Title: Feminist contributions, challenges and claims
Abstract: abstract This Article highlights key contributions of second wave feminism, arguing that these are of relevance today, as we struggle to deal with questions of social justice within a context of increasing poverty and inequality. I look at feminist understandings of expanded social justice which highlighted crucial links between the economic, political and the cultural, and which stressed that the personal was political. I look at feminist strategies which stressed women's agency and the need for separate women's movements even as feminist women challenged men alongside whom they worked in trade unions, liberation movements and radical social movements. I look at how feminist struggles have fragmented over the decades alongside an increasing hegemony of economic and political neoliberalism, and the demobilisation of emancipatory movements. While women made gains within state institutions and the United Nations (UN) system in the 1990s, alongside these gains was the co-option and depoliticisation of feminist concepts forged in the throes of struggle of the earlier decades. Women's agency too came under threat and was challenged as men's movements came to be promoted as vehicles for gender equality. I argue that while men can play a vital role in struggles for gender equality it is women's movements that need to be advanced and supported as key actors in repoliticising feminism today.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 11
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