This comparative study arouses already some stakes to this first word. How do we define feminism in a strict way that is stripped of any subjectivity? To define this controversial word appears not only useful but also a necessary starting point to this essay. According to Le Petit Robert, feminism can be defined as a "Doctrine which has the objective of the extension of rights, the role of women in society." Then, it is understood through the medical spectrum as an aspect of a male individual that presents some secondary characteristics of the female sex. While the second definition has nothing to do with the "feminism" studied as a social and identity movement, the first one is ideologically limited and hence, inadequate.
On the other hand, as feminism has got numerous definitions, it is also present in diverse theories. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir assumed, from the point of view of the existentialism, that there was not a nature of women, but that femininity was a social product:
[...] For instance, one can put into relief a well known deep action that took place in France, in the merge of the Second Wave's feminism In April 1971, the centre-left magazine, the Nouvel Observateur and the newspaper, Le Monde, published this 'Manifeste des 343'. It was a declaration signed by women, both well known and unknown, that confessed they had had an abortion. At that time, abortion was illegal and all the women risked being arrested. Despite those risks, women dared publish this Manifeste des 343 in order to have an impact as huge as possible. [...]
[...] Conversely, in the United States, white native born women of rural New England and the middle states were benefited from high educational levels and from a relative security. This context allowed them to transform the language of revolutionary republicanism in favor of the situation of women. Whereas France was affected by industrial revolution's resentment, American early feminists remained untouched by the problems of working women in the cities. Actually, they were strongly concerned by stakes on individual moral reform, and most of all by the issue of slavery. [...]
[...] In other words, the dogmatic thoughts according to which the woman did not have the right to a real social and political existence in the view of the sexists' prejudices were destabilized by the emergence of feminism. Feminism has in fact given a palpable and identifiable existence to the women hitherto invisible in the political and social fields. In the United States, the solidity of the feminist movement rests partly on the invocation of the American model of freedom which on a side proclaims universal theory but which, on the other side, forgets a part of humanity, that is to say women. [...]
[...] In this case feminism is less a claim of equality between woman and man but an assertion of the properties of femininity. Thus, the “feminism” term become essential in the end of the XIXth century to mean the collective aspiration of women to the equality between sexes within a society subjected to the pre-eminence of man while it pointed out men that had too much femininity before. Hence, can one understand and study the American and the French feminist movement through the "identity" spectrum? [...]
[...] The Origins of modern feminism: women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780-1860. London: Macmillan 382p. - ELMALEH Eliane. Etude comparative des féminismes français et américains contemporains Annales du monde anglophone p 173-191 - OKIN Susan Moller. Justice, gender and the family. New York : Basic Books 216p - OZOUF Mona. Les mots et les femmes. Paris : Fayard 397p - CASSEL Joan. A group called women: sisterhood and symbolism in the feminist movement, New York: Mc Kay Company 240p. [...]
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