WGST 400 Assignment 4 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

WGST 400 Assignment 4 - Research Paper Example of both self-emancipation and social emancipation.1 In England, the term was first employed in the1890s during women’s campaign for individual rights and the claim to citizenship, especially the right to vote. The campaign for suffrage challenged the denial of autonomy to women as citizens and feminists of the period stood for women’s right to ‘a democratic political voice and a social right to resources.’2 However, the meanings of feminism in England extended beyond the campaign for suffrage and encompass such aspects as the segregation and stigmatization of women’s gender roles, celebration of women’s uniqueness and differences, socio-economic and cultural issues of women, equal rights for women, education disparities of women, equality of opportunities and equal wages, antimilitarism and pacific movements, women emancipation movements, and so on. It is worthwhile to analyze the historical growth and development of feminist movements in Great Britain. Organized feminist movements in England can broadly be categorised into two phases-the first wave feminism and the second wave feminism. The first wave feminism consists of feminist movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, covering the campaign for suffrage as well as feminist experiences during and after the First and Second World Wars. The second-wave feminism covers feminist initiatives beginning from the mid-or late 1960s and extends itself to modern radical feminism. The nineteenth-century intellectual and economic developments, specifically liberalism and the industrial revolution, paved the way for the first wave feminism.3 While liberalism triggered the growth of liberal feminism the industrial revolution offered middle class women a unique opportunity to work out of home and earn money. Similarly, the theory of relative status deprivation has been part ly responsible for the rise of feminism as women strongly felt that they are negated of adequate opportunities whereas their