Portal:Feminism

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Feminism Portal

Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern societies are patriarchal—they prioritize the male point of view—and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.

Originating in late 18th-century Europe, feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to vote, run for public office, work, earn equal pay, own property, receive education, enter into contracts, have equal rights within marriage, and maternity leave. Feminists have also worked to ensure access to contraception, legal abortions, and social integration; and to protect women and girls from sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Changes in female dress standards and acceptable physical activities for women have also been part of feminist movements.

Many scholars consider feminist campaigns to be a main force behind major historical societal changes for women's rights, particularly in the West, where they are near-universally credited with achieving women's suffrage, gender-neutral language, reproductive rights for women (including access to contraceptives and abortion), and the right to enter into contracts and own property. Although feminist advocacy is, and has been, mainly focused on women's rights, some argue for the inclusion of men's liberation within its aims, because they believe that men are also harmed by traditional gender roles. Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experiences. Feminist theorists have developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues concerning gender.

Numerous feminist movements and ideologies have developed over the years, representing different viewpoints and political aims. Traditionally, since the 19th century, first-wave liberal feminism, which sought political and legal equality through reforms within a liberal democratic framework, was contrasted with labour-based proletarian women's movements that over time developed into socialist and Marxist feminism based on class struggle theory. Since the 1960s, both of these traditions are also contrasted with the radical feminism that arose from the radical wing of second-wave feminism and that calls for a radical reordering of society to eliminate patriarchy. Liberal, socialist, and radical feminism are sometimes referred to as the "Big Three" schools of feminist thought.

Since the late 20th century, many newer forms of feminism have emerged. Some forms, such as white feminism and gender-critical feminism, have been criticized as taking into account only white, middle class, college-educated, heterosexual, or cisgender perspectives. These criticisms have led to the creation of ethnically specific or multicultural forms of feminism, such as black feminism and intersectional feminism. Some have argued that feminism often promotes misandry and the elevation of women's interests above men's, and criticize radical feminist positions as harmful to both men and women. (Full article...)

View new selections below (purge)

edit

Featured article

Catherine de' Medici, by François Clouet

Catherine de' Medici's building projects included the Valois chapel at Saint-Denis, the Tuileries Palace, and the Hôtel de la Reine in Paris, and extensions to the château, near Blois. Born in 1519 in Florence to an Italian father and a French mother, Catherine de' Medici was a daughter of both the Italian and the French Renaissance. She grew up in Florence and Rome under the wing of the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII. In 1533, at the age of fourteen, she left Italy and married Henry, the second son of Francis I and Queen Claude of France. On doing so, she entered the greatest Renaissance court in northern Europe. King Francis set his daughter-in-law an example of kingship and artistic patronage that she never forgot. She witnessed his huge architectural schemes at Chambord and Fontainebleau. She saw Italian and French craftsmen at work together, forging the style that became known as the first School of Fontainebleau. Francis died in 1547, and Catherine became queen consort of France. But it wasn't until her husband King Henry's death in 1559, when she found herself at forty the effective ruler of France, that Catherine came into her own as a patron of architecture. Over the next three decades, she launched a series of costly building projects aimed at enhancing the grandeur of the monarchy. During the same period, however, religious civil war gripped the country and brought the prestige of the monarchy to a dangerously low ebb.

More featured articles

More...

edit

Featured picture

Credit: Edward S. Curtis

A head-and-shoulders portrait of a Zuni girl with a pottery jar on her head, circa 1903. The Zuni are a Native American tribe, one of the Pueblo peoples, who live beside the Zuni River, in western New Mexico, United States. The Zuni language is unique and unrelated to the languages of the other Pueblo peoples. The Zuni continue to practice their traditional shamanistic religion with its regular ceremonies and dances and an independent mythology. Archaeological evidence shows they have lived in their present location for about 1,300 years.

More featured pictures

More...

edit

In this month

June 1949 – First publication of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, a detailed analysis of women's oppression which became a foundational text of contemporary feminism
June 1996 – Fauziya Kassindja was granted asylum in the United States in order to escape the tribal practice of female genital cutting. This set a precedent allowing the grant of asylum for gender discrimination.
21 June 1947 – Shirin Ebadi - Iranian lawyer and human rights activist who was the first Muslim woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her pioneering efforts on behalf of women's and children's rights
23 June 1879 – Birth of Hoda Shaarawi (pictured at right), a pioneering Egyptian feminist leader and nationalist; she founded the Egyptian Feminist Union and led protests, notably removing her face veil for the first time in public.
30 June 1966 – Foundation of the National Organization for Women in the United States, which promotes reproductive freedoms; diversity; the end of racism, rape and domestic violence; economic justice; lesbian rights; and constitutional equality for women.

More anniversaries

edit

Selected quote

In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist.

— Gloria Steinem

More selected quotes

More...

edit

Related portals

edit

Featured biography

Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and early feminist. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, travel narratives, a conduct book, a history of the French Revolution, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in which she argued that women are not naturally inferior to men, but only appeared to be because they lacked education. She suggested that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagined a social order founded on reason. Among both the general public and feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has often received as much, if not more, interest than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, relationships. After two unsuccessful affairs with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. She was also the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. Today, Wollstonecraft is considered a foundational thinker in feminist philosophy. Her early advocacy of women's equality and her attacks on conventional femininity and the degradation of women presaged the later emergence of the feminist political movement.

More featured biographies

More...

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Margareth Rago seeks to establish a methodology for what she calls "feminist science"?
... that after dying in her daughter's arms in an asylum in 1897, Maria Trubnikova was remembered as the "heart and soul" of feminist activism in Russia?

edit

More did you know

... that Lydia Becker (pictured), founder of the Women's Suffrage Journal, was also an amateur botanist and friend of Charles Darwin?
... that Johanna Brandt detailed spying for the Boers with her mother in her book Petticoat Commando?
... that Mary Hallaren was the first woman to join the United States Army?

More did you know facts

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various feminism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1John Neal (from History of feminism)
Image 2Nellie McClung (from History of feminism)
Image 38M 2018 in Pamplona (from International Women's Day)
Image 4First edition print of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (from History of feminism)
Image 5Germaine Greer in June 1972 (from History of feminism)
Image 6Lucy Stone (from History of feminism)
Image 7Bessie Rayner Parkes (from History of feminism)
Image 8Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) and Susan B. Anthony (from History of feminism)
Image 98M 2020 in Spain (from International Women's Day)
Image 10Florence Nightingale (from History of feminism)
Image 11Catharine MacKinnon (from History of feminism)
Image 12Emily Davison (from History of feminism)
Image 13The vandalized Concepción Feminist Mural in Spain, which was vandalized on International Women's Day 2021. (from International Women's Day)
Image 14Ida B. Wells (from History of feminism)
Image 15Wealthy Chinese women with bound feet (Beijing, 1900). Foot binding was a symbol of women's oppression during the reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. (from History of feminism)
Image 16Suffrage parade in New York, May 6, 1912 (from History of feminism)
Image 17The Nineteenth Amendment (from History of feminism)
Image 18Christine de Pizan presents her book to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria. (from History of feminism)
Image 19bell hooks (from History of feminism)
Image 20Betty Friedan 1960 (from History of feminism)
Image 21Cover of WSPU's The Suffragette, April 25, 1913 (after Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, 1830) (from History of feminism)
Image 22An Antimonumenta, installed in Mexico City on International Women's Day 2019, as photographed the day after. The circle part says "In Mexico 9 women are murdered daily" and the cross part says "Not one more!" On the opposite side, the Antimonumenta reads "We demand a national gender alert", and in the central part "No + Femicides". (from International Women's Day)
Image 23Margaret Sanger (from History of feminism)
Image 24Sylvia Pankhurst (from History of feminism)
Image 25Irena Krzywicka (from History of feminism)
Image 26Simone de Beauvoir (from History of feminism)
Image 27Huda Shaarawi, founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union (from History of feminism)
Image 28Board of directors of "Jam'iat e nesvan e vatan-khah", a women's rights association in Tehran (1923–1933) (from History of feminism)
Image 29Women's Liberation march in Washington, D.C., 1970 (from History of feminism)
Image 30Women on the street celebrating International Women's Day in Cameroon (from International Women's Day)
Image 31Camilla Collett (from History of feminism)
Image 32Frances Cobbe (from History of feminism)
Image 33
  Official holiday
  Holiday for women
  Non-official holiday
(from International Women's Day)
Image 34Gloria Steinem at news conference, Women's Action Alliance, January 12, 1972 (from History of feminism)
Image 35Clara Zetkin (left) and Rosa Luxemburg (right) in January 1910 (from International Women's Day)
Image 36Marie Stopes (from History of feminism)
Image 37A veil-burning ceremony in Andijan on International Women's Day in 1927. (from International Women's Day)
Image 38María Elena Oddone holding a banner, on International Women's Day in 1984 in Argentina. The banner says "No to motherhood, yes to pleasure". (from International Women's Day)
Image 39Matilda Joslyn Gage (from History of feminism)
Image 40Female members of the Australian Builders Labourers Federation march on International Women's Day 1975 in Sydney (from International Women's Day)
Image 41Yellow mimosa is the symbol of IWD in Italy as well as in Russia, Ukraine and many other ex-Soviet Union republics (from International Women's Day)
Image 42Author and scholar Helen Kendrick Johnson opposed women's suffrage. (from History of feminism)

edit

WikiProjects

edit

Topics

edit

Featured content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Feminism}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.

Featured articles

Featured lists

Good articles

Featured pictures

Alice Manfield - Guide Alice, Mt Buffalo, c1900-30, SLV
Alice Park - Records of the National Woman's Party
Alice Paul (1915) by Harris & Ewing
Angela Davis in a half-length portrait by Bernard Gotfryd - crop
Anne Dallas Dudley LOC
Avril de Sainte-Croix - Restored, cropped
Bertha Lutz 1925
Cabinet Card of Sojourner Truth - Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Convicts Lunatics and Women! Have No Vote for Parliament, ca. 1907-1918
Dr. Caroline Spencer 275029v
Ethel Smyth
Frances Benjamin Johnston, Self-Portrait (as "New Woman"), 1896
Fredrikke Mørck
George Charles Beresford - Virginia Woolf in 1902 - Restoration
Henrietta Rodman from the George Grantham Bain Collection
Henry Mayer, The Awakening, 1915 Cornell CUL PJM 1176 01 - Restoration
Hester Jeffrey
Hubertine Auclert 1910
Iris Calderhead
Joy Young Rogers outside the White House
Lucretia Mott, signed photo, by F. Gutekunst
Mabel Vernon, c. 1917, by Edmonston, Washington, D.C.
Marguerite Durand 1910 - Restoration
Marie Stopes in her laboratory, 1904 - Restoration
Mary Garrity - Ida B. Wells-Barnett - Google Art Project - restoration crop
Millicent Fawcett
Mrs. Crystal Eastman Benedict by Edmonston, Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Lillian Ascough, chairman of the Connecticut branch of the Woman's Party
Mrs. Pauline Adams 147002v
Portrett av Gina Krog (6276081582) - Restoration
Poster by Anna Soós Korànyi for the Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance
Ray Strachey restored
Sojourner Truth, 1870 (cropped, restored)
Victoria Claflin Woodhull by Mathew Brady - Oval Portrait
Voltairine de Cleyre (Age 35)
We Can Do It! NARA 535413 - Restoration 2