Page 274 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

women’s emancipation movements 2051

The history of men’s opposition to women’s
emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the
story of that emancipation itself. • Virginia Woolf
(1882–1941)

tions as desirable in finding solutions. Women’s move-
Women’s ments reflect the different histories, cultures, and political

systems of people who have a gender in common but
Emancipation perhaps little else.

Movements The Western Perspective:

Britain and the United States
uring the nineteenth and twentieth centuries During the nineteenth century, suffrage (the right to
Dwomen’s emancipation movements, whether they vote) received the most emphasis among women’s rights
were called the “woman question,”“women’s rights,” or groups, but many middle-class women also saw social
“feminism,” were based on challenging theWestern family reform as their defining characteristic. With the rapid
economy in which the primary role of women is that of wife urbanization caused by industrial changes, the middle
and mother, with waged work being a secondary role. class grew in influence; women asserted their participa-
Because people saw the domestic sphere as primary, tion by addressing the miseries caused by the new ori-
women’s work outside the home was undervalued and entations of society and wished to influence legal reforms
undercompensated.This distinction caused male domina- by exercising the vote.
tion of the political system with little hope of a reorienta- In addition to working for suffrage and engaging in
tion of women’s position in society. During the past two good works, women during the nineteenth century on
centuries women (and a number of men) worked to change both sides of the Atlantic Ocean were interested in the
this system politically,economically,and socially with vary- very nature of womanhood. They debated fiercely what
ing degrees of success.They rarely took race and class into makes women different than men, and they discussed
account,and people usually had an unacknowledged view what all women desire. They also assumed that women
of universalism toward women in other parts of the world. of all classes and races are the same and that gender
That is, the position of Euro-American feminists was that alone is the overriding difference in social constructions.
all women have the same oppression to overthrow and that Women’s concerns were much the same in both coun-
common tactics will be useful in all circumstances. tries with minor exceptions.Women in the United States
Today students of women’s lives recognize that geog- tended to claim some moral superiority because the
raphy is a factor. Although many feminists claim a uni- United States was more democratic and equitable than
versal theory of injustice and advocate a universal Britain, but British reformers tartly pointed to the exis-
platform of change, their experience is limited to indus- tence of slavery in many U.S. states.
trialized and democratic nations. Areas of the world that By 1924 both groups had achieved suffrage (although
have experienced long histories of colonization or that women under age thirty did not gain the vote in Britain
have operated under forms of socialist, collective political until 1928), opened employment for many women, and
systems present radically different challenges to women amended the most oppressive marriage laws. At this
and call for varying approaches to change. For these rea- point many feminist groups turned to public health
sons the term women’s movements (plural) is more appro- issues, especially birth control and expanded legal rights
priate for the twenty-first century. The plural movements for women. No single issue, however, emerged to unite all
acknowledges the validity of dissimilar approaches, and women as suffrage had. Women seemed to be disap-
the plural women’s rather than woman recognizes that pointed with the goals achieved and confused about
not all women face the same issues in widely divergent future goals.
geographical areas.The elimination of the word rights is Neither country was more radical or more effective.
a nod to those cultures that do not see adversarial posi- The major discouragements to women seemed to stem