What is feminism?
Feminism is a social movement that, according to historians, emerged after the French Revolution and that grew stronger in England, during the 19th century, and then in the United States, at the beginning of the 20th century. This movement fights for equal conditions between men and women, in the sense that both have the same rights and the same opportunities.
It is important to point out that feminism is not the opposite of machismo, because machismo is a social construction that promotes and justifies acts of aggression and oppression against women. Feminism, as we mentioned, is the social movement that fights against the manifestations of machismo in society. Thus, the ultimate goal of feminism is to build a society that offers equal conditions for both genders.
Roots of Feminism
The origins of the feminist movement go back to the period of the liberal revolutions, of which the main highlight was the French Revolution, influenced by the ideals of the Enlightenment. From this period, the action of
Olympia de Gouges, who, during the initial years of the Revolution, fought for the emancipation of women's rights, defending, above all, the right of women to actively participate in politics.He sharply criticized the actions of the revolutionaries, who, despite defending causes of "freedom" and “equality”, still kept women subjugated to the domestic environment, not allowing them to enter politics. In 1791, she launched the Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens in opposition to the Declaration of Human and Citizen's Rights, in which it criticized the existing inequalities between genders.
Olympia de Gouges was a Girondin and, for her criticism of the government imposed by the Jacobins at the time of the Terror, she was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. Olympia was guillotine on November 3, 1793, and reports state that, by climbing the scaffold for her execution, Olympia released the following sentence: "The woman has the right to climb the scaffold, she must also have the right to climb the rostrum.”|1|
The feminist movement actually gained strength in England throughout the 19th century, later moving to the United States in the 20th century. In the case of England, the feminist movement focused mainly on the struggle for equal working conditions in English industries. Women demanded a workload and salary equal to men.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the movement spread to the United States and its main struggle was to suffragette question, that is, the right to vote. From the suffragist movement in the United Kingdom, the names of Emmeline Pankhurst it's from EmilyDavison. The second was particularly notorious for throwing herself in front of the King's horse, which caused her death in 1913.
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In the case of Brazil, the suffrage movement was led by Bertha Lutz, who led the Brazilian Federation for Female Progress (FBPF). This feminist movement headed by Bertha Lutz is currently questioned for its conduct seen as conservative. However, the role of suffragism in Brazil gave women the right to vote, decreed in 1932.
From the 1960s, feminism started a new phase, greatly influenced by the context of social unrest with the journeys of 1968 and the emergence of the hippie movement. During this period, the feminist movement gained strength and started to defend the idea that the oppression and violence committed in the private sphere are related to a situation of political oppression. Thus, to strengthen the defense against private violence, it is necessary to attack oppression as a whole in the political sphere.
From the 1990s onwards, a new phase of feminism began and was named the “third wave of feminism”. From that period onwards, it was a matter of discussing some imprecise views of second wave feminism (1960s) and the debate was expanded with feminism, from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), being able to have access to communities of needy women and being able to exert greater pressure on the State to develop policies in defense of women.
Challenges of feminism today
Currently in Brazil, feminism continues to discuss issues that affect women in general. First, there is the devaluation of the female worker compared to men, mainly due to the fact that, according to surveys carried out by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), women earn on average 30% less than men to do the same occupation |2|.
In addition, there is the issue of harassment and violence against women, since, according to studies conducted by the Department of Policies for Women of the Federal Government, a woman is raped in Brazil every 10 minutes and, every 90 minutes, a woman is murdered in Brazil. Brazil. Women are susceptible to this type of gender-based violence in different places, whether on the street or in their families |3|.
The great effort of the feminist movement in the Brazilian case is to fight against this violence and to that the government create public policies that combat this and that promote the well-being of women in society. One of the major milestones in this regard was the decree of Law nº 11.340, of August 7, 2006, also known as Lei Maria da Penha.
|1| Olympe de Gouges: women and the revolution. To access, click on here.
|2| and |3| What is feminism? To access, click on here.
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
