feminism
Feminism is a social movement and a set of ideas that seek equal rights for women in law, politics, work and culture.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Definitions
- In social and political use: a movement and programme that aims to equalise the rights of women with those of men and to remove legal, economic and customary barriers that limit women's public life.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - In scholarship: a research outlook and a body of theory that describe society, culture and language through gender, power and inequality between women and men.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Informally: an attitude or view that treats equal rights for women as a central value, and sometimes a label for people who support women's causes outside a strict movement programme.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Examples
- The social history textbook presents feminism as successive waves of struggle for the vote, paid work and education for women.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - She joined liberal feminism with calls for equal pay and access to professions once closed to women.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - The seminar treated feminism as a research perspective in literary studies and sociology.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - In the kitchen talk his feminism only meant that he refused jokes that put women down.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Usage
In everyday English feminism names both a concrete political current and a broad worldview label. In scholarly and historical writing it helps to say whether the topic is the fight for the vote, a liberal or radical strand, an academic theory, or a casual equality attitude. That habit keeps a description of ideas apart from moral judgement and from a pejorative shorthand.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)The 1913 Webster lists feminine, femininity and feminize among related English forms, yet it opens no stand-alone entry for feminism in the political sense of a movement. Skeat (1910), under FEMININE, leads from Old French to Latin and notes related female and effeminate. As a label for a social movement, English feminism belongs to a later period inside that same word family, after those editions.
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Editorial team; facts: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913; W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 1910, open sourceCommon collocations include wave of feminism, liberal feminism, radical feminism, feminist theory and feminist movement. A person linked to these ideas is a feminist, and the matching adjective is feminist. Journalism often sets feminism beside the women's movement: the latter can be wider and may include groups that do not take the feminist label.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Arct's Polish dictionary of foreign words (1921) already opens Feminizm (masculine) and Feministka. That entry shows the cognate word was in Polish circulation between the wars and concerned equal rights for women. The Polish gloss is not this site's editorial definition: we record the fact that the lemma existed and restate its general sense in our own words, without copying the dictionary's wording.
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Editorial team; facts: M. Arct, Slownik wyrazow obcych, 9th ed., Warsaw 1921, open sourceWord forms
Regular English noun, usually uncountable; the plural feminisms is used for different strands or national versions of the movement and theory.
word forms
| przypadek | forma |
|---|---|
| singular | feminism |
| plural | feminisms |
Word forms: Editorial team
Collocations
- wave of feminism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - liberal feminism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - radical feminism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - feminist theory
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - feminist movement
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Synonyms · Antonyms
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Etymology
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W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910, open sourcealso
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913, open sourcealso
M. Arct, Slownik wyrazow obcych, 9th ed., Warsaw 1921, open sourceRelated words
- feminist , noun for a supporter; also adjective
- feminine , adjective in the same word family (Skeat, Webster)
- femininity , noun: quality of being feminine (Webster 1913)
- feminize , verb: to make feminine (Webster 1913)
- emancipation , thematically related noun
Related entries
Questions and answers
What does feminism mean?
It names a programme and practice of equal rights for women and the removal of legal, economic and customary barriers. In scholarship it can also name a research outlook on gender and power, and in casual speech a broad equality label.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Where does the word feminism come from?
The root goes back to Latin femina, woman, through French feminisme. Skeat describes the feminine family; the 1913 Webster records feminine, femininity and feminize without a stand-alone movement lemma. The political sense arose later inside that word family.
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W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910, open sourceHow is feminism different from the women's movement?
The women's movement is often the wider term: it covers organisations and actions for women, including groups that reject the feminist label. Feminism usually names an ideology or current with a clear equality programme and often a social theory. In practice the two ranges partly overlap.