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Feminist Issues

In 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) declared in its Statement of Purpose that women must be free to "develop their fullest human potential," and that they could do so only by "accepting to the full the challenges and responsibilities they share with all other people in our society" (Donovan, 1992, p. 25). This statement is infused with the ideology of liberalism. Women, it says, must be free to develop their "human potential," with the implication that the common humanity they share with "all other people" (i.e. men) is much more fundamental than any distinct identity as women.

Feminism as we know it developed originally as a logical development of Enlightenment liberal ideology, even if, in modern times, radical feminists have emerged to severely criticize the tenets of liberalism, and therefore the liberal form of feminism itself. The remainder of the following essay will first develop the original identity of liberal feminism as an aspect of broader liberal thought. This analysis will be expanded through evaluation of the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill, and liberal feminism will then be considered in the context of radical feminist critiques. Finally, the assumptions of both liberal and radical feminists will te bested against the experience of two nineteenth-century women, Harriet Jacobs and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as these experiences are revealed through their autobiographical or quasi-autobiographical writings.

Mary Wollstonecraft holds pride of place as the first major figure in the history of modern feminist thought. Even before examining her actual ideas, the reader may be struck by the date of her work, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was originally published in 1792. It thus was written a mere five years after the drafting of the American Constitution, and sixteen years after the Declaration of Independence.

These same years also saw the publication of s...

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Feminist Issues. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 17:30, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703674.html