Feminism Approach Talking about feminism, there has not been any agreed definition for the term of feminism and it probably will never have despite all protestations. There are many definitions of feminism, but all are informed by certain shared concerns.
At a political level, Cameron (1992: 4) says that ‘feminism is a movement for full humanity of women’. She adds, women must, as a precondition to any wholesale change in values, be liberated from their present subordinate position with its multiple reactions, exclusions, and oppressions such as relative poverty, economic dependence, and sexual exploitation, vulnerability to violence, poor health, overwork, and lack of civil and legal right.
As an intellectual approach, feminism seeks to understand how current relations between women and men are constructed. This approach involves several interrelated activities, i.e.; it tries to describe the condition of women’s lives, now and in the past. Cameron (1992: 4-5) gives an explanation of those conditions. She states ‘feminists have inevitably paid attention to the differences between women and men.
If they are not natural but constructed, how are they constructed? If they tend to subordinate women to men, how and why does that happen?’
Feminist theory has advanced various accounts and examined the influence of some factors. An example is the sexual division of labor, present in some degree in all society in which some tasks are women’s and others are men’s. As Cameron (1992: 5) states ‘men’s work is economically and socially valued; while women’s usually is not’.
In addition, Cameron (1992: 5) says that ‘other feminists have considered the role of sexuality. Sexual violence against women is widely practiced and frequently condoned at the same time’.
There is, ironically, a fact that most women are supporting feminist ideals while denying being identified as feminists. A number of conditions have caused most of women being alienated from the movements for women’s rights. Wolf identifies some of them as the mistakes of mass media, as follows:
The articles in mass media about women movements are partial. They describe that while working women cannot speak loudly and clearly of feminism at the place where they work, feminists cannot do such thing in any mass media (Wolf, 1999: 99).
As Wolf (1999: 139-140) observes that ‘the situation in mass media does not fit the fact that women dilemmas are actually complicated and getting more ambiguous. The two choices often contain equal intellectual and emotional demands’. She also explains that women want to work and take care of children; women do not like pornography and are interested in sexually expressing themselves; women want their rights to go to the war and do not want to kill anybody. To choose one of the two
choices they need a great social energy. But high-class publishers avoid women issues. Women magazines are afraid of being too close with feminist track, and feminist publishers themselves are afraid of being too far.
In the same book, Wolf (1999: 99) adds that ‘other cause of women feminism is that a common misunderstanding that feminism and lesbianism are the same things and that feminism as anti-family and it hates men’.
Furthermore, Wolf (1999: XXIV) says that there are always two approaches in the debates of feminism. First is what she calls victim feminism, which shows women in mystical and pure sexual role, led by the spirit of mother. Emphasizing on the violence against women is its way to get women’s rights. The feminism identified by Wolf is one of many causes of men and women’s alienation from movement of feminism. She states that feminism is responsible for the biggest part of inconsistent, negative, and chauvinistic thoughts, and all the regressive things’ (Wolf, 1999: 99).
Second is what she calls power feminism, which takes women as ordinary people who are sexually and individually not better or worse than men as their partner. This feminism claims women’s rights based on a simple logic; women indeed have those rights. This group of feminists know that ambition, aggression, competition, hope of autonomy, and also destructive and rude attitudes are women’s as well as men’s traits. Both ideas are the result of learning and basic nature. They understand that both men and women should learn to control those demands and take women as grown-up human beings. This feminism does not fight against men as a gender but the power held by men, which is not proportional. It is false to judge that men are better than women.
Based on the concept of power feminism, there is a stage. At this stage, every woman has to have the word ‘feminism’ as a theory that tells about personal self-esteem and all women’s self-esteem. Wolf (1999: 205) says, ‘confessing, “I’m a feminist” is the same as saying “I’m a human”’. There is a simple awareness of women’s desire whether they like the result or not. Therefore, at this stage, Naomi Wolf is a feminist; Germaine Greer is a feminist; Indira Gandhi; Mother Theresa is a feminist, and Arundhati Roy is also a feminist. Here, ‘feminist’ is a word that is owned by every woman who works with all her power.