Feminism and gender perspective

No-one who has children - or knows someone with children - can doubt that gender matters. Even before we ask if the baby is well, we want to know if it's a boy or a girl. No sorting mechanism in society is as important as gender and most societies regard women as being worth less than men.

Feminism has arisen from women's refusal to accept themselves as being of less worth. And feminism isn't just an invention of well-educated western women: it is also relevant to women who struggle for human rights all over the world, be they illiterate or university-educated.

In Chiapas in Mexico, for example, the poor women who were part of the Zapatista movement at the beginning of the 1990's, formulated women's law, "ley des mujeres". They demanded the right to chosen their own husbands, the right to have as many or as few children as they wanted and the right to become what they wanted, up to and including taxi drivers - something that was unimaginable previously.

Today in Sweden many people define feminism this way - a feminist is a person who considers:

That women are subordinate to men
That this relationship should change

This is a definition which both invites discussion and demands change. It is also a definition that demonstrates that feminism isn't only for women, but also that men can be feminists too.

Feminisms

Because there are many different opinions on what is the best way to achieve an equal society, there are also many difference feminisms. Here are the most common:

Liberal feminism: Women should have the same democratic freedoms and rights as men. Women's subordinate position can be revoked through conditioning, education and through influencing attitudes. Liberal feminism was mainly fashioned around the turn of the last century. An underlying idea is that men and women are fundamentally  alike. The liberal feminists emphasise the sense that both men and women have and see that as a means to reach a future society in which the gender roles are dissolved and everyone, both men and women, are free people. 

Socialist feminism: Women's oppression is part of class oppression. Karl Marx himself was not a feminist but Marxism asserted that women's liberation would happen automatically after a socialist revolution. It was Marx's collaborator Friedrich Engels who was father to the idea of men's need to control women's sexuality in order to ensure inheritance to his heirs. This has been further developed by later feminists.

Radical feminism: Women's oppression is the most fundamental and widespread form of oppression. Men's oppression of women in the family, sexual oppression, abuse of women and misogyny are different parts of this. Lesbians are oppressed because they threaten men's control over women's bodies. "The personal is political" is a well-known slogan.

In 1970 Kate Millet introduced the word 'patriarchate' which is a foundation stone of modern feminism.  The patriarchate is a way of explaining why women themselves consider that they have less worth than men and that, admittedly, oppression looks different at different times in different parts of the world but has the same root cause. In contract to the liberal feminists, radical feminists consider that there is a fundamental conflict between men and women. 

'Specific nature' feminism: In the struggle for equal rights, one must realise that women and men are biologically unalike. The sexes complement one another. Ellen Key and Elin Wägner are well-known specific nature feminists. In the 1990's specific nature feminism was discussed anew in, amongst others, the book 'He and She' born different' (Han och hon - födda olika).

Likeness feminism: emphasises the similarities between the sexes and is the trend that dominated in Sweden. Likeness feminists point out that the differences within sexes are greater than those between them.

Eco-feminism: Collective name for the feminist groups that place the environment in the centre.

Anarcho-feminism: originating in anarchism and the revolt against all state systems. Important in the 1970's.

Modern feminism: A synthesis of radical and socialist feminism which says that both class and gender play roles. In recent years issues around ethnicity, race and sexuality have become all the more important.

Quick feminist lexicon

Equality: women and men's equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities in all essential areas in life: work, care of home and children, participation in politics, unions and other activities in society. Including the right to not be exposed to gender-related violence.

Gender: The socially and culturally formed gender, not the sex one is born to. A word which describes that we learn how a man should be and how a woman should be and that needn't have connection with our biological gender.

Gender perspective: An understanding that we live in a society where (as a group) have more power than women (as a group), that women's and men's lives look different and that this is something one must take into consideration in all contexts: in working life, in schools, when political proposal are presented etc.

Gender analysis: An analysis that takes as its starting point, how things affect men and women respectively.

The 3 R-method: A method of doing a gender analysis. The three R's stand for Representation, Resources, Reality (life and institutions). To be able to achieve change, one must first know how it is.

Representation deals with mapping. How many women and how many men. How does the gender division look amongst those who decide and those who affect things?

R number two deals with how resources in the form of money, space and time are allocated between men and women, girls and boys. The questions can be: How much money is allocated to girls' sport? How much time does the salesperson devote to men and women respectively? Who gets to talk most at nursery - boys or girls?

R number three is the analysis phase. Why does it look as it does? Why do more men than women get collected by an ambulance with the blue flashing light? Why do banks lend less money to women than to men? Why do boys get to talk more than girls in nursery?

When we have answers to all three R's, then we get to answer the most important question: what needs to be done?

There are several methods - LOTS, Balanced steering and other forms of checklist. They are described in the method book Gör det jämt (Make it equal), published by the government. The book can be downloaded from www.regeringen.se. Type Gör det jämt in the search section.

Gender coding: A concept that makes it obvious that certain places and tools are regarded as female, others as male. A hospital is a female-coded workplace, a garage a male-coded workplace. A skirt is female-coded (except in Scotland!), a tie male. Places can be gender-coded. A playground is female-coded during the day. It is not expected that a single man would be there then.

Mainstreaming: A strategy to ensure that equality is included as a part of activities as a matter of course. Another term is integration.

A history with ancestors

There are many prominent figures - here are some of them.

Mary Wollstonecraft is often described as feminism's progenitor. In 1792, in the middle of the French revolution, she published the first feminist book, "In defence of women's rights". Mary Wollstonecraft was upset that the revolution's human rights, freedoms and fraternity didn't include women. She thought badly of Rousseau view that women's, that is to say mothers', place was in the home and that she should leave the world to men. Mary Wollestonecraft's simple view was that women and men should have the same economic, political and social rights. She believed that women's nature was a product of education, not of biology. 

John Stuart Mill, founder of liberalism's political philosophy demanded the same political rights for women as men in his 1869 book "The oppression of women".

Ellen Key (1849-1926) is a Swedish feminist and leading figure who is still controversial. She is often described as a specific nature feminist (see above) because she argued for motherliness. Ellen Key advocated women's agencies, voting rights and free love. For Key, the female complemented the male.

Clara Zetkin (1857-1933)
German socialist who, at the 1910 international women's conference in Copenhagen, roposed an international day of women's struggle. She got Lenin to make this a holliday in the Soviet Union from 1922.
Zetkin struggled for women's right to vote, for education and freedom. She believed that women must be economically independent of men and that women were damaged by men's oppression , regardless of class. She considered that men and women should have the same responsibility for home and children.  

Reading tips 

Mary Wollstonecraft - In defence of women's rights. 
Lena Gemzöe - Feminism

Jennie Sjögren - Ordination vardagsfeminism.
Lisa Gålmark - Vadå feminist
Helena Josefson - Genus - hur påverkar det dig?

Kate Millet - Sexual Politics 
Tiina Rosenberg - Queerfeministisk agenda