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Exploring Feminist Theory

A prominent motivation of historical feminist theory has been the feminist movement, as theorists rewrite male-centred history to make women active agents and show how women diverged from their contemporary social conventions. Women were expected to stay in the private sphere, looking after the home and acting as the angelic wife and mother. First-wave feminism emerged from political origins, as suffragettes began to fight against this convention for property rights within marriage, to be properly educated, to be accepted within the public sphere and work and to be able to vote. Through defying this expectation, moral panic in society grew and suffragettes were seen to be “responsible for all manner of social ills”[1] and often portrayed as “ugly harridans with slatternly hairstyles: unbalanced, hysterical and devoid of judgement”.[2] 

Once women were granted basic political rights, the movement developed into second-wave feminism in the 1960s, and its debates progressed to cover issues of reproductive rights, sexuality, domestic violence and workplace equality. Society grew more liberal and permissive, and women gained certain sexual freedoms in the form of the contraceptive pill. Furthermore, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 meant that women could no longer be discriminated against in areas like the workplace and education. However, as women were granted more freedoms, social panic grew further as some believed young women were losing their moral compass in the decades of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Misbehaviour and challenges to traditional authority were highly publicised, and “these stories carried a particular charge when girls were involved”.[3] 

The 1970s saw an increasing relationship between feminism and historic theory; the movement exposed how women were continuously omitted from history in favour of men, and this created the grounds for feminist theory. Feminist scholars like Sheila Rowbotham, Linda Gordon and Joan Scott produced works that “started taking the questions from [their] own activism and applying them to the past”[4], which recovered women as active agents in their own lives as opposed to being secondary to men. Scholars researched the political histories of women alongside newer conceptual categories like gender, patriarchy, women’s culture and the concept of separate spheres as an attempt to theorise gender differences and show women as being dominated and oppressed by men.[5] Judith Bennett conducted influential research in this area, as she presented women “not only as victims and resisters of patriarchal social formations, but also as colluders, survivors, and beneficiaries”.[6] 

However, some scholars believe that studying women away from men is an issue within feminist methodology, as it is easily portrayed as radical and says little about “the significance of sex roles in social life and historical change”.[7] Furthermore, due to the fact that feminist history largely appeals to the female population, Natalie Zemon Davis believes that it has “little effect on the main body of historical writing or periodisation.”[8] The second-wave feminist movement, as well as feminist theorists, were also not completely inclusive; a large focus of their histories and activism revolved around heterosexual white women instead of including women from all cultures and sexualities. In an attempt to become more inclusive, contemporary historians have begun to diversify their research in order to cover all women and draw the focus of feminism away from women and towards notions of gender, which shows the willingness of theorists and activists to both retheorise and rewrite history in order to continue the fight towards equality.

Joan Scott suggests that second-wave feminism began to diffuse in the 1990s and saw the “beginning of its eclipse”[9] as feminists were confronted with different pressures than previously experienced. A multiplicity of approaches emerged when studying women’s history to further enrich the field, from “socialist, Marxist, black, radical, liberal, lesbian, post-structuralist, post-colonial and transnational”.[10] Furthermore, the dominance of the notion of separate spheres in feminist history was replaced when the concept of gender began to be questioned, which stimulated studies into toxic masculinities. Instead of researching how women experienced life in comparison to men throughout history, scholars began to investigate the construction of gender identities and “the way in which gender discourse operated as a primary way of signifying relationships of power”.[11] 

The inclusion of men in feminist analysis, whilst criticised by some feminists, has created a broader perspective of gender as a concept. Joan Scott believed that such a methodological shift was essential because the previous theories of gender “had failed to transform the wider discipline as originally anticipated”.[12] The third-wave feminist movement was coloured by a need to diversify and redefine what it meant to be a feminist, and this is increasingly present in feminist scholarship. Scott suggests that “only by deconstructing the most fundamental categories of historical analysis— women, men, identity, gender, experience, agency, subjectivity—could such a reconfiguration of history take place”.[13]

There is still much work to be done in terms of gender studies, especially in contemporary society where the meaning of gender has evolved drastically from the 20th and early 21st centuries. Young Scot describes gender identity as "how we feel in relation to being male or female - and there are different terms, descriptions and labels for different types of gender identities".[14]


Further reading:

Åhäll, Linda. “Affect as Methodology: Feminism and the Politics of Emotion.” International Political Sociology 12 (2018): 36-52.

Bennett, Judith. History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Dyhouse, Carol. Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2014.

Hercus, Cheryl. “Identity, Emotion and Feminist Collective Action.” Gender and Society 13, no. 1 (1999): 34-55.

Lutz, Catherine. “Emotions and Feminist Theories.” In Gender Feelings, edited by Daniela Rippl and Verena Mayer, 104-121. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2008.

Morgan, Sue. “Theorising Feminist History: A Thirty-Year Retrospective.” Women’s History Review 18, no. 3 (July 2009): 381-407.

Scott, Joan W. “Back to the Future.” Review of History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, by Judith Bennett. History and Theory 47 (May 2008): 279-284.

Zemon Davis, Natalie. “‘Women’s History’ in Transition: The European Case.” Feminist Studies 3, no. 3-4 (1976): 83-103.

References:

[1] Carol Dyhouse, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2014), 241.

[2] Dyhouse, Girl Trouble, 243.

[3] Dyhouse, Girl Trouble, 175.

[4] Judith Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 6-7.

[5] Sue Morgan, “Theorising Feminist History: A Thirty-Year Retrospective,” Women’s History Review 18, no. 3 (July 2009): 383.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Natalie Zemon Davis, “‘Women’s History’ in Transition: The European Case,” Feminist Studies 3, no. 3-4 (1976): 83.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Joan W. Scott, “Back to the Future,” review of History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, by Judith Bennett, History and Theory 47 (May 2008): 280.

[10] Morgan, “Theorising Feminist History,” 382.

[11] Morgan, “Theorising Feminist History,” 385.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.