student essays on feminism

Essay on Feminism

500 words essay on feminism.

Feminism is a social and political movement that advocates for the rights of women on the grounds of equality of sexes. It does not deny the biological differences between the sexes but demands equality in opportunities. It covers everything from social and political to economic arenas. In fact, feminist campaigns have been a crucial part of history in women empowerment. The feminist campaigns of the twentieth century made the right to vote, public property, work and education possible. Thus, an essay on feminism will discuss its importance and impact.

Importance of Feminism

Feminism is not just important for women but for every sex, gender, caste, creed and more. It empowers the people and society as a whole. A very common misconception is that only women can be feminists.

It is absolutely wrong but feminism does not just benefit women. It strives for equality of the sexes, not the superiority of women. Feminism takes the gender roles which have been around for many years and tries to deconstruct them.

This allows people to live freely and empower lives without getting tied down by traditional restrictions. In other words, it benefits women as well as men. For instance, while it advocates that women must be free to earn it also advocates that why should men be the sole breadwinner of the family? It tries to give freedom to all.

Most importantly, it is essential for young people to get involved in the feminist movement. This way, we can achieve faster results. It is no less than a dream to live in a world full of equality.

Thus, we must all look at our own cultures and communities for making this dream a reality. We have not yet reached the result but we are on the journey, so we must continue on this mission to achieve successful results.

Impact of Feminism

Feminism has had a life-changing impact on everyone, especially women. If we look at history, we see that it is what gave women the right to vote. It was no small feat but was achieved successfully by women.

Further, if we look at modern feminism, we see how feminism involves in life-altering campaigns. For instance, campaigns that support the abortion of unwanted pregnancy and reproductive rights allow women to have freedom of choice.

Moreover, feminism constantly questions patriarchy and strives to renounce gender roles. It allows men to be whoever they wish to be without getting judged. It is not taboo for men to cry anymore because they must be allowed to express themselves freely.

Similarly, it also helps the LGBTQ community greatly as it advocates for their right too. Feminism gives a place for everyone and it is best to practice intersectional feminism to understand everyone’s struggle.

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Conclusion of the Essay on Feminism

The key message of feminism must be to highlight the choice in bringing personal meaning to feminism. It is to recognize other’s right for doing the same thing. The sad part is that despite feminism being a strong movement, there are still parts of the world where inequality and exploitation of women take places. Thus, we must all try to practice intersectional feminism.

FAQ of Essay on Feminism

Question 1: What are feminist beliefs?

Answer 1: Feminist beliefs are the desire for equality between the sexes. It is the belief that men and women must have equal rights and opportunities. Thus, it covers everything from social and political to economic equality.

Question 2: What started feminism?

Answer 2: The first wave of feminism occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It emerged out of an environment of urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics. This wave aimed to open up new doors for women with a focus on suffrage.

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Essays About Feminism: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

When writing essays about feminism, there are a lot of aspects you can focus on. We have collected some of the best essay examples with prompts.

Feminism is a socio-political movement that is about fighting for equal rights and opportunities for all genders. While many point its beginnings to the women’s rights movements in the 19th century, when women were liberated and finally allowed to vote, feminist thinking can actually be traced back to as early as the late 14th century with the works of French writer Christine De Pizan , touted the first feminist philosopher.

Today, the definition of feminism has expanded to end discrimination, oppression and stereotyping of all genders from all walks of life. It aims to make radical reforms to eliminate cultural norms and push the legislation of equality-supporting laws.

Because feminism is a widely relevant topic, you may be asked to write an essay about feminism either as a student or a professional. However, it may be difficult to find a starting point given the broad spectrum of areas in which feminism is found relevant.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essays on feminism to provide inspiration:

1. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

2. bad feminist by roxane gay, 3. civic memory, feminist future by lidia yuknavitch, 4. trickle-down feminism by sarah jaffe, 5. emily ratajkowski explores what it means to be hyper feminine by emily ratajkowski , 1. definition of feminism, 2. does feminism still matter in the workplace, 3. would you consider yourself a feminist, 4. historical evolution of feminism, 5. criticisms against feminism, 6. how can we achieve gender equality , 7. who are the feminists in your community and what are they fighting for.

“The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women — of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.

Solnit starts with amusing narratives of real-life experiences with men who have critiqued her books wrongly. Solnit points out that men’s arrogance and tendency to explain things to women, thinking they know better, have forced women into silence and weakened their credibility even in places where their voices are crucial – such as in the court stand when women testify to being raped. Solnit, thus, emphasizes that the fight against mansplainers is important to the feminist movement. For more, check out these articles about feminism .

“I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to. I have a job I’m pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to cry at work, so I close my office door and lose it.”

Gay reveals a series of secrets that make her believe she is a “bad feminst.” At first, she had tried to hide her fondness for men, fashion and thuggish rap, among many other things that gave her joy but went against the ideal feminist image etched in the mind of many. Eventually, Gay embraces the “mess of contradictions” that she is, proudly owning the label of a “bad feminist” while she speaks up on issues critical to the feminist movement and debunks myths on the unrealistic standards surrounding the sisterhood.

“There is no photo for what my father did to his daughters. It came into our bodies as a habit of being, a structure of consciousness, a way of life. Maybe it is akin to feeling discovered and conquered and colonized. Maybe the first colonizations are of the bodies of women and children, and from there they extend like the outstretched hand of a man grabbing land. Cultures.”

Yuknavitch highlights her rage against “fathers” both in her personal life and in each political administration that she survived. Yuknavitch described how these fathers and father images try to take control of others’ bodies and lives and crush others’ spirits. In her confrontation and memory of such men, however, Yuknavitch also learned to create art and find her feminist purpose.

“Women may be overrepresented in the growing sectors of the economy, but those sectors pay poverty wages. The public sector job cuts that have been largely responsible for unemployment remaining at or near 8 percent have fallen disproportionately on women (and women of color are hit the hardest). Those good union jobs disappear, and are replaced with a minimum-wage gig at Walmart—and even in retail, women make only 90 percent of what men make.”

Jaffe gives an in-depth view of the gains and impasse in the fight to improve women’s working opportunities. She stresses that women’s breakthroughs in the workplace may not always be a cause for celebration if these do not translate to long-term and more concrete changes for women to be treated better in the workplace. Jaffe encouraged feminists to continue organizing themselves to focus on solutions that can address the continued low wages of women, gender pay gaps and the minimal choice of professions offered to women.

“I often think about this. Why, as a culture, do we insist on separating smart and serious from sexy? Give women the opportunity to be whatever they want and as multifaceted as they can be.”

American model Ratajkowski writes a candid memoir on what it means to be hyper feminine in a society that represses and shames sexuality. She recounts how a misogynistic culture heavily influenced her early adventures on exploring her feminine side, how she took it to her advantage and turned being “sexy” into her strength. Ratajkowski also reveals how she feels about feminism today and women, in general, having their own decision and choices.

Writing Prompts on Essays about Feminism

For more help in picking your next essay topic, check out these seven essay prompts that can get you started:

Feminism is largely believed to be women’s fight against the patriarchy. Could it be a fight against all forms of oppression, discrimination, objectification and stereotyping? Could it be something more? You may even investigate some common myths about feminism. You might be interested in our list of adjectives for strong women .

Essays about Feminism: Does feminism still matter in the workplace?

Now that several women are climbing to the top of corporate ladders, have the right to vote and could get a doctorate, does feminism remain relevant?

Your article can explore the continued challenges of women in the workplace. You may also interview some working women who have faced obstacles toward certain goals due to discrimination and how they overcame the situation.

This would tie in closely to the topic on the definition of feminism. But this topic adds value and a personal touch as you share the reasons and narratives that made you realize you are or are not a feminist.

A common misconception is that only women can be feminists.

The First Wave of feminism started in the 19th century as protests on the streets and evolved into today’s Fourth Wave where technologial tools are leveraged to promote feminist advocacies. Look at each period of feminism and compare their objectives and challenges.

While feminism aims to benefit everybody, the movement has also earned the ire of many. Some people blame feminism for enabling hostility towards men, promiscuity and pornography, among others. You can also touch on the more controversial issue on abortion which feminists fight for with the popularizd slogan “My body, my choice.” You can discuss the law of abortion in your state or your country and what feminist groups have to say about these existing regulations.

Gender equality is pursued in various fields, especially where women have had little representation in the past. One example is the tech industry. Choose one sector you relate closely with and research on how gender equality has advanced in this area. It may be fun to also interview some industry leaders to know what policy frameworks they are implementing, and what will be their strategic direction moving forward.

Everyone surely knows a handful of feminists in their social media networks. Interview some friends and ask about feminist projects they have worked on or are working on. Of course, do not forget to ask about the outcomes or targets of the project and find out who has benefitted from the cause. Are these mothers or young women?

WRITING TIPS: Before you head on to write about feminism, check out our essay writing tips so you can have a struggle-free writing process.

If writing an essay still feels like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead

Yna Lim is a communications specialist currently focused on policy advocacy. In her eight years of writing, she has been exposed to a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, web hosting, agriculture, marketing, intellectual property, data privacy and international trade. A former journalist in one of the top business papers in the Philippines, Yna is currently pursuing her master's degree in economics and business.

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44 Student Essay Example: Feminist Criticism

The following student essay example of femnist criticism is taken from Beginnings and Endings: A Critical Edition . This is the publication created by students in English 211. This essay discusses Ray Bradbury’s short story ”There Will Come Soft Rains.”

Burning Stereotypes in Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”

By Karley McCarthy

Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” takes place in the fallout of a nuclear war. The author chooses to tell the story though a technologically advanced house and its animatronic inhabitants instead of a traditional protagonist. The house goes about its day-to-day as if no war had struck. It functions as though its deceased family is still residing in its walls, taking care of the maintenance, happiness, and safety of itself and the long dead family. On the surface, Bradbury’s story seems like a clear-cut warning about technology and humanity’s permissiveness. Given that the short story was written in the 1940s, it’s easy to analyze the themes present and how they related to women of the time. Bradbury’s apt precautionary tale can be used as a metaphor for women’s expectations and role in society after World War II and how some women may have dealt with the fallout of their husbands coming back home with psychological trauma.

To experience “There Will Come Soft Rains” from a feminist perspective, readers must be aware of the societal norms that would have shaped Bradbury’s writing. “Soft Rains” takes place in the year 2026. Yet the house and norms found throughout were, “modeled after concept homes that showed society’s expectations of technological advancement” (Mambrol). This can be seen in the stereotypical nuclear family that once inhabited the house as well as their cliché white home and the hobbies present. According to writer Elaine Tyler May’s book Homeward Bound, America’s view of women’s role in society undertook a massive pendulum swing during the World War II era as the country transitioned through pre-war to post-war life. For example, in a matter of decades support for women joining the workforce shifted from 80% in opposition to only 13% (May 59). Despite this shift, the men coming back from the war still expected women to position themselves as the happy housewife they had left behind, not the newfound career woman architype. Prominent figures of the 40s, such as actress Joan Crawford, portrayed a caricature of womanhood that is subservient to patriarchal gender roles, attempting to abandon the modern idea of a self-sufficient working-class woman (May 62-63). Keeping this in mind, how can this image of the 1940s woman be seen in Bradbury’s work?

Throughout Bradbury’s life he worked towards dismantling clichés in his own writing. A biography titled simply “Ray Bradbury” mentions that even in his earlier work, he was always attempting to “escape the constrictions of stereotypes” found in early science fiction (Seed 13). An example of him breaking constrictions could be his use of a nonhuman protagonist. Instead, Bradbury relies on the personification of the house and its robotic counterparts. Bradbury describes the house as having “electric eyes” and emotions such as a, “preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia,” something that would make the house quiver at the sounds of the outside world (2-3). While these descriptions are interesting, Bradbury’s use of personification here is a thought-provoking choice when one breaks down what exactly the house is meant to personify.

One analysis of this story notes that the house’s personification, “replaces the most human aspects of life,” for its inhabitants (Mambrol). Throughout the story, the house acts as a caretaker, records a schedule, cooks, cleans, and even attempts to extinguish an all-consuming fire. While firefighting is not a traditionally feminine career or expectation from the 1940s (more on that later), most of the house’s daily tasks are replacing jobs that were traditionally held by a household’s matriarch. Expanding further on this dichotomy of male/woman tasks, a chore mentioned in the story that is ‘traditionally’ accepted as a masculine household duty—mowing the law—is still assigned as a male task. This is feels intentional to the house’s design as Bradbury is, “a social critic, and his work is pertinent to real problems on earth” (Dominianni 49). Bradbury’s story is not meant to commentate on just an apocalypse, but society at large. Bradbury describes the west face of the house as, “black, save for five places” (Bradbury 1-2). These “five places” are the silhouettes of the family who had been incinerated by a nuclear bomb. The family’s two children are included playing with a ball, but the mother and father’s descriptions are most important. The mother is seen in a passive role, picking flowers, while the father mows the lawn. The subtext here is that the man is not replaceable in his mundane and tedious task. Only the woman is replaced. While this is a small flash into the owners’ lives, what “human aspect” or autonomy of the father’s life has been replaced by the house’s actions if the house is mainly personifying only the traditional 1940s female-held positions? The message here is that a man’s position in society is irreplaceable while a woman’s is one of mere support.

While this dynamic of husband vs subordinate is harmful, wives supporting their partners is nothing new. Homeward Bound explains that life after World War II for many women meant a return to their previous position as a housewife while many men came home irreparably damaged by years of warfare. PTSD, known then as shellshock, affected countless men returning from the war. Women were often expected to mend the psychological damage as part of their domestic responsibilities, even if they were unprepared for the realities of the severe trauma their husbands had faced (May 64-65). The psychological effects of the war came crashing into women’s lives the same way that the tree fell into the autonomous house in “Soft Rains”. As mentioned earlier, firefighting is not a task someone from the 40s would expect of women, but the house’s combustion and its scramble to save itself can be seen as a metaphor for women attempting to reverse the cold reality that the war had left them with. The picturesque family they had dreamed of would forever be scarred by the casualties that took place overseas. While Bradbury may not have meant for women to be invoked specifically from this precautionary tale, it’s obvious that him wanting his science fiction to act as, “a cumulative early warning system against unforeseen consequences,” would have impacted women of the time as much as men (Seed 22). The unforeseen consequences here is the trauma the war inflicted on families.

While men were fighting on the front lines, women back home and in noncombat positions would still feel the war’s ripples. In “Soft Rains” the nuclear tragedy had left, “a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles” (Bradbury 1). Despite the destruction, the house continues its routine as though nothing had happened. This can be seen as a metaphor for how women responded to the trauma their husbands brought back from the war. Women were urged to, “preserve for him the essence of the girl he fell in love with, the girl he longs to come back to. . .The least we can do as women is to try to live up to some of those expectations” (May 64). Following this, many could have put their desires and personal growth to the side to act as a secondary character in their husband’s lives.

The final line can be read as the culmination of similarities between post-war women and Bradbury’s house. The violence and destruction that fell upon the house in its final moments leaves little standing. What’s remarkable is how the house still attempts to continue despite its destruction. The final lines of the short story exemplify this: “Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: ‘Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…’” (Bradbury 5). The house is acting just like the women from the 40s, clinging to their past in an attempt to preserve something that had already been lost, society’s innocence. One analysis points out that, “The house is depicted in this way because it represents both humanity and humanity’s failure to save itself” (Mambrol). While it might be wrong to say that women were unable to save themselves in this situation, this quote does touch on an idea present in the feminist metaphor for “Soft Rains”. The preservation of “the essence of the girl he fell in love with, the girl he longs to come back to” was a failure (May 64). The same way that the house cannot preserve itself from destruction, women cannot preserve an image of themselves that had already dissolved. As mentioned earlier, women had already entered the workforce, a huge step towards removing sexist stereotypes around women’s worth. After garnering work-based independence, it seems impossible that the idea of women solely as men’s support would not immolate.

While Bradbury’s “Soft Rains” can be viewed as an apt precautionary tale with real modern world issues at hand, in many ways it is a period piece. As a writer in the 1940s, it’s hard to imagine that Bradbury’s story would not have been influenced by the framework of a nuclear family and the stereotypical expectations of this time. Bradbury’s use of personification opens dialogue about gender roles in the 1940s and how war had complicated patriarchal expectations. Despite his attempt to bypass science fiction stereotypes, his story is full of metaphor for gender stereotypes. Using a feminist lens to analyze the story allows it to be read as a metaphor for war and its effects on married women. The standard analysis appears to say that, “machine no longer served humanity in “There Will Come Soft Rains”; there humanity is subservient to machinery” (Dominianni 49). From a feminist perspective, instead of machine, the house represents patriarchy and gender norms. While men suffered greatly during World War II, women often put their wants and futures on hold to support their husbands. This is a selfless act that shows the resilience of women despite their society’s wish to downplay their potential and turn them into mere support.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains.” Broome-Tioga BOCES, 1950, pp. 1-5. btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf.

Dominianni, Robert. “Ray Bradbury’s 2026: A Year with Current Value.” The English Journal , vol. 73, no. 7, 1984, pp. 49–51. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/817806

Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains.” Literary Theory and Criticism , 17 Jan. 2022.

May, Elaine Tyler. “War and Peace: Fanning the Home Fires.” Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. 20th ed., Basic Books, 2008, pp. 58-88.

Seed, David. “Out of the Science Fiction Ghetto.” Ray Bradbury (Modern Masters of Science Fiction). University of Illinois, 2015, pp. 1-45.

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5 Essays About Feminism

On the surface, the definition of feminism is simple. It’s the belief that women should be politically, socially, and economically equal to men. Over the years, the movement expanded from a focus on voting rights to worker rights, reproductive rights, gender roles, and beyond. Modern feminism is moving to a more inclusive and intersectional place. Here are five essays about feminism that tackle topics like trans activism, progress, and privilege:

“Trickle-Down Feminism” – Sarah Jaffe

Feminists celebrate successful women who have seemingly smashed through the glass ceiling, but the reality is that most women are still under it. Even in fast-growing fields where women dominate (retail sales, food service, etc), women make less money than men. In this essay from Dissent Magazine, author Sarah Jaffe argues that when the fastest-growing fields are low-wage, it isn’t a victory for women. At the same time, it does present an opportunity to change the way we value service work. It isn’t enough to focus only on “equal pay for equal work” as that argument mostly focuses on jobs where someone can negotiate their salary. This essay explores how feminism can’t succeed if only the concerns of the wealthiest, most privileged women are prioritized.

Sarah Jaffe writes about organizing, social movements, and the economy with publications like Dissent, the Nation, Jacobin, and others. She is the former labor editor at Alternet.

“What No One Else Will Tell You About Feminism” – Lindy West

Written in Lindy West’s distinct voice, this essay provides a clear, condensed history of feminism’s different “waves.” The first wave focused on the right to vote, which established women as equal citizens. In the second wave, after WWII, women began taking on issues that couldn’t be legally-challenged, like gender roles. As the third wave began, the scope of feminism began to encompass others besides middle-class white women. Women should be allowed to define their womanhood for themselves. West also points out that “waves” may not even exist since history is a continuum. She concludes the essay by declaring if you believe all people are equal, you are a feminist.

Jezebel reprinted this essay with permission from How To Be A Person, The Stranger’s Guide to College by Lindy West, Dan Savage, Christopher Frizelle, and Bethany Jean Clement. Lindy West is an activist, comedian, and writer who focuses on topics like feminism, pop culture, and fat acceptance.

“Toward a Trans* Feminism” – Jack Halberstam

The history of transactivsm and feminism is messy. This essay begins with the author’s personal experience with gender and terms like trans*, which Halberstam prefers. The asterisk serves to “open the meaning,” allowing people to choose their categorization as they see fit. The main body of the essay focuses on the less-known history of feminists and trans* folks. He references essays from the 1970s and other literature that help paint a more complete picture. In current times, the tension between radical feminism and trans* feminism remains, but changes that are good for trans* women are good for everyone.

This essay was adapted from Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability by Jack Halberstam. Halberstam is the Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is also the author of several books.

“Rebecca Solnit: How Change Happens” – Rebecca Solnit

The world is changing. Rebecca Solnit describes this transformation as an assembly of ideas, visions, values, essays, books, protests, and more. It has many layers involving race, class, gender, power, climate, justice, etc, as well as many voices. This has led to more clarity about injustice. Solnit describes watching the transformation and how progress and “ wokeness ” are part of a historical process. Progress is hard work. Not exclusively about feminism, this essay takes a more intersectional look at how progress as a whole occurs.

“How Change Happens” was adapted from the introduction to Whose Story Is it? Rebecca Solnit is a writer, activist, and historian. She’s the author of over 20 books on art, politics, feminism, and more.

“Bad Feminist” extract – Roxane Gay

People are complicated and imperfect. In this excerpt from her book Bad Feminist: Essays , Roxane Gay explores her contradictions. The opening sentence is, “I am failing as a woman.” She goes on to describe how she wants to be independent, but also to be taken care of. She wants to be strong and in charge, but she also wants to surrender sometimes. For a long time, she denied that she was human and flawed. However, the work it took to deny her humanness is harder than accepting who she is. While Gay might be a “bad feminist,” she is also deeply committed to issues that are important to feminism. This is a must-read essay for any feminists who worry that they aren’t perfect.

Roxane Gay is a professor, speaker, editor, writer, and social commentator. She is the author of Bad Feminist , a New York Times bestseller, Hunger (a memoir), and works of fiction.

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✍️Essay on Feminism for Students: Samples 150, 250 Words

Updated on
Nov 2, 2023

In a society, men and women should be considered equal in every aspect. This thought is advocated by a social and political movement i.e. feminism . The word feminism was coined by the French Philosopher Charles Fourier in 1837. He was known for his strong belief in equal rights for women as men in every sector, be it the right to vote, right to work, right to decide, right to participate in public life, right to own property, etc. Feminism advocates the rights of women with respect to the equality of gender . There are different types of feminism i.e. liberal, radical, Marxist, cultural, and eco-feminism. Stay tuned and have a look at the following sample essay on feminism!

Also Read: Popular Struggles and Movements

Essay on Feminism 150 Words

India is a land of diversity of which 52.2% are women as per an estimate for the year 2023. This doesn’t mean that every woman is getting basic fundamental rights in society. We should not neglect the rights of women and treat them as a weaker sex. Women are equally strong and capable as men. To advocate this thought a movement called Feminism came into existence in 1837. Feminism is a movement that advocates the equality of women in social, political, and economic areas.

India is up eight notches in #WorldEconomicForum ’s annual gender ranking. And Iceland is #1 for women, again, for the 14th year in a row. @namitabhandare ’s newsletter, #HTMindtheGap looks at why. Plus the week’s other gender stories https://t.co/9Fen6TaEnb Subscribe here… pic.twitter.com/r6XfFMINO0 — Hindustan Times (@htTweets) June 25, 2023

Traditionally, women were believed to stay at home and there were severe restrictions imposed on them. They were not allowed to go out, study, work, vote, own property, etc. However, with the passage of time, people are becoming aware of the objective of feminism. Any person who supports feminism and is a proponent of equal human rights for women is considered a feminist.

Feminism is a challenge to the patriarchal systems existing in society. Despite this strong movement burning in high flames to burn the orthodox and dominant culture, there are still some parts of the world that are facing gender inequality. So, it is our duty to make a world free of any discrimination.

Essay on Feminism 250 Words

Talking about feminism in a broader sense, then, it is not restricted only to women. It refers to the equality of every sex or gender. Some people feel offended by the concept of feminism as they take it in the wrong way. There is a misconception that only women are feminists. But this is not the case. Feminists can be anyone who supports the noble cause of supporting the concept of providing equal rights to women.

Feminism is not restricted to single-sex i.e. women, but it advocates for every person irrespective of caste, creed, colour, sex, or gender. As an individual, it is our duty to help every person achieve equal status in society and eradicate any kind of gender discrimination .

Equality helps people to live freely without any traditional restrictions. At present, the Government of India is also contributing to providing equal rights to the female sector through various Government schemes like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Pradhan Mantri Mahila Shakti Kendra, One Stop Center, and many more.

Apart from these Government policies, campaigns like reproductive rights or abortion of unwanted pregnancy also give women the right to choose and lead their life without any external authority of a male.

Feminism has also supported the LGBTIQA+ community so that people belonging to this community could come out and reveal their identity without any shame. The concept of feminism also helped them to ask for equal rights as men and women. Thus, it could be concluded that feminism is for all genders and a true feminist will support every person to achieve equal rights and hold a respectable position in society.

Check Out: Women Equality Day

Kajal Thareja

Hi, I am Kajal, a pharmacy graduate, currently pursuing management and is an experienced content writer. I have 2-years of writing experience in Ed-tech (digital marketing) company. I am passionate towards writing blogs and am on the path of discovering true potential professionally in the field of content marketing. I am engaged in writing creative content for students which is simple yet creative and engaging and leaves an impact on the reader's mind.

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Reflections on teaching. Insights into feminism.

In 1980, four years after she arrived on campus as an assistant professor, Estelle B. Freedman co-founded Stanford University’s Program in Feminist Studies . Thirty years later, the program boasts faculty from twenty-seven different academic disciplines and its courses draw students from around the campus.

At a panel event titled "Beyond the Stalled Revolution," Freedman reflected on her years of experience teaching feminist studies. Freedman began teaching Stanford courses about women and gender in the late 1970s. Her students engaged enthusiastically with women’s issues, in the context of the feminist movements of the time. Students arrived with a high level of political motivation, and the challenge was to channel that enthusiasm to complex analysis, rather than to simply “add and stir” women, as a category, to the study of humanities and social sciences. For example, it was not enough to simply identify “great women” who had contributed to history, literature, and more. Rather, Freedman encouraged her students to analyze the intersecting hierarchies that permitted some women and men, but not others, to gain positions of power and influence.

In the Reagan Era, the political environment changed, both inside and outside the classroom. More incoming students expressed discomfort with the word “feminism”—even as they largely embraced the feminist movement’s central tenets. Freedman observed “a seeming paradox of young women who felt entitled to economic and social equality with men yet expressed an escalating fear of feminism.” Some scholars have correlated this escalating fear of feminism with a “stall” in the gender revolution.

Many of Freedman’s students expressed faith in American ideals of equality and did not see the need for a feminist movement. Other students perceived the feminist movement as being solely for lesbian women or solely for the white, middle-class. Indeed, over the years a major goal of Freedman’s has been to ensure that in addition to thinking in terms of gender, her students consider other social categories such as race, class, and sexuality.

As an example, Freedman pointed to critics of a liberal feminism that once focused narrowly on encouraging educated housewives to leave their homes and enter the workforce. This strategy may improve the lives of middle-class women but does not address the concerns of their working-class peers. In fact, the professionalization of middle-class women (often white) has largely relied on inexpensive domestic labor provided by working-class women (often non-white), as housecleaners and childcare providers.

“Hence the question,” asked Freedman, “does women’s liberation liberate the maid?”

By thinking of ways to simultaneously address race, class, and gender issues, Freedman challenges her students to develop complex solutions to social problems. “I’m often surprised by the number of students who report that the most important thing they learned in Feminist Studies is that race makes a difference. I’m delighted they learned that, surprised it has taken this long.”

Beginning in the 1990s, Freedman has seen a new group of students in her classes: the sons and daughters of second-wave feminists. Simultaneously, national and international political developments—such as the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the international exposes of sex trafficking of women, and the same-sex marriage campaign—have made many students sympathetic to movements for gender and sexual equality, even if they do not personally claim the label “feminist.”

Despite the changes in student concerns over the course of Freedman’s teaching career, there have been some constants. One is the issue of physical vulnerability—although services and awareness have increased, women as well as gay men and transgendered students continue to feel vulnerable to physical and sexual assault. Freedman is currently responding to the issue of sexual violence by writing a book about the political response to rape in American history.

Another matter is the need to place the study of gender within contexts of other social issues. In the lives of women around the world, the hierarchies of race, class, and nationality are as salient as the hierarchy of gender. Freedman’s books No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women and The Essential Feminist Reader , both of which are used in courses in the United States, analyze gender from complex, global perspectives.

At the “Beyond the Stalled Revolution” panel, Freedman and other scholars met to consider the recent history and the future direction of the feminist movement. Asked to issue her recommendations for the future, Freedman closed her remarks with a caution, one that echoed a major message of her courses:

“Addressing only the status of women will not suffice…. Feminism will fail if we strive merely to make women the equals of men in their capacities to exploit and to be exploited. Rather, we need to explore how our insights about women can help us to create a more egalitarian world.”

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Gender Equality — Essay On Feminism In Society

Essay on Feminism in Society

Categories: Gender Equality Women's Rights

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Words: 1481 |

Published: Mar 19, 2024

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I. introduction, ii. history of feminism, iii. feminism in the workplace, iv. feminism in politics, v. feminism in media and pop culture, vi. feminism in education, vii. criticisms of feminism, viii. conclusion.

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Feminist theory and its use in qualitative research in education.

Emily Freeman Emily Freeman University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1193
Published online: 28 August 2019

Feminist theory rose in prominence in educational research during the 1980s and experienced a resurgence in popularity during the late 1990s−2010s. Standpoint epistemologies, intersectionality, and feminist poststructuralism are the most prevalent theories, but feminist researchers often work across feminist theoretical thought. Feminist qualitative research in education encompasses a myriad of methods and methodologies, but projects share a commitment to feminist ethics and theories. Among the commitments are the understanding that knowledge is situated in the subjectivities and lived experiences of both researcher and participants and research is deeply reflexive. Feminist theory informs both research questions and the methodology of a project in addition to serving as a foundation for analysis. The goals of feminist educational research include dismantling systems of oppression, highlighting gender-based disparities, and seeking new ways of constructing knowledge.

feminist theories
qualitative research
educational research
positionality
methodology

Introduction

Feminist qualitative research begins with the understanding that all knowledge is situated in the bodies and subjectivities of people, particularly women and historically marginalized groups. Donna Haraway ( 1988 ) wrote,

I am arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, position, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people’s lives I’m arguing for the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity. Only the god trick is forbidden. . . . Feminism is about a critical vision consequent upon a critical positioning in unhomogeneous gendered social space. (p. 589)

By arguing that “politics and epistemologies” are always interpretive and partial, Haraway offered feminist qualitative researchers in education a way to understand all research as potentially political and always interpretive and partial. Because all humans bring their own histories, biases, and subjectivities with them to a research space or project, it is naïve to think that the written product of research could ever be considered neutral, but what does research with a strong commitment to feminism look like in the context of education?

Writing specifically about the ways researchers of both genders can use feminist ethnographic methods while conducting research on schools and schooling, Levinson ( 1998 ) stated, “I define feminist ethnography as intensive qualitative research, aimed toward the description and analysis of the gendered construction and representation of experience, which is informed by a political and intellectual commitment to the empowerment of women and the creation of more equitable arrangements between and among specific, culturally defined genders” (p. 339). The core of Levinson’s definition is helpful for understanding the ways that feminist educational anthropologists engage with schools as gendered and political constructs and the larger questions of feminist qualitative research in education. His message also extends to other forms of feminist qualitative research. By focusing on description, analysis, and representation of gendered constructs, educational researchers can move beyond simple binary analyses to more nuanced understandings of the myriad ways gender operates within educational contexts.

Feminist qualitative research spans the range of qualitative methodologies, but much early research emerged out of the feminist postmodern turn in anthropology (Behar & Gordon, 1995 ), which was a response to male anthropologists who ignored the gendered implications of ethnographic research (e.g., Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ). Historically, most of the work on feminist education was conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, with a resurgence in the late 2010s (Culley & Portuges, 1985 ; DuBois, Kelly, Kennedy, Korsmeyer, & Robinson, 1985 ; Gottesman, 2016 ; Maher & Tetreault, 1994 ; Thayer-Bacon, Stone, & Sprecher, 2013 ). Within this body of research, the majority focuses on higher education (Coffey & Delamont, 2000 ; Digiovanni & Liston, 2005 ; Diller, Houston, Morgan, & Ayim, 1996 ; Gabriel & Smithson, 1990 ; Mayberry & Rose, 1999 ). Even leading journals, such as Feminist Teacher ( 1984 −present), focus mostly on the challenges of teaching about and to women in higher education, although more scholarship on P–12 education has emerged in recent issues.

There is also a large collection of work on the links between gender, achievement, and self-esteem (American Association of University Women, 1992 , 1999 ; Digiovanni & Liston, 2005 ; Gilligan, 1982 ; Hancock, 1989 ; Jackson, Paechter, & Renold, 2010 ; National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 2002 ; Orenstein, 1994 ; Pipher, 1994 ; Sadker & Sadker, 1994 ). However, just because research examines gender does not mean that it is feminist. Simply using gender as a category of analysis does not mean the research project is informed by feminist theory, ethics, or methods, but it is often a starting point for researchers who are interested in the complex ways gender is constructed and the ways it operates in education.

This article examines the histories and theories of U.S.–based feminism, the tenets of feminist qualitative research and methodologies, examples of feminist qualitative studies, and the possibilities for feminist qualitative research in education to provide feminist educational researchers context and methods for engaging in transformative and subversive research. Each section provides a brief overview of the major concepts and conversations, along with examples from educational research to highlight the ways feminist theory has informed educational scholarship. Some examples are given limited attention and serve as entry points into a more detailed analysis of a few key examples. While there is a large body of non-Western feminist theory (e.g., the works of Lila Abu-Lughod, Sara Ahmed, Raewyn Connell, Saba Mahmood, Chandra Mohanty, and Gayatri Spivak), much of the educational research using feminist theory draws on Western feminist theory. This article focuses on U.S.–based research to show the ways that the utilization of feminist theory has changed since the 1980s.

Histories, Origins, and Theories of U.S.–Based Feminism

The normative historiography of feminist theory and activism in the United States is broken into three waves. First-wave feminism (1830s−1920s) primarily focused on women’s suffrage and women’s rights to legally exist in public spaces. During this time period, there were major schisms between feminist groups concerning abolition, rights for African American women, and the erasure of marginalized voices from larger feminist debates. The second wave (1960s and 1980s) worked to extend some of the rights won during the first wave. Activists of this time period focused on women’s rights to enter the workforce, sexual harassment, educational equality, and abortion rights. During this wave, colleges and universities started creating women’s studies departments and those scholars provided much of the theoretical work that informs feminist research and activism today. While there were major feminist victories during second-wave feminism, notably Title IX and Roe v. Wade , issues concerning the marginalization of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity led many feminists of color to separate from mainstream white feminist groups. The third wave (1990s to the present) is often characterized as the intersectional wave, as some feminist groups began utilizing Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality ( 1991 ) to understand that oppression operates via multiple categories (e.g., gender, race, class, age, ability) and that intersecting oppressions lead to different lived experiences.

Historians and scholars of feminism argue that dividing feminist activism into three waves flattens and erases the major contributions of women of color and gender-nonconforming people. Thompson ( 2002 ) called this history a history of hegemonic feminism and proposed that we look at the contributions of multiracial feminism when discussing history. Her work, along with that of Allen ( 1984 ) about the indigenous roots of U.S. feminism, raised many questions about the ways that feminism operates within the public and academic spheres. For those who wish to engage in feminist research, it is vital to spend time understanding the historical, theoretical, and political ways that feminism(s) can both liberate and oppress, depending on the scholar’s understandings of, and orientations to, feminist projects.

Standpoint Epistemology

Much of the theoretical work that informs feminist qualitative research today emerged out of second-wave feminist scholarship. Standpoint epistemology, according to Harding ( 1991 , 2004 ), posits that knowledge comes from one’s particular social location, that it is subjective, and the further one is from the hegemonic norm, the clearer one can see oppression. This was a major challenge to androcentric and Enlightenment theories of knowledge because standpoint theory acknowledges that there is no universal understanding of the world. This theory aligns with the second-wave feminist slogan, “The personal is political,” and advocates for a view of knowledge that is produced from the body.

Greene ( 1994 ) wrote from a feminist postmodernist epistemology and attacked Enlightenment thinking by using standpoint theory as her starting point. Her work serves as an example of one way that educational scholars can use standpoint theory in their work. She theorized encounters with “imaginative literature” to help educators conceptualize new ways of using reading and writing in the classroom and called for teachers to think of literature as “a harbinger of the possible.” (Greene, 1994 , p. 218). Greene wrote from an explicitly feminist perspective and moved beyond simple analyses of gender to a larger critique of the ways that knowledge is constructed in classrooms.

Intersectionality

Crenshaw ( 1991 ) and Collins ( 2000 ) challenged and expanded standpoint theory to move it beyond an individual understanding of knowledge to a group-based theory of oppression. Their work, and that of other black and womanist feminists, opened up multiple spaces of possibility for feminist scholars and researchers because it challenged hegemonic feminist thought. For those interested in conducting feminist research in educational settings, their work is especially pertinent because they advocate for feminists to attend to all aspects of oppression rather than flattening them to one of simple gender-based oppression.

Haddix, McArthur, Muhammad, Price-Dennis, and Sealey-Ruiz ( 2016 ), all women-of-color feminist educators, wrote a provocateur piece in a special issue of English Education on black girls’ literacy. The four authors drew on black feminist thought and conducted a virtual kitchen-table conversation. By symbolically representing their conversations as one from the kitchen, this article pays homage to women-of-color feminism and pushes educators who read English Education to reconsider elements of their own subjectivities. Third-wave feminism and black feminism emphasize intersectionality, in that different demographic details like race, class, and gender are inextricably linked in power structures. Intersectionality is an important frame for educational research because identifying the unique experiences, realities, and narratives of those involved in educational systems can highlight the ways that power and oppression operate in society.

Feminist Poststructural Theory

Feminist poststructural theory has greatly informed many feminist projects in educational research. Deconstruction is

a critical practice that aims to ‘dismantle [ déconstruire ] the metaphysical and rhetorical structures that are at work, not in order to reject or discard them, but to reinscribe them in another way,’ (Derrida, quoted in Spivak, 1974 , p. lxxv). Thus, deconstruction is not about tearing down, but about looking at how a structure has been constructed, what holds it together, and what it produces. (St. Pierre, 2000 , p. 482)

Reality, subjectivity, knowledge, and truth are constructed through language and discourse (cultural practices, power relations, etc.), so truth is local and diverse, rather than a universal experience (St. Pierre, 2000 ). Feminist poststructuralist theory may be used to question structural inequality that is maintained in education through dominant discourses.

In Go Be a Writer! Expanding the Curricular Boundaries of Literacy Learning with Children , Kuby and Rucker ( 2016 ) explored early elementary literacy practices using poststructural and posthumanist theories. Their book drew on hours of classroom observations, student interviews and work, and their own musings on ways to de-standardize literacy instruction and curriculum. Through the process of pedagogical documentation, Kuby and Rucker drew on the works of Barad, Deleuze and Guattari, and Derrida to explore the ways they saw children engaging in what they call “literacy desiring(s).” One aim of the book is to find practical and applicable ways to “Disrupt literacy in ways that rewrite the curriculum, the interactions, and the power dynamics of the classroom even begetting a new kind of energy that spirals and bounces and explodes” (Kuby & Rucker, 2016 , p. 5). The second goal of their book is not only to understand what happened in Rucker’s classroom using the theories, but also to unbound the links between “teaching↔learning” (p. 202) and to write with the theories, rather than separating theory from the methodology and classroom enactments (p. 45) because “knowing/being/doing were not separate” (p. 28). This work engages with key tenets of feminist poststructuralist theory and adds to both the theoretical and pedagogical conversations about what counts as a literacy practice.

While the discussion in this section provides an overview of the histories and major feminist theories, it is by no means exhaustive. Scholars who wish to engage in feminist educational research need to spend time doing the work of understanding the various theories and trajectories that constitute feminist work so they are able to ground their projects and theories in a particular tradition that will inform the ethics and methods of research.

Tenets of Feminist Qualitative Research

Why engage in feminist qualitative research.

Evans and Spivak ( 2016 ) stated, “The only real and effective way you can sabotage something this way is when you are working intimately within it.” Feminist researchers are in the classroom and the academy, working intimately within curricular, pedagogical, and methodological constraints that serve neoliberal ideologies, so it is vital to better understand the ways that we can engage in affirmative sabotage to build a more just and equitable world. Spivak’s ( 2014 ) notion of affirmative sabotage has become a cornerstone for understanding feminist qualitative research and teaching. She borrowed and built on Gramsci’s role of the organic intellectual and stated that they/we need to engage in affirmative sabotage to transform the humanities.

I used the term “affirmative sabotage” to gloss on the usual meaning of sabotage: the deliberate ruining of the master’s machine from the inside. Affirmative sabotage doesn’t just ruin; the idea is of entering the discourse that you are criticizing fully, so that you can turn it around from inside. The only real and effective way you can sabotage something this way is when you are working intimately within it. (Evans & Spivak, 2016 )

While Spivak has been mostly concerned with literary education, her writings provide teachers and researchers numerous lines of inquiry into projects that can explode androcentric universal notions of knowledge and resist reproductive heteronormativity.

Spivak’s pedagogical musings center on deconstruction, primarily Derridean notions of deconstruction (Derrida, 2016 ; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 ; Spivak, 2006 , 2009 , 2012 ) that seek to destabilize existing categories and to call into question previously unquestioned beliefs about the goals of education. Her works provide an excellent starting point for examining the links between feminism and educational research. The desire to create new worlds within classrooms, worlds that are fluid, interpretive, and inclusive in order to interrogate power structures, lies at the core of what it means to be a feminist education researcher. As researchers, we must seriously engage with feminist theory and include it in our research so that feminism is not seen as a dirty word, but as a movement/pedagogy/methodology that seeks the liberation of all (Davis, 2016 ).

Feminist research and feminist teaching are intrinsically linked. As Kerkhoff ( 2015 ) wrote, “Feminist pedagogy requires students to challenge the norms and to question whether existing practices privilege certain groups and marginalize others” (p. 444), and this is exactly what feminist educational research should do. Bailey ( 2001 ) called on teachers, particularly those who identify as feminists, to be activists, “The values of one’s teaching should not be separated sharply from the values one expresses outside the classroom, because teaching is not inherently pure or laboratory practice” (p. 126); however, we have to be careful not to glorify teachers as activists because that leads to the risk of misinterpreting actions. Bailey argued that teaching critical thinking is not enough if it is not coupled with curriculums and pedagogies that are antiheteronormative, antisexist, and antiracist. As Bailey warned, just using feminist theory or identifying as a feminist is not enough. It is very easy to use the language and theories of feminism without being actively feminist in one’s research. There are ethical and methodological issues that feminist scholars must consider when conducting research.

Feminist research requires one to discuss ethics, not as a bureaucratic move, but as a reflexive move that shows the researchers understand that, no matter how much they wish it didn’t, power always plays a role in the process. According to Davies ( 2014 ), “Ethics, as Barad defines it, is a matter of questioning what is being made to matter and how that mattering affects what it is possible to do and to think” (p. 11). In other words, ethics is what is made to matter in a particular time and place.

Davies ( 2016 ) extended her definition of ethics to the interactions one has with others.

This is not ethics as a matter of separate individuals following a set of rules. Ethical practice, as both Barad and Deleuze define it, requires thinking beyond the already known, being open in the moment of the encounter, pausing at the threshold and crossing over. Ethical practice is emergent in encounters with others, in emergent listening with others. It is a matter of questioning what is being made to matter and how that mattering affects what it is possible to do and to think. Ethics is emergent in the intra-active encounters in which knowing, being, and doing (epistemology, ontology, and ethics) are inextricably linked. (Barad, 2007 , p. 83)

The ethics of any project must be negotiated and contested before, during, and after the process of conducting research in conjunction with the participants. Feminist research is highly reflexive and should be conducted in ways that challenge power dynamics between individuals and social institutions. Educational researchers must heed the warning to avoid the “god-trick” (Haraway, 1988 ) and to continually question and re-question the ways we seek to define and present subjugated knowledge (Hesse-Biber, 2012 ).

Positionalities and Reflexivity

According to feminist ethnographer Noelle Stout, “Positionality isn’t meant to be a few sentences at the beginning of a work” (personal communication, April 5, 2016 ). In order to move to new ways of experiencing and studying the world, it is vital that scholars examine the ways that reflexivity and positionality are constructed. In a glorious footnote, Margery Wolf ( 1992 ) related reflexivity in anthropological writing to a bureaucratic procedure (p. 136), and that resonates with how positionality often operates in the field of education.

The current trend in educational research is to include a positionality statement that fixes the identity of the author in a particular place and time and is derived from feminist standpoint theory. Researchers should make their biases and the identities of the authors clear in a text, but there are serious issues with the way that positionality functions as a boundary around the authors. Examining how the researchers exert authority within a text allows the reader the opportunity to determine the intent and philosophy behind the text. If positionality were used in an embedded and reflexive manner, then educational research would be much richer and allow more nuanced views of schools, in addition to being more feminist in nature. The rest of this section briefly discussrs articles that engage with feminist ethics regarding researcher subjectivities and positionality, and two articles are examined in greater depth.

When looking for examples of research that includes deeply reflexive and embedded positionality, one finds that they mostly deal with issues of race, equity, and diversity. The highlighted articles provide examples of positionality statements that are deeply reflexive and represent the ways that feminist researchers can attend to the ethics of being part of a research project. These examples all come from feminist ethnographic projects, but they are applicable to a wide variety of feminist qualitative projects.

Martinez ( 2016 ) examined how research methods are or are not appropriate for specific contexts. Calderon ( 2016 ) examined autoethnography and the reproduction of “settler colonial understandings of marginalized communities” (p. 5). Similarly, Wissman, Staples, Vasudevan, and Nichols ( 2015 ) discussed how to research with adolescents through engaged participation and collaborative inquiry, and Ceglowski and Makovsky ( 2012 ) discussed the ways researchers can engage in duoethnography with young children.

Abajian ( 2016 ) uncovered the ways military recruiters operate in high schools and paid particular attention to the politics of remaining neutral while also working to subvert school militarization. She wrote,

Because of the sensitive and also controversial nature of my research, it was not possible to have a collaborative process with students, teachers, and parents. Purposefully intervening would have made documentation impossible because that would have (rightfully) aligned me with anti-war and counter-recruitment activists who were usually not welcomed on school campuses (Abajian & Guzman, 2013 ). It was difficult enough to find an administrator who gave me consent to conduct my research within her school, as I had explicitly stated in my participant recruitment letters and consent forms that I was going to research the promotion of post-secondary paths including the military. Hence, any purposeful intervention on my part would have resulted in the termination of my research project. At the same time, my documentation was, in essence, an intervention. I hoped that my presence as an observer positively shaped the context of my observation and also contributed to the larger struggle against the militarization of schools. (p. 26)

Her positionality played a vital role in the creation, implementation, and analysis of military recruitment, but it also forced her into unexpected silences in order to carry out her research. Abajian’s positionality statement brings up many questions about the ways researchers have to use or silence their positionality to further their research, especially if they are working in ostensibly “neutral” and “politically free” zones, such as schools. Her work drew on engaged anthropology (Low & Merry, 2010 ) and critical reflexivity (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008 ) to highlight how researchers’ subjectivities shape ethnographic projects. Questions of subjectivity and positionality in her work reflect the larger discourses around these topics in feminist theory and qualitative research.

Brown ( 2011 ) provided another example of embedded and reflexive positionality of the articles surveyed. Her entire study engaged with questions about how her positionality influenced the study during the field-work portion of her ethnography on how race and racism operate in ethnographic field-work. This excerpt from her study highlights how she conceived of positionality and how it informed her work and her process.

Next, I provide a brief overview of the research study from which this paper emerged and I follow this with a presentation of four, first-person narratives from key encounters I experienced while doing ethnographic field research. Each of these stories centres the role race played as I negotiated my multiple, complex positionality vis-á-vis different informants and participants in my study. These stories highlight the emotional pressures that race work has on the researcher and the research process, thus reaffirming why one needs to recognise the role race plays, and may play, in research prior to, during, and after conducting one’s study (Milner, 2007 ). I conclude by discussing the implications these insights have on preparing researchers of color to conduct cross-racial qualitative research. (Brown, 2011 , p. 98)

Brown centered the roles of race and subjectivity, both hers and her participants, by focusing her analysis on the four narratives. The researchers highlighted in this section thought deeply about the ethics of their projects and the ways that their positionality informed their choice of methods.

Methods and Challenges

Feminist qualitative research can take many forms, but the most common data collection methods include interviews, observations, and narrative or discourse analysis. For the purposes of this article, methods refer to the tools and techniques researchers use, while methodology refers to the larger philosophical and epistemological approaches to conducting research. It is also important to note that these are not fixed terms, and that there continues to be much debate about what constitutes feminist theory and feminist research methods among feminist qualitative researchers. This section discusses some of the tensions and constraints of using feminist theory in educational research.

Jackson and Mazzei ( 2012 ) called on researchers to think through their data with theory at all stages of the collection and analysis process. They also reminded us that all data collection is partial and informed by the researcher’s own beliefs (Koro-Ljungberg, Löytönen, & Tesar, 2017 ). Interviews are sites of power and critiques because they show the power of stories and serve as a method of worlding, the process of “making a world, turning insight into instrument, through and into a possible act of freedom” (Spivak, 2014 , p. xiii). Interviews allow researchers and participants ways to engage in new ways of understanding past experiences and connecting them to feminist theories. The narratives serve as data, but it is worth noting that the data collected from interviews are “partial, incomplete, and always being re-told and re-membered” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 , p. 3), much like the lived experiences of both researcher and participant.

Research, data collection, and interpretation are not neutral endeavors, particularly with interviews (Jackson & Mazzei, 2009 ; Mazzei, 2007 , 2013 ). Since education research emerged out of educational psychology (Lather, 1991 ; St. Pierre, 2016 ), historically there has been an emphasis on generalizability and positivist data collection methods. Most feminist research makes no claims of generalizability or truth; indeed, to do so would negate the hyperpersonal and particular nature of this type of research (Love, 2017 ). St. Pierre ( 2016 ) viewed the lack of generalizability as an asset of feminist and poststructural research, rather than a limitation, because it creates a space of resistance against positivist research methodologies.

Denzin and Giardina ( 2016 ) urged researchers to “consider an alternative mode of thinking about the critical turn in qualitative inquiry and posit the following suggestion: perhaps it is time we turned away from ‘methodology’ altogether ” (p. 5, italics original). Despite the contention over the term critical among some feminist scholars (e.g. Ellsworth, 1989 ), their suggestion is valid and has been picked up by feminist and poststructural scholars who examine the tensions between following a strict research method/ology and the theoretical systems out of which they operate because precision in method obscures the messy and human nature of research (Koro-Ljungberg, 2016 ; Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2017 ; Love, 2017 ; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000 ). Feminist qualitative researchers should seek to complicate the question of what method and methodology mean when conducting feminist research (Lather, 1991 ), due to the feminist emphasis on reflexive and situated research methods (Hesse-Biber, 2012 ).

Examples of Feminist Qualitative Research in Education

A complete overview of the literature is not possible here, due to considerations of length, but the articles and books selected represent the various debates within feminist educational research. They also show how research preoccupations have changed over the course of feminist work in education. The literature review is divided into three broad categories: Power, canons, and gender; feminist pedagogies, curriculums, and classrooms; and teacher education, identities, and knowledge. Each section provides a broad overview of the literature to demonstrate the breadth of work using feminist theory, with some examples more deeply explicated to describe how feminist theories inform the scholarship.

Power, Canons, and Gender

The literature in this category contests disciplinary practices that are androcentric in both content and form, while asserting the value of using feminist knowledge to construct knowledge. The majority of the work was written in the 1980s and supported the creation of feminist ways of knowing, particularly via the creation of women’s studies programs or courses in existing departments that centered female voices and experiences.

Questioning the canon has long been a focus of feminist scholarship, as has the attempt to subvert its power in the disciplines. Bezucha ( 1985 ) focused on the ways that departments of history resist the inclusion of both women and feminism in the historical canon. Similarly, Miller ( 1985 ) discussed feminism as subversion when seeking to expand the canon of French literature in higher education.

Lauter and Dieterich ( 1972 ) examined a report by ERIC, “Women’s Place in Academe,” a collection of articles about the discrepancies by gender in jobs and tenure-track positions and the lack of inclusion of women authors in literature classes. They also found that women were relegated to “softer” disciplines and that feminist knowledge was not acknowledged as valid work. Culley and Portuges ( 1985 ) expanded the focus beyond disciplines to the larger structures of higher education and noted the varies ways that professors subvert from within their disciplines. DuBois et al. ( 1985 ) chronicled the development of feminist scholarship in the disciplines of anthropology, education, history, literature, and philosophy. They explained that the institutions of higher education often prevent feminist scholars from working across disciplines in an attempt to keep them separate. Raymond ( 1985 ) also critiqued the academy for not encouraging relationships across disciplines and offered the development of women’s, gender, and feminist studies as one solution to greater interdisciplinary work.

Parson ( 2016 ) examined the ways that STEM syllabi reinforce gendered norms in higher education. She specifically looked at eight syllabi from math, chemistry, biology, physics, and geology classes to determine how modal verbs showing stance, pronouns, intertextuality, interdiscursivity, and gender showed power relations in higher education. She framed the study through poststructuralist feminist critical discourse analysis to uncover “the ways that gendered practices that favor men are represented and replicated in the syllabus” (p. 103). She found that all the syllabi positioned knowledge as something that is, rather than something that can be co-constructed. Additionally, the syllabi also favored individual and masculine notions of what it means to learn by stressing the competitive and difficult nature of the classroom and content.

When reading newer work on feminism in higher education and the construction of knowledge, it is easy to feel that, while the conversations might have shifted somewhat, the challenge of conducting interdisciplinary feminist work in institutions of higher education remains as present as it was during the creation of women’s and gender studies departments. The articles all point to the fact that simply including women’s and marginalized voices in the academy does not erase or mitigate the larger issues of gender discrimination and androcentricity within the silos of the academy.

Feminist Pedagogies, Curricula, and Classrooms

This category of literature has many similarities to the previous one, but all the works focus more specifically on questions of curriculum and pedagogy. A review of the literature shows that the earliest conversations were about the role of women in academia and knowledge construction, and this selection builds on that work to emphasize the ways that feminism can influence the events within classes and expands the focus to more levels of education.

Rich ( 1985 ) explained that curriculum in higher education courses needs to validate gender identities while resisting patriarchal canons. Maher ( 1985 ) narrowed the focus to a critique of the lecture as a pedagogical technique that reinforces androcentric ways of learning and knowing. She called for classes in higher education to be “collaborative, cooperative, and interactive” (p. 30), a cry that still echoes across many college campuses today, especially from students in large lecture-based courses. Maher and Tetreault ( 1994 ) provided a collection of essays that are rooted in feminist classroom practice and moved from the classroom into theoretical possibilities for feminist education. Warren ( 1998 ) recommended using Peggy McIntosh’s five phases of curriculum development ( 1990 ) and extending it to include feminist pedagogies that challenge patriarchal ways of teaching. Exploring the relational encounters that exist in feminist classrooms, Sánchez-Pardo ( 2017 ) discussed the ethics of pedagogy as a politics of visibility and investigated the ways that democratic classrooms relate to feminist classrooms.

While all of the previously cited literature is U.S.–based, the next two works focus on the ways that feminist pedagogies and curriculum operate in a European context. Weiner ( 1994 ) used autobiography and narrative methodologies to provide an introduction to how feminism has influenced educational research and pedagogy in Britain. Revelles-Benavente and Ramos ( 2017 ) collected a series of studies about how situated feminist knowledge challenges the problems of neoliberal education across Europe. These two, among many European feminist works, demonstrate the range of scholarship and show the trans-Atlantic links between how feminism has been received in educational settings. However, much more work needs to be done in looking at the broader global context, and particularly by feminist scholars who come from non-Western contexts.

The following literature moves us into P–12 classrooms. DiGiovanni and Liston ( 2005 ) called for a new research agenda in K–5 education that explores the hidden curriculums surrounding gender and gender identity. One source of the hidden curriculum is classroom literature, which both Davies ( 2003 ) and Vandergrift ( 1995 ) discussed in their works. Davies ( 2003 ) used feminist ethnography to understand how children who were exposed to feminist picture books talked about gender and gender roles. Vandergrift ( 1995 ) presented a theoretical piece that explored the ways picture books reinforce or resist canons. She laid out a future research agenda using reader response theory to better comprehend how young children question gender in literature. Willinsky ( 1987 ) explored the ways that dictionary definitions reinforced constructions of gender. He looked at the definitions of the words clitoris, penis , and vagina in six school dictionaries and then compared them with A Feminist Dictionary to see how the definitions varied across texts. He found a stark difference in the treatment of the words vagina and penis ; definitions of the word vagina were treated as medical or anatomical and devoid of sexuality, while definitions of the term penis were linked to sex (p. 151).

Weisner ( 2004 ) addressed middle school classrooms and highlighted the various ways her school discouraged unconventional and feminist ways of teaching. She also brought up issues of silence, on the part of both teachers and students, regarding sexuality. By including students in the curriculum planning process, Weisner provided more possibilities for challenging power in classrooms. Wallace ( 1999 ) returned to the realm of higher education and pushed literature professors to expand pedagogy to be about more than just the texts that are read. She challenged the metaphoric dichotomy of classrooms as places of love or battlefields; in doing so, she “advocate[d] active ignorance and attention to resistances” (p. 194) as a method of subverting transference from students to teachers.

The works discussed in this section cover topics ranging from the place of women in curriculum to the gendered encounters teachers and students have with curriculums and pedagogies. They offer current feminist scholars many directions for future research, particularly in the arena of P–12 education.

Teacher Education, Identities, and Knowledge

The third subset of literature examines the ways that teachers exist in classrooms and some possibilities for feminist teacher education. The majority of the literature in this section starts from the premise that the teachers are engaged in feminist projects. The selections concerning teacher education offer critiques of existing heteropatriarchal normative teacher education and include possibilities for weaving feminism and feminist pedagogies into the education of preservice teachers.

Holzman ( 1986 ) explored the role of multicultural teaching and how it can challenge systematic oppression; however, she complicated the process with her personal narrative of being a lesbian and working to find a place within the school for her sexual identity. She questioned how teachers can protect their identities while also engaging in the fight for justice and equity. Hoffman ( 1985 ) discussed the ways teacher power operates in the classroom and how to balance the personal and political while still engaging in disciplinary curriculums. She contended that teachers can work from personal knowledge and connect it to the larger curricular concerns of their discipline. Golden ( 1998 ) used teacher narratives to unpack how teachers can become radicalized in the higher education classroom when faced with unrelenting patriarchal and heteronormative messages.

Extending this work, Bailey ( 2001 ) discussed teachers as activists within the classroom. She focused on three aspects of teaching: integrity with regard to relationships, course content, and teaching strategies. She concluded that teachers cannot separate their values from their profession. Simon ( 2007 ) conducted a case study of a secondary teacher and communities of inquiry to see how they impacted her work in the classroom. The teacher, Laura, explicitly tied her inquiry activities to activist teacher education and critical pedagogy, “For this study, inquiry is fundamental to critical pedagogy, shaped by power and ideology, relationships within and outside of the classroom, as well as teachers’ and students’ autochthonous histories and epistemologies” (Simon, 2007 , p. 47). Laura’s experiences during her teacher education program continued during her years in the classroom, leading her to create a larger activism-oriented teacher organization.

Collecting educational autobiographies from 17 college-level feminist professors, Maher and Tetreault ( 1994 ) worried that educators often conflated “the experience and values of white middle-class women like ourselves for gendered universals” (p. 15). They complicated the idea of a democratic feminist teacher, raised issues regarding the problematic ways hegemonic feminism flattens experience to that of just white women, and pushed feminist professors to pay particular attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality when teaching.

Cheira ( 2017 ) called for gender-conscious teaching and literature-based teaching to confront the gender stereotypes she encountered in Portuguese secondary schools. Papoulis and Smith ( 1992 ) conducted summer sessions where teachers experienced writing activities they could teach their students. Conceptualized as an experiential professional development course, the article revolved around an incident where the seminar was reading Emily Dickinson and the men in the course asked the two female instructors why they had to read feminist literature and the conversations that arose. The stories the women told tie into Papoulis and Smith’s call for teacher educators to interrogate their underlying beliefs and ideologies about gender, race, and class, so they are able to foster communities of study that can purposefully and consciously address feminist inquiry.

McWilliam ( 1994 ) collected stories of preservice teachers in Australia to understand how feminism can influence teacher education. She explored how textual practices affect how preservice teachers understand teaching and their role. Robertson ( 1994 ) tackled the issue of teacher education and challenged teachers to move beyond the two metaphors of banking and midwifery when discussing feminist ways of teaching. She called for teacher educators to use feminist pedagogies within schools of education so that preservice teachers experience a feminist education. Maher and Rathbone ( 1986 ) explored the scholarship on women’s and girls’ educational experiences and used their findings to call for changes in teacher education. They argued that schools reinforce the notion that female qualities are inferior due to androcentric curriculums and ways of showing knowledge. Justice-oriented teacher education is a more recent iteration of this debate, and Jones and Hughes ( 2016 ) called for community-based practices to expand the traditional definitions of schooling and education. They called for preservice teachers to be conversant with, and open to, feminist storylines that defy existing gendered, raced, and classed stereotypes.

Bieler ( 2010 ) drew on feminist and critical definitions of dialogue (e.g., those by Bakhtin, Freire, Ellsworth, hooks, and Burbules) to reframe mentoring discourse in university supervision and dialogic praxis. She concluded by calling on university supervisors to change their methods of working with preservice teachers to “Explicitly and transparently cultivat[e] dialogic praxis-oriented mentoring relationships so that the newest members of our field can ‘feel their own strength at last,’ as Homer’s Telemachus aspired to do” (Bieler, 2010 , p. 422).

Johnson ( 2004 ) also examined the role of teacher educators, but she focused on the bodies and sexualities of preservice teachers. She explored the dynamics of sexual tension in secondary classrooms, the role of the body in teaching, and concerns about clothing when teaching. She explicitly worked to resist and undermine Cartesian dualities and, instead, explored the erotic power of teaching and seducing students into a love of subject matter. “But empowered women threaten the patriarchal structure of this society. Therefore, women have been acculturated to distrust erotic power” (Johnson, 2004 , p. 7). Like Bieler ( 2010 ), Johnson ( 2004 ) concluded that, “Teacher educators could play a role in creating a space within the larger framework of teacher education discourse such that bodily knowledge is considered along with pedagogical and content knowledge as a necessary component of teacher training and professional development” (p. 24). The articles about teacher education all sought to provoke questions about how we engage in the preparation and continuing development of educators.

Teacher identity and teacher education constitute how teachers construct knowledge, as both students and teachers. The works in this section raise issues of what identities are “acceptable” in the classroom, ways teachers and teacher educators can disrupt oppressive storylines and practices, and the challenges of utilizing feminist pedagogies without falling into hegemonic feminist practices.

Possibilities for Feminist Qualitative Research

Spivak ( 2012 ) believed that “gender is our first instrument of abstraction” (p. 30) and is often overlooked in a desire to understand political, curricular, or cultural moments. More work needs to be done to center gender and intersecting identities in educational research. One way is by using feminist qualitative methods. Classrooms and educational systems need to be examined through their gendered components, and the ways students operate within and negotiate systems of power and oppression need to be explored. We need to see if and how teachers are actively challenging patriarchal and heteronormative curriculums and to learn new methods for engaging in affirmative sabotage (Spivak, 2014 ). Given the historical emphasis on higher education, more work is needed regarding P–12 education, because it is in P–12 classrooms that affirmative sabotage may be the most necessary to subvert systems of oppression.

In order to engage in affirmative sabotage, it is vital that qualitative researchers who wish to use feminist theory spend time grappling with the complexity and multiplicity of feminist theory. It is only by doing this thought work that researchers will be able to understand the ongoing debates within feminist theory and to use it in a way that leads to a more equitable and just world. Simply using feminist theory because it may be trendy ignores the very real political nature of feminist activism. Researchers need to consider which theories they draw on and why they use those theories in their projects. One way of doing this is to explicitly think with theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 ) at all stages of the research project and to consider which voices are being heard and which are being silenced (Gilligan, 2011 ; Spivak, 1988 ) in educational research. More consideration also needs to be given to non-U.S. and non-Western feminist theories and research to expand our understanding of education and schooling.

Paying close attention to feminist debates about method and methodology provides another possibility for qualitative research. The very process of challenging positivist research methods opens up new spaces and places for feminist qualitative research in education. It also allows researchers room to explore subjectivities that are often marginalized. When researchers engage in the deeply reflexive work that feminist research requires, it leads to acts of affirmative sabotage within the academy. These discussions create the spaces that lead to new visions and new worlds. Spivak ( 2006 ) once declared, “I am helpless before the fact that all my essays these days seem to end with projects for future work” (p. 35), but this is precisely the beauty of feminist qualitative research. We are setting ourselves and other feminist researchers up for future work, future questions, and actively changing the nature of qualitative research.

Acknowledgements

Dr. George Noblit provided the author with the opportunity to think deeply about qualitative methods and to write this article, for which the author is extremely grateful. Dr. Lynda Stone and Dr. Tanya Shields are thanked for encouraging the author’s passion for feminist theory and for providing many hours of fruitful conversation and book lists. A final thank you is owed to the author’s partner, Ben Skelton, for hours of listening to her talk about feminist methods, for always being a first reader, and for taking care of their infant while the author finished writing this article.

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Warren, K. J. (1998). Rewriting the future: The feminist challenge to the malestream curriculum. In G. E. Cohee , E. Däumer , T. D. Kemp , P. M. Krebs , S. Lafky , & S. Runzo (Eds.), The feminist teacher anthology . New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Weiner, G. (1994). Feminisms in education: An introduction . Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press.
Weisner, J. (2004). Awakening teacher voice and student voice: The development of a feminist pedagogy. Feminist Teacher , 15 (1), 34–47.
Willinsky, J. (1987). Learning the language of difference: The dictionary in the high school. English Education , 19 (3), 146–158.
Wissman, K. K. , Staples, J. M. , Vasudevan, L. , & Nichols, R. E. (2015). Cultivating research pedagogies with adolescents: Created spaces, engaged participation, and embodied inquiry. Anthropology & Education Quarterly , 46 (2), 186–197.
Wolf, M. (1992). A thrice-told tale: Feminism, postmodernism, and ethnographic responsibility . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Gender, Justice, and Equity in Education
Education, Women, and the Politics of Curriculum
Risky Truth-Making in Qualitative Inquiry
Ecofeminism and Education
Qualitative Approaches to Studying Marginalized Communities
Poststructural Temporalities in School Ethnography
Gender and Technology in Education
Gender and the Superintendency
Activism and Social Movement Building in Curriculum
Gender Equitable Education and Technological Innovation

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From Friedan Forward—Considering a Feminist Perspective

Resources & Preparation
Instructional Plan
Related Resources

Combining letter writing, potential publication, and the power of perspective, this lesson challenges students to think about how opinions develop and change based on such things as age, experience, time, and place. Students first freewrite about the potentially controversial topic of feminism, and share their thoughts in a class discussion. They read and discuss the short story "We" and Betty Friedan's "The Problem That Has No Name" and review the history of feminism and the goals of the feminist movement. After examining their own feelings about those goals, each student writes a letter expressing his/her views on the topic. Sealed in a stamped envelope, each letter is mailed to its writer by the teacher six years later. This lesson focuses on feminism as a controversial topic, but the lesson plan can be used effectively with a variety of issues.

Featured Resources

Letter Generator : Students can use this online tool to publish letters. Putting It In Perspective—A Letter to Myself : This handout explains the letter writing and publishing assignment.

From Theory to Practice

By focusing students' attention on meaningful audiences, teachers can more effectively explore writing and publishing with students. This lesson plan concentrates on what Rubenstein describes as "writing that matters":

Only when adolescents are involved in writing that matters-and matters beyond the quest for the almighty A-can they produce work that speaks from their hearts and speaks to an audience beyond that of the teacher. Unfortunately, most students are all too comfortable with "school writing." Tell them to write a five-hundred-word essay on "My Most Important Decision" and they'll spew it out with ease, the bright ones even remembering to use that sacred five-paragraph format! And when the teacher reads these essays, some will be "good" and some will be "poor," but rarely will there be one that takes her breath away. Even if there is one essay that does, where will it go from there?. . . Certainly there is nothing wrong with teaching students to write personal essays. . . But as a form it is perhaps overused in middle and high school classrooms, and when students begin to see it as "the way one writes in school," they adopt a writing voice that is academic and artificial and calculated to please the teacher alone. The teacher's task, then, is to design assignments that will have a natural audience-and one that extends beyond the classroom. When the audience is real-and red penless-so too does the writing become real, free of the classroom clichés and studentspeak that spoils good writing. (15-16)

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

Copies of “We” in Stealing Time by Mary Grimm (Random House 1994) or a similar short story that inspires discussion of the role of women in society
Copies of “ The Problem That Has No Name ” in The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)
Additional texts for research and exploration
Discussion Questions for “We” by Mary Grimm
Putting It In Perspective—A Letter to Myself
Reflection Questions

(segments #1 and #3)

Preparation

Obtain copies of Mary Grimm’s short story “We” which appears in her book Stealing Time (NY: Random House, 1994) and in the New Yorker (October 17, 1988).
Obtain copies of Betty Friedan’s essay “The Problem That Has No Name,” Chapter One of The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963), as well as in with numerous reprints. Chapter One can also be viewed online .
Familiarize yourself with biographical material on Betty Friedan and historical information about the feminist movement. Useful resources can be found in the Websites listed in the Resources section.
Prepare and make copies of Discussion Questions on “We,” Assignment Sheet: Putting It In Perspective—A Letter to Myself , and Reflection Questions .
Test the ReadWriteThink Letter Generator on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tools and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.

Student Objectives

Students will

read and discuss fiction and nonfiction texts.
research and analyze the feminist movement from the 1960s to the present.
consider their own goals, plans and hopes for the future.
apply their knowledge to express their views on feminism in both oral and written form.
employ all the steps of the writing process to create a polished piece.
appreciate the importance of writing for a real audience.
take the first steps toward writing for publication.

Session One

Ask students to freewrite for 8–10 minutes on this question: “What specific experiences have you had that caused you to think that you were treated in particular way because of your gender?” Encourage them to write about more than one experience if applicable.
Ask students to share their responses orally. Encourage them to explain why they felt they were treated in a certain way and to describe the feelings they had in the situation. Expect lively discussion!
Now pose this question: “Do you believe males and females are equal in American society today?”
Ask students to freewrite again for 8–10 minutes, and encourage them to include specific reasons for the views they express.
Ask students to share their responses orally.
Collect both freewrites, and put aside to use in later sessions.
For homework, ask students to read “We” by Mary Grimm, and to be prepared to respond to the Discussion Questions .

Session Two

Ask students to share their gut-level reaction to “We” by focusing on questions #2 and #3 from the Discussion Questions . Use this conversation to begin to spark interest in the issues that will form the core of the writing assignment.
Next, ask students to form small groups of three or four, and assign one of the quoted lines from question #4 from the Discussion Questions to each group.
Ask each group to discuss the quotation and prepare a brief oral explanation of its significance to share with the class.
Continue class discussion with response to questions #1 and #5. Use Question #5 as a transition to a conversation about issues in the feminist movement.
Ask students what they know about feminism. Ask them how they define the term and to explain if they see themselves as feminists based on their definitions.
Encourage students to share whatever information they already know about the history of the feminist movement and its goals.
Depending on the focus of the class, this can be a place to offer factual content in a lecture format and/or to assign students the task of doing research on the development of the movement.
Introduce Betty Friedan and her book The Feminine Mystique with background material.
Hand out “The Problem That Has No Name,” and begin reading it with the class to help them understand the basic intent of the piece.
For homework, ask students to finish reading the text.

Session Three

During this session, encourage students to identify the issues that the feminist movement addresses and to examine their own opinions and ideas on these issues.
Ask students to brainstorm a list of the issues that are at the core of he women’s movement. Record their responses on the board or chart paper. Such issues might include equal opportunity in education and employment, the role of the housewife and division of labor in the home, childcare, a woman’s right to control her body, and violence against women.
Using both the fictional story “We” and the nonfiction chapter “The Problem That Has No Name,” ask students to find examples that show how women express these concerns and deal with them. Encourage students to find parallel examples in the two pieces.
Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why or why not?
How do you define the term feminist ?
Equal opportunity in education
Equal opportunity in employment
A woman’s right to control her body
Sexual freedom
Violence against women (rape, domestic abuse, etc.)
Maternity leave
What problems do you imagine encountering in the future in working out your role as a woman or as a man?
Has the feminist movement made life in the United states better? Why or why not?
After they have responded to the questions, ask students to discuss their answers with one another. It’s likely that enthusiastic discussion will ensue.
Remind students that they need to support their opinions with specific examples and that they need to listen to and reflect on the comments of their peers.
Observe the discussion, but if possible, do not participate—so that you can avoid influencing students’ opinions.
At the conclusion of the discussion, hand out the Assignment Sheet: Putting It In Perspective—A Letter to Myself .
to make two copies of the final piece—one to be graded and the other to be sealed in the envelope.
to supply an envelope, which will be addressed and collected in the class session in which the final paper is due.
to bring two stamps to that class session (two are necessary because of the inevitable rise in postal rates), or to bring in money if you are willing to make the trip to the post office for them.
Tell students to begin working on the first draft of the piece.
Use the ReadWriteThink Letter Generator to review the general requirements of friendly letters.
Remind students that their letters will be in friendly letter format and will therefore have an informal tone, but that it must address these issues clearly and with solid and specific supporting ideas.
Return the freewrites from the first session for students to use as additional material.

Session Four

Have student share the drafts of their letters in response groups.
In particular, ask responders to look for details that indicate the writing expresses specific reasons for the opinions the writers puts forth.
During discussion with responders, the writer’s task is to make a strong case for the views expressed in the papers.
Demonstrate how to use the ReadWriteThink Letter Generator to create final drafts of the letters.
Give students whatever time is necessary for further revision and response.
As students are working outside of class on their letters, more in-class time can be devoted to further study/discussion of the feminist movement.

Session Five

Pass out copies of the Reflection Questions , and ask students to respond to the questions.
Ask for volunteers to read their letters and/or to share their ideas with the whole class or in small groups.
Collect one copy of the letter along with the Reflection Questions for grading purposes.
Ask students to seal the other copy in the envelope. If necessary, conduct a mini-lesson on addressing envelopes.
Suggest that students include a return address that might serve as a second chance if the intended address is not applicable in six years.
Collect all envelopes and make a show of binding them with ribbon or string and the promise to store them safely for six years.
Ask students to imagine how they will react to their letters in six years. Ask how many think their views will change, and encourage discussion about why they believe they may feel differently in the future.
This lesson can be used with a variety of literature texts that will inspire discussion about feminist issues. The teacher can also guide students to examine the changing roles and views of women based on the time frame of each of the pieces studied. The text list contains options for extensions.
With student permission, create a bulletin board to publish these letters. Suggest that students add pictures, photographs, and/or words that illustrate various people, events, and issues central the feminist movement.
Create a class time capsule, a class publication of all letters collected in a booklet or binder. Consider bringing this collection to class reunion.

Student Assessment / Reflections

Grade each letter as a complete writing assignment. When students are writing and revising their letters, they should be guided by the specific questions outlined in the assignment sheet.
What aspect of your letter are you most satisfied with? Why?
What do you think is the most persuasive point you’ve made in the letter?
What makes it a strong point?
What part of the letter are you still dissatisfied with? Why?
Where could you include some more specific detail?
What was the best piece of advice you got from your response group?
What did you say in your letter that surprised you?
How do you think your views differ from those of your classmates?
In writing this piece, what did you discover about yourself as a writer? As a person?
How do you think you will react when you receive this letter in six years?
Which, if any, of your views do you think will change?
Calendar Activities
Professional Library
Student Interactives

The Letter Generator is a useful tool for students to learn the parts of a business or friendly letter and then compose and print letters for both styles of correspondence.

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Feminist persuasive speech topics

108 feminist persuasive speech topics

- the top current women's rights & feminist issues.

By: Susan Dugdale | Last modified: 07-20-2022

There are 108 persuasive speech topics here covering many current feminist issues. For example:

that copy-cat fast fashion reinforces the relentless consumer cycle and the poverty trap,
that the advertising industry deliberately manufactures and supports body image insecurities to serve its own ends,
that gendered language reinforces the patriarchal structure of society...

They're provocative and challenging topics raising issues that I like to think should be of concern to us all!

Use the quick links to find a topic you want to explore

25 feminist persuasive speech topics about beauty and fashion
16 the media and feminism topics
8 the role of language and feminism speech ideas

8 feminist speech ideas about culture and arts

9 topics on education and gendered expectations, 27 feminist topics about society & social inequality, 8 business & work related feminist speech topics.

Resources for preparing persuasive speeches
References for feminism

What is 'feminism'?

Feminism is defined as belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.

(See: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism )

Return to Top

25 feminist speech topics about beauty & fashion

that from puberty onward a woman is targeted by cosmetic companies
that the shape of woman’s body is valued over its health
that physical beauty in a woman is conferred by popular beliefs
that striving for what is regarded as the epitome of female physical perfection destroys women
that physical perfection is a myth
that compassion and collaboration is needed between women (and men) rather than competition and comparison
that beauty, fashion and feminism can co-exist
that clothing reflects social position or class
that the fashionable clothing of any era reflects its dominate cultural beliefs
that a modern feminist does not need to ban either the bra or the razor
that prescriptive beauty norms (PBNs) reinforce sexism, racism, colorism, classism, ableism, ageism, and gender norms
that western feminine beauty standards dominate globally
that there is no legitimate historical or biological justification for the ‘white’ beauty myth
that modern beauty standards were used as “political weapons" against women’s advancement (see Naomi Wolfe - The Beauty Myth )
that the beauty industry cynically and callously exploits women through “self-empowerment” campaigns – eg L'Oreal's “Because you're worth it”
that beauty shaming of any sort is shameful
that health and beauty need to work together for the empowerment of women
that beauty and fashion role models need to be independent of major brands
that fashion and cosmetic industries have a moral responsibility to use the immense power they have in shaping people’s lives for their betterment
that the unfair balance of power between the consumers of fashionable clothing and those who make it is a feminist issue
that copy-cat fast fashion reinforces the relentless consumer cycle and the poverty trap
that genuinely sustainable fashion is only responsible way forward
that clothing/fashion can make a feminist statement. For example: the 1850s “freedom” or “bloomer” dress named after women’s rights and temperance advocate Amelia Bloomer , the wearing of trousers, shorts, or mini skirts by women, or skirts and dresses by men
that boss dressing for women is unnecessary and toxic
that establishing superiority through wearing elitist fashion is an age old ploy

16 the media and feminism speech topics

that feminism in mainstream media is often misrepresented through lack of understanding
that some media deliberately encourages a narrow polarizing definition of feminism to whip up interest and drama for its own sake
that mainstream media plays a significant role in keeping women marginalized
that social media has created an independent level playing field for feminists globally
that the #metoo movement reaffirmed the need for community and solidarity amongst feminists
that the advertising industry deliberately manufactures and supports ongoing body image insecurities to serve its own ends
that the advertising industry decides and deifies what physical perfection looks like
that the ideal cover girl body/face is a myth
that eating disorders and negative body image problems are increased by the unrealistic beauty standards set by mainstream media
that women get media coverage for doing newsworthy things and being beautiful. Men get media coverage for doing newsworthy things.
that social media gives traditionally private issues a platform for discussion and change: abortion, domestic abuse, pay equity
that print media (broadsheets, magazines, newspapers...) have played and continue to play a vital role in feminist education
that ‘the women’s hour’ and similar radio programs or podcasts have been and are an important part in highlighting feminist issues
that ‘feminist wokeness’ has been hijacked by popular media
that social media reinforces prejudices rather than challenges them because the smart use of analytics means we mainly see posts aligned with our viewpoints
that social media has enabled and ‘normalized’ the spread of pornography: the use of bodies as a commodity to be traded

8 the role language and feminism speech ideas

that frequently repeated platitudes (eg. girls will be girls and boys will be boys) are stereotypical straitjackets stifling change
that the derogatory words for females and female genitalia frequently used to vent anger or frustration demonstrate the worth and value placed on women
that feminism is neither male nor female
that gendered language reinforces the patriarchal structure of society
that sexist language needs to be called out and changed
that gendered language limits women’s opportunities
that gendered languages (French, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi...) need to become more inclusive
that the real enemy of feminism is language
that limitations in any arena (work, sports, arts) placed on woman because they are women need challenging
that male bias in the organizations awarding major awards and grants needs to change
that the ideal woman in art is a figment of a male imagination
that historically art has objectified women
that heroic figures should be celebrated and honored for their deeds – not for what they look like or their gender
that strong feisty female characters in literature can inspire change eg. Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s novel of the same name, and Offred from Margaret Atwood’s The Hand Maiden’s Tale.
that the role of feminist art in any field: literature, film, theatre, dance, sculpture..., is to transform and challenge stereotypes. Examples of feminist artists: Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro, Barbara Kruger (More: feminist art )
that feminist musicians have used their influence as agents of change, and to inspire: Beyonce, Queen Latifah, Pussy Riot, Lorde, Aretha Franklin, Carole King, Nina Simone
that there no subjects more suitable for boys than girls, or subjects more suitable for girls than boys
that toys, clothing, and colors should be gender neutral
that student achievement and behavioral expectations should be gender free
that feminism should be actively modelled in the classroom
that eligibility for educational institutions should be merit based
that boys should not ‘punished’ or blamed for our patriarchal history
that gendered performance is actively supported and encouraged by some educational philosophies and schools in order to maintain the status quo
that the belief that ‘male’ and ‘female’ intelligence are different and that male intelligence is superior is false
that education is vital for the advancement of black feminism
that rigidly adhered to gendered workplace and domestic roles sustain and support inequalities
that domestic violence is typically a male gendered crime
that patriarchal attitudes toward women make sexual harassment and rape inevitable
that a safe legal abortion is a fundamental right for every person who wants one
that humiliation and control either by fear and threat of rape, or rape itself, is an act toxic entitlement
that a person is never ever ‘asking for it’: to be sexually harassed, or to be raped
that safe methods of birth control should be freely available to whomever wants them
that full sexual and reproductive health and rights for all people is an essential precondition to achieving gender equality
that men should not have control over woman's sexual and reproductive decision-making
that the increase in sperm donation is a feminist victory
that a person can be a domestic goddess and a feminist
that there is a positive difference between assertive and aggressive feminism
that the shock tactics of feminist anarchists is justified
that powerful feminist role models open the way for others to follow
that intersectional feminism is essential to fully understand the deep ingrained inequalities of those experiencing overlapping forms of oppression
that a feminist’s belief and practices are shaped by the country they live in, its dominant religious and cultural practices
that female circumcision is an example of women’s oppression disguised as a cultural tradition
that honor crimes are never justifiable
that period poverty and stigma is a global feminist issue
that we need to accept that some women want to remain protected by patriarchal practices and beliefs
that environmental issues are feminist issues
that everybody benefits from feminism
that feminism works towards equality, not female superiority
that anti-feminist myths (that feminists are angry women who blame men for their problems, that feminists are anti marriage, that feminists have no sense of humor, that feminists are not ‘natural’ mothers, that feminists are anti religion, that feminists are actually all lesbians ...) are desperate attempts to maintain the patriarchal status quo
that toxic femininity is a by-product of fear and insecurity eg. The need to ridicule another woman in order to impress a man, shaming a man for not being ‘manly’, raging against a women for being seen to be powerful, competent and successful in a leadership position ...
that blaming the patriarchy is far too simple
that one can hold religious beliefs and be feminist
that gendered jobs and job titles belong in the past
that pay scales should be based on merit, not gender
that adequate maternity and child care plus parental leave provisions should be mandatory
that flexible working hours benefits both the business and its employees
that token feminism is not enough
that corporate feminism is for wealthy white women
that feminism and capitalism are in conflict
that women in power owe it to other women to work for their empowerment

Useful resources

The first three resources below provide an excellent starting point to get a broad overview of feminism: its history, development and current issues.

I've included the fourth link because I'm a New Zealander, and proud of what its women's suffrage movement achieved: the vote for women in 1893.

What’s the definition of feminism? 12 TED talks that explain it to you
An overview of feminist philosophy – Stanford University, USA
Britannica: an excellent over of the history and development of feminism
The symbolism of a white camellia and the Suffrage Movement in New Zealand

How to choose a good persuasive speech topic and preparing a great speech

For a more in-depth discussion about choosing a good persuasive topic, and crafting a persuasive speech please see:

persuasive speech ideas and read all the notes under the heading “What make a speech topic good?"
writing a persuasive speech . You’ll find notes covering:
setting a speech goal,
audience analysis,
evidence and empathy (the need for proof or evidence to back what you’re saying as well as showing you understand, or empathize with, the positions of those for and against your proposal),
balance and obstacles (to address points against your proposal, the obstacles, in a fair and balanced way),
varying structural patterns (ways to organize you material) and more. And click this link for hundreds more persuasive speech topic suggestions . ☺

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Feminism Essay – Long Feminism Essay

Table of Contents

Feminism Essay: Feminism stands as a powerful social and political movement advise for the rights of women with a fundamental goal of achieving equality between the sexes. While feminism accept the biological note between men and women, it passionately calls for equal opportunities for all. Its scope enclose various facets of life, spanning from social and political realms to economic domains. Indeed, the history of feminist campaigns has played a pivotal role in advancing women’s empowerment. Notably, the efforts of feminist movements during the 20th century paved the way for significant milestones such as women gaining the right to vote, access to public property, opportunities for employment, and equal access to education. Thus, when delving into the topic of feminism, it is vital to explore its importance and the far-reaching impact it has had on society.

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Importance of Feminism

Feminism holds a vital place in our society, and its significance extends beyond just women; it impacts every individual, irrespective of their gender, background, or beliefs. The core of feminism lies in empowering not only women but all of humanity. It’s a common misunderstanding to think that only women can be feminists.

In reality, this notion is far from the truth. Feminism is not about elevating one gender over another; it’s about striving for equality between genders. It challenges the traditional gender roles that have persisted for generations.

The essence of feminism lies in enabling people to live authentically and lead fulfilling lives without the constraints of outdated norms. In simpler terms, it benefits both women and men. For instance, feminism supports women’s right to work and questions why men should be expected to be the sole providers for their families. It advocates for freedom and equality for all.

One of the most important aspects of feminism is encouraging young people to actively participate in this movement. This active involvement can accelerate progress. Imagine a world where everyone is treated with equality – it’s a dream worth pursuing.

Therefore, it’s imperative for all of us to reflect on our cultures and communities and work towards turning this dream into reality. Although we may not have fully achieved our goal yet, we are on the right path, and our continued efforts will lead to successful results.

Feminism Essay: Impacts of Feminism

Feminism plays a crucial role in our society, and its significance goes beyond just women; it impacts every individual, regardless of their gender, background, or beliefs. Feminism is all about empowering everyone, not just women, and it’s a common misconception that only women can be feminists.

In reality, this notion is quite far from the truth. Feminism isn’t about elevating one gender over another; it’s about striving for equality between genders. It challenges the traditional gender roles that have been around for a long time.

At its core, feminism is about enabling people to live authentically and lead fulfilling lives without being held back by outdated norms. To put it simply, it benefits both women and men. For example, feminism supports women’s right to work and questions why men should bear the sole responsibility for providing for their families. It advocates for freedom and equality for all.

One of the most important aspects of feminism is encouraging young people to actively participate in this movement. Their involvement can help us make progress more quickly. Just imagine a world where everyone is treated equally – it’s a dream worth pursuing.

Therefore, it’s crucial for all of us to reflect on our cultures and communities and work toward making this dream a reality. While we may not have fully achieved our goal yet, we are on the right path, and our ongoing efforts will eventually lead to successful results.

Feminism Essay: History of Feminism

In today’s world, there’s an ongoing discussion about the stereotypes that women still encounter in society. However, the movement toward gender equality for women can be traced back to the late 19th century. During that time, women came together in large numbers to challenge the unfair treatment they were experiencing, and these collective efforts are now known as feminist movements. As the movement gained widespread support and attention, it became known as feminism.

Feminism is a social and political movement that advocates for women’s rights and seeks to establish gender equality. It emphasizes the idea that biological differences between men and women shouldn’t determine how they are treated. Instead, feminism strives to ensure that women have the same opportunities as men in various aspects of life, including social, political, and economic domains. It promotes the idea that when men are given opportunities, women should not be denied those opportunities solely because of their gender.

If you’re interested in delving further into the significance of feminism and its impact on society, you can continue reading this essay to gain a deeper understanding of how feminism has shaped our world.

Feminism Essay FAQs

What is feminism in essay.

Feminism in an essay explains the movement advocating for women's rights and gender equality.

What is feminism in your own words?

Feminism, in my own words, is about ensuring fairness and equal opportunities for women in all aspects of life.

What is feminism in 100 words?

Feminism is a social and political movement striving for women's rights and gender equality. It rejects discrimination based on gender, aiming to provide women with the same opportunities as men in areas like politics, society, and work. Feminism acknowledges that biological differences don't justify unequal treatment and works to break down stereotypes and biases that hold women back.

What is feminism in simple words essay?

A simple essay on feminism explains how it's a movement fighting for women's rights and fairness, promoting equal opportunities for women in all areas of life.

How to write an essay about feminism?

To write an essay about feminism, start by defining feminism, discuss its history and goals, mention influential figures, explore its impact on society, and provide examples of feminist achievements.

What is a short paragraph about feminism?

Feminism is a movement advocating for gender equality, striving to eliminate discrimination against women and ensure they have the same opportunities as men in various aspects of life.

What are examples of feminism?

Examples of feminism include women's suffrage movements, efforts to close the gender pay gap, promoting women in leadership roles, and campaigns against gender-based violence.

Journal of International Women's Studies

Home > Journals and Campus Publications > JIWS > Vol. 21 > Iss. 3 (2020)

Volume 21, Issue 3 (2020) Feminist Comforts and Considerations amidst a Global Pandemic: New Writings in Feminist and Women’s Studies—Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2019 Feminist Studies Association’s (FSA) Annual Student Essay Competition

Introduction.

Feminist Comforts and Considerations amidst a Global Pandemic: New Writings in Feminist and Women’s Studies—Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2019 Feminist Studies Association’s (FSA) Annual Student Essay Competition Carli Rowell

Unending and uncertain: thinking through a phenomenological consideration of self-harm towards a feminist understanding of embodied agency Veronica Heney

Postfeminist Hegemony in a Precarious World: Lessons in Neoliberal Survival from RuPaul’s Drag Race Phoebe Chetwynd

Liminal Space and Minority Communities in Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle (1936) Amy Finlay-Jeffrey

The Communal Violence Bill: Women’s Bodies as Repositories of Communal Honour Zara Ismail

A Critique of Anti-Carceral Feminism Amy Masson

The Pussyhat Project: Texturing the Struggle for Feminist Solidarity Katja May

Masculine Failure and Male Violence in Noah Hawley’s Fargo J. T. Weisser

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JOLE 2023 Special Issue
Editorial Staff
20th Anniversary Issue
What Can Feminism Offer Student Leadership Education?

Susan V. Iverson, Brenda L. McKenzie, Malina Halman 10.12806/V18/I1/T1

Introduction

Contemporary challenges facing society call for transformative leadership; that is, the capacity to impact people and events in profound ways that raise all to higher levels of motivation and critical consciousness. Such transforming leaders are essential to initiate and realize needed organizational and social change (Astin & Astin, 2000; Burns, 1978; Dugan, 2017; Roberts, 2007). Yet, for the volumes written about leadership, gaps and critiques exist in how to actualize transformational leadership and to develop transforming leaders. Additionally many student leadership education approaches still “rely on leadership fads, reductionistic platitudes, and nondevelopmental approaches” (Owen, 2015, p. 8). In this paper, we illuminate what we believe are particular gaps in existing student leadership education efforts. We then advance this conversation by asking (and discussing) the question: “What might be gained by bringing a feminist lens to the work of student leadership education?” We propose that leadership educators purposefully adopt the tenets of feminism in order to prepare students to be critically engaged and change-oriented leaders in their environments. We posit that educators can use feminism to 1) illuminate how identity matters, 2) design leadership activities that encourage shared power, 3) raise consciousness and help students find their voice, and 4) spur students to become activists.

The Problem(s)

The literature on leadership is voluminous; yet, debate and limitations exist. In this section, we discuss a few problems we observe in the dominant thinking about leadership as preface to our argument that feminist theory is a lens for responding to these problems.

Over-Emphasis on Positional Leadership. Theories of leadership tend to overemphasize positional leadership. This is evident when reviewing the literature on leadership, which we cluster into three categories (see Chemers, 1997; Kezar, Carducci, & Contreras- McGavin, 2006; Northouse, 2016 for full discussion of these theories):

Dispositional theories: certain attributes make a great leader (e.g., “great man” theories that assert leadership is an innate ability, trait theories that delineate universal traits common to all leaders).
Behavioral theories: great leadership is based on what someone does; key behavioral patterns result in leadership, and thus leadership capabilities can be learned, rather than being
Contingency theories: an individual’s ability to lead is contingent upon various situational factors, including the leader’s preferred style, and the capabilities and behaviors of

Burns’ (1978) theorizing of transforming leadership as a process, not a position, laid the foundation for contemporary theories that describe how leadership is relational, shared, collaborative, and seeks to bring about positive social change. Yet, Burns’ work is too often misrepresented as transformational, meaning a characteristic (dispositional or behavioral) that a person possesses (Bass, 1985; Dugan, 2017; Northouse, 2016). The focus then is on leadership as an aggregation of conditions — leader attributes, behaviors, situational factors; and leaders risk approaching organizational challenges in technical ways, or, as Heifetz (1994) posited, in maladaptive ways.

Over-Emphasis on Technical Problems. According to Heifetz (1994), leaders are confronted by two types of problems — technical and adaptive. Technical problems have known solutions and typically require technical expertise; leaders apply current knowledge, skills, and/or tools to resolve a situation (Heifetz, 1994, pp. 71-72). For instance, a technical problem could be handling a student’s grievance of a course grade. The procedures to handle the problem are known, although the solution is not known (whether or not the student will receive an adjusted grade). With the second type of problem — adaptive — the problem definition is not clear-cut, and technical fixes are not available; the problem cannot be solved using one’s existing knowledge and skills, thus requiring people to make a shift in their values, expectations, attitudes, or habits of behavior. Heifetz (1994) stated “adaptive work involves not only the assessment of reality but also the clarification of values” (p. 31). The recurrence of hazing incidents on college campuses is an example of just such an adaptive problem. Currently, much of the leadership exhibited addressing the issue of hazing revolves around the “easy” work or the quick fix. Chapters are suspended, task forces are established to examine the culture. Yet these do not get at the root problems to be resolved. Instead, we need to examine what is at the core of hazing incidents, e.g., power, control, and hypermasculinity, engage the community in critical reflection on how these underlying problems are deeply rooted in our practice, and implement actions that lead to structural change.

This capacity to do adaptive work is not easily developed. We argue that insufficient attention is given in the literature on student leadership education regarding how to equip students to use knowledge of leadership to create new responses to leadership situations that are not clear-cut. Current leadership education efforts can perpetuate the “same old way” of approaching situations. Decades ago, Conger (1991) critiqued an over-emphasis on strategy and rationality, and called instead for creative approaches that draw upon affect and imagination, and that complicate taken-for-granted assumptions about leadership. We argue that such perspectives need to be added to leadership education efforts.

The Downside of Competencies. A further shortcoming is that this difficult work of rethinking and reframing gets reduced to a prescriptive set of knowledge, skills, and abilities — competencies. Our discussion of the preceding two problems illuminates how competency-based education has continued to emerge as a panacea to leadership educators’ challenges (Conger & Ready, 2004; Hollenbeck, McCall, & Silzer, 2006; Seemiller & Murray, 2013). Whatever we may want leaders prepared to do gets converted to a set of competencies — key knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to be an effective leader (e.g. problem-solving, effective communication, tolerance for ambiguity). The use of competencies in leadership education can also provide for a common language, a benefit for a campus community where leadership education exists in multiple areas (Conger & Ready, 2004). Yet, competency-based approaches to leadership education have their downside, including an over-emphasis on a narrow set of characteristics which are not universally effective (Bolden & Gosling, 2006).

Competencies can be alluring. To the previous challenge, we could advance student leadership education for developing skills as an adaptive leader (e.g. problem solving, resilience, facilitation). Educators could create learning situations that allow students to confront contextualized, ill-structured problems and strive to find meaningful solutions (Iverson, 2007). However, too often, leaders are unwittingly prepared to (only) maintain the status quo (to address technical problems), rather than inspire creative thinking about how to identify and analyze intractable problems and how to mobilize adaptive work. The challenge, for developing leadership competencies, is how to develop people’s adaptive capacity for tackling the complex problems that have no clear-cut solutions; knowing what to do when they don’t know what to do (Heifetz, 1994).

Further, and this issue segues into the next challenge, leadership competency-based education tends not to consider the differential experiences of women and students of color (Debebe & Reinert, 2014; McKenzie, 2014). As Eagly and Carli (2007) highlighted, “women are held to a higher standard of leadership competency than men” (p. 110), and competence may not have the same meaning for men and women. Because of these different standards, women face doubts about their leadership competence. Female leaders often have difficulty being heard and, if they assert their voice, are perceived as non-feminine and too aggressive (Rhode, 2016). However, male leaders who exhibit these same behaviors are perceived as assertive and successful (Eagly & Carli, 2007).

Limited Attention of Identities. As leadership educators are designing initiatives, including how to develop transforming student leaders, they tend to generalize leadership, failing to consider how dimensions of identity matter in the development and performance of leadership. Foremost among these is the identity of being a student. Very limited attention has been given to the development of frameworks for college student leadership. Dugan, Komives, and Segar (2008) found that most research on student leadership adopts leadership measures not constructed for the college population (p. 480).

More recently, some models have emerged that are specific to student leadership, e.g., the social change model of leadership (Komives, Wagner, & Assoc., 2009), the relational leadership model (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 2013), and the student leadership challenge (Kouzes & Posner, 2008). Researchers have illuminated that students participating in leadership education demonstrate a stronger sense of self, improved decision-making skills, and growth in the development of modeling the way and enabling others to act (Cress, Astin, Zimmerman-Oster, & Burkhardt, 2001; DiPaulo, 2008; Posner, 2009; Shertzer & Schuh, 2004). Yet, some critique these generic models for their failure to disaggregate leadership identities, suggesting that leadership is accessible to everyone, “regardless of their social identities” (Tillapaugh, Mitchell Jr., & Soria, 2017, p. 27).

Leadership identity development does not occur in isolation from other dimensions of identity (Debebe & Reinert, 2014); yet, these intersections remain understudied. The scholarship on leadership has become more inclusive of women and has interrogated how gender matters to the development and enactment of leadership (Eddy, Ward, & Khwaja, 2017; Storberg-Walker & Haber-Curran, 2017). Yet, little scholarly attention has been specifically given to female college students, and even less explores how to prepare female college students for their leadership experiences in the world of work (McKenzie & Iverson, 2017). Further, attention to other dimensions of identity, such as race, is limited (Rosser-Mims, 2010).

Feminism and Leadership

In this section, we explicate how feminism can serve as a theoretical strategy for addressing the problems described above. While we are referring to feminism as a unitary category, it is not a monolithic ideology. Numerous branches of feminist thought each offer a distinctive view and explanations for women’s oppression (see Tong, 2016 for full discussion of distinctions and theoretical tensions). There exist, however, threads across feminist thinking and practice that serve as core tenets. We illuminate these core tenets and how these are useful for leadership development: identity matters; power; consciousness and voice; and activism.

Identity Matters. Feminism is a movement striving for the political, social, and educational equality of all genders. The basic assumptions undergirding feminism are that gender is central to the structure and organization of society; gender inequality exists; and gender inequality should be eliminated (Allan, 2008). Feminism is not a monolithic ideology (Tong, 2016); we align with those feminist scholars who challenge female essentialism, problematize gender binary language to acknowledge gender fluidity and trans* identities, and illuminate the complexities of intersecting identities, inclusive of race, sexuality, and social class among other dimensions of identity (Chin, Lott, Rice, & Sanchez-Hucles, 2008; Debebe & Reinert, 2014; Hesse-Biber, 2011; Spelman, 1998).

A feminist perspective on leadership must be considerate of the differential experiences of women and students of color (Debebe & Reinert, 2014). We argue for critique of the assumption that all students gain leadership efficacy and capacity in the same way through the same educational approaches. Rather we must problematize the “dichotomous, false adversarial relationship” (Haber-Curran & Tillapaugh, 2017, p. 17) that contributes to the continuation of the development of leadership theory as well as views of leadership that are male-normed (Madsen, 2017). Portrayals of leadership comprised of masculine characteristics (Fine, 2009), such as the grandiose images of transformative leaders, may leave some individuals feeling incapable of performing this seemingly heroic role (Iverson, Allan, & Gordon, 2017). Student leadership education can play a critical role in understanding the role our socially constructed understanding of gender plays in one’s leadership journey (Haber-Curran & Tillapaugh, 2017, p. 11). Broadening focus beyond positional leaders, the inclusion of readings from a variety of voices, including those of women and people of color, and challenging views of masculine versus feminine characteristics of leadership are just a few ways leadership educators can play this critical role (Haber-Curran & Tillapaugh, 2017)

Reconceptualizing Power. A feminist perspective brings explicit attention to how power operates in relationships and organizations. A dominant conception of power is that it is exercised as power-over others through positional authority (Allen, 1998). A feminist lens enables disruption of this dominant notion of power-over (and the over-emphasis on positional authority), to advance alternative conceptions of “power as a productive force, rather than a primarily prohibitive or repressive one” (Allan, Gordon, & Iverson, 2006, p. 44). Alternative conceptualizations emerge revealing power as shared and distributed, and as energy that is circulating and can be taken up by anyone whether that person has positional authority or not.

Leadership then, no longer held positionally, can be shared and “leadership functions are distributed among group members” (Drescher, Korsgaard, Welpe, Picot, & Wigand, 2014, p.772). This may result in shifts in language, too. Feminist scholars often redefine traditional terms associated with leadership (Batliwala, 2011; Chin, 2004; hooks, 1994); leaders are no longer solo architects, but instead leadership may be viewed as a “collective enterprise” (Astin & Leland, 1991, p. 37), a “process” (p. 111), or a collaborative endeavor (Bensimon & Neumann, 1993). Power is conceived as energy — circulating, enabling leadership activities that empower others — “in other words…power with others , or shared power ” (Astin & Leland, 1991, p. 8, emphasis in original). The focus is no longer on the individual leader, whose actions achieve a desired outcome or change; rather the individual is eclipsed by the group connecting to ideas advanced by connective leadership (Lipman-Bluman, 1992), which relies on the empowerment of others. College students need to understand that the concepts of power and leadership are not separate but are inextricably linked. Given that student leadership education efforts may not address power in relation to leadership much, if at all, these different conceptualizations of power should be incorporated as a way for college students to explore what power means to them. Inclusion of discussions about power and leadership become a necessary component, a way to shift conventional views of power-over to one of empowerment, a key foundation of a feminist approach to leadership.

Raising Consciousness and Amplifying Voice. A feminist perspective on leadershipallows us “to hear women’s voices that long have been held in silence” (Thurber & Zimmerman, 2002, p. 12). Thurber and Zimmerman identified that the use of voice can be: a) personal (feeling empowered and validated through self-reflection); b) collaborative (speaking and sharing with others); and c) public (becoming “agents for change rather than targets of change”) (pp. 14-15). This use of voice is tied to the emancipatory emphasis in feminist leadership: a commitment to social justice, equity, and change for the betterment of all (Batliwala, 2011). While this attention to voice is evident in feminist literature and some scholarship on women and leadership (Dugan, Komives, & Segar, 2008; Haber-Curran & Sulpizio, 2017; Keohane, 2014), it is less (if not rarely) visible in extant literature on leadership. Of note, what we are describing here differs from studies that examine gender differences in communication styles (e.g., Klofstad, Anderson, & Peters, 2012).

One example of how individuals’ voices are silenced relates to the imposter phenomenon, a “strong belief that they are not intelligent; in fact, they are convinced that they have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise” (Clance & Imes, 1978, p. 1; see also Ross, Stewart, Mugge, & Fultz, 2001). Lack of belief in self is a trap that college students can find themselves facing. Studies such as McKenzie’s (2015), illustrate the struggle female-identified students face between speaking up for what is right and deferring to others (typically males).

Through dialogue with others (e.g., consciousness-raising groups), students can feel empowered and validated. Consciousness-raising (CR) groups in particular, which blossomed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, are a powerful mechanism through which student leaders can frame their lived experiences through dialogic practices. By gathering and sharing their personal narratives, “CR functions as an ideal way for women to begin to see themselves as leaders, particularly because CR was designed to be a ‘radicalizing’ process, a way of inspiring women to take action” (Aleman & Stephenson, 2012, p. 118). In these groups, students gain awareness, become empowered, and are a means through which to organize, strategize, and act (Aleman & Stephenson, 2012).

Becoming Activists. Raised consciousness, amplified voices, and reconceptualized power as collective action — these coalesce in feminisms’ final tenet: activism. Applying a feminist approach to student leadership education emphasizes action and prepares students to be change-agents. Students are more likely to place emphasis on larger social issues and social responsibility and work toward adaptive change. Evidence of this can be found in many student- led political movements and organizations, such as the “I, Too, Am” Movements, the Occupy Movement, the #MeToo Movement, and recent rallies and marches against gun violence (Bauer- Wolf, 2018; Butler, 2014; Gautney, 2011; Gluckman, Read, Mangan, & Quilantan, 2017).

Reconceptualizing leadership as collective action empowers students to instigate change. Individuals can enact change within the existing organizational structures, or they may adopt a more activist orientation as grassroots leaders (Kezar & Lester, 2011; Meyerson & Tompkins, 2007). We argue that student leadership education needs to re-examine what it means to be an activist and understand how today’s college students could make their voices heard. After leadership educators gain this understanding, we can then work together to create opportunities with college students to use their voices to make positive change. Activism may be operating in more private settings, such as daily conversations or online discussions. Leadership educators can facilitate college students’ use of social media as a way to “engage in less hierarchical activism and amplify the voices of people otherwise ignored by mainstream media outlets” (Linder, Myers, Riggle, & Lacy, 2016, p. 223). Resonating with the feminist adage, the personal is political , leadership educators can support students to be agents of change; to transform often personal stories of injustice experienced both on and off campus into change-oriented initiatives, and hold their institutions accountable (Linder et al., 2016; Ludden, 2014).

Implications for Leadership Education

Earlier in this article, we critiqued competency-based education, arguing that the leadership competencies (awareness, knowledge, and skills) developed by educators tend to fall short; the complexity of leadership gets reduced to a narrow set of characteristics that may (unwittingly) sustain the status quo rather than empower adaptive leadership. In this section, we describe what student leadership education can look like when leadership educators adopt a feminist perspective. In particular, we argue that consciousness-raising, one of central tenets of feminism, is essential for leadership development; it raises (self)awareness and cultivates critical consciousness (Ardovini, 2015; Stanley & Wise, 1993). We delineate three particular applications of this consciousness-raising for: 1) leadership curriculum; 2) reflexivity of student leaders, and 3) leadership educators.

Consciousness-Raising of Leadership Curriculum. In order to develop students who will lead as agents of change, what should leadership education curriculum include? The content of the curriculum should still impart foundational knowledge (e.g., leadership theories); however, it must also incorporate “forward-thinking practice” (Sulpizio, 2014, p. 97). This means leadership educators will teach student leaders about the many conceptualizations of power and that leadership is not solely positional, but also collective. Students will understand “how structural imbalances in power produce real limits on the capacity of subordinate groups to exercise a sense of agency and struggle” (Giroux, 1993, p. 27). Individuals come to learn the challenges for adaptive leadership, and that for effective reform, “the entire system must be restructured, not just some of its parts” (Banks, 1995, p. 393). We also advocate for ‘troubling’ notions of who is a leader. Inviting a diversity of speakers to reflect all genders and amplify minoritized voices, to share their stories of leading change, being activists, and creating equitable organizations allows students to hear and learn from others, seeing what can be possible.

As the curriculum — and student leaders’ knowledge — gets complicated, their opportunities to practice the skills needed to enact their knowledge is even more critical. Student leaders must have opportunities to “apprentice” activist work (Bisignani, 2014). Educators could identify an issue related to equity on campus or in the community which the students then research and address, through proposals for resolution or by serving as a consultant to an organization aiming to advance equity. Clark-Taylor, Mitchell, and Rich (2014) provided a helpful example in their description of a summer internship offered through the University of Rochester’s Gender and Women’s Studies program, which was explicitly designed to develop students’ skills in feminist leadership and activism. Others argue for, or model through their practices, how to (re)design spaces that can develop activist orientations (Baumgardner & Richards, 2005; Iverson & James, 2014). One approach, rhetorical activism (Sowards & Renegar, 2006), includes sharing stories and resisting stereotypes and labels.

An illustrative example can be found in the issue of sexual violence on campus. Students can, and do, engage in collaborative, empowered action through programming such as Take Back the Night; however, students could also engage in letter writing campaigns/petitions, where individuals organize their classmates and compose written correspondence addressed to campus and/or government officials regarding the limitations of policies and laws (Iverson, 2015). Such activist efforts within the curriculum could also mean creating small working groups in a leadership course committed to resolving specific campus issues related to gender such as under- representation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) or female students involvement in student government. Leadership educators need to consider how to utilize social media in their curriculum as an educational resource as it relates to activism and social change (Linder et al., 2016). Opportunities such as these allow students to develop and deploy privilege-cognizant knowledge, critical consciousness, and justice-oriented skills needed to take action in the larger community/society (Iverson, 2012; Linder, 2018).

Consciousness-Raising of Student Leaders. Inextricably linked to the development of curriculum that cultivates critical knowledge and skills (described above) is the need for critical (self)awareness. Kumagai and Lypson (2009) argued that competency frameworks must foster critical self- awareness , to yield critical consciousness about one’s own identity and privileges. Such a consciousness involves a “reflective awareness of the differences in power and privilege and the inequities that are embedded in social relationships” (p. 783).

An important element of consciousness-raising is critical reflexivity — a process of reflection through which one examines and unsettles one’s assumptions and preconceptions, and how these affect decisions, experience, and actions (Cunliffe, 2009; Hertz, 1997; Warren, 2011). If an objective of applying feminism to leadership education is to address injustices and inequalities, and spurring students to become activists, student leaders must have opportunities to critically reflect on their own experiences and approaches to addressing said challenges in order to be able to take a stand in society. For example, students could be asked to write their autobiography as a way to begin to understand how they perceive actions and experiences and relate those to how they are as a leader (Densten & Gray, 2001). Such reflections could help students recognize how their own views of leadership are shaped by gender role expectations (Haber-Curran & Tillapaugh, 2017, p. 18). Journal reflections throughout a leadership course or program could also be used as a way to integrate learning and experience. Discussion questions could be posed that suggest situations college students may face and how they would respond as well as how it would make them feel, and students could be asked to share their stories with others in “brave” spaces (e.g., consciousness-raising groups) that “encourage taking risks” (Arao & Clemens, 2013, p. 141). The idea of critical reflexivity allows students to build on previous leadership experiences and incorporate new learning about future experience as leaders.

Consciousness-Raising of Leadership Educators. Finally, little of the above recommendations will be realized if leadership educators — those who develop the curriculum and advise the student leaders — fail to explore their own assumptions about leadership. For instance, leadership educators must engage in the same reflexive activities that they assign their students. They must interrogate their assumptions and acceptance of socially constructed gender roles to the work they do, often unconsciously. They need to challenge themselves about what they believe and how those beliefs are reflected in how they perform their jobs. Leadership educators should review what voices are (and are not) incorporated in the readings they select for students. Much of the commonly used scholarship and literature about leadership has been written by men; leadership educators who are concerned about providing a balance of knowledge and experience to their students must challenge themselves to find writings from a variety of viewpoints from a variety of voices, including those of women and people of color. Leadership educators must also be willing to confront sexism when it occurs in their programs, addressing sexist comments and providing safe (and brave) spaces for students to explore what they know about gender identity and their acceptance of socially constructed views and to develop skills to challenge those views in themselves first and then in the larger community. This may not be an easy process for leadership educators and will require learning and self-exploration on the part of these professionals, which could be accomplished through attendance at conference sessions, reading, journaling, and departmental professional development activities designed to explore the social construction of gender. Although these shifts may present challenges, it is important for leadership educators to make these changes in their programs in order to contribute to students’ leadership identity development.

Future Research

Future research should investigate the advantages and disadvantages of suggestions made in this article. For instance, how does identity matter? Inquiry is needed to understand the role our socially constructed understanding of gender plays in one’s leadership journey, both for student leaders and for the educators who develop student leadership curriculum. Further, research should explore in what ways our theoretical argument does, or does not, transcend cultural boundaries. Finally, we are drawn to the assumption that feminist pedagogy lends itself to the approach to leadership education that we describe. However, research is needed to determine what pedagogical approaches, informed by what epistemological assumptions, contribute to certain outcomes (such as raised consciousness, activist orientations).

Conclusions

Leadership educators articulate a sense of urgency in the need to develop dynamic, resilient student leaders prepared to lead change on their college campuses and in their workplaces and communities (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 2013). Some call for leadership development initiatives that will promote critical and creative thinking and develop the capacity for positive change; yet, these “needed attributes” (Coers, 2018, p. 2) must be more than a prescribed list of characteristics. In this paper, we have argued that deploying feminism as a theoretical strategy can develop in students the critically-conscious, adaptive leadership needed for socially just change. Note, we are not calling for feminist leadership, which could be misinterpreted as a characteristic one chooses to adopt, like being a charismatic leader, or could be relegated to particular disciplinary homes (i.e. women’s studies) or certain student groups (i.e. student women’s association). Rather this article aims to cross boundaries or borders that have framed the work of feminism and leadership, arguing that the field of leadership education needs feminism as a lens through which to frame initiatives for students. Application of a feminist lens will allow the focus of student leadership education to shift from an emphasis on positional, competency-based views of leaders to one that is more attuned to identities, voice, and taking action in an adaptive (not technical) fashion.

In conclusion, much can be done to educate college students and to encourage their development as leaders. Higher education needs to take a more deliberate role in preparing college students for experiences they may face on our campuses or in the workplace and society – – stereotypes, discrimination, and inequity, for example. While we acknowledge this approach can be messy and risky, the core tenets of feminism can provide a framework for helping college students find their voice and lead positive change. We approach this article as a space for thinking in public, enabling our theorizing to be “susceptible to critical review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use” (Shulman, 1998, p. 5). We believe that by asking questions, or what Hutchings and Shulman (1999) called “going meta,” we are extending an effort to improve the context of student leadership development programs. This “going meta” approach encourages us to question how and in what ways student leadership learning is occurring and critically consider ways of “advancing practice beyond it” (Hutchings & Shulman, 1999, p. 13).

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Student Essays

Essay on Feminism | Meaning, Purpose & Importance of Feminism Today

Feminism is a social and political movement which argues that women are disadvantaged by historical, traditional and common cultural representations of gender. It is often associated with the struggle for reproductive freedom and economic independence, freedom from sexual harassment and rape, and the freedom to choose one’s own clothing.

The following explores the feminism its meaning, brief history, purpose & importance of feminism in today’s world short & long essay for students. This essay is really helpful for school exams, test etc.

Essay on Feminism | Meaning, Purpose & Importance of Feminism Essay for Students

Feminism is the belief of the equality of the sexes (men and women). Although Feminism has many different branches, all of them are striving for this goal. To be feminist does not mean that a person has to be female. It is about believing in equality between sexes, whether it applies to men, women, everyone or no one.

Brief History

The history of feminism dates back to the ancient times when men and women were treated differently with women being oppressed by society. But with time, women started fighting for their rights. This led to the start of Feminism in the late 19th century due to the work of some prominent feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft. It is constantly growing and developing due to the changes that society goes through and with time, we will get better and more equal world.

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However, the Feminism changed over time. There are many different branches of feminism that have developed throughout history. Each branch is affected by the historical, social and political climate that it exists in.

The most prominent types of feminism are Liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, Socialist/Socialist Feminism, Ecofeminism, Postmodern/Postcolonial feminism, Black feminism and Womanism. Each branch of feminism has their own focus but the main goal is to achieve equality for all sexes.

Purpose & Importance

The purpose of Feminism is to secure equal rights for women. It strives for political, social and economical equality of sexes (gender equality). Some people think feminism is about superiority so they don’t want to identify with it. But feminism does not mean superiority. It just means that men and women are equal.

The main points are that women should have the same political, social and economical rights as men. It does not mean that they were lesser then men or that they must be better then them to deserve those rights. They just want their rights!

Importance of Feminism:

Feminism is important because it ensures equal rights for everyone. It is not about superiority but equality. Everyone deserves the same opportunities and feminism strives to make that happen.

The Feminism has allowed women to step up and be leaders in their fields. It allows them to express themselves and stand up for what they believe in without fear of backlash from the people around them simply because of their gender. It ensures equal rights for everyone, both men and women. It is about how people should be given equality in all aspects of life including right, work opportunities and more.

Feminism is important because it ensures that everyone has equal rights and opportunities regardless of their sex or gender identity. Nobody has a higher value then the other simply based on their biological characteristics so they deserve to have the same rights, opportunities etc.

Feminism Today

We are still in the process of achieving equal rights for everyone. There is still a lot that needs to be done to achieve it. However, Feminism is important because it prevents inequality and fights for people’s rights regardless of their gender. We have many different genders so we need feminism to ensure equality among all sexes.

The most recent example is the ban on women entering sports stadiums in Saudi Arabia. The recent news has shown that there are many feminist movements, especially online where it allows people to be anonymous and express their opinions without fear of backlash. This is why feminism is important today because it allows equal opportunities for everyone regardless of gender.

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Feminism is important because it ensures equal rights for everyone. It strives to give women the same opportunities as men and ensure that they feel safe and comfortable in their own skin. Everyone should be treated equally regardless of sex or gender identity. It does not mean that one person is better then the other but simply that they are equal.

Essay on Healthy Air For Healthy Planet

Healthy air refers to the cleanest and least polluted air that does not pose any health risks. On the other hand, a healthy planet refers to a planet that is free from pollution and other environmental threats. Essay on Healthy Air For Healthy Planet Healthy air is essential for our overall well-being. It helps us…

Essay on Indian Army-Importance & Qualities Indian Army

A big and powerful army ensures the safety and well being of its citizen. India has the one of the largest serving army in the world. The Indian army is strong, strict, well disciplined and well trained. It has had successfully defended the Indian soil from enemies in various wars. The following Essay talks about…

Essay on Child Marriage | Stop Child Marriage Essay For Students

The child marriage is one of the most ominous face of today’s world. It is practiced all across India, not only India alone. Despite the legislation to ban girl child marriage, there are still cultural practices under which the girls are given as child marriage. The essay that we have written below sheds lights on…

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Motivation is the true force that makes us do wonderful things in our life. It is what drives us to achieve our goals and objectives. It is the inner power that compels us to act in spite of all the obstacles and challenges that we face in life. Motivation is a very important concept, which…

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India is known as world’s largest democracy. The Indian democracy follows the Indian constitution that talks about fairness, justice, equality and freedom. The following essay talks about Indian Democracy, what are basic features, characteristics of Indian democracy along with how Indian democracy ensure fairness and equality. This essay is quite helpful for children and students….

4 Bewitched: A Magically Feminist Show

Isabelle Jeffrey

In 1964, the magically and enchanting sitcom Bewitched made its debut on ABC and put a spell on audiences everywhere. The charming situational comedy depicts a rather typical, middle-class, nuclear family living in the suburbs. But there is a plot twist that makes this seemingly ordinary sitcom truly magical. The main character, Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery), is a witch . With the wiggle of her nose or the snap of her fingers, she can do anything she wants. Her magical talents help her in everyday life and add a twinkle to the boredom of suburbia. These supernatural abilities make Samantha one of the most powerful female characters in sitcom history. One can argue that having such a strong, female character like Samantha at the center of the show helped Bewitched become a symbol of feminism. But not everyone sees the show in this way. Some critics of the series, such as Gary Kenton and Walter Metz, suggest that Bewitched is an oppressive show due to its reliance on patriarchal norms and female suppression. Although Kenton and Metz suggest that Bewitched is a sexist sitcom, scholars like Susan Douglas have a different view of the magicom. In fact, Douglas and I share the opinion that this show is extremely feminist because it puts female characters at the center of the show and gives them magical powers that no mortal man could possess. I think it is more compelling to give attention to the strengths, powers, and abilities of the female characters like Samantha and her mother, Endora (Agnes Moorehead). If viewers focus on their magical dominance over of the mortal male characters, I think a strong case can be made that Bewitched is extremely feminist and pro-women; it might be called a magically feminist sitcom.

Kenton and Mertz are among scholars who suggest that Bewitched is a sexist show due to its portrayal of female characters and the gender power-dynamics. They believe that Samantha is made smaller, is belittled, and is chastised for having her powers. Rather than being championed for her natural talents and abilities, she is restricted from using them and is made to feel bad for having them. Her husband Darrin (Dick York 1964-69, Dick Sargeant 1969-72), in particular, often restricts her from using witchcraft. Thus, the patriarchal power structures of the show seek to keep Samantha normal and less powerful than her husband or, for that matter, any other male character. In his chapter titled “The 1960s Magicoms” Kenton writes, “By trying to suppress her formidable powers in order to be a ‘normal’ American housewife, Samantha became a hero to traditionalists” (78). Kenton, like many other scholars, argues that Samantha’s natural talents and abilities are restricted so that she can attend to the housework and live out her days in the domestic sphere. In many ways, taking away her powers makes her subservient to her male counterparts, which maintains traditional gender roles. She succumbs to the pressure every female character faces in sitcoms: dealing with the gender structure and male dominance. To add to this argument, Metz writes, “don’t you see that Bewitched is just another example of degradation of womanhood? Here’s a woman with unimaginable power and she uses it to shore up her husband’s ego” (98) and that ““ Bewitched was as anti-feminist, anti-sexual, and pro-centrist as a sitcom could be” (94). I think this analysis is a common read of the sitcom. It is a traditional analysis that suggests that Bewitched is inherently sexist and seeks to keep women in a position that is secondary to men. But I suggest we look beyond these critiques at competing messages and instead focus on the feminist aspects within this magicom.

While these opinions are valid, I have to disagree with the arguments that Bewitched is a sexist show that seeks to hinder and restrict females. The show’s central character is a woman who has supernatural talents that far surpass that of any male character in the show. Physically, Samantha is the most powerful character in the magicom. In an interview with Mary M. Dalton, Gary Kenton suggests, “I think Bewitched , you could make an argument for a certain feminist reading. This woman is definitely the smarter character… and more powerful” (Kenton “Chapter Six” 5). In this interview, Kenton goes so far as to say that there may be room for a feminist interpretation of the show. He sees the intelligence and prowess of Samantha and points to the feminist nature of the show. In addition to this, Samantha never follows Darrin’s call for restriction of her powers and instead uses them to save him, and other male characters, from doom. Rather than listen to her husband and follow his rules, she disobeys him and becomes a rebel. What is great is that Samantha never gives up her powers and continuously uses them throughout the show. Susan Douglas argues, “In Bewitched we have a woman’s dream and a man’s nightmare. Darrin was surrounded by an endearing yet constantly troublesome matriarchy, a domestic situation in which is wife, mother-in-law, daughter, and other relatives were all witches, endowed with magical powers, which constantly threatened his professional status and his authority as head of the household” (127). My read of Bewitched , like Douglas’s, is that it is a matriarchal show focused on reinventing the female image and talent spectrum. Every female character stands for something in the feminist movement. Samantha, along with Endora and her cousin Tabitha (also played by Elizabeth Montgomery in a black wig), refuses to be restricted by the patriarchy and sexism of male characters and traditionalist women like Mrs. Kravitz (Sandra Gould).

Samantha and Darrin’s neighbor Gladys Kravitz is a hero to traditionalists and a foil for the strong female characters. Like certain men in the show, she represents the old ways and seeks to keep gender roles traditional. She is an older housewife who has spent most of her life tending to her family, her home, and her husband. Because she has been contained in the domestic sphere for most of her life, she is nosey and pays way too much attention to other people’s business, especially Samantha’s. Mrs. Kravitz “was a parody of an old housewife with too much time on her hands and nothing to do expect live through others” (Douglas 133). In many ways, she is in charge of pressing the social code and making sure everyone stays in line with cultural norms. That is why she pays so much attention to Samantha’s every move; she wants to make sure that Samantha is following the rules of suburbia. Because she is nosey and wants to know everything, she is always watching from her window or sneaking over to Darrin and Samantha’s house to make sure that everything is normal. In the episode “Be It Ever So Mortgaged,” Mrs. Kravitz says, “Don’t try to stop be Abner. I’m going over there. There is something going on and I’m going to find out what it is” ( Avedon and Saks). This is a classic move from Mrs. Kravitz and is a pattern she maintains throughout the series. It is this constant surveillance of Samantha and this need to maintain tradition that drives Mrs. Kravitz. Throughout the eight seasons of the show, she continues to be a strong foil for the progressive and feminist female characters.

Still from Season 1, Episode 2 “Be It Ever So Mortgaged.”

In stark contrast to the role of Mrs. Kravitz, Samantha stands as a symbol of feminism and female empowerment. Having a central character like Samantha allowed Bewitched to be a, “show that hailed young female viewers by providing, and seeking to reconcile, images of female equality – and, often, even images of female superiority” (Douglas 133). Samantha has powers that make her stronger and more powerful than any other character in the show. Her talents and abilities far surpass that of any man. She is clearly in a dominant position in comparison to her male counterparts and she does not apologize for it. Although she does play the housewife role, she is rarely ever just in the background. Viewers never just see Samantha doing housewife things; rather, she uses her powers to make those chores and day-to-day work easier. In this way, she is maintaining her identity as a witch while also maintaining her role as a homemaker. Sam is a modern housewife who explores interests outside the home; she puts a modern twist on being a stay-at-home wife by using her powers to be more empowered. This allows her to be a proto-feminist character. Her main focus is not just the home and making her husband happy, but it is about her pursuing her interests as well. “Samantha embodied important contradictions, for she was a happy, respectable suburban housewife who exerted power beyond the kitchen or the living room…The show often suggested that women, especially younger women, were smarter, more creative, and more versatile than men” (Douglas 128). In addition to putting a modern, feminist twist on being a housewife, Samantha also plays an integral role in Darrin’s career. In almost every episode, she ends up saving Darrin’s job and helping him come up with a fantastic advertisement. It is suggested that “Samantha engineered the outcome so that Darrin got the credit for coming up with a great idea or doing a great job, but the audience knew who was the real power behind the throne” (Douglas 128). In many regards, this makes her smarter and more business-savvy than her own husband. In the episode “Help, Help, Don’t Save Me,” Darrin is struggling to come up with good pitches for his client Caldwell Soup. Samantha ends up making his original ideas much better, proving that she has abilities and smarts far beyond that of a simple housewife. In this scene, Samantha proves herself and clearly shows that she is just as good, if not better than, the male characters in the show. The sitcom’s depiction of such a strong and powerful female character invites feminist readings of the series.

Still from Season 1, Episode 5, “Help, Help, Don’t Save Me.”

While Samantha is more of a subtle feminist, her mother Endora is an outspoken one. She is arguably the most radical character of the series. From the very beginning of the show, Endora is vehemently against Samantha marrying a mortal and giving up her powers. She cannot understand the appeal of being a housewife and giving up so much freedom. Endora is truly bewildered by the notion of housewifery, the American dream etc.; “Endora is probably one of the most radical feminist characters to appear in the sitcom. She not only mocks Darrin at every opportunity but disdains all the cherished trappings of the American dream to which her daughter aspires – marriage, children, suburban house, security – all of it” (Kenton 78-79). She sees this as a sacrifice that Samantha is too good to make. Endora values her daughter’s talents and so desperately wants Samantha to keep them. Giving them up, especially for a man, is not an option in Endora’s eyes. During the interview, Kenton acknowledges Endora’s strength, “well, and her mother, the Agnes Moorehead character, was, you know, one of the prototype feminist characters. I mean, she just couldn’t understand, you know, why she had this enormous power, she could go anywhere, do anything” (Kenton “Chapter Six” 5). Endora wants to instill a sense of pride, rebellion, and confidence in Samantha; at a time when women were supposed to just listen to their husbands and lose their individual identities, this was a pretty radical notion. Endora seeks to protect and fight for women, like Samantha, especially because she sees men as idiots and buffoons. Endora truly believes that Darrin, and most men for that matter, are weak and stupid in comparison to women. Thus, she cannot understand why Samantha would want to be secondary to her husband and give up her noticeable dominance. Endora “sees him [Darrin] as a mere mortal to whom Samantha is superior, and as someone who is constraining Samantha, trying to make her life too confined, boring, and predictable” (Douglas 130). Endora has such an interesting perspective and brings so much to the show in terms of female empowerment. She acts as a teacher for many viewers as she lectures Sam on the dangers of allowing men to act like kings in many episodes. A great example from the first season is “Be it Ever So Mortgaged” when Endora says, “Just because you married a human, Samantha, that’s no reason to overdo this grubby little housewife role” ( Avedon and Saks ). Endora’s role in the show is to bring attention to sexism, unfair gender roles, patriarchy, and other societal conventions that seek to make women secondary.

In many ways, I think that Bewitched is a feminist show that says a lot about gender roles, patriarchy, and societal expectations. It is a strong reading of the series to look at it as a female-centered sitcom in which almost all of the featured female characters are strong. Characters like Samantha, Endora, Serena, and even Samantha’s daughter Tabitha (Erin Murphy) in the later seasons, highlight the progressive attitude running through this particular magicom. The feminist ideals are often contested by Mrs. Kravitz, but I think her role is necessary to give a sense of realism to the show by acknowledging pervasive attitudes and offering a stark contrast to the witches. Mrs. Kravitz represents the past and people who are not ready to embrace the second wave of the women’s movement. She is a representation of the older generation, the traditionalists who are stuck in their ways and even women who are happy being just housewives. But the younger generation, people like Samantha and Tabitha, clearly desire more for themselves. Tabitha is born with magical powers and from the get-go is more powerful than her father and other male characters. Her mother and grandmother encourage her to be proud of who she is and to cherish her supernatural talents. Bewitched really starts a conversation about the empowerment of women and how that is represented in different generations during the 1960s. The show clearly invites a conversation about female issues and female empowerment as it centers on such strong women characters.

Shows like Bewitched were able to bring social and political issues to the forefront of television. For me, Bewitched started a conversation about feminism and really highlighted the feminist perspective. I think it is important to see Bewitched as a feminist show because it was one of the first series that really put strong women at the center of a sitcom. Before this, we see a lot of women inhabiting the typical female roles as mothers, housewives, or housekeepers. Here, we see that but with a twist. Samantha is not simply a housewife, a homemaker, a mother, etc. She is a witch who is smart, talented, powerful, and able to do things outside the home. I think Bewitched is an important show because it depicts women who are in power positions. Viewers see women who are more dominant and able than men with talents that extend beyond the home. The domestic sphere does not define Endora and Samantha; rather, their valued is based on their abilities as witches. Bewitched shows that women can and should be valued for more than their pot-roast or the way they set the table. The series uses witchcraft and Samantha’s wiggly nose to show that women have talents that far surpass what is assumed of them. The real power of the show does not necessarily come from witchcraft but from the strength of the female characters and their talents outside the home.

Isabelle Jeffrey is a senior at Wake Forest University from Greenwich, CT. She is a Communication major and a double minor in Entrepreneurship and in Global Commerce and Trade.

Works Cited

Arnold, Danny, and Sol Saks. “Help, Help, Don’t Save Me.” Bewitched. N.d. Web.

Avedon, Barbara, and Sol Saks. “Be It Ever So Mortgaged.” Bewitched . N.d. Web. 20 July 2017.

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media . New York: Times Books, 1994. Print.

Kenton, Gary. “Chapter Six: The 1960s Magicoms : Safety in Numb- ers .” Interview by Mary Dalton. N.p ., n.d. Web. 22 July 2017.

Kenton, Gary. “The 1960 s Magicoms .” The Sitcom Reader, Second Edition . N.p ., n.d. Web. 25 June 2017.

Metz, Walter. TV Milestones : Bewitched. Detroit, US: Wayne State University Press, 2007. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 27 June 2017.

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Student Essay Competition

To encourage a new generation of feminist scholars, the FSA sponsors an annual student essay competition for work which is innovative, interdisciplinary and grounded in feminist theory and practice. After an initial shortlisting process, the top seven entries will be judged by our judging panel to determine the winner. All shortlisted entries will be published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies , and the winner will also receive a year’s free FSA membership.

Students at any stage of their studies at a British or Irish university or recent graduates from British or Irish universities are encouraged to submit entries. To be eligible, entries must have been submitted as student work at a British or Irish university, must not have been previously published, must not be currently under consideration for publication, or must not have been entered into other competitions which may result in publication elsewhere. Essays should be 6,000-7,000 words (including footnotes and bibliography). Entries must be submitted electronically via email, include a completed competition coversheet, and adhere to the submission instructions below.

Please note that due to unforeseen circumstances the student essay prize did not run in 2021/22, we would encourage anyone who submitted previously to submit to this round of the essay prize

Previous essay prize winners and shortlisted entries:

Volume 22, Issue 2 (2021) The Post Pandemic University, Possibilities, Practices and Pedagogies: And New Writings in Feminist and Women’s Studies—Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2020 Feminist Studies Association’s (FSA) Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 21, Issue 3 (2020) Feminist Comforts and Considerations amidst a Global Pandemic: New Writings in Feminist and Women’s Studies—Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2019 Feminist Studies Association’s (FSA) Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 20, Issue 4 (2019) New Writings in Feminist and Women’s Studies Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2018 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association’s (FWSA) Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 19, Issue 1 (2018) New Writings in Feminist Studies: Winning and Shortlisted Entries from the 2017 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association’s Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 18, Issue 3 (2017) New Writings in Feminist Studies: Winning and Shortlisted Entries from the 2016 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association’s Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 17, Issue 2 (2016) New Writings in Feminist Studies: Winning and Shortlisted Entries from the 2015 FWSA Student Essay Competition
Volume 16, Issue 1 (2014) The 10th Anniversary of the FWSA Essay Competition: New Directions in Feminist Studies – Emotions, Activisms, Intersectionality
Volume 14, Issue 4 (2013) New Writings in Feminist and Women’s Studies: Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2012 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association’s Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 13, Issue 2 (2012) Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2010 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 12, Issue 2 (2011) Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2009 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 11, Issue 3 (2009) Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2007 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 10, Issue 3 (2009) Feminist and Woman’s Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 9, Issue 2 (2008) Politics, Sexualities, and New Feminist Scholarship: Winning and short-listed entries for the 2006 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition
Volume 8, Issue 2 (2007) Identity, Difference and New Feminisms: Winning and Short-listed entries for the 2005 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association, U.K. Annual Essay Competition
Volume 7, Issue 3 (2006) New British Feminist Scholarship and Contemporary Politics: Prizewinning and Short-listed Essays from the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (UK and Ireland) Essay Competition
Volume 6, Issue 3 (2005) Winning and Short-listed Essays from the Second Annual Essay Competition of the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (UK and Ireland) (FWSA)
Volume 5, Issue 2 (2004) New Writings in Women’s Studies: Selected Essays from the First Women’s Studies Network (U.K.) Association Essay Contest

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The 2022/2023 student essay competition is now closed. Thank you to all who submitted an entry, the results will be announced shortly.

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Black Americans Firmly Support Gender Equality but Are Split on Transgender and Nonbinary Issues

2. Black Americans and their views on feminism

Table of contents.

Black adults differ by gender and education in their views on the progress of gender equality
Gender, faith and family
Black adults say feminism has had a significant impact on women’s rights
How Black Americans describe feminism
3. Black Americans’ views on transgender and nonbinary issues
Acknowledgments
The four studies

The relationship between Black Americans and the U.S. feminist movement has been contentious since the 19th century. Feminist activists such as Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul racially stereotyped Black men during Reconstruction and kept Black women suffragists at the back of women’s marches in the early 20th century.

In the 1970s, Black women criticized the feminist movement for being narrowly focused on the issues of middle-class White women . Many White feminist activists expressed a desire to work outside the home, one that many Black feminist activists did not share because Black women had historically been a part of the labor force as enslaved workers, farmers and maids. And in an era that saw the codifying of Roe v. Wade, Black women’s fight for reproductive rights extended beyond abortion to advocacy against forced sterilizations .

Since the 1990s, Black Americans’ feminist tensions have often revolved around questions of intraracial harm and betrayal. Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegation against Clarence Thomas, the women who have made sexual assault claims against hip-hop stars such as R. Kelly and Russell Simmons, and Meredith Watson’s sexual assault claim against former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax are all examples of Black women being positioned as race traitors who are “trying to bring a good brother down.” Indeed, Black Americans’ relationship with feminism is fraught from both external and internal challenges to the movement’s legitimacy.

This chapter draws data on Black adult’s views of feminism from a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted in March and April of 2020. 5

Chart shows About half of Black adults say feminism has helped Black women

Despite this history of tension, about three-quarters of Black adults (76%) say the feminist movement has done a lot to advance women’s rights in the U.S. This includes 28% who say the feminist movement has done a great deal to advance these rights and 48% who say it has done a fair amount. Much smaller shares say the feminist movement hasn’t done much (17%) or anything at all (6%) to advance women’s rights.

While Black adults view feminism as impactful overall, they have different views on the extent to which the movement has helped various groups of women. About half of Black adults (49%) say feminism has helped Black women, either a little (33%) or a lot (16%). About a quarter of Black adults say feminism has hurt Black women (26%), either a little (10%) or a lot (15%). At the same time, 22% of Black adults say feminism has neither helped nor hurt Black women.

Black adults differ on this question primarily by education. Those with a bachelor’s degree (61%) are more likely than those with a high school diploma or less (45%) to say feminism has helped Black women. In contrast, about three-in-ten Black adults with a high school diploma or less or some college education (28% each) say feminism has hurt Black women, while 19% of Black adults with a bachelor’s degree say the same. And Black adults with a high school diploma or less (19%) are more likely than those with a bachelor’s degree (8%) to say feminism has hurt Black women a lot .

Reflecting some of the historical tension described above, Black adults are more likely to say that feminism has had a significant positive impact on White women than on Black women. While 42% of Black adults say feminism has helped White women a lot, a much smaller share say the same about Black women (16%).

When asked specifically about the impact of feminism on their personal lives, about a third of Black women (36%) say feminism has helped them personally, either a little (29%) or a lot (7%). Smaller shares say that feminism has hurt them (13%), either a little or a lot (7% respectively). And half of Black women say feminism has neither helped nor hurt them personally (49%).

Chart shows nearly seven-in-ten Black adults describe feminism in the U.S. as empowering

When asked how they would describe feminism in the U.S. today, the majority of Black adults say it is “empowering” (68%). This is higher than the shares who describe it as “inclusive” (45%), “polarizing” (34%) or “outdated” (24%).

About seven-in-ten Black women (71%) and 65% of Black men describe feminism as empowering, as do 70% of Black adults 18 to 49 and 65% of Black adults 50 and older.

However, Black adults differ by education on this question. While three-quarters of Black adults with a bachelor’s degree (75%) describe feminism as empowering, a smaller share of Black adults with a high school diploma or less share this view (63%).

Differences by education also appear in other descriptors of feminism. A majority of Black adults with a bachelor’s degree (57%) characterize feminism as inclusive. The same is true of only 39% of Black adults with a high school diploma or less and 44% of those with some college experience. While 41% of Black bachelor’s degree holders describe feminism as polarizing, only 30% of those with a high school diploma or less say the same. And roughly one-in-five Black bachelor’s degree holders (18%) describe feminism as outdated, while about a quarter of Black adults with a high school diploma or less (25%) or some college experience (26%) share this view.

And while Black adults (68%) and the general public (64%) are both most likely to view feminism as empowering, Black adults are less likely than Americans overall to characterize feminism as polarizing (34% vs. 45%) or outdated (24% vs. 30%).

Aside from their descriptions about feminism in the U.S. overall, Black adults were also asked about how well the term describes them personally. About half of Black adults say “feminist” does not describe them (48%), saying it applies either not too well (25%) or not well at all (24%). Roughly a third of Black adults say “feminist” describes them somewhat well (36%). And only 16% say it describes them very well.

Black men (63%) are much more likely than Black women (36%) to say “feminist” does not describe them well. Meanwhile, Black women are more likely than Black men to say that feminism describes them somewhat well (44% vs. 27%) or very well (20% vs. 10%).

And 54% of Black adults with a high school diploma or less say “feminist” does not describe them well, compared with 43% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 44% of those with college experience and no bachelor’s degree.

In this survey, Black adults only include U.S. adults who are single-race Black and have no Hispanic background, unless otherwise noted. ↩

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From Pen to Paper: How Students at Dartmouth Pursue Creative Writing

One writer looks at different creative writing organizations on campus..

While Dartmouth students have likely written more essays than they can count, many might have trouble remembering the last time they wrote for pleasure — to craft a story just for themselves. I personally love to write poetry but can never justify pausing in the middle of a problem set to pull out my journal. Making time for creative writing can be difficult at Dartmouth. As a result, some students find that joining writing-based clubs in college gives them a dedicated space for their passion.

One such organization is the Stonefence Review — commonly known as Stonefence — an undergraduate journal that publishes quarterly and accepts prose, poetry and visual artwork submissions from the Dartmouth community.

Editor-in-chief Eliza Dunn ’25 has been involved with Stonefence since her freshman year. After working on a literary magazine in high school, Dunn said she wanted to contribute to a similar publication in college. Dunn added that though Stonefence struggled to get submissions and maintain active membership immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, membership has grown significantly since then.

“It was definitely a small club,” Dunn said. “I remember for the first couple weeks [of freshman fall], it was just me coming to meetings along with the editors.”

The club — which now has around 12 to 15 active members in a given term — meets weekly on Thursdays at 8 p.m. in the John Milton Reading Room in Sanborn Library. Most meetings are spent reviewing rolling submissions, both from members themselves and students not in the club, according to Dunn.

While Stonefence focuses mainly on publishing submitted editorial content, Spilled Ink Poetry Club focuses on reading and writing poems during its meetings, according to past coverage by The Dartmouth. The club encourages writers of all experience levels to share their work in a supportive space, according to Lucas Manso ’27, who joined Spilled Ink fall term.

Manso said club members are given a prompt during the second half of each meeting. He loves this aspect of the club, because, in his words, “it forces me to write.”

Though the club is small, Manso said members form a “very close-knit group.”

“We are always looking for new people who want to write with us,” Manso said. “I feel like we’re not as out there or known about, but it’s a really cool space.”

Stonefence and Spilled Ink accept submissions on any topic, while Spare Rib, a feminist magazine, publishes pieces focused on social issues with the goal of increasing dialogue on campus, according to their website. Spare Rib currently has 16 members — though meetings are open to newcomers — and meets on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. in Carpenter Hall.

Maggie Emerson ’25, who serves as a writing lead on Spare Rib, focuses on copy editing and reviewing submissions for the club. She first joined Spare Rib after retiring from the ice hockey team due to an injury, explaining that she wanted to use her increased free time to try something new.

“I really like to read and write poetry, but I never had [written poetry formally] before. I liked that Spare Rib was a feminist space as well,” Emerson said. “So I was like, I’ll just try it. I’ll go to one meeting. It was such a lovely welcoming environment, and I met so many new people.”

Similar to Stonefence, Spare Rib collects submissions from both members and non-members for the magazine, or “zine” for short, according to their website. Each zine has a theme — which are oftentimes a single word — for submissions; the group accepts all writing and art or design submissions as long as they adhere to the theme, Emerson said.

According to Emerson, aside from producing the zine every two terms, Spare Rib also tries to engage in activist and political spaces on campus.

“Sometimes we’ll do a topical tea time or read a feminist, political piece and discuss it,” Emerson said. “Last meeting we made handmade Tarot cards and had a presentation on feminist connections to Tarot. I think it’s a really cool way to bring awareness to activism that our campus sometimes lacks.”

While creative writing classes at Dartmouth can be a strong formal way to hone writing skills, many students said the community built by these clubs draws students to write for themselves and keep coming to meetings.

Spare Rib members grow very close based on their shared passion for activism, Emerson said. She appreciates that although they are tight-knit, the club doesn’t feel like a clique. That dynamic is due to the fact that members have varying levels of experience and all events are open to everyone, she added.

Similarly, Dunn said Stonefence has a strong group dynamic.

“Since it’s a small group, Stonefence has become a pretty light, comfortable and fun space for all of us,” she said. “It’s nice to have those little pockets of people that do appreciate writing as much as we do because I think it’s hard to come by.”

While Stonefence, Spilled Ink and Spare Rib each have different goals and functions, the three clubs create a space for writing outside of class. We all need an outlet, and creative writing is a great way to de-stress, be present and work through emotions.

“Having your only intake or expression of any thoughts be purely academic can be really constraining and also just depressing over time … having opportunities to help students cultivate creative writing as a potential passion or hobby is important and influential,” Emerson said.

Eliza Dunn ’25 is a former Mirror writer.

Farewell to the Fayes: Embracing Transformation in First-Year Dorms at Dartmouth

Methods and Misperceptions: Spotlight on GOVT 83.21

Reflection: Keeping in Touch

Julia cross ’24 dies at age 21, college community reacts to dartmouth’s ‘c’ grade on adl’s antisemitism report card, faculty and staff for justice in palestine at dartmouth organizes rally, college investigating two students for alleged on-campus racial harassment, review: ‘the tortured poets department’ is long, complicated and beautiful.

The Dartmouth

No One Has a Right to Protest in My Home

The difference between a private yard and a public forum

An illustration of a home with a dialogue bubble above it

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

As a constitutional scholar and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, I strongly defend the right to speak one’s mind in public forums. But the rancorous debate over the Israel-Hamas war seems to be blurring some people’s sense of which settings are public and which are not. Until recently, neither my wife—Catherine Fisk, a UC Berkeley law professor—nor I ever imagined a moment when our right to limit a protest at a dinner held at our own home would become the subject of any controversy.

Ever since I became a law-school dean, in 2008, the two of us have established a custom of inviting each class of first-year students over for a meal. These dinners help create and reinforce a warm community, and, to accommodate all students, they take place on many evenings during the year. The only exceptions were in 2020 and 2021 because of COVID. So last year and this year, at the request of the presidents of the third-year classes, we organized make-up dinners on three successive nights and invited each of the 400 graduating students to attend one.

The week before the dinners on April 9, 10, and 11, though, a group at Berkeley called Law Students for Justice in Palestine put a profoundly disturbing poster on social media and on bulletin boards in the law-school building. No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves , the poster declared in large letters. (Students sometimes refer to me as “Chem.”) It also included a caricature of me holding a bloody knife and fork and with what appeared to be blood around my lips—an image that evokes the horrible anti-Semitic blood libel, in which Jews are accused of killing and cannibalizing gentile children. The poster attacks me for no apparent reason other than that I am Jewish. The posters did not specify anything I personally had said or done wrong. The only stated request was that the University of California divest from Israel—a matter for the regents of the University of California, not the law school or even the Berkeley campus.

George Packer: The campus-left occupation that broke higher education

Several Jewish students and staff members told me that the posters offended them and asked me to have them removed. Even though their presence upset me too, I felt that I could not take them off bulletin boards at a public law school. Though appalling, they were speech protected by the First Amendment.

The group responsible for the posters was not content to have its say on paper. Student-government leaders told me that Law Students for Justice in Palestine demanded that my wife and I cancel the dinners; if not, the group would protest at them. I was sad to hear this, but the prospect of a demonstration in the street in front of our home did not change our plans. I made clear that we would still host dinners for students who wanted to attend.

On April 9, about 60 students came to our home for dinner. Our guests were seated at tables in our backyard. Just as they began eating, I was stunned to see the leader of Law Students for Justice in Palestine—who was among the registered guests—stand up with a microphone that she had brought, go up the steps in the yard, and begin reading a speech about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop speaking and leave the premises. The protester continued. At one point, my wife attempted to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her: You are a guest in our home. Please leave.

The student insisted that she had free-speech rights. But our home is not a forum for free speech; it is our own property, and the First Amendment—which constrains the government’s power to encroach on speech on public property—does not apply at all to guests in private backyards. The dinner, which was meant to celebrate graduating students, was obviously disrupted. Even if we had held the dinner in the law-school building, no one would have had a constitutional right to disrupt the event. I have taught First Amendment law for 44 years, and as many other experts have confirmed, this is not a close question.

Some attendees sympathetic to the student-group leader recorded a video. An excerpt of it appeared on social media and quickly went viral. Soon newspapers and magazines published stories about it. Some commentators have criticized my wife for trying to get hold of the microphone. Some have said that I just should have let the student speak for as long as she wanted. But in all of the dinners we have held over more than 15 years, not once has anyone attempted to give a speech. We had no reason to change the terms of the dinner to accommodate someone from an organization that put up anti-Semitic images of me.

After struggling over the microphone, the student said if we let go of it, she would leave. We relented, and she departed, along with about 10 other students—all of whom had removed their jackets to show matching T-shirts conveying a pro-Palestinian message.

Michael Powell: The unreality of Columbia’s ‘liberated zone’

The dinners went forward on Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday night, about 15 people came to our home and stood on the street in front of it, and then on the path directly next to our backyard. They chanted loudly and at times offensively. They yelled and banged drums to make as much noise as possible to disturb the dinner. The event continued.

Being at the center of a social-media firestorm was strange and unsettling. We received thousands of messages, many very hateful and some threatening. For days, we got death threats. An organized email campaign demanded that the regents and campus officials fire my wife and me, and another organized email campaign supported us. Amid an intensely painful sequence of events, we experienced one upside: After receiving countless supportive messages from people we have met over the course of decades, we felt like Jimmy Stewart at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life .

Overall, though, this experience has been enormously sad. It made me realize how anti-Semitism is not taken as seriously as other kinds of prejudice. If a student group had put up posters that included a racist caricature of a Black dean or played on hateful tropes about Asian American or LGBTQ people, the school would have erupted—and understandably so. But a plainly anti-Semitic poster received just a handful of complaints from Jewish staff and students.

Many people’s reaction to the incident in our yard reflected their views of what is happening in the Middle East. But it should not be that way. The dinners at our house were entirely nonpolitical; there was no program of any kind. And our university communities, along with society as a whole, will be worse off if every social interaction—including ones at people’s private homes—becomes a forum for uninvited political monologues.

I have spent my career staunchly defending freedom of speech. As a dean, I have tried hard to create a warm, inclusive community. As I continue as dean of Berkeley Law, I will endeavor to heal the divisions in our community. We are not going to solve the problems of the Middle East in our law school, but we must be a place where we treat one another with respect and kindness.

What Professors Owe Our Students Right Now

T uesday, April 23, was the last day of my class for the semester at Barnard College, Columbia University’s sister college, and I woke up to several emails from my students that morning. “I don’t want to come to campus,” they said. “I don’t feel safe.”

I didn’t blame them. Police in riot gear lined up along Broadway. Protesters from outside the university had gathered at the gates, drawn to campus by the hullabaloo. Media narratives swirled about a campus run amuck; no doubt worried parents were texting them to be careful.

Our campus no longer felt like ours.

Days earlier, on April 17, the campus had woken up to dozens of green tents that had sprung up like mushrooms on a campus lawn. Many in the media have blamed the crisis that ensued on the pro-Palestinian students who organized the encampment to protest the war in Gaza and pressure the university to divest from companies doing business in Israel. But as a faculty member watching the conflict unfold, I believe it is not the encampment itself, but the administration’s response to it, that has incited our current crisis.

Hours after the tents appeared, Columbia President Minouche Shafik sat down before a congressional hearing entitled “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism.” For nearly four hours, members of congress grilled Shafik , alleging Columbia had been overrun by “pro-terrorist” activists and accusing the University of being a “hotbed of antisemitism.” Her inquisitors made a variety of false and misleading allegations about the university, its students, and its faculty. In response, Shafik pledged order and discipline.

On Thursday, she made good on that promise. Less than 24 hours after the hearings, dozens of police in riot gear descended on campus , entered the encampment, and carted off over a hundred students in zip ties. The move has ignited a firestorm on our campus, which has now spread to more than a dozen schools across the country.

Faculty have different opinions about the substance of the student protestors’ demands. They have different positions on the crisis in the Middle East. But the administration’s decision to call in the NYPD has provoked widespread outrage. The rapid and overwhelming use of force seems disproportionate to a nonviolent student protest. The resort to force has further inflamed the already difficult dialogues that have animated our campus this year—about Israel and Palestine, academic freedom, and where one person’s right to expression ends and another one’s right to be free of harassment begins. Ultimately, too, it has called into question what we, as professors, owe our students.

In response to the arrests, many of my colleagues have jumped in to support our students, especially those from Barnard, who in addition to being arrested and suspended were summarily evicted from their dorms and now have nowhere to sleep. We organized a rally to protest the arrests and suspensions of peaceful student protesters and to affirm the value of free expression.

Read more: Scenes From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across U.S. Universities

Students too have responded to the moment. The pro-Palestine encampment is gone—but another one materialized within an hour on an adjacent lawn. The organizers wrote a code of conduct governing the space and have organized interfaith services, a teach-in on antisemitism, and a Passover Seder. A member of Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism —a campus body formed in the fall and tasked with “understanding how antisemitism manifests on campus”—arrived with a shank bone for the Seder. Together with faculty, students have trained in de-escalation strategies to protect the campus from provocateurs who have arrived seeking conflict. Student journalists from The Columbia Spectator and KCRW Radio have kept campus—and the world—informed about what is happening, even as the administration has limited press access to campus.

Meanwhile, the administration’s decision to arrest and suspend has not made any of us safer. In fact, it has provoked disorder. A week after the mass arrests, the campus feels under siege—not from the students in the (second) encampment, but from outside forces hellbent on dividing us. These include hostile members of congress (on April 24, House Speaker Mike Johnson held a press conference in the center of campus and lectured our students to “ go back to class ”) and inflammatory media narratives about violence and chaos. Proud Boys co-founder Gavin Mcinnes was spotted on campus yesterday, and there are reports of far-right media figures headed for campus as I write this.

These agents of chaos do not share the university’s values. Yet these are exactly the values we owe our students. We owe them serious discussion, not viral soundbites. We owe them interactions based on reason, not force. We owe them a commitment to free inquiry. We can acknowledge that others’ expressions may cause us deep discomfort but also help them to understand the difference between discomfort and real harm. We can help them listen respectfully to those with whom they disagree.

Unfortunately, a panicked university administration has genuflected to the outsiders, and in the process, has failed to stand for what we as an academic community must defend: not just issues concerning Israel or Palestine, but what students deserve above all—the conditions that make reasoned teaching, research, and discussion about this and many other issues possible in the first place. Instead of restoring order, the administration has sown chaos and exposed community members to actual danger. If we are to reclaim our university, faculty and students must do it together. We must work to quell tensions, to support one another, and, with helicopters buzzing overhead and worried texts filling our phones, to forge ahead with the important business of teaching and learning.

I think we’ve done an admirable job.

On Tuesday before class, in response to the emails arriving in my inbox, I sent my students a message: “Whether you attend remotely or in person, please show up.” Not because I’ll be taking attendance, I told them. Not because it matters for your grade. But because we’ll be talking about today’s readings, the last readings of the semester, and because gathering in a classroom feels like a small act of resistance on a campus besieged.

A half hour later, I walked into the classroom. Dozens of students sat quietly waiting, laptops open. More than a dozen more appeared on zoom, some from their dorm rooms, some from the encampment. Almost every student in the class was there.

They had shown up.

More Must-Reads From TIME

The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
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Scenes From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across U.S. Universities
6 Compliments That Land Every Time
If You're Dating Right Now , You're Brave: Column
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Harvey Weinstein Conviction Thrown Out

New york’s highest appeals court has overturned the movie producer’s 2020 conviction for sex crimes, which was a landmark in the #metoo movement..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From The New York Times, I’m Katrin Bennhold. This is “The Daily.”

When Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted for sex crimes four years ago, it was celebrated as a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement. Yesterday, New York’s highest appeals court overturned that conviction. My colleague Jodi Kantor on what this ruling means for Weinstein and for the #MeToo movement. It’s Friday, April 26.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

# Jodi, you and your reporting partner, Megan Twohey, were the ones who broke the Harvey Weinstein scandal, which really defined the #MeToo movement and was at the center of this court case. Explain what just happened.

So on Thursday morning, New York’s highest court threw out Harvey Weinstein’s conviction for sex crimes and ordered a new trial. In 2020, he had been convicted of sexually abusing two women. He was sentenced to 23 years in jail. The prosecution really pushed the boundaries, and the conviction was always a little shaky, a little controversial. But it was a landmark sentence, in part because Harvey Weinstein is a foundational figure in the #MeToo movement. And now that all goes back to zero.

He’s not a free man. He was also convicted in Los Angeles. But the New York conviction has been wiped away. And prosecutors have the really difficult decision of whether to leave things be or start again from scratch.

And I know we’ve spent a lot of time covering this case on this show, with you, in fact. But just remind us why the prosecution’s case was seen to be fragile even then.

The controversy of this case was always about which women would be allowed to take the witness stand. So think of it this way. If you took all of the women who have horrifying stories about Harvey Weinstein, they could fill a whole courtroom of their own. Nearly 100 women have come forward with stories about his predation.

However, the number of those women who were candidates to serve at the center of a New York criminal trial was very small. A lot of these stories are about sexual harassment, which is a civil offense, but it cannot send you to prison. It’s not a crime.

Some of these stories took place outside of New York City. Others took place a long time ago, which meant that they were outside of the statute of limitations. Or they were afraid to come forward. So at the end of the day, the case that prosecutors brought was only about two women.

Two out of 100.

Yes. And both of those women stories were pretty complicated. They had disturbing stories of being victimized by Weinstein. But what they also openly admitted is that they had had consensual sex with Weinstein as well. And the conventional prosecutorial wisdom is that it’s too messy for a jury, that they’ll see it as too gray, too blurry, and will hesitate to convict.

So prosecutors, working under enormous public pressure and attention, figured out what they thought was a way to bolster their case, which is that they brought in more witnesses. Remember that part of the power of the Harvey Weinstein story is about patterns. It’s about hearing one woman tell virtually the same story as the next woman.

It becomes this kind of echoing pattern that is so much more powerful than any one isolated story. So prosecutors tried to re-create that in the courtroom. They did that to searing effect. They brought in these additional witnesses who had really powerful stories, and that was instrumental to Weinstein being convicted.

But these were witnesses whose allegations were not actually on trial.

Exactly. Prosecutors were taking a risk by including them because there’s a bedrock principle of criminal law that when a person is on trial, the evidence should pertain directly to the charges that are being examined. Anything extraneous is not allowed. So prosecutors took this risk, and it seemed to pay off in a big way.

When Weinstein was convicted in February of 2020, it was by a whole chorus of women’s voices. # What seemed to be happening is that the legal reality had kind caught up with the logic of the #MeToo movement, in which these patterns, these groups of women, had become so important.

And then, to heighten things, the same thing basically happened in Los Angeles. Weinstein was tried in a second separate trial, and he was also convicted, also with that kind of supporting evidence, and sentenced to another 16 years in prison.

And on the same strategy based on a chorus of women who all joined forces, basically joining their allegations against him.

The rules are different in California. But, yes, it was a similar strategy. So Weinstein goes to jail. The world’s attention moves on. The story appears to end.

But in the background, Weinstein’s lawyers were building a strategy to challenge the fairness of these convictions. And they were basically saying this evidence never should have been admitted in the first place. And Megan and I could tell that Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers were getting some traction.

His first appeal failed. But by watching the proceedings, we could tell that the judges were actually taking the questions pretty seriously. And then Weinstein’s lawyers took their last shot. They made their last case at the highest level of the New York courts, and they won. And that panel of judges overturned the conviction.

And what exactly do these judges say to explain why they threw out this conviction, given that another court had upheld it?

Well, when you read the opinion that came out on Thursday morning, you can feel the judge’s disagreements kind of rising from the pages. # Picture sort of a half-moon of seven judges, four of them female, listening to the lawyer’s arguments, wrestling with whether perhaps the most important conviction of the #MeToo era was actually fair. And in their discussion, you can feel them torn between, on the one hand, the need for accountability, and then, on the other hand, the need for fairness.

So there was a sort of sense that this is an important moment and this case represents something perhaps bigger than itself.

Absolutely. There was a lot of concern, first of all, for what was going to happen to Weinstein himself, all that that symbolized, but also what sort of message they were sending going forward. So in the actual opinion, the judges divide into — let’s call them two teams. The majority are basically behaving like traditionalists.

They’re saying things like, here’s one line — “under our system of justice, the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged.” They’re saying there was just too much other stuff in this trial that wasn’t directly relevant, didn’t directly serve as evidence for the two center acts that were being prosecuted.

So those majority-opinion judges simply say that this was a kind of overreach by the prosecutor, that this isn’t how the criminal justice system works.

Exactly. And then, if we called the first team of judges the traditionalists, let’s call the dissenters the realists. And they’re talking about the way sexual crimes play out in the real world and what’s necessary to effectively prosecute them. And they are incredibly critical of the majority.

They use words like — I’m looking at the pages now — “oblivious,” “naive,” phrases like “an unfortunate step backwards,” “endangering decades of progress,” “perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence,” “allows predators to escape accountability.” What they’re saying is that these rules of evidence have to be somewhat flexible in the real world, because otherwise they’re not going to capture what really happened.

You can really sense the passion in this argument. You know, you really get the sense that this court is bitterly divided over this question. And what I’m hearing the dissent basically saying is that if we overturn this conviction, we’ll be pushing ourselves backwards. This is regress.

And that the evidence served a really important function in the trial, that something is lost without it.

But in the end, that point of view lost out. In this case, the traditionalist judges prevailed by a single vote.

We’ll be right back.

So, Jodi, now that this conviction has been overturned, what’s next for Harvey Weinstein?

Well, back in New York, prosecutors have a really tough question to face, which is, do they retry this case? On the one hand, the Weinstein conviction meant so much to so many people that to just drop it seems very unsatisfying.

But on the other hand, their attempt failed. Those women are going to be very difficult to get back on the stand. And are they really going to start from zero and do this all over again?

Especially given that this conviction has just been overturned?

Exactly. But meanwhile, the other thing to keep your eye on is the appeals in the California case. Weinstein’s attorney told The Times that next month, they are going to file an appeal in California that will make many of the same arguments that they did in New York.

Now, the California rules are a little clearer on what evidence is admissible. So we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. But I should add that this attorney is the same one who succeeded in getting Bill Cosby’s conviction thrown out.

So is there a world in which all the convictions against Weinstein will be overturned?

Sure, Katrin. It’s very plausible.

Wow. Now, given that, what does this ruling mean for other legal cases, for other #MeToo cases that are currently moving through the legal system?

Well, it’s definitely a symbolic blow for the #MeToo movement and also for accountability, which is part of what powers the movement. If you think of progress like a wheel spinning forward, part of what powers the wheel is accountability, because women only want to come forward if they think something may actually happen. When they see consequences for some men, it encourages others to step forward.

But that doesn’t really feel like a symbolic blow. # That actually feels like a real setback, because if the promise of accountability was what was driving the #MeToo movement and sort of persuading all these women to come forward, then this ruling seems to be undercutting that.

Well, it’s also a sign of health in the system, because what we’re seeing in prosecutions across the country is more testing of this sort. Prosecutors are starting to bring cases that they never would have brought years before. Maybe they’re messier. Maybe the evidence isn’t perfect. Maybe they’re less traditional.

And so to prove those cases, you have to try to get new kinds of evidence in court. And some of those attempts are going to succeed, as they did in the Weinstein trial the first time around. And some of those efforts are going to fail, as we see with the overturning of the conviction. # But that kind of experimentation, potential expansion, is potentially a sign of the health of the system and the idea that the legal system may be, to some degree, catching up with #MeToo.

So you’re saying another way to look at this case is that it sort of represents a legal system trying to navigate this new reality and sort of trying to figure out in real time how to deal with these kinds of cases. It’s almost like a trial and error, “one step forward, two steps back” dynamic.

But also, I want to add that you can’t score #MeToo like a basketball game. Every time there is some big outcome in a #MeToo case — R. Kelly gets convicted, Governor Cuomo resigns, Bill Cosby gets convicted, Bill Cosby walks free — there can be this temptation to draw huge conclusions from that. It’s a victory for me, too. It’s a loss for me, too.

But these cases are not necessarily reliable indicators of what’s really happening, what’s really changing, because what we’re also seeing is real structural change on the legal level. Laws protecting women have changed in, I think, 23 states since 2017. The New York statute of limitations was extended for rape directly in response to the Weinstein allegations. It’s now much longer.

And recently, New York state opened a kind of new window for survivors to sue for long ago offenses. So even as these individual cases rise and fall one by one, the system is slowly changing.

Hmm. So on the one hand, the Harvey Weinstein case actually changed legislation and created this whole new set of laws around these kinds of cases. But on the other hand, the criminal case against him was ultimately shot down. So I guess my question is, how should we think about the Weinstein case? # And does any of this change the way we should see his case as the kind of defining case of the #MeToo movement, and Weinstein himself as the defining central character?

I think the question that Megan and I have had for a long time is whether any criminal conviction in any city is really the best measure of what Harvey Weinstein did or didn’t do, because at its essence, the Harvey Weinstein story is about work. What was really special about him as a producer, his particular genius, was for making careers.

He made Gwyneth Paltrow. He made Matt Damon, Quentin Tarantino, a lot of producers who are very successful now. That was kind of his superpower. But what we now know is that he also used that superpower to manipulate and hurt women. In story after story about Weinstein, the same motifs come up.

A lot of these women were really young. It was their first day, their first week, their first month on the job. They wanted opportunity. They wanted a piece of the action.

So though the annals of the Harvey Weinstein story do include these instances of very troubling, allegedly criminal behavior, like rape, the essence of the story, I think, is about what happens to women in the workplace — the opportunities they have, the way their ambitions can be used against them. And that’s not something that any criminal court can capture.

You know, when you talk to Weinstein victims, of course, you hear the famous things they’ve said about the kind of physical offenses — the bathroom stories, the hotel room stories. But you also hear them talk about their own careers.

They say things like, I lost opportunities because of this, or, I could never work in Hollywood again. And they say, my whole life is different because of that. I can never get those years back. And it’s just not something that any criminal court is quite built to capture.

So in a way, you’re saying that the story is much bigger than those criminal allegations against Weinstein. In a way, they’re the tip of the iceberg. But underneath, there is this whole culture of men abusing their power, against women in particular, in the workplace.

Exactly. And thanks in large part to the #MeToo movement, this is behavior that used to be widely tolerated, and it’s no longer socially acceptable.

And, Jodi, I wonder, have you spoken to some of the women that you spent years talking to and hearing from who came forward to share their stories about Weinstein and others? Have you spoken to them since this latest news?

Yes, and I have to tell you, the Weinstein survivors are pretty resolute. They don’t really see this as changing the story.

When we first got the news from the court, the first person I called was Ashley Judd, the first actress who came forward about Harvey Weinstein. And what she said to me was that she was disappointed, that this was upsetting, but she was also unwavering. She said to me, “We know what really happened.”

Mm-hmm. And I guess, in some ways, that’s the legacy. The truth was aired in a court of law.

We never knew what the legal system would do. We never knew whether he would be convicted or not. But the story stands. It’s the women who are the narrators of this story now, and that won’t be overturned.

Jodi, thank you very much.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Thursday, the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether former president Donald Trump should have legal immunity for allegedly interfering with the 2020 presidential election after he lost the race to Joe Biden. Trump’s lawyers have argued that his actions, because he was still president at the time, should be shielded from prosecution.

Their arguments were unanimously rejected in February by a lower court. But on Thursday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed more receptive to Trump’s claims. If the court rules in the former president’s favor, it could potentially delay any trial in the matter until after the election.

And one other thing you should know before you go today — this weekend, we’re going to start sharing with you a brand-new show from some of our colleagues. It’s hosted by David Marchese and Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and the idea of the show is simple and classic. Every week, one of them will interview someone fascinating — actors, politicians, athletes, writers. They’re calling their podcast just “The Interview.”

This weekend, their first couple episodes are perfect examples. Lulu speaks with Yair Lapid, the leader of the political opposition in Israel. David speaks with actress Anne Hathaway. We’ll be sending you those shows right here on Saturday and Sunday. I hope you’ll give them a listen.

Today’s episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Rikki Novetsky, and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by MJ Davis Lin and Liz O. Baylen, contains original music by Dan Powell and Elisheba Ittoop, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Katrin Bennhold. See you Monday.

April 30, 2024 • 27:40 The Secret Push That Could Ban TikTok
April 29, 2024 • 47:53 Trump 2.0: What a Second Trump Presidency Would Bring
April 26, 2024 • 21:50 Harvey Weinstein Conviction Thrown Out
April 25, 2024 • 40:33 The Crackdown on Student Protesters
April 24, 2024 • 32:18 Is $60 Billion Enough to Save Ukraine?
April 23, 2024 • 30:30 A Salacious Conspiracy or Just 34 Pieces of Paper?
April 22, 2024 • 24:30 The Evolving Danger of the New Bird Flu
April 19, 2024 • 30:42 The Supreme Court Takes Up Homelessness
April 18, 2024 • 30:07 The Opening Days of Trump’s First Criminal Trial
April 17, 2024 • 24:52 Are ‘Forever Chemicals’ a Forever Problem?
April 16, 2024 • 29:29 A.I.’s Original Sin
April 15, 2024 • 24:07 Iran’s Unprecedented Attack on Israel

Hosted by Katrin Bennhold

Featuring Jodi Kantor

Produced by Nina Feldman , Rikki Novetsky and Carlos Prieto

Edited by M.J. Davis Lin and Liz O. Baylen

Original music by Dan Powell and Elisheba Ittoop

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

When the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted of sex crimes four years ago, it was celebrated as a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement. Yesterday, New York’s highest court of appeals overturned that conviction.

Jodi Kantor, one of the reporters who broke the story of the abuse allegations against Mr. Weinstein in 2017, explains what this ruling means for him and for #MeToo.

On today’s episode

Jodi Kantor , an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

Harvey Weinstein is walking down stone steps surrounded by a group of men in suits. One man is holding him by the arm.

Background reading

The verdict against Harvey Weinstein was overturned by the New York Court of Appeals.

Here’s why the conviction was fragile from the start .

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Katrin Bennhold is the Berlin bureau chief. A former Nieman fellow at Harvard University, she previously reported from London and Paris, covering a range of topics from the rise of populism to gender. More about Katrin Bennhold

Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and co-author of “She Said,” which recounts how she and Megan Twohey broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, helping to ignite the #MeToo movement. Instagram • More about Jodi Kantor

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Student Essay Competition. To encourage a new generation of feminist scholars, the FSA sponsors an annual student essay competition for work which is innovative, interdisciplinary and grounded in feminist theory and practice. After an initial shortlisting process, the top seven entries will be judged by our judging panel to determine the winner.
Black Americans and their views on feminism
The relationship between Black Americans and the U.S. feminist movement has been contentious since the 19th century. Feminist activists such as Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul racially stereotyped Black men during Reconstruction and kept Black women suffragists at the back of women's marches in the early 20th century.. In the 1970s, Black women criticized the feminist movement for being ...
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Opinion
Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of the forthcoming book "The Age of Grievance," from which this essay is adapted. I warn my students. At the start of every semester ...
No One Has a Right to Protest in My Home
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The Crackdown on Student Protesters
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T uesday, April 23, was the last day of my class for the semester at Barnard College, Columbia University's sister college, and I woke up to several emails from my students that morning. "I ...
Global Feminism
The PGSA Graduate Conference 2024 will take place this week on May 1st - 2nd. This year's theme is "Global Feminism". The two keynote speakers are Ranjoo Herrs from Bentley University, and Safaneh Mohaghegh Neyshabouri from the University of Calgary.
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Essays About Feminism: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

1. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

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44 Student Essay Example: Feminist Criticism

Burning Stereotypes in Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”

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5 Essays About Feminism

“Trickle-Down Feminism” – Sarah Jaffe

“What No One Else Will Tell You About Feminism” – Lindy West

“Toward a Trans* Feminism” – Jack Halberstam

“Rebecca Solnit: How Change Happens” – Rebecca Solnit

“Bad Feminist” extract – Roxane Gay

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Article contents

Introduction

Histories, Origins, and Theories of U.S.–Based Feminism

Standpoint Epistemology

Intersectionality

Feminist Poststructural Theory

Tenets of Feminist Qualitative Research

Positionalities and Reflexivity

Methods and Challenges

Examples of Feminist Qualitative Research in Education

Power, Canons, and Gender

Feminist Pedagogies, Curricula, and Classrooms

Teacher Education, Identities, and Knowledge

Possibilities for Feminist Qualitative Research

Acknowledgements

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