No Turning Back : History Of Feminism And The Future Of Women

From reading the summary on “Why We Still Need Feminism”, the writer used the guidelines for writing summaries but missed a few key components. The writer cited the author and title of the text but rarely used any direct quotes or paraphrasing. The summary was more objective but the writer did put their personal opinion in some areas of the summary but overall, the writer conveyed what the author was trying to express in a very factual way. The writer does use author tags throughout the summary, for example, by saying “Cavanaugh asserts” or “Casey Cavanaugh argues”. It is very clear in the summary that the writer is giving the author the credit deserved. My interpretation of the summary was interested. I was very keen to read how the writer

Thousands of years ago, the Goddess was viewed as an autonomous entity worthy of respect from men and women alike. Because of societal changes caused by Eastern influence, a patriarchical system conquered all aspects of life including religion. Today, the loss of a strong female presence in Judeo-Christian beliefs has prompted believers to look to other sources that celebrate the role of women. Goddess religion and feminist spirituality have increasingly been embraced by men and women as an alternative to the patriarchy found in traditional biblical religion.

In the case of religion and government, they are both ran by men, fundamentally men use these two establishments to further their own interests and make up rules, commandments, and laws to force women into marital “enslavement”.

From physical distinctions, such as genitals, to socially constructed ones, such as gender roles. Not only has society constructed these inequalities, but religion was the basis of it. According to the world’s biggest religion, Christianity, women were inferior to men. Many religions, specifically the Abrahamic faiths, treated men as the dominant individuals in society. Women had to be inferior to protect their modesty.

Since the Christian religion was a large and prominent force in the everyday life in the average person in the 17th and 18th century, the Bible was a large influence in how the woman was seen in society as it says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church…” (Ephesians 5:22-23, 33). The Bible is that the woman was ruled by her husband, that she didn’t even have her own head, and cannot think for herself because it was expected by the very faith that she must submit to her husband. The Holy Book also says that the woman was created from the rib of the man, which it is known now as completely preposterous, so it implies that the woman is inferior to man because she was created from man, because heaven forbid that any evidence point towards that it is man that came from a woman.

Religion is powerful in that it controls followers’ behaviours and beliefs throughout their entire lives; it is a form of social control. Catholicism is one of the most widely known religions influencing more than 2 billion people around the world (Ross). Within Catholicism not everyone are seen as equals; men have greater privilege than women. The bible and church are from a male’s point of view (Christ 86) and passages within the bible are used to enforce a sexual hierarchy. In fact, the oppression of women begins with the first story in Genesis about creation, which portrays females as being inferior to men and even of an evil nature. This one passage is the main source of justification of oppression of woman in the church (Daly 13).

The Holy Bible is full of advice on every issue known to humanity. This advice varies in topics from society's functions to foreign policy and even gender roles. Today's western culture is very confused when it comes to gender roles, swinging over the last over 50 years from a male-dominated society to a large portion of the feminist society fighting for female dominance and the disappearance of chivalry. Society is always searching for answers from science and philosophy but constantly fails to look in the right places. The Bible is the foundation of truth and it requires the ultimate amount of attention if any community plans to be successful for any length of time. The education of modern society on what the Bible says about gender roles is necessary to achieve mutual understanding of beliefs.

First wave European feminism sought to fight for women's suffrage and the liberal women's rights movements, while the second wave fought for the empowerment of women and differential rights in society, and third wave currently challenges both second wave feminism and patriarchy through a desire to embrace diversity and an idea of universal womanhood. The principal goals in emerging Ukrainian feminist movements was to reveal the conditions that women in Ukrainian society endured. The Ukrainian society held, and still holds, an emphasis on the political view of national solidarity, this was also prevalent through the feminist movements, and dominated over the solidarity of women . In the Ukraine, an exhibitionist feminist protest group

Feminism by definition means the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social and economic equality to men. But many a time’s people restrict the boundary of these forgetting the very important element of diversity of women living in different places and in varied situations.

Christianity from the start placed men in positions of authority in marriage, government, community, family, and pretty much anything. The religion only allowed membership of priests to males only. There was a wide following amount of women with an enhanced social status, while they believed and practiced Christianity, they were only allowed to follow the men. Later centuries, as religious groups of women and nuns flourished, women came to play an important role in Christianity through convents and abbeys and have continued through history to be active. They mostly participated in schools, hospitals, nursing homes and monastic settlements. A lot has changed in recent decades, with the ordination of women in some churches have become pretty popular. Focusing on the early century of Christianity, played a huge role in re-defining a women’s credibility within the Christian

The “New Woman” refers to a category of women, beginning in the late 19th century, who adopted feminist ideals, wishing to break gender roles and gain independence from and equality with men (Newton, 560-61). While not one specific, real person, the “New Woman” is an overarching term that encompasses the many women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first generation of these women strove for economic and social autonomy with roles separate from the home and family spheres of domesticity (Newton, 561). For example, they would not marry, but instead receive a higher education and work in a profession (Newton, 561). To replace their commitments to men and family, they instead formed close and passionate relationships with other women, though these relationships were not sexual in nature, people viewed women as passionless and pure. The second generation, however, living in a more modernist culture of sexual freedom, began to discuss female sexuality, and wanted to participate in more opportunities only offered to men, including drinking and smoking (Newton, 564). Because of the societal idea that only men were sexual beings, New Women had to explain the intimate relationships among them, which had become sexual in the second generation. Thus, they created the idea of masculine lesbians, who had male souls that caused them their sexual feelings (Newton, 566). The “mythic mannish lesbian” refers to these women who dressed and acted in a masculine manner

The definition of feminism is very elusive. Maybe because of its ever-changing historical meaning, it’s not for certain whether there is any coherence to the term feminism or if there is a definition that will live up to the movement’s variety of adherents and ideas. In the book “No Turning Back,” author Estelle Freedman gives an accurate four-part definition of the very active movement: “Feminism is a belief that women and men are inherently part of equal worth. Because most societies privilege men as a group, social movements are necessary to achieve equality between women and men, with the understanding that gender always intersects with other social hierarchies” (Freedman 7).

In 1776, the then First Lady of the United States was the first to raise her about women’s rights, telling her husband to “remember the ladies” in his drafting of new laws, yet it took more than 100 years for men like John Adams to actually do so. With the help of half a dozen determined, and in this case white upper-middle-class, women the first-wave feminism, which spans from the 19th century to the early 20th century, finally led to their goal after 72 years of protesting. The Nineteenth Amendment, which secured the rights for women to vote finally passed in 1920. This grand victory brought other reforms along, including reforms in the educational system,

The idea of women being equal to men has been debated for a very long time. Even when civilizations were just starting, most women were treated very differently from men. When women started fighting against this oppression they were called feminists. Feminism can be separated into three waves. The first wave of feminism was from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s. The second wave was from the 1960s to the 1980s. The third wave of feminism started in the 1990s, but its end is unclear. Some people believe it has ended and the fourth wave of feminism has started, but others believe it continues today. The different waves have been very different in some aspects, but very similar in others. The main differences between the first and third wave of feminism are what they fought for, how they protested, and society’s reaction to their cause.

Gender gives you power; males are considered more powerful in comparison to women as a result of their physical makeup. People also mistake what the Bible conveys about the male and female relationships. In the Bible, God states that men should be the head of the house and are responsible for anyone in his household; while women should take care and bring up the children and support the man. God intended this to be a balance of power between soft and strong. The Bible states in Ephesians 5:23-33 “Wives be subject to your husband.. Husbands love your wives.. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as they love their own bodies..He who loves his own wife loves himself;..” However, countless people misinterpret this description-because they