FEMINISM AND WOMEN's PROBLEMS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there was wide recognition among U.S. feminists that the women’s movement is global, and that much can be learned from feminisms in less affluent and more traditional cultures, and from those societies that are more proactive about women’s rights and concerns. Women’s groups in India, Latin America and Russia, for example, have often gained political support, not through advocacy of equality between women and men, but through demands for governmental and social support for women as wives and mothers. Throughout Africa and Southeast Asia, the practice of microfinance (usually taking the form of loans to women of several hundred dollars or less) and outright gifts of domestic animals have been important contributions to the family well-being of poor women responsible for providing food to their children and relatives. In Latin America and Russia, mothers’ groups have effectively prevailed on government and military authorities to furnish information about missing husbands, sons, and brothers who have died or suffered in military service. In Norway after the 1970s, it became a legal requirement that 40 percent of all members of parliament be female, with the understanding among political elites that women in government have stronger interests in family welfare and social well-being issues than do men. Moreover, Norway’s “Credo on Difference”recognizes that the political inclusion of “women’s issues,”such as education, pensions, and welfare, on the top tier of the national agenda benefits all members of society, and not just women.

As Gayle Rubin has pointed out, and as feminist followers of Karl Marx have stressed, women perform work in agricultural and industrial societies, which enables male heads of household to do their paid labor. Mothers are still not paid for child rearing, housework, social tasks, and other parts of “women’s work,”so that many women who work outside of their homes must also perform a “second shift”without compensation. While women have secured the vote, child custody rights after divorce, and reproductive autonomy, they are still not fully the political equals of men, in even the most affluent Western countries. Those women who do participate in political leadership, even women of color (e.g., Condoleezza Rice, who became the U.S. secretary of state in 2005), often do so without special attention to the concerns of women or people of color.

Intersectionality and the “second shift”problem present a challenge to feminism: Is it possible for feminism to be both a system of belief and a source of change in the world that furthers the interests of all women? For this to occur, it is necessary to recognize the historical disadvantages of women and their future potential, and to acknowledge both what women have in common and the ways in which they are different. One way that feminist theorists could do this would be to abandon attempts to posit a common essence in all women, and instead view women as human beings who have been assigned to, or identify with, a group that makes up at least half of humankind. To be assigned to this group or identify with it would not mean that one had to be a mother, a man’s heterosexual choice, or a female at birth, but only that this was one’s social identity. Surely it is as mothers, men’s heterosexual choices, and human females that women have suffered the problems that first led to feminism and women’s movements in many different social, national, cultural, and racial/ethnic contexts. Such a common basis for women’s social identity would not negate the real-life differences, demands, and expectations of justice experienced by women on account of their racial diversity. It would allow women to come together across their racial differences to address common problems, such as the second shift, while they continue to think about and act against specific race-based problems.