Feminism

7 Pages 1728 Words

FEMINIST MOVEMENT FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE PRESENT IN USA

Women traditionally had been regarded as inferior to men physically and intellectually. Both law and theology had ordered their subjection. Women could not possess property in their own names, engage in business, or control the disposal of their children. Historically they have been considered not only intellectually inferior to men but also a major source of temptation and evil. In Greek mythology, for example, it was a woman, Pandora, who opened the forbidden box and brought plagues and unhappiness to mankind. Early Roman law described women as children, forever inferior to men. Early Christian theology perpetuated these views. St. Jerome, a 4th-century Latin father of the Christian church, said: "Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object." But throughout centuries women began to understand that they were not inferior. From this moment they began to seek their equality in the name of Feminism.
Feminism is a movement for the political, social, and educational equality of women with men; the movement has occurred mainly in Europe and the United States. It has its roots in the humanism of the 18th century and in the Industrial Revolution. We first see the Feminist Movement in French Revolution with Olympe de Gouges’ writings. In Europe there’re 2 important feminist writers that wrote classics in Feminist Literature. First one is English writer Virginia Woolf with her famous work ‘A Room of One’s Own’. The second writer is French Simone de Beauvoir with her work ‘Le Deuxieme Sexe’. Feminist issues range from access to employment, education, child care, contraception, and abortion, to equality in the workplace, changing family roles, redress for sexual harassment in the workplace, and the need for equal political representation.
The history of American feminism - the self-conscious desire to achie...