Feminisms

A Global History

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Pub Date Nov 24 2020 | Archive Date Nov 01 2020

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Description

Feminism’s origins have often been framed around a limited cast of mostly white and educated foremothers, but the truth is that feminism has been and continues to be a global movement. For centuries, women from all walks of life have been mobilizing for gender justice. As the last decade has reminded even the most powerful women, there is nothing “post-feminist” about our world. And there is much to be learned from the passion and protests of the past.

Historian Lucy Delap looks to the global past to give us a usable history of the movement against gender injustice—one that can help clarify questions of feminist strategy, priority and focus in the contemporary moment. Rooted in recent innovative histories, the book incorporates alternative starting points and new thinkers, challenging the presumed priority of European feminists and ranging across a global terrain of revolutions, religions, empires and anti-colonial struggles.

In Feminisms, we find familiar stories—of suffrage, of solidarity, of protest—yet there is no assumption that feminism looks the same in each place or time. Instead, Delap explores a central paradox: feminists have demanded inclusion but have persistently practiced their own exclusions. Some voices are heard and others are routinely muted. In amplifying the voices of figures at the grassroots level, Delap shows us how a rich relationship to the feminist past can help inform its future.

Feminism’s origins have often been framed around a limited cast of mostly white and educated foremothers, but the truth is that feminism has been and continues to be a global movement. For centuries...


Advance Praise

"This outstanding work . . . takes a thematic approach to the topic of global feminist history to provide a unified vision that maintains appropriate nuance. . . . It's masterful." New Books in Gender Studies

"A brilliant work of feminist scholarship that is global in scope, rigorous in analysis, and inviting in its storytelling." Hyaeweol Choi, author of Gender Politics at Home and Abroad: Protestant Modernity in Colonial-Era Korea 

"Delap's telling is unique amongst histories of feminism. As it tears across the globe, Feminisms reveals familiar organizations, projects, agitators, and obstacles in new garb and places them alongside ones conventionally overlooked. Start with any chapter and savor every generous, undogmatic page." Bonnie G. Smith, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Emerita of History, Rutgers University

"Delap wields the concept of feminism to show how activists 'politicize the injustices of gender' across 250 years and six continents. Attentive to the blind spots and complicities of many feminist ventures, she also recognizes its affinities and resonance across generations, geographies, and genders. This brilliant book probes feminism's meanings and materializations through chapters on dreams, feelings, objects, and songs as well as ideas, looks, spaces, and actions." Nancy A. Hewitt, author of Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds

"This outstanding work . . . takes a thematic approach to the topic of global feminist history to provide a unified vision that maintains appropriate nuance. . . . It's masterful." New Books in...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780226754093
PRICE $27.50 (USD)
PAGES 256

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Featured Reviews

(From the book) - Feminism - Best understood as an overlapping, internally complex set of actions, questions and demands that has been in formulation since the 18th Century or even earlier. It concerns change over time.

Feminism is an ongoing story of profound transformation. Despite it being devalued, it still strongly advocates women's rights on the grounds of equality of sexes.

In this much needed book, the author takes us through a wonderful and unique look on Feminism. It not only covers the entry point but it also throws light on limits.

Covers examples from various countries including Japan, Egypt, Germany and Russia to name a few.

- What is Feminism?
- How and Why was it developed?
- Journey of Feminism
- What does Feminism mean Globally?

A very well written and enlightening book.

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Feminism: A Global History tells the story
of feminisms that are not defined by one single type of feminism, which is the eurocentric, acknowledging many other types of feminisms and gender equality fights. About how we can gather all these feminisms into one purpose: to achieve gender justice

She talks about a lot of things inside the feminist movements: idea of gender, if men can be feminists, the variants of feminism, the ‘woman question’, feminism in politics, feminism as capitalism material, women’s culture and the history of female empowerment and fight for justice, besides other topics.

Lucy Delap really committed to study for this book, and I have so much respect for it. Except that maybe she did exclude some narratives, which I’m not in place to talk about, although she did dug out more than a lot of other white-straight-centered feminist books. The author could’ve brought more trans and non-binary representation, for sure.

I did wish she could focus a little more on fewer topics; there was just so much information.

Overall, it taught me a lot. A nice read to know more about feminism all around the world.

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The 2020s will turn out to be a crucial decade for many things, one of them without a doubt will be that it constitutes a crossroads, an upheaval in the world of feminism brought about by the social and legal social and legal revindications made in the name of transgender people and their consequences for all women. In this of all years, this text presents a much-needed trot through of the history of feminism. Here, for example, the reader will discover the origin of, and the different meanings given to terms like “patriarchy”, why feminists have always placed special significance on spaces, and the views and concerns of prominent feminists on women as consumers.

A special strength of this book is the effort it makes to present the feminisms in different continents, the reader will be exposed to the ideas of Japanese, Brazilian, Nigerian, and Indian, feminists among many others. This gives the lie to the frequently made accusation that feminism is an exclusively Westernised movement formed by white women.

The illustrations deserve a paragraph on themselves they are not only biographical, but cultural. It is interesting for example to see a portrait of a gathering of Japanese feminist group in the early 20th century.

All in all I could not recommend this more highly. It is interesting, it is engaging and once you finish it you will have a better idea of the many forms that feminism has taken, in both space and time, and may yet take.

Once again, many thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read an early version of this text.

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