Feminist Society

Feminism is the advocacy of women’s right on the grounds of political, social and economic equality to men. Women began fighting for equal rights since the early 1600. Women’s rights movements were also influenced by the Revolutionary War and the French Revolution in the late 1700’s.

The word ‘Feminism’ only came to the United States from France in the early 1900’s. The feminist movement splintered off from suffrage-oriented groups after the U.S. women were given the rights to vote under the 19^th Amendment in 1920. After World War 2 the Women’s Liberation Movement surfaced when more women began entering college and the work-force. They wanted to revolutionize the way women lived in terms of education, employment, domesticity and sexuality.

Some people say that feminism only seeks to advance some women with a very specific set of ideals, and attack women who disagree. Very few men understand  the basic principles of feminism and most of them believe that through the use of hate speech, feminism only serves to promote hate against men and whereas  the quest of the modern-day feminist is to place women above men.

It is safe to say that feminism is hard to define, thus making it so hard to understand. The breadth of the movement includes wide diversity of views and internal debate that make it even harder to define. We all agree that this movement has a lot of concepts within it; but the basic principle of the movement is to the pursuit of equality between men and women but not exclusively sexual equality.

There are a lot of women all over the world who still feel like they are being oppressed by men and that their rights aren’t respected by men.  The question is; can we honestly say that this statement is false?

Jenniffer Sono is a  22 year old Computer Science student that was victimised at Noord Street taxi rank for showing off the legs that were considered sexy and won her the title of Miss Lovely Legs. She is only one of many young women who have been harassed by man at the taxi rank. In an interview she said “All along in was wrong to think that at the taxi rank, there are men who will protect girls”. These men are giving real men a bad name, not all Zulu men have the same mentality as them.

On 20 January 2012 women in Malawi staged a protest against a gang that terrorises trouser wearing women by stripping off their clothes. You don’t need to be a feminist to find this disturbing. The good news is that you do not need to be a woman to be a feminist. Women started the fight, and are still fighting for equality. It’s up to real men to fight with/for them.

It is much easier to sit back and watch as all this happens but it takes a real man to stand up and fight against the abuse of women all over the world.