Table Of Contentunderstanding feminism
Understanding Movements in Modern Thought
Series Editor: Jack Reynolds
Th is series provides short, accessible and lively introductions to the
major schools, movements and traditions in philosophy and the h istory
of ideas since the beginning of the Enlightenment. All books in the
series are written for undergraduates meeting the subject for the fi rst
time.
Published
Understanding Empiricism Understanding Phenomenology
Robert G. Meyers David R. Cerbone
Understanding Existentialism Understanding Postcolonialism
Jack Reynolds Jane Hiddleston
Understanding Feminism Understanding Poststructuralism
Peta Bowden & Jane Mummery James Williams
Understanding German Idealism Understanding Psychoanalysis
Will Dudley Matthew Sharpe & Joanne Faulkner
Understanding Hegelianism Understanding Rationalism
Robert Sinnerbrink Charlie Heunemann
Understanding Hermeneutics Understanding Utilitarianism
Lawrence Schmidt Tim Mulgan
Understanding Naturalism Understanding Virtue Ethics
Jack Ritchie Stan van Hooft
Forthcoming titles include
Understanding Environmental Understanding Pragmatism
Philosophy Axel Mueller
Andrew Brennan & Y. S. Lo
understanding feminism
Peta Bowden & Jane Mummery
First published in 2009 by Acumen
Published 2014 by Routledge
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© Peta Bowden & Jane Mummery, 2009
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ISBN: 978-1-84465-194-8 (hardcover)
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Oppression 13
2 Embodiment 45
3 Sexuality and desire 73
4 Diff erences among and within women 99
5 Agency 123
6 Responsibility 151
Questions for discussion and revision 175
Further reading 177
References 183
Index 193
v contents
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Acknowledgements
Th is book has been generously supported through research leave,
travel funding and editorial assistance provided by the University of
Ballarat and Murdoch University. We are also grateful to the follow-
ing colleagues, students and friends who have read chapters and pro-
vided moral support during the writing process: Rose Bishop, Brodie
Cooper, April Jane Fleming, Helena Grehan, Trish Harris, Niall Lucy,
Nell Newman, Marnie Nolton, Dick Ounsworth, Jodi Peskett, Lorraine
Sim, Sam Stevenson and Anne Surma. Kate Machin has helped us enor-
mously in getting the manuscript ready for publication and Acumen’s
anonymous reviewers and the Acumen editorial team, Jack Reynolds,
Tristan Palmer and Kate Williams, have provided astute advice and
professional assistance in the publication process.
acknowledgements vii
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Introduction
Th e history of women’s struggle to change their lives is a long one.
Th e term “feminism”, which highlights their oppression specifi cally in
relation to men, however, has been in use in English only since the
campaigns for women’s suff rage during the last decade of the nineteenth
century. More recently, it has been the resurgence of women’s move-
ments in the late 1960s – the so-called “second wave” – that is usually
associated with feminist strivings for women’s equal rights, and freedom
from oppressive constraints of sex, self-expression and autonomy. Most
of the theoretical work of modern feminism has occurred during the
period since this resurgence, and it is this work that is our focus in
Understanding Feminism.
Second-wave feminisms emerged in the west in conjunction with
the social contestations of student protest movements, anti-war move-
ments and, in the United States, the struggle for civil rights for blacks.
In this they echoed earlier challenges to women’s subordination that
characteristically refl ected and radically extended wider social move-
ments for change. British sociologist Sheila Rowbotham’s Women in
Movement (1992) traces some of these developments across the world
during the period since the Enlightenment: from the struggles of
women against the identifi cation of human reason and progress with
the reason and progress of men during the eighteenth-century revolu-
tions in America and France, and their organization for women’s rights
during the movement to abolish slavery, to their mobilization on behalf
of women in nineteenth-century social reform, the Russian revolution,
the quest for Indian self-rule and Chinese communism. In all of these
introduction 1
