries that experienced a rev, the reaction to event and ideas of 1848 slowed the dev of womens organising.
In spite of the fact that they didn’t have suffrage, women organized themselves to make their voices heard.
The voice of women was dedicated to womens issues. The writers focussed in particular on the working conditions that women worked in arguing that they deserved higher wages, more diverse work opp and have control over their earnings.
The editors and readers of the paper met at the club des femmes(womens club) to discuss republican politics abd the place of women with it.
Women participated in the rev of 1830 and 1848. In the first instace their role was celebrated, but in 1848 they were all to often portrayed as “furies” out to destroy family, private property and civilization.
The satirical newspaper Le Chariveri waged an all out war on women activists likening them to prostitutes or masculinized old maids.
Furthermore, working class organizers attempted to portray male workers as protectors of women in an attempt to justify their higher wages and the vote.
Women were active in the German States during the 1848 revolution. Women rallied to the cause of the revolution in large numbers. However, the newly formed Frarnkfurt Parliament did not discuss womens suffrage and didn’t let women watch its proceedings either. In Austria the question of giving women the right to vote was compared to giving the insane or children the same right. In Hungary, the “Radical Hungarian Women” were not able to secure suffrage but were able to prompt the new government to discuss the question of womens education.
Frustrated by slow or no government response on womens issues, women organized themselves. Louise Otto-Peters began Fraueuzeitung(Women’s Newspaper) out of frustration. Throughout C. Europe, women’s clubs were formed as well. This revolutionary pd was also the pd in which new types of education were advocated. This period sees the articulation of the concept of kindergarten.
Even in England, which didn’t witness a revolution, the question of women’s votes was raised in Parliament. Benjamin Disraeli said, “I don’t see why (women) should not also have the right to vote”
The efforts of these woment to bring about change in women’s status were facilitated by the fact that England didn’t experience the extreme repression that spread throughout the continent as the revolutions were put down. In June, 1848, women’s clubs were closed in France and shortly thereafter women were banned from political activity. In Austria-Hungary, womens political activity was banned in March 1849. Such restrictions meant that until the 1860’s, England was the only country that saw ay significant progress with regard to womens rights.
The question of a married womans dependence on her husband prompted a group of women to take action. Thus, the Langham Place Circle was founded. The women involved undertook a series of initiatives to better the condition of women. The founded the all femal Victoria Press to publish their newspaper. Another iniative was the creation of the Society for the Promotion and Employment of Women and the Ladies Institute, which included a club, reading room and classrooms.
On the political front in the 1850’s their activities were directed towards the reform of laws governing married womens property. As a result, married women were granted control of their earnings in 1878 and their property in 1882.
The Langham Place group also, after some time, began to work for the vote. In 1865, they organized the Woman’s Suffrage Committee, later called the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. In 1869, women ratepayers(therefore unmarried or widowed women) were allowed to vote in local elections. Shortly thereafter, women gained the right to be elected to school and Poor Law boards (1870 and ’75 respectively)
FEMINISM FLOWERS
By the 1870’s EU saw a number of changes. Italy and Germany were united and France was a republic. In 1878 French feminists convened the first womens rights congress. This was attended by men and women from all over the world, particularly W Europe and Russia. There was disagreement over the importance of sufferage but there was linearity of thought with regard to political and civil equality with mean. By the 1890’s, these international congresses became more common, sometimes being held annually. In addition national forms of feminism grew in numbers and strength.
In places where the concept of citizenship was important, women sought to obtain those rights of citizenship. With the growth and development of republican democracies, women wanted a share in the decision making, usually in the form of achieving the right to vote. The right to vote, was not the hallmark of feminism all over Europe as voting rights had greater importance in republics where men also had a meaningful right to vote (England, France, USA).
Although the demands of the right of women to vote and gain citizenship were first raised during the FR, ensuing governments, both in France and the rest of Europe, strongly resisted allowing women into the male public sphere, and esp resisted giving them the vote. They denied them on the grounds that property was a criterion for voting and women had already been denied property rights. However, by the first decade of the 20th cent. , once women had been granted property rights in W. European countries, feminists agreed that women should be full citizens of their countries.
In keeping with the social context, some argued for the right to vote as a means of improving the social and eco situations of mothers and for giving motherhood new support.
England
In England feminists were far from united on ways to achieve the right to vote. In 1890 the many English suffrage societies that had formed united into the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), headed by Millicent Fawcett. Primarily a middle class movement, it had some support from workingwomen, in a minuscule cross-class alliance.
These working class representatives took the message of benefits of the right to vote back home, esp to the textile workers, pointing out that the vote would help them feed their children.
After the British Parliament voted, in 1892, to exclude women from the right to vote, feminist activities for suffrage became more militant and violent. The Women’s Social and Political Union held parades and engaged in vandalism and violence in order to defeat candidates that refused to grant women suffrage. They argued that taking measures “appropriate to their gender” had failed. The British government jailed many of the suffragettes (This campaign became known as the ‘Suffragette’ campaign). This led to many women staging hunger strikes in protest. The media was very sympathetic to the suffragettes and stories of their harsh treatment were made public – the women’s opponents would drag the demonstrators by the hair or by their breasts.
With the outbreak of war in 1914m the suffragettes supported the British war effort, for which the British government rewarded them with suffrage as soon as the war was over.
Ireland
In Ireland the men and women gained the right to vote in local elections in 1898, but sought Home Rule and the right to vote in national parliamentary elections. Irish party leaders, all men, opposed the idea of enfranchising women as they thought it would compromise their movement for Home Rule. This led to the formation of militant Irish suffragettes and the Irish Women’s Franchise League, modelede after the British women’s organizations. They argued that Irish Home Rule should provide equal voting rights for men and women to the Irish Parliament and they too engaged in vandalism. Irish women gained suffrage in 1918.
France
French feminists arguing for suffrage behaved less violently than their British and Irish counterparts. French feminists worte and argued for suffrage up to the war in 1914, but met resistence. In 1909 they organized the French Union for Women’s Suffrage, which worked with the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance leading the drive for suffrage. Throughtout the Third Republic(1871-1940) women were denied the right to vote. Part of the reason was cited to be because women were religious and would vote according to their priests (and not their husbands) advice, therby voting to oust republican members of parliament in favour of conservative Catholics who abhorred Republicanism. With the outbreak of the war, French feminists stilled their demands for suffrage. However, unlike the British, Irish, Dutch, Danish, German, Austrian and Russian women who obtained the right to vote either during or right after the War, French women had to wait till 1945.
Germany
The feminist demand for suffrage didn’t have deep roots in Germany. Feminist organisations like the German Women’s Ass.(ADF) Or the Federation of Women’s Organizations (BDF) worked more on issues like women’s education and working conditions for women.
In1896 a group of radical women organized the League of Progressive Women’s Organizations(VFF) which worked with the German Ass. For Women’s Suffrage in demanding the vote. By 1907 the BDF expanded its interests to include greater rights for women of soaial classes with the family, in educations, in economic life and in politics in the community and state level. This organisation, although viewing women primarily as mothers, nevertheless advocated paid work, equal pat, equality in marriage and inclusion of women in all aspects of the public sphere, including the right to vote.
Demanding suffrage, however, was only one of many feminist goals during the last decades of the century. Feminists formed alliances for the abolition of traffic in women for sex work (‘the white slave trade’) and agitated against government regulation of prostitution. Josephine Butler, a British feminist, was the first to regard prostitues as sex workers trying to support themselves and their families. She removed prostitution from the questions of womens morality and spoke about men’s immorality in frequenting prostitutes.
When it came to labour legislation, however, there was lack of congruence among women. Some feminists believed that agitating for equal right to work for fair wages in conditions that were not ruinous to their health, might interfere and cause harm to their basic right to work. The fact though was that women worked indangerous conditions for abysmal wages, and one of the major arguments to alleviate the dire work related conditions focussed on how those working conditions impinged on women’s morality and motherhood. Legislation to ‘protect’ women workers in the interest of protecting their wombs and their motherhood increased in the 1890’s when legislators limited the number of working hours for women and banned nightime work. This legislation, obviously, discouraged employers from employing women. Feminists believed that such legislation i) Presumed the ‘male breadwinner’ model of society, which was wrong as women should not live dependent on men ii) Deprived women of needed income and jobs.
Working women did find ways around gender specific labour legislation so they could continue to work and earn enough to feed their children. Only 10% of women participated in unions, this is partyl because of men’s refusal to allow women to join, and husbands pressuring their wives not to join but mostly because union activity took time and money, which working class women didn’t have.
The Marxist and Socialist Feminist agenda differed markedly from that of the bourgeois feminists. The socialists called for women’s suffrage as well as state support for mothers. They also campaigned for complete equality of women vut also for labour legislation that banned women from certain dangerous occupations. The more radical among them advocated the overthrow of the capitalist industries and governemtns in order to end the exploitation of both men and women. Capitalism, they argued, with its exploitation of all workers, its emphasison private property, and the exultation of the patriarchal family, was at the base of women’s subordination. Because og the fundamental nature of private property under capitalism, and men’s desire to accumalate and control that property, man positioned women’s sexuality and reproduction in their own interest of protecting the sanctity of men’s property.
Many socialists or marxist feminists believed that if the economic order were overthrown, then women’ s emancipation would follow.