White Feminism

White feminism describes feminism in the context of those whom are situated as white. This distinction is relevant because of the differing ways that patriarchy, inequality, and oppression are manifested and experienced across varying race, class, and cultural contexts.

Europe Supported By Africa and America, by William Blake

Alternatively, white feminism can be used as a term to critique “non-intersectional mainstream feminism.” The term itself came about following a shift in Feminist discourse that prioritized an intersectional approach to women's issues. White feminism therefore describes feminist discourse that privileges, and only discusses white women's issues. In the early days of feminism, many white feminists believed that the movement should fight for upper-class white women's right to vote first, as it was a more attainable goal. Intersectionality challenges the dominant claim made by white feminism that in the U.S., women were granted the right to vote in 1920 following the ratification of the 19th amendment. This claim overlooks the fact that First Nations and African American women were excluded from the voting system, in some cases up until the 1960s.

White feminists can be defined as those who participate in the aforementioned type of feminism; alternately, white feminists can refer descriptively to people who racially identify as white and also identify as feminist.

White Feminism as Critique

Somewhat of an umbrella term, white feminism has been used by (but is not limited to use by) feminists of colour, as well as self-identified white feminists, as a term to highlight instances of privilege within the feminist movement. White feminism can be regarded as synonymous to the dominant form of Western feminism that is enacted through a discourse that highlights the "...liberal, bourgeois strands of feminism."

The scholar and activist Bell Hooks notes that "the reality was and is that privileged white women often experience a greater sense of solidarity with men of their same class than with poor white women or women of colour." The notion of whiteness is often associated with the concept of privilege. According to “White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, privilege relating to gender, sexuality, learning abilities, language, ethnic identity, class, race, disabilities, religion,etc help shape today's politics and society . White feminism is generally seen as exclusionary to women of colour, migrants, and the working and poorer classes. A critique of white feminism is that it seeks to include women within structures of power as they exist, without addressing the inequity of the system itself.

White feminists are predominately framed as white, heteronormative, cisgendered, able-bodied, educated and middle-class.

Concept of "Whiteness"

The context of 'whiteness' in white feminism as race/class catagory is a contentious subject. 'Whiteness' does not exclusively indicate race in this case. As Marilyn Frye writes, "Being white is not a biological condition. It is being a member of a certain social/political category, a category that is persistently maintained by those people who are, in their own and each others' perception, most unquestionably in it."

Second Wave Feminism: the late 20th century

"Second-wave" feminism emerged, after the Second World War. In 1947, a Commission on the Status of Women was established by the United Nations, and two years later it issued a Declaration of Human Rights, which both acknowledged that men and women had 'equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution', as well as women's entitlement to 'special care and assistance' in their role as mothers. The second wave of feminism in North America is the late 20th century' covers women's activism in some countries, it includes the late 1940s post-war boom, which comes with a increase of birth rates and also economic growth. The era lasting through the late 1980s, after that the scholars have some disputes of the feminist sex wars, which leads to the era of third-wave feminism in the early 1990s.

See also

Womanism

Intersectionality

White Privilege

Post-Colonial Feminism

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Further Reading

Haraway, D. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective". Journal article. (1998). Originally printed in Feminist Studies 14(3): 575-599.

McIntosh, P. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack". Web article. (1990). Reprinted from Independent School, Winter (1990). amptoons.com