feminist argument essay

Feminism - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

Feminism has been a driving force in advocating for equality and women’s rights. Through feminist arguments, the movement challenges societal norms and promotes women empowerment. Persuasive and argumentative essays on feminism serve as powerful tools to raise awareness and spark change. These papers delve into feminist topics for essays, addressing issues such as gender inequality, reproductive justice, and much more.

When creating a research paper on feminism, it is essential to develop compelling titles that capture the essence of the study. They should reflect the critical nature of the topic and engage readers from the outset. Also, strong thesis statements are crucial in guiding the research and presenting a clear argument. They set the tone for the entire paper and highlight the significance of the investigation question. Papers on feminism shed light on the challenges faced by women and provide evidence-based arguments to support feminist claims. With a clear outline, they present a well-structured and organized discussion on various feminist topics.

The Essay introduction and conclusion are crucial elements in exploring and analyzing the complex and evolving topic. An introduction serves as an opportunity to provide background information about the feminist movement, its historical context, and the specific focus of the essay. By summarizing the main arguments and findings, the conclusion reaffirms the significance of your study. Integrating essay examples about feminism in the introduction and conclusion strengthens the essay as a whole. It provides concrete evidence and relevant narratives. They serve as powerful illustrations of feminist ideologies, struggles, and achievements.

Feminism of Romeo and Juliet

Introduction The idea that playwright, William Shakespeare, tends to write within the gender expectations of saintly maidens or widowed hags in esteem of his female characters is not a new concept, as essentially all of his female characters face some sort of grievance either at the will of or by submitting to the strict patriarchal expectations of their time. Many would concur that Juliet Capulet in Romeo and Juliet is not any different. She is particularly childish and fickle, and […]

Feminism in a Doll’s House

Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of being politically, socially, and economically equal to men. In the nineteenth century, women were viewed as secondary to men and had little rights. In 1890, married women were given the right to control their own wealth, and in 1882 women finally were given access to higher education. During the time that Ibsen wrote A Doll House, he lived in a patriarchal society which we can tell as we read […]

Women’s Rights in the United States in the 1970s

In the 1940’s-1960’s, there was a blurred distinction between clinical and sexual exams within the medical field (Wendy Kline, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry). For example, many male doctors would provide pelvic exams as a means to teach women sex instruction, and were taught to assert their power over their patients. This led to women instituting new training programs for proper examinations, creating a more gentle and greatly-respected method of examining women and their bodies. There was also an increase […]

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Gender Inequality and Feminism

Gender inequality is a concept which has been occurring over a number of years and due to gender differences it fuels up gender inequality, which gave rise to gender socialization. Gender socialization is the process of learning gender roles which emerge from society and nowadays social media, throughout this process men and women learn their roles in society. The most common attribute we ascribe to women is that they can be vulnerable and sensitive, on the other hand, men hear […]

Expressing Feminism in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Background Information Jane Austen was an English novelist born in Hampshire, South of England on 16th December in 1775. She was very close to Cassandra, her sister. When together, the two would share a bedroom but when apart they would write to each other almost every. After Jane's death on 18th July 1817, her sister testified how the two loved each other, ""she was gilder of every pleasure, the sun of my life, and the soother of sorrow"" (Bendit 245). […]

Mona Lisa Smile

The 2003 romance movie, "Mona Lisa Smile," directed by Mike Newell, portrays a recent UCLA graduate female art history professor named Katherine Watson. She is hired at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953 to teach an art history class to a classroom full of hardworking and demanding young girls, determined to make her feel unwelcome. The girls who attend Wellesley are from some of the most wealthy, influential, and upper-class families in Massachusetts. Despite all the hardships and judgmental […]

About Feminism in Hamlet

Ophelia agrees to take Laertes’s advice. She agrees to take his advice because she knows nothing else than to listen a man. She is dependent on men and continues to do whatever they tell her. She saids “this is a good lesson keep, As a watchman to my heart.” (1.3.51) She sees it as he is looking out for her, which he is but it reality he is demanding her to stay away from Hamlet to keep her purity. Laertes […]

Gladwell Outliers, Privilege Video, Intersectional Feminism

Race, gender, and conversation are controversial issues among most Americans, especially Blacks. For instance, the "Safe Space to Brave Space" article calls for freedom of speech. Comparatively, Chapter 3 of Gladwell presents a story about Christopher Langan which focuses on geniuses; children possessing innate genius, yet racism, conversation issues, and poverty caused Langan's misery. This concept is therefore incongruent with the privilege video's details where backgrounds tremendously influence people's social and economic welfare. The "Safe Space to Brave Space" article […]

Femininism and Masculinity in Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”

For a considerable amount of the literature in English language, sex and gender are shown to be equitable with certain human traits. Strength is defined as a predominantly male trait while weakness is shown as the female one. Men are depicted as stable while women are shown as impulsive and unpredictable. Logic is shown as masculine while imagination is equated with femininity. It is often possible to identify a character as female or male by simply judging the behavior of […]

Feminism is for Everybody Themes of Feminism Marriage and Respect Found in a Doll’s House

The late, great Maya Angelou once said, ""You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them."" This idea is one that is clearly embraced my Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House, a dramatic script filled with many heavy themes that leave a reader questioning their views on some rather hot topics. Feminism reigns supreme in the play, as the rights to equality for womankind are demanded, […]

Feminism in the Yellow Wallpaper and the Story of an Hour

Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, the protagonist is described as a woman of the 1800’s facing oppression by male dominance. In comparison, the protagonist from Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour”, experiences the same oppression. Both protagonists are dealing with some type of loss over the course of their short story, but in contrast the effectiveness of their loss differs on opposite ends of the spectrum. Ultimately both protagonists are portrayed as women who experience […]

“Pride and Prejudice” Satire

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is famous for satirizing society's rules and for exaggerating the extent to which they impact people. Although Austen is parodying the class structure in society throughout the whole novel, she is also enforcing the importance of self-awareness. Austen exaggerates the interactions between high and low status people because it ridicules society's rules. She condemns characters like Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine because of their inability to reject society's norms, and rewards Elizabeth because she is […]

Three Waves of Feminism

Women are a huge part of our Nation’s history. From stories of our Great American Heroes, to the patriotic American Flag itself, women have been a driving factor in the uprising of America. There was a time when women did not have rights, Which created the wills of Feminists. Historic Feminists such as Sojourner Truth, Betty Friedan, And Susan B. Anthony are the reason why the country is shaped how it is for women today. Their fight for civil justice […]

Feminism in Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is a critique of gender roles, during the early Victorian era. Brontë clearly reveals her feminist voice before the first wave of the feminist movement, which took place in the late 19th century. Brontë critiques gender roles with the binary appeal of the female and male main and secondary characters, throughout this work. During the early Victorian Era, the world was starting to change at an exponential rate. Traditional values, while still intact, became more flexible and education […]

The Yellow Wallpaper Feminism

Any literary work intends to evoke some profound feelings and impressions that readers link to their personal experience and reality around. Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents a feminist gothic story “The Yellow Wallpaper” that discloses the issues of female suffering and lack of freedom in the patriarchal society that limits women’s choices and desires. The protagonist faces discrimination and neglect that result in her physical and psychological breakdown, broken illusions about self-identity, and madness as a response to inside and outside […]

Feminism in the Handmaid’s Tale

According to the Oxford Dictionary, feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes (Oxford Dictionary). Despite many gender equality laws being passed and feminist movements being initiated in the late twentieth century, women were still struggling to achieve their rights. In the 1980s, a “third wave” of feminism began (Burkett & Brunell), which focused on intersectionality—the idea that women experienced layers of oppression caused by gender inequality (Zack). In interviews given around […]

Women in World War II

Many changes in the United States occurred with the start of World War II. These changes were heavily influenced by society, propaganda, and different kinds of advertising. One major change was the drastic shift of traditionally male jobs being taken over by women as a great number of men went off to fight in the war. This may seem like a step in the right direction for gender equality, but when the war concluded, women were expected to hand their […]

Feminism Represented through Frankenstein Characters

Frankenstein is known all over for being about a monster that loses control and kills people, but no one talks about some of the topics that Mary Shelley portrays in the novel. This book seems male dominant. The females play a big role, but not in the way that big roles are usually played. Women seem to hide from playing a part in Frankenstein, but Mary Shelley finds a way to display feminism in the book and that is how […]

Feminism in Frankenstein

When you hear the name Frankenstein you immediately think of a tall green monster, yet the name that the monster was called by everyone today is not the real name of this monster, it doesn't even have an actual name, Frankenstein is the name of the creator Victor. It may be questioned that why is this long time ago when the monster was created, in 1818 still talked about today. Many people today recreate the story of Frankenstein and tell […]

Short Essay on Feminism

Feminism is defined by the dictionary as “the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes,” but I believe it’s a lot more than that. I believe feminism is a way of life, a way of seeing more than just male and female. It is seeing people as a whole, regardless of their gender. Feminism isn’t only about equality for women, yes it might have started as such, but it opened up our eyes to […]

Dracula: Sexism and Feminism

Bram Stoker’s, Dracula portrays women that are in a vampiric state as more powerful than regular human women. Stoker shows how the women are subordinate by detailing the three sisters, Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray. In this novel their desires and lust are demonstrated from chapter to chapter. Stoker presents the New Woman and the Victorian Woman. Stoker also demonstrates and tells why the Victorian Woman would be the ideal woman for everyone. Sexism and feminism are described in Lucy […]

Elizabeth Stanton’s Impact on Women’s Rights Movement

Abstract For centuries, there have been several social issues that have been resolved by the actions of pioneers who stood for change. Whether the goal was to resolve violent bigotry or give equal rights to those without, these changes were vital in shaping our nation today. With every development in the system, more people became pursuant in advocating for change. The topic that will be discussed in this analysis revolves around the women's rights movement. The greatest advocate for the […]

The Problems with Modern Feminism Today

Since 1920 a society has changed, but have the effects of modern feminism created a counter-productive culture? Our society has taken a turn from worse to increasingly better. There are countless women using terms such as “mansplaining” to try and shut down anything factual that a man has to say (Goodwin 1). The pink tax is built on the belief that women are charged more for products when statistically it’s just marketing. Feminists complain of the gender wage gap, but […]

Beyonce Feminism Independent Woman in her Song

According to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, as used in Beyonce’s song, a feminist is “a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality between the sexes.” Yet, women have always been and still are subject to oppression: in our daily lives, literature, science, and in music. Yes, modern-day girls and women are able to live a much more free and comfortable life than those before us, but we still aren’t equal to our male counterparts. The difference today is […]

Why we Still Need Feminism

Many people think that with how far we gotten in certain aspects that we no longer need feminism but not all women are blessed with these opportunities, many people forget about women in other countries that aren't as progressive like the United states and Canada. There are still societal issues within the modern age. Many people who feel like feminism is no longer needed forgot about women in other countries, those are the women who need it the most because […]

“Their Eyes were Watching God”: Feminism and the Embracement of Self Love

“Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression.”- Bell Hook. This definition is the embodiment of the feminist revolution, which is very prominent in the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. In the novel the main character, Janie, is essentially on a journey to find her true self. Janie is an attractive, confident, middle-aged black woman, who returns to Eatonville after leaving for a long time. She experiences her first loss of innocence […]

Women’s Rights in America

Throughout the sixties until this very day, woman have been actively trying to take charge of their future by securing the same rights that men have. Issues commonly associated with women's rights include the rights to: bodily integrity, to be free from sexual violence, to vote, enter legal contracts, to work, to fair wages or equal pay, to have reproductive rights, own property, obtain an education. The Womens's Rights movement of the 1960's and 1970's has changed the course of […]

Feminism in Medea

Throughout history, the focus of media and literature was on "his"tory and rarely on "her"story. Majority of the protagonist in literature and popular media have been males. Nevertheless, not all works of literature focused on a male protagonist, for example in Euripides "Medea", Medea was portrayed as a strong female protagonist with modern feminist characteristics, she can be rivaled to Odysseus from the great Greek Epic, "The Odyssey" by Homer in terms of the intelligence, a difference between the protagonists' […]

About the Waves of Feminism

Women in the western societies have long fought for their rights and questioned the position the society had chosen to give them. This involved their rights in the political, social and economic spheres of the society which always seemed to favor men and ensured their superiority over women. This paper will discuss the topic of why women have been given less importance in all the important public spheres of the society, the different waves of feminism and how these problems […]

Fashion and Feminism

The late 1700s through early 1800s saw a major shift from huge Victorian dresses with extensive undergarments to thinner Greek-inspired forms. This change occurred as a direct result of America's independence from British rule. The idea behind this shift was to appear less British and more democratic, hence why inspiration was drawn from the democratic Greeks. This led to greater freedom of movement for women, both physically and socially. In 1851, Amelia Bloomer introduced "bloomers," the first form of women's […]

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Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender

Feminism is said to be the movement to end women’s oppression (hooks 2000, 26). One possible way to understand ‘woman’ in this claim is to take it as a sex term: ‘woman’ picks out human females and being a human female depends on various biological and anatomical features (like genitalia). Historically many feminists have understood ‘woman’ differently: not as a sex term, but as a gender term that depends on social and cultural factors (like social position). In so doing, they distinguished sex (being female or male) from gender (being a woman or a man), although most ordinary language users appear to treat the two interchangeably. In feminist philosophy, this distinction has generated a lively debate. Central questions include: What does it mean for gender to be distinct from sex, if anything at all? How should we understand the claim that gender depends on social and/or cultural factors? What does it mean to be gendered woman, man, or genderqueer? This entry outlines and discusses distinctly feminist debates on sex and gender considering both historical and more contemporary positions.

1.1 Biological determinism

1.2 gender terminology, 2.1 gender socialisation, 2.2 gender as feminine and masculine personality, 2.3 gender as feminine and masculine sexuality, 3.1.1 particularity argument, 3.1.2 normativity argument, 3.2 is sex classification solely a matter of biology, 3.3 are sex and gender distinct, 3.4 is the sex/gender distinction useful, 4.1.1 gendered social series, 4.1.2 resemblance nominalism, 4.2.1 social subordination and gender, 4.2.2 gender uniessentialism, 4.2.3 gender as positionality, 5. beyond the binary, 6. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the sex/gender distinction..

The terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ mean different things to different feminist theorists and neither are easy or straightforward to characterise. Sketching out some feminist history of the terms provides a helpful starting point.

Most people ordinarily seem to think that sex and gender are coextensive: women are human females, men are human males. Many feminists have historically disagreed and have endorsed the sex/ gender distinction. Provisionally: ‘sex’ denotes human females and males depending on biological features (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones and other physical features); ‘gender’ denotes women and men depending on social factors (social role, position, behaviour or identity). The main feminist motivation for making this distinction was to counter biological determinism or the view that biology is destiny.

A typical example of a biological determinist view is that of Geddes and Thompson who, in 1889, argued that social, psychological and behavioural traits were caused by metabolic state. Women supposedly conserve energy (being ‘anabolic’) and this makes them passive, conservative, sluggish, stable and uninterested in politics. Men expend their surplus energy (being ‘katabolic’) and this makes them eager, energetic, passionate, variable and, thereby, interested in political and social matters. These biological ‘facts’ about metabolic states were used not only to explain behavioural differences between women and men but also to justify what our social and political arrangements ought to be. More specifically, they were used to argue for withholding from women political rights accorded to men because (according to Geddes and Thompson) “what was decided among the prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by Act of Parliament” (quoted from Moi 1999, 18). It would be inappropriate to grant women political rights, as they are simply not suited to have those rights; it would also be futile since women (due to their biology) would simply not be interested in exercising their political rights. To counter this kind of biological determinism, feminists have argued that behavioural and psychological differences have social, rather than biological, causes. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir famously claimed that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, and that “social discrimination produces in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to be caused by nature” (Beauvoir 1972 [original 1949], 18; for more, see the entry on Simone de Beauvoir ). Commonly observed behavioural traits associated with women and men, then, are not caused by anatomy or chromosomes. Rather, they are culturally learned or acquired.

Although biological determinism of the kind endorsed by Geddes and Thompson is nowadays uncommon, the idea that behavioural and psychological differences between women and men have biological causes has not disappeared. In the 1970s, sex differences were used to argue that women should not become airline pilots since they will be hormonally unstable once a month and, therefore, unable to perform their duties as well as men (Rogers 1999, 11). More recently, differences in male and female brains have been said to explain behavioural differences; in particular, the anatomy of corpus callosum, a bundle of nerves that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres, is thought to be responsible for various psychological and behavioural differences. For instance, in 1992, a Time magazine article surveyed then prominent biological explanations of differences between women and men claiming that women’s thicker corpus callosums could explain what ‘women’s intuition’ is based on and impair women’s ability to perform some specialised visual-spatial skills, like reading maps (Gorman 1992). Anne Fausto-Sterling has questioned the idea that differences in corpus callosums cause behavioural and psychological differences. First, the corpus callosum is a highly variable piece of anatomy; as a result, generalisations about its size, shape and thickness that hold for women and men in general should be viewed with caution. Second, differences in adult human corpus callosums are not found in infants; this may suggest that physical brain differences actually develop as responses to differential treatment. Third, given that visual-spatial skills (like map reading) can be improved by practice, even if women and men’s corpus callosums differ, this does not make the resulting behavioural differences immutable. (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, chapter 5).

In order to distinguish biological differences from social/psychological ones and to talk about the latter, feminists appropriated the term ‘gender’. Psychologists writing on transsexuality were the first to employ gender terminology in this sense. Until the 1960s, ‘gender’ was often used to refer to masculine and feminine words, like le and la in French. However, in order to explain why some people felt that they were ‘trapped in the wrong bodies’, the psychologist Robert Stoller (1968) began using the terms ‘sex’ to pick out biological traits and ‘gender’ to pick out the amount of femininity and masculinity a person exhibited. Although (by and large) a person’s sex and gender complemented each other, separating out these terms seemed to make theoretical sense allowing Stoller to explain the phenomenon of transsexuality: transsexuals’ sex and gender simply don’t match.

Along with psychologists like Stoller, feminists found it useful to distinguish sex and gender. This enabled them to argue that many differences between women and men were socially produced and, therefore, changeable. Gayle Rubin (for instance) uses the phrase ‘sex/gender system’ in order to describe “a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention” (1975, 165). Rubin employed this system to articulate that “part of social life which is the locus of the oppression of women” (1975, 159) describing gender as the “socially imposed division of the sexes” (1975, 179). Rubin’s thought was that although biological differences are fixed, gender differences are the oppressive results of social interventions that dictate how women and men should behave. Women are oppressed as women and “by having to be women” (Rubin 1975, 204). However, since gender is social, it is thought to be mutable and alterable by political and social reform that would ultimately bring an end to women’s subordination. Feminism should aim to create a “genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love” (Rubin 1975, 204).

In some earlier interpretations, like Rubin’s, sex and gender were thought to complement one another. The slogan ‘Gender is the social interpretation of sex’ captures this view. Nicholson calls this ‘the coat-rack view’ of gender: our sexed bodies are like coat racks and “provide the site upon which gender [is] constructed” (1994, 81). Gender conceived of as masculinity and femininity is superimposed upon the ‘coat-rack’ of sex as each society imposes on sexed bodies their cultural conceptions of how males and females should behave. This socially constructs gender differences – or the amount of femininity/masculinity of a person – upon our sexed bodies. That is, according to this interpretation, all humans are either male or female; their sex is fixed. But cultures interpret sexed bodies differently and project different norms on those bodies thereby creating feminine and masculine persons. Distinguishing sex and gender, however, also enables the two to come apart: they are separable in that one can be sexed male and yet be gendered a woman, or vice versa (Haslanger 2000b; Stoljar 1995).

So, this group of feminist arguments against biological determinism suggested that gender differences result from cultural practices and social expectations. Nowadays it is more common to denote this by saying that gender is socially constructed. This means that genders (women and men) and gendered traits (like being nurturing or ambitious) are the “intended or unintended product[s] of a social practice” (Haslanger 1995, 97). But which social practices construct gender, what social construction is and what being of a certain gender amounts to are major feminist controversies. There is no consensus on these issues. (See the entry on intersections between analytic and continental feminism for more on different ways to understand gender.)

2. Gender as socially constructed

One way to interpret Beauvoir’s claim that one is not born but rather becomes a woman is to take it as a claim about gender socialisation: females become women through a process whereby they acquire feminine traits and learn feminine behaviour. Masculinity and femininity are thought to be products of nurture or how individuals are brought up. They are causally constructed (Haslanger 1995, 98): social forces either have a causal role in bringing gendered individuals into existence or (to some substantial sense) shape the way we are qua women and men. And the mechanism of construction is social learning. For instance, Kate Millett takes gender differences to have “essentially cultural, rather than biological bases” that result from differential treatment (1971, 28–9). For her, gender is “the sum total of the parents’, the peers’, and the culture’s notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way of temperament, character, interests, status, worth, gesture, and expression” (Millett 1971, 31). Feminine and masculine gender-norms, however, are problematic in that gendered behaviour conveniently fits with and reinforces women’s subordination so that women are socialised into subordinate social roles: they learn to be passive, ignorant, docile, emotional helpmeets for men (Millett 1971, 26). However, since these roles are simply learned, we can create more equal societies by ‘unlearning’ social roles. That is, feminists should aim to diminish the influence of socialisation.

Social learning theorists hold that a huge array of different influences socialise us as women and men. This being the case, it is extremely difficult to counter gender socialisation. For instance, parents often unconsciously treat their female and male children differently. When parents have been asked to describe their 24- hour old infants, they have done so using gender-stereotypic language: boys are describes as strong, alert and coordinated and girls as tiny, soft and delicate. Parents’ treatment of their infants further reflects these descriptions whether they are aware of this or not (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 32). Some socialisation is more overt: children are often dressed in gender stereotypical clothes and colours (boys are dressed in blue, girls in pink) and parents tend to buy their children gender stereotypical toys. They also (intentionally or not) tend to reinforce certain ‘appropriate’ behaviours. While the precise form of gender socialization has changed since the onset of second-wave feminism, even today girls are discouraged from playing sports like football or from playing ‘rough and tumble’ games and are more likely than boys to be given dolls or cooking toys to play with; boys are told not to ‘cry like a baby’ and are more likely to be given masculine toys like trucks and guns (for more, see Kimmel 2000, 122–126). [ 1 ]

According to social learning theorists, children are also influenced by what they observe in the world around them. This, again, makes countering gender socialisation difficult. For one, children’s books have portrayed males and females in blatantly stereotypical ways: for instance, males as adventurers and leaders, and females as helpers and followers. One way to address gender stereotyping in children’s books has been to portray females in independent roles and males as non-aggressive and nurturing (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 35). Some publishers have attempted an alternative approach by making their characters, for instance, gender-neutral animals or genderless imaginary creatures (like TV’s Teletubbies). However, parents reading books with gender-neutral or genderless characters often undermine the publishers’ efforts by reading them to their children in ways that depict the characters as either feminine or masculine. According to Renzetti and Curran, parents labelled the overwhelming majority of gender-neutral characters masculine whereas those characters that fit feminine gender stereotypes (for instance, by being helpful and caring) were labelled feminine (1992, 35). Socialising influences like these are still thought to send implicit messages regarding how females and males should act and are expected to act shaping us into feminine and masculine persons.

Nancy Chodorow (1978; 1995) has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences (see also Deaux & Major 1990; Gatens 1996). Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices. In particular, gendered personalities develop because women tend to be the primary caretakers of small children. Chodorow holds that because mothers (or other prominent females) tend to care for infants, infant male and female psychic development differs. Crudely put: the mother-daughter relationship differs from the mother-son relationship because mothers are more likely to identify with their daughters than their sons. This unconsciously prompts the mother to encourage her son to psychologically individuate himself from her thereby prompting him to develop well defined and rigid ego boundaries. However, the mother unconsciously discourages the daughter from individuating herself thereby prompting the daughter to develop flexible and blurry ego boundaries. Childhood gender socialisation further builds on and reinforces these unconsciously developed ego boundaries finally producing feminine and masculine persons (1995, 202–206). This perspective has its roots in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, although Chodorow’s approach differs in many ways from Freud’s.

Gendered personalities are supposedly manifested in common gender stereotypical behaviour. Take emotional dependency. Women are stereotypically more emotional and emotionally dependent upon others around them, supposedly finding it difficult to distinguish their own interests and wellbeing from the interests and wellbeing of their children and partners. This is said to be because of their blurry and (somewhat) confused ego boundaries: women find it hard to distinguish their own needs from the needs of those around them because they cannot sufficiently individuate themselves from those close to them. By contrast, men are stereotypically emotionally detached, preferring a career where dispassionate and distanced thinking are virtues. These traits are said to result from men’s well-defined ego boundaries that enable them to prioritise their own needs and interests sometimes at the expense of others’ needs and interests.

Chodorow thinks that these gender differences should and can be changed. Feminine and masculine personalities play a crucial role in women’s oppression since they make females overly attentive to the needs of others and males emotionally deficient. In order to correct the situation, both male and female parents should be equally involved in parenting (Chodorow 1995, 214). This would help in ensuring that children develop sufficiently individuated senses of selves without becoming overly detached, which in turn helps to eradicate common gender stereotypical behaviours.

Catharine MacKinnon develops her theory of gender as a theory of sexuality. Very roughly: the social meaning of sex (gender) is created by sexual objectification of women whereby women are viewed and treated as objects for satisfying men’s desires (MacKinnon 1989). Masculinity is defined as sexual dominance, femininity as sexual submissiveness: genders are “created through the eroticization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex” (MacKinnon 1989, 113). For MacKinnon, gender is constitutively constructed : in defining genders (or masculinity and femininity) we must make reference to social factors (see Haslanger 1995, 98). In particular, we must make reference to the position one occupies in the sexualised dominance/submission dynamic: men occupy the sexually dominant position, women the sexually submissive one. As a result, genders are by definition hierarchical and this hierarchy is fundamentally tied to sexualised power relations. The notion of ‘gender equality’, then, does not make sense to MacKinnon. If sexuality ceased to be a manifestation of dominance, hierarchical genders (that are defined in terms of sexuality) would cease to exist.

So, gender difference for MacKinnon is not a matter of having a particular psychological orientation or behavioural pattern; rather, it is a function of sexuality that is hierarchal in patriarchal societies. This is not to say that men are naturally disposed to sexually objectify women or that women are naturally submissive. Instead, male and female sexualities are socially conditioned: men have been conditioned to find women’s subordination sexy and women have been conditioned to find a particular male version of female sexuality as erotic – one in which it is erotic to be sexually submissive. For MacKinnon, both female and male sexual desires are defined from a male point of view that is conditioned by pornography (MacKinnon 1989, chapter 7). Bluntly put: pornography portrays a false picture of ‘what women want’ suggesting that women in actual fact are and want to be submissive. This conditions men’s sexuality so that they view women’s submission as sexy. And male dominance enforces this male version of sexuality onto women, sometimes by force. MacKinnon’s thought is not that male dominance is a result of social learning (see 2.1.); rather, socialization is an expression of power. That is, socialized differences in masculine and feminine traits, behaviour, and roles are not responsible for power inequalities. Females and males (roughly put) are socialised differently because there are underlying power inequalities. As MacKinnon puts it, ‘dominance’ (power relations) is prior to ‘difference’ (traits, behaviour and roles) (see, MacKinnon 1989, chapter 12). MacKinnon, then, sees legal restrictions on pornography as paramount to ending women’s subordinate status that stems from their gender.

3. Problems with the sex/gender distinction

3.1 is gender uniform.

The positions outlined above share an underlying metaphysical perspective on gender: gender realism . [ 2 ] That is, women as a group are assumed to share some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines their gender and the possession of which makes some individuals women (as opposed to, say, men). All women are thought to differ from all men in this respect (or respects). For example, MacKinnon thought that being treated in sexually objectifying ways is the common condition that defines women’s gender and what women as women share. All women differ from all men in this respect. Further, pointing out females who are not sexually objectified does not provide a counterexample to MacKinnon’s view. Being sexually objectified is constitutive of being a woman; a female who escapes sexual objectification, then, would not count as a woman.

One may want to critique the three accounts outlined by rejecting the particular details of each account. (For instance, see Spelman [1988, chapter 4] for a critique of the details of Chodorow’s view.) A more thoroughgoing critique has been levelled at the general metaphysical perspective of gender realism that underlies these positions. It has come under sustained attack on two grounds: first, that it fails to take into account racial, cultural and class differences between women (particularity argument); second, that it posits a normative ideal of womanhood (normativity argument).

Elizabeth Spelman (1988) has influentially argued against gender realism with her particularity argument. Roughly: gender realists mistakenly assume that gender is constructed independently of race, class, ethnicity and nationality. If gender were separable from, for example, race and class in this manner, all women would experience womanhood in the same way. And this is clearly false. For instance, Harris (1993) and Stone (2007) criticise MacKinnon’s view, that sexual objectification is the common condition that defines women’s gender, for failing to take into account differences in women’s backgrounds that shape their sexuality. The history of racist oppression illustrates that during slavery black women were ‘hypersexualised’ and thought to be always sexually available whereas white women were thought to be pure and sexually virtuous. In fact, the rape of a black woman was thought to be impossible (Harris 1993). So, (the argument goes) sexual objectification cannot serve as the common condition for womanhood since it varies considerably depending on one’s race and class. [ 3 ]

For Spelman, the perspective of ‘white solipsism’ underlies gender realists’ mistake. They assumed that all women share some “golden nugget of womanness” (Spelman 1988, 159) and that the features constitutive of such a nugget are the same for all women regardless of their particular cultural backgrounds. Next, white Western middle-class feminists accounted for the shared features simply by reflecting on the cultural features that condition their gender as women thus supposing that “the womanness underneath the Black woman’s skin is a white woman’s, and deep down inside the Latina woman is an Anglo woman waiting to burst through an obscuring cultural shroud” (Spelman 1988, 13). In so doing, Spelman claims, white middle-class Western feminists passed off their particular view of gender as “a metaphysical truth” (1988, 180) thereby privileging some women while marginalising others. In failing to see the importance of race and class in gender construction, white middle-class Western feminists conflated “the condition of one group of women with the condition of all” (Spelman 1988, 3).

Betty Friedan’s (1963) well-known work is a case in point of white solipsism. [ 4 ] Friedan saw domesticity as the main vehicle of gender oppression and called upon women in general to find jobs outside the home. But she failed to realize that women from less privileged backgrounds, often poor and non-white, already worked outside the home to support their families. Friedan’s suggestion, then, was applicable only to a particular sub-group of women (white middle-class Western housewives). But it was mistakenly taken to apply to all women’s lives — a mistake that was generated by Friedan’s failure to take women’s racial and class differences into account (hooks 2000, 1–3).

Spelman further holds that since social conditioning creates femininity and societies (and sub-groups) that condition it differ from one another, femininity must be differently conditioned in different societies. For her, “females become not simply women but particular kinds of women” (Spelman 1988, 113): white working-class women, black middle-class women, poor Jewish women, wealthy aristocratic European women, and so on.

This line of thought has been extremely influential in feminist philosophy. For instance, Young holds that Spelman has definitively shown that gender realism is untenable (1997, 13). Mikkola (2006) argues that this isn’t so. The arguments Spelman makes do not undermine the idea that there is some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines women’s gender; they simply point out that some particular ways of cashing out what defines womanhood are misguided. So, although Spelman is right to reject those accounts that falsely take the feature that conditions white middle-class Western feminists’ gender to condition women’s gender in general, this leaves open the possibility that women qua women do share something that defines their gender. (See also Haslanger [2000a] for a discussion of why gender realism is not necessarily untenable, and Stoljar [2011] for a discussion of Mikkola’s critique of Spelman.)

Judith Butler critiques the sex/gender distinction on two grounds. They critique gender realism with their normativity argument (1999 [original 1990], chapter 1); they also hold that the sex/gender distinction is unintelligible (this will be discussed in section 3.3.). Butler’s normativity argument is not straightforwardly directed at the metaphysical perspective of gender realism, but rather at its political counterpart: identity politics. This is a form of political mobilization based on membership in some group (e.g. racial, ethnic, cultural, gender) and group membership is thought to be delimited by some common experiences, conditions or features that define the group (Heyes 2000, 58; see also the entry on Identity Politics ). Feminist identity politics, then, presupposes gender realism in that feminist politics is said to be mobilized around women as a group (or category) where membership in this group is fixed by some condition, experience or feature that women supposedly share and that defines their gender.

Butler’s normativity argument makes two claims. The first is akin to Spelman’s particularity argument: unitary gender notions fail to take differences amongst women into account thus failing to recognise “the multiplicity of cultural, social, and political intersections in which the concrete array of ‘women’ are constructed” (Butler 1999, 19–20). In their attempt to undercut biologically deterministic ways of defining what it means to be a woman, feminists inadvertently created new socially constructed accounts of supposedly shared femininity. Butler’s second claim is that such false gender realist accounts are normative. That is, in their attempt to fix feminism’s subject matter, feminists unwittingly defined the term ‘woman’ in a way that implies there is some correct way to be gendered a woman (Butler 1999, 5). That the definition of the term ‘woman’ is fixed supposedly “operates as a policing force which generates and legitimizes certain practices, experiences, etc., and curtails and delegitimizes others” (Nicholson 1998, 293). Following this line of thought, one could say that, for instance, Chodorow’s view of gender suggests that ‘real’ women have feminine personalities and that these are the women feminism should be concerned about. If one does not exhibit a distinctly feminine personality, the implication is that one is not ‘really’ a member of women’s category nor does one properly qualify for feminist political representation.

Butler’s second claim is based on their view that“[i]dentity categories [like that of women] are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary” (Butler 1991, 160). That is, the mistake of those feminists Butler critiques was not that they provided the incorrect definition of ‘woman’. Rather, (the argument goes) their mistake was to attempt to define the term ‘woman’ at all. Butler’s view is that ‘woman’ can never be defined in a way that does not prescribe some “unspoken normative requirements” (like having a feminine personality) that women should conform to (Butler 1999, 9). Butler takes this to be a feature of terms like ‘woman’ that purport to pick out (what they call) ‘identity categories’. They seem to assume that ‘woman’ can never be used in a non-ideological way (Moi 1999, 43) and that it will always encode conditions that are not satisfied by everyone we think of as women. Some explanation for this comes from Butler’s view that all processes of drawing categorical distinctions involve evaluative and normative commitments; these in turn involve the exercise of power and reflect the conditions of those who are socially powerful (Witt 1995).

In order to better understand Butler’s critique, consider their account of gender performativity. For them, standard feminist accounts take gendered individuals to have some essential properties qua gendered individuals or a gender core by virtue of which one is either a man or a woman. This view assumes that women and men, qua women and men, are bearers of various essential and accidental attributes where the former secure gendered persons’ persistence through time as so gendered. But according to Butler this view is false: (i) there are no such essential properties, and (ii) gender is an illusion maintained by prevalent power structures. First, feminists are said to think that genders are socially constructed in that they have the following essential attributes (Butler 1999, 24): women are females with feminine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at men; men are males with masculine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at women. These are the attributes necessary for gendered individuals and those that enable women and men to persist through time as women and men. Individuals have “intelligible genders” (Butler 1999, 23) if they exhibit this sequence of traits in a coherent manner (where sexual desire follows from sexual orientation that in turn follows from feminine/ masculine behaviours thought to follow from biological sex). Social forces in general deem individuals who exhibit in coherent gender sequences (like lesbians) to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ and they actively discourage such sequencing of traits, for instance, via name-calling and overt homophobic discrimination. Think back to what was said above: having a certain conception of what women are like that mirrors the conditions of socially powerful (white, middle-class, heterosexual, Western) women functions to marginalize and police those who do not fit this conception.

These gender cores, supposedly encoding the above traits, however, are nothing more than illusions created by ideals and practices that seek to render gender uniform through heterosexism, the view that heterosexuality is natural and homosexuality is deviant (Butler 1999, 42). Gender cores are constructed as if they somehow naturally belong to women and men thereby creating gender dimorphism or the belief that one must be either a masculine male or a feminine female. But gender dimorphism only serves a heterosexist social order by implying that since women and men are sharply opposed, it is natural to sexually desire the opposite sex or gender.

Further, being feminine and desiring men (for instance) are standardly assumed to be expressions of one’s gender as a woman. Butler denies this and holds that gender is really performative. It is not “a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is … instituted … through a stylized repetition of [habitual] acts ” (Butler 1999, 179): through wearing certain gender-coded clothing, walking and sitting in certain gender-coded ways, styling one’s hair in gender-coded manner and so on. Gender is not something one is, it is something one does; it is a sequence of acts, a doing rather than a being. And repeatedly engaging in ‘feminising’ and ‘masculinising’ acts congeals gender thereby making people falsely think of gender as something they naturally are . Gender only comes into being through these gendering acts: a female who has sex with men does not express her gender as a woman. This activity (amongst others) makes her gendered a woman.

The constitutive acts that gender individuals create genders as “compelling illusion[s]” (Butler 1990, 271). Our gendered classification scheme is a strong pragmatic construction : social factors wholly determine our use of the scheme and the scheme fails to represent accurately any ‘facts of the matter’ (Haslanger 1995, 100). People think that there are true and real genders, and those deemed to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ are not socially sanctioned. But, genders are true and real only to the extent that they are performed (Butler 1990, 278–9). It does not make sense, then, to say of a male-to-female trans person that s/he is really a man who only appears to be a woman. Instead, males dressing up and acting in ways that are associated with femininity “show that [as Butler suggests] ‘being’ feminine is just a matter of doing certain activities” (Stone 2007, 64). As a result, the trans person’s gender is just as real or true as anyone else’s who is a ‘traditionally’ feminine female or masculine male (Butler 1990, 278). [ 5 ] Without heterosexism that compels people to engage in certain gendering acts, there would not be any genders at all. And ultimately the aim should be to abolish norms that compel people to act in these gendering ways.

For Butler, given that gender is performative, the appropriate response to feminist identity politics involves two things. First, feminists should understand ‘woman’ as open-ended and “a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or end … it is open to intervention and resignification” (Butler 1999, 43). That is, feminists should not try to define ‘woman’ at all. Second, the category of women “ought not to be the foundation of feminist politics” (Butler 1999, 9). Rather, feminists should focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement.

Many people, including many feminists, have ordinarily taken sex ascriptions to be solely a matter of biology with no social or cultural dimension. It is commonplace to think that there are only two sexes and that biological sex classifications are utterly unproblematic. By contrast, some feminists have argued that sex classifications are not unproblematic and that they are not solely a matter of biology. In order to make sense of this, it is helpful to distinguish object- and idea-construction (see Haslanger 2003b for more): social forces can be said to construct certain kinds of objects (e.g. sexed bodies or gendered individuals) and certain kinds of ideas (e.g. sex or gender concepts). First, take the object-construction of sexed bodies. Secondary sex characteristics, or the physiological and biological features commonly associated with males and females, are affected by social practices. In some societies, females’ lower social status has meant that they have been fed less and so, the lack of nutrition has had the effect of making them smaller in size (Jaggar 1983, 37). Uniformity in muscular shape, size and strength within sex categories is not caused entirely by biological factors, but depends heavily on exercise opportunities: if males and females were allowed the same exercise opportunities and equal encouragement to exercise, it is thought that bodily dimorphism would diminish (Fausto-Sterling 1993a, 218). A number of medical phenomena involving bones (like osteoporosis) have social causes directly related to expectations about gender, women’s diet and their exercise opportunities (Fausto-Sterling 2005). These examples suggest that physiological features thought to be sex-specific traits not affected by social and cultural factors are, after all, to some extent products of social conditioning. Social conditioning, then, shapes our biology.

Second, take the idea-construction of sex concepts. Our concept of sex is said to be a product of social forces in the sense that what counts as sex is shaped by social meanings. Standardly, those with XX-chromosomes, ovaries that produce large egg cells, female genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘female’ hormones, and other secondary sex characteristics (relatively small body size, less body hair) count as biologically female. Those with XY-chromosomes, testes that produce small sperm cells, male genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘male’ hormones and other secondary sex traits (relatively large body size, significant amounts of body hair) count as male. This understanding is fairly recent. The prevalent scientific view from Ancient Greeks until the late 18 th century, did not consider female and male sexes to be distinct categories with specific traits; instead, a ‘one-sex model’ held that males and females were members of the same sex category. Females’ genitals were thought to be the same as males’ but simply directed inside the body; ovaries and testes (for instance) were referred to by the same term and whether the term referred to the former or the latter was made clear by the context (Laqueur 1990, 4). It was not until the late 1700s that scientists began to think of female and male anatomies as radically different moving away from the ‘one-sex model’ of a single sex spectrum to the (nowadays prevalent) ‘two-sex model’ of sexual dimorphism. (For an alternative view, see King 2013.)

Fausto-Sterling has argued that this ‘two-sex model’ isn’t straightforward either (1993b; 2000a; 2000b). Based on a meta-study of empirical medical research, she estimates that 1.7% of population fail to neatly fall within the usual sex classifications possessing various combinations of different sex characteristics (Fausto-Sterling 2000a, 20). In her earlier work, she claimed that intersex individuals make up (at least) three further sex classes: ‘herms’ who possess one testis and one ovary; ‘merms’ who possess testes, some aspects of female genitalia but no ovaries; and ‘ferms’ who have ovaries, some aspects of male genitalia but no testes (Fausto-Sterling 1993b, 21). (In her [2000a], Fausto-Sterling notes that these labels were put forward tongue–in–cheek.) Recognition of intersex people suggests that feminists (and society at large) are wrong to think that humans are either female or male.

To illustrate further the idea-construction of sex, consider the case of the athlete Maria Patiño. Patiño has female genitalia, has always considered herself to be female and was considered so by others. However, she was discovered to have XY chromosomes and was barred from competing in women’s sports (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, 1–3). Patiño’s genitalia were at odds with her chromosomes and the latter were taken to determine her sex. Patiño successfully fought to be recognised as a female athlete arguing that her chromosomes alone were not sufficient to not make her female. Intersex people, like Patiño, illustrate that our understandings of sex differ and suggest that there is no immediately obvious way to settle what sex amounts to purely biologically or scientifically. Deciding what sex is involves evaluative judgements that are influenced by social factors.

Insofar as our cultural conceptions affect our understandings of sex, feminists must be much more careful about sex classifications and rethink what sex amounts to (Stone 2007, chapter 1). More specifically, intersex people illustrate that sex traits associated with females and males need not always go together and that individuals can have some mixture of these traits. This suggests to Stone that sex is a cluster concept: it is sufficient to satisfy enough of the sex features that tend to cluster together in order to count as being of a particular sex. But, one need not satisfy all of those features or some arbitrarily chosen supposedly necessary sex feature, like chromosomes (Stone 2007, 44). This makes sex a matter of degree and sex classifications should take place on a spectrum: one can be more or less female/male but there is no sharp distinction between the two. Further, intersex people (along with trans people) are located at the centre of the sex spectrum and in many cases their sex will be indeterminate (Stone 2007).

More recently, Ayala and Vasilyeva (2015) have argued for an inclusive and extended conception of sex: just as certain tools can be seen to extend our minds beyond the limits of our brains (e.g. white canes), other tools (like dildos) can extend our sex beyond our bodily boundaries. This view aims to motivate the idea that what counts as sex should not be determined by looking inwards at genitalia or other anatomical features. In a different vein, Ásta (2018) argues that sex is a conferred social property. This follows her more general conferralist framework to analyse all social properties: properties that are conferred by others thereby generating a social status that consists in contextually specific constraints and enablements on individual behaviour. The general schema for conferred properties is as follows (Ásta 2018, 8):

Conferred property: what property is conferred. Who: who the subjects are. What: what attitude, state, or action of the subjects matter. When: under what conditions the conferral takes place. Base property: what the subjects are attempting to track (consciously or not), if anything.

With being of a certain sex (e.g. male, female) in mind, Ásta holds that it is a conferred property that merely aims to track physical features. Hence sex is a social – or in fact, an institutional – property rather than a natural one. The schema for sex goes as follows (72):

Conferred property: being female, male. Who: legal authorities, drawing on the expert opinion of doctors, other medical personnel. What: “the recording of a sex in official documents ... The judgment of the doctors (and others) as to what sex role might be the most fitting, given the biological characteristics present.” When: at birth or after surgery/ hormonal treatment. Base property: “the aim is to track as many sex-stereotypical characteristics as possible, and doctors perform surgery in cases where that might help bring the physical characteristics more in line with the stereotype of male and female.”

This (among other things) offers a debunking analysis of sex: it may appear to be a natural property, but on the conferralist analysis is better understood as a conferred legal status. Ásta holds that gender too is a conferred property, but contra the discussion in the following section, she does not think that this collapses the distinction between sex and gender: sex and gender are differently conferred albeit both satisfying the general schema noted above. Nonetheless, on the conferralist framework what underlies both sex and gender is the idea of social construction as social significance: sex-stereotypical characteristics are taken to be socially significant context specifically, whereby they become the basis for conferring sex onto individuals and this brings with it various constraints and enablements on individuals and their behaviour. This fits object- and idea-constructions introduced above, although offers a different general framework to analyse the matter at hand.

In addition to arguing against identity politics and for gender performativity, Butler holds that distinguishing biological sex from social gender is unintelligible. For them, both are socially constructed:

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. (Butler 1999, 10–11)

(Butler is not alone in claiming that there are no tenable distinctions between nature/culture, biology/construction and sex/gender. See also: Antony 1998; Gatens 1996; Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999.) Butler makes two different claims in the passage cited: that sex is a social construction, and that sex is gender. To unpack their view, consider the two claims in turn. First, the idea that sex is a social construct, for Butler, boils down to the view that our sexed bodies are also performative and, so, they have “no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute [their] reality” (1999, 173). Prima facie , this implausibly implies that female and male bodies do not have independent existence and that if gendering activities ceased, so would physical bodies. This is not Butler’s claim; rather, their position is that bodies viewed as the material foundations on which gender is constructed, are themselves constructed as if they provide such material foundations (Butler 1993). Cultural conceptions about gender figure in “the very apparatus of production whereby sexes themselves are established” (Butler 1999, 11).

For Butler, sexed bodies never exist outside social meanings and how we understand gender shapes how we understand sex (1999, 139). Sexed bodies are not empty matter on which gender is constructed and sex categories are not picked out on the basis of objective features of the world. Instead, our sexed bodies are themselves discursively constructed : they are the way they are, at least to a substantial extent, because of what is attributed to sexed bodies and how they are classified (for discursive construction, see Haslanger 1995, 99). Sex assignment (calling someone female or male) is normative (Butler 1993, 1). [ 6 ] When the doctor calls a newly born infant a girl or a boy, s/he is not making a descriptive claim, but a normative one. In fact, the doctor is performing an illocutionary speech act (see the entry on Speech Acts ). In effect, the doctor’s utterance makes infants into girls or boys. We, then, engage in activities that make it seem as if sexes naturally come in two and that being female or male is an objective feature of the world, rather than being a consequence of certain constitutive acts (that is, rather than being performative). And this is what Butler means in saying that physical bodies never exist outside cultural and social meanings, and that sex is as socially constructed as gender. They do not deny that physical bodies exist. But, they take our understanding of this existence to be a product of social conditioning: social conditioning makes the existence of physical bodies intelligible to us by discursively constructing sexed bodies through certain constitutive acts. (For a helpful introduction to Butler’s views, see Salih 2002.)

For Butler, sex assignment is always in some sense oppressive. Again, this appears to be because of Butler’s general suspicion of classification: sex classification can never be merely descriptive but always has a normative element reflecting evaluative claims of those who are powerful. Conducting a feminist genealogy of the body (or examining why sexed bodies are thought to come naturally as female and male), then, should ground feminist practice (Butler 1993, 28–9). Feminists should examine and uncover ways in which social construction and certain acts that constitute sex shape our understandings of sexed bodies, what kinds of meanings bodies acquire and which practices and illocutionary speech acts ‘make’ our bodies into sexes. Doing so enables feminists to identity how sexed bodies are socially constructed in order to resist such construction.

However, given what was said above, it is far from obvious what we should make of Butler’s claim that sex “was always already gender” (1999, 11). Stone (2007) takes this to mean that sex is gender but goes on to question it arguing that the social construction of both sex and gender does not make sex identical to gender. According to Stone, it would be more accurate for Butler to say that claims about sex imply gender norms. That is, many claims about sex traits (like ‘females are physically weaker than males’) actually carry implications about how women and men are expected to behave. To some extent the claim describes certain facts. But, it also implies that females are not expected to do much heavy lifting and that they would probably not be good at it. So, claims about sex are not identical to claims about gender; rather, they imply claims about gender norms (Stone 2007, 70).

Some feminists hold that the sex/gender distinction is not useful. For a start, it is thought to reflect politically problematic dualistic thinking that undercuts feminist aims: the distinction is taken to reflect and replicate androcentric oppositions between (for instance) mind/body, culture/nature and reason/emotion that have been used to justify women’s oppression (e.g. Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The thought is that in oppositions like these, one term is always superior to the other and that the devalued term is usually associated with women (Lloyd 1993). For instance, human subjectivity and agency are identified with the mind but since women are usually identified with their bodies, they are devalued as human subjects and agents. The opposition between mind and body is said to further map on to other distinctions, like reason/emotion, culture/nature, rational/irrational, where one side of each distinction is devalued (one’s bodily features are usually valued less that one’s mind, rationality is usually valued more than irrationality) and women are associated with the devalued terms: they are thought to be closer to bodily features and nature than men, to be irrational, emotional and so on. This is said to be evident (for instance) in job interviews. Men are treated as gender-neutral persons and not asked whether they are planning to take time off to have a family. By contrast, that women face such queries illustrates that they are associated more closely than men with bodily features to do with procreation (Prokhovnik 1999, 126). The opposition between mind and body, then, is thought to map onto the opposition between men and women.

Now, the mind/body dualism is also said to map onto the sex/gender distinction (Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The idea is that gender maps onto mind, sex onto body. Although not used by those endorsing this view, the basic idea can be summed by the slogan ‘Gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs’: the implication is that, while sex is immutable, gender is something individuals have control over – it is something we can alter and change through individual choices. However, since women are said to be more closely associated with biological features (and so, to map onto the body side of the mind/body distinction) and men are treated as gender-neutral persons (mapping onto the mind side), the implication is that “man equals gender, which is associated with mind and choice, freedom from body, autonomy, and with the public real; while woman equals sex, associated with the body, reproduction, ‘natural’ rhythms and the private realm” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). This is said to render the sex/gender distinction inherently repressive and to drain it of any potential for emancipation: rather than facilitating gender role choice for women, it “actually functions to reinforce their association with body, sex, and involuntary ‘natural’ rhythms” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). Contrary to what feminists like Rubin argued, the sex/gender distinction cannot be used as a theoretical tool that dissociates conceptions of womanhood from biological and reproductive features.

Moi has further argued that the sex/gender distinction is useless given certain theoretical goals (1999, chapter 1). This is not to say that it is utterly worthless; according to Moi, the sex/gender distinction worked well to show that the historically prevalent biological determinism was false. However, for her, the distinction does no useful work “when it comes to producing a good theory of subjectivity” (1999, 6) and “a concrete, historical understanding of what it means to be a woman (or a man) in a given society” (1999, 4–5). That is, the 1960s distinction understood sex as fixed by biology without any cultural or historical dimensions. This understanding, however, ignores lived experiences and embodiment as aspects of womanhood (and manhood) by separating sex from gender and insisting that womanhood is to do with the latter. Rather, embodiment must be included in one’s theory that tries to figure out what it is to be a woman (or a man).

Mikkola (2011) argues that the sex/gender distinction, which underlies views like Rubin’s and MacKinnon’s, has certain unintuitive and undesirable ontological commitments that render the distinction politically unhelpful. First, claiming that gender is socially constructed implies that the existence of women and men is a mind-dependent matter. This suggests that we can do away with women and men simply by altering some social practices, conventions or conditions on which gender depends (whatever those are). However, ordinary social agents find this unintuitive given that (ordinarily) sex and gender are not distinguished. Second, claiming that gender is a product of oppressive social forces suggests that doing away with women and men should be feminism’s political goal. But this harbours ontologically undesirable commitments since many ordinary social agents view their gender to be a source of positive value. So, feminism seems to want to do away with something that should not be done away with, which is unlikely to motivate social agents to act in ways that aim at gender justice. Given these problems, Mikkola argues that feminists should give up the distinction on practical political grounds.

Tomas Bogardus (2020) has argued in an even more radical sense against the sex/gender distinction: as things stand, he holds, feminist philosophers have merely assumed and asserted that the distinction exists, instead of having offered good arguments for the distinction. In other words, feminist philosophers allegedly have yet to offer good reasons to think that ‘woman’ does not simply pick out adult human females. Alex Byrne (2020) argues in a similar vein: the term ‘woman’ does not pick out a social kind as feminist philosophers have “assumed”. Instead, “women are adult human females–nothing more, and nothing less” (2020, 3801). Byrne offers six considerations to ground this AHF (adult, human, female) conception.

It reproduces the dictionary definition of ‘woman’.
One would expect English to have a word that picks out the category adult human female, and ‘woman’ is the only candidate.
AHF explains how we sometimes know that an individual is a woman, despite knowing nothing else relevant about her other than the fact that she is an adult human female.
AHF stands or falls with the analogous thesis for girls, which can be supported independently.
AHF predicts the correct verdict in cases of gender role reversal.
AHF is supported by the fact that ‘woman’ and ‘female’ are often appropriately used as stylistic variants of each other, even in hyperintensional contexts.

Robin Dembroff (2021) responds to Byrne and highlights various problems with Byrne’s argument. First, framing: Byrne assumes from the start that gender terms like ‘woman’ have a single invariant meaning thereby failing to discuss the possibility of terms like ‘woman’ having multiple meanings – something that is a familiar claim made by feminist theorists from various disciplines. Moreover, Byrne (according to Dembroff) assumes without argument that there is a single, universal category of woman – again, something that has been extensively discussed and critiqued by feminist philosophers and theorists. Second, Byrne’s conception of the ‘dominant’ meaning of woman is said to be cherry-picked and it ignores a wealth of contexts outside of philosophy (like the media and the law) where ‘woman’ has a meaning other than AHF . Third, Byrne’s own distinction between biological and social categories fails to establish what he intended to establish: namely, that ‘woman’ picks out a biological rather than a social kind. Hence, Dembroff holds, Byrne’s case fails by its own lights. Byrne (2021) responds to Dembroff’s critique.

Others such as ‘gender critical feminists’ also hold views about the sex/gender distinction in a spirit similar to Bogardus and Byrne. For example, Holly Lawford-Smith (2021) takes the prevalent sex/gender distinction, where ‘female’/‘male’ are used as sex terms and ‘woman’/’man’ as gender terms, not to be helpful. Instead, she takes all of these to be sex terms and holds that (the norms of) femininity/masculinity refer to gender normativity. Because much of the gender critical feminists’ discussion that philosophers have engaged in has taken place in social media, public fora, and other sources outside academic philosophy, this entry will not focus on these discussions.

4. Women as a group

The various critiques of the sex/gender distinction have called into question the viability of the category women . Feminism is the movement to end the oppression women as a group face. But, how should the category of women be understood if feminists accept the above arguments that gender construction is not uniform, that a sharp distinction between biological sex and social gender is false or (at least) not useful, and that various features associated with women play a role in what it is to be a woman, none of which are individually necessary and jointly sufficient (like a variety of social roles, positions, behaviours, traits, bodily features and experiences)? Feminists must be able to address cultural and social differences in gender construction if feminism is to be a genuinely inclusive movement and be careful not to posit commonalities that mask important ways in which women qua women differ. These concerns (among others) have generated a situation where (as Linda Alcoff puts it) feminists aim to speak and make political demands in the name of women, at the same time rejecting the idea that there is a unified category of women (2006, 152). If feminist critiques of the category women are successful, then what (if anything) binds women together, what is it to be a woman, and what kinds of demands can feminists make on behalf of women?

Many have found the fragmentation of the category of women problematic for political reasons (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Bach 2012; Benhabib 1992; Frye 1996; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Martin 1994; Mikkola 2007; Stoljar 1995; Stone 2004; Tanesini 1996; Young 1997; Zack 2005). For instance, Young holds that accounts like Spelman’s reduce the category of women to a gerrymandered collection of individuals with nothing to bind them together (1997, 20). Black women differ from white women but members of both groups also differ from one another with respect to nationality, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and economic position; that is, wealthy white women differ from working-class white women due to their economic and class positions. These sub-groups are themselves diverse: for instance, some working-class white women in Northern Ireland are starkly divided along religious lines. So if we accept Spelman’s position, we risk ending up with individual women and nothing to bind them together. And this is problematic: in order to respond to oppression of women in general, feminists must understand them as a category in some sense. Young writes that without doing so “it is not possible to conceptualize oppression as a systematic, structured, institutional process” (1997, 17). Some, then, take the articulation of an inclusive category of women to be the prerequisite for effective feminist politics and a rich literature has emerged that aims to conceptualise women as a group or a collective (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Ásta 2011; Frye 1996; 2011; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Stoljar 1995, 2011; Young 1997; Zack 2005). Articulations of this category can be divided into those that are: (a) gender nominalist — positions that deny there is something women qua women share and that seek to unify women’s social kind by appealing to something external to women; and (b) gender realist — positions that take there to be something women qua women share (although these realist positions differ significantly from those outlined in Section 2). Below we will review some influential gender nominalist and gender realist positions. Before doing so, it is worth noting that not everyone is convinced that attempts to articulate an inclusive category of women can succeed or that worries about what it is to be a woman are in need of being resolved. Mikkola (2016) argues that feminist politics need not rely on overcoming (what she calls) the ‘gender controversy’: that feminists must settle the meaning of gender concepts and articulate a way to ground women’s social kind membership. As she sees it, disputes about ‘what it is to be a woman’ have become theoretically bankrupt and intractable, which has generated an analytical impasse that looks unsurpassable. Instead, Mikkola argues for giving up the quest, which in any case in her view poses no serious political obstacles.

Elizabeth Barnes (2020) responds to the need to offer an inclusive conception of gender somewhat differently, although she endorses the need for feminism to be inclusive particularly of trans people. Barnes holds that typically philosophical theories of gender aim to offer an account of what it is to be a woman (or man, genderqueer, etc.), where such an account is presumed to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for being a woman or an account of our gender terms’ extensions. But, she holds, it is a mistake to expect our theories of gender to do so. For Barnes, a project that offers a metaphysics of gender “should be understood as the project of theorizing what it is —if anything— about the social world that ultimately explains gender” (2020, 706). This project is not equivalent to one that aims to define gender terms or elucidate the application conditions for natural language gender terms though.

4.1 Gender nominalism

Iris Young argues that unless there is “some sense in which ‘woman’ is the name of a social collective [that feminism represents], there is nothing specific to feminist politics” (1997, 13). In order to make the category women intelligible, she argues that women make up a series: a particular kind of social collective “whose members are unified passively by the objects their actions are oriented around and/or by the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the other” (Young 1997, 23). A series is distinct from a group in that, whereas members of groups are thought to self-consciously share certain goals, projects, traits and/ or self-conceptions, members of series pursue their own individual ends without necessarily having anything at all in common. Young holds that women are not bound together by a shared feature or experience (or set of features and experiences) since she takes Spelman’s particularity argument to have established definitely that no such feature exists (1997, 13; see also: Frye 1996; Heyes 2000). Instead, women’s category is unified by certain practico-inert realities or the ways in which women’s lives and their actions are oriented around certain objects and everyday realities (Young 1997, 23–4). For example, bus commuters make up a series unified through their individual actions being organised around the same practico-inert objects of the bus and the practice of public transport. Women make up a series unified through women’s lives and actions being organised around certain practico-inert objects and realities that position them as women .

Young identifies two broad groups of such practico-inert objects and realities. First, phenomena associated with female bodies (physical facts), biological processes that take place in female bodies (menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) and social rules associated with these biological processes (social rules of menstruation, for instance). Second, gender-coded objects and practices: pronouns, verbal and visual representations of gender, gender-coded artefacts and social spaces, clothes, cosmetics, tools and furniture. So, women make up a series since their lives and actions are organised around female bodies and certain gender-coded objects. Their series is bound together passively and the unity is “not one that arises from the individuals called women” (Young 1997, 32).

Although Young’s proposal purports to be a response to Spelman’s worries, Stone has questioned whether it is, after all, susceptible to the particularity argument: ultimately, on Young’s view, something women as women share (their practico-inert realities) binds them together (Stone 2004).

Natalie Stoljar holds that unless the category of women is unified, feminist action on behalf of women cannot be justified (1995, 282). Stoljar too is persuaded by the thought that women qua women do not share anything unitary. This prompts her to argue for resemblance nominalism. This is the view that a certain kind of resemblance relation holds between entities of a particular type (for more on resemblance nominalism, see Armstrong 1989, 39–58). Stoljar is not alone in arguing for resemblance relations to make sense of women as a category; others have also done so, usually appealing to Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ relations (Alcoff 1988; Green & Radford Curry 1991; Heyes 2000; Munro 2006). Stoljar relies more on Price’s resemblance nominalism whereby x is a member of some type F only if x resembles some paradigm or exemplar of F sufficiently closely (Price 1953, 20). For instance, the type of red entities is unified by some chosen red paradigms so that only those entities that sufficiently resemble the paradigms count as red. The type (or category) of women, then, is unified by some chosen woman paradigms so that those who sufficiently resemble the woman paradigms count as women (Stoljar 1995, 284).

Semantic considerations about the concept woman suggest to Stoljar that resemblance nominalism should be endorsed (Stoljar 2000, 28). It seems unlikely that the concept is applied on the basis of some single social feature all and only women possess. By contrast, woman is a cluster concept and our attributions of womanhood pick out “different arrangements of features in different individuals” (Stoljar 2000, 27). More specifically, they pick out the following clusters of features: (a) Female sex; (b) Phenomenological features: menstruation, female sexual experience, child-birth, breast-feeding, fear of walking on the streets at night or fear of rape; (c) Certain roles: wearing typically female clothing, being oppressed on the basis of one’s sex or undertaking care-work; (d) Gender attribution: “calling oneself a woman, being called a woman” (Stoljar 1995, 283–4). For Stoljar, attributions of womanhood are to do with a variety of traits and experiences: those that feminists have historically termed ‘gender traits’ (like social, behavioural, psychological traits) and those termed ‘sex traits’. Nonetheless, she holds that since the concept woman applies to (at least some) trans persons, one can be a woman without being female (Stoljar 1995, 282).

The cluster concept woman does not, however, straightforwardly provide the criterion for picking out the category of women. Rather, the four clusters of features that the concept picks out help single out woman paradigms that in turn help single out the category of women. First, any individual who possesses a feature from at least three of the four clusters mentioned will count as an exemplar of the category. For instance, an African-American with primary and secondary female sex characteristics, who describes herself as a woman and is oppressed on the basis of her sex, along with a white European hermaphrodite brought up ‘as a girl’, who engages in female roles and has female phenomenological features despite lacking female sex characteristics, will count as woman paradigms (Stoljar 1995, 284). [ 7 ] Second, any individual who resembles “any of the paradigms sufficiently closely (on Price’s account, as closely as [the paradigms] resemble each other) will be a member of the resemblance class ‘woman’” (Stoljar 1995, 284). That is, what delimits membership in the category of women is that one resembles sufficiently a woman paradigm.

4.2 Neo-gender realism

In a series of articles collected in her 2012 book, Sally Haslanger argues for a way to define the concept woman that is politically useful, serving as a tool in feminist fights against sexism, and that shows woman to be a social (not a biological) notion. More specifically, Haslanger argues that gender is a matter of occupying either a subordinate or a privileged social position. In some articles, Haslanger is arguing for a revisionary analysis of the concept woman (2000b; 2003a; 2003b). Elsewhere she suggests that her analysis may not be that revisionary after all (2005; 2006). Consider the former argument first. Haslanger’s analysis is, in her terms, ameliorative: it aims to elucidate which gender concepts best help feminists achieve their legitimate purposes thereby elucidating those concepts feminists should be using (Haslanger 2000b, 33). [ 8 ] Now, feminists need gender terminology in order to fight sexist injustices (Haslanger 2000b, 36). In particular, they need gender terms to identify, explain and talk about persistent social inequalities between males and females. Haslanger’s analysis of gender begins with the recognition that females and males differ in two respects: physically and in their social positions. Societies in general tend to “privilege individuals with male bodies” (Haslanger 2000b, 38) so that the social positions they subsequently occupy are better than the social positions of those with female bodies. And this generates persistent sexist injustices. With this in mind, Haslanger specifies how she understands genders:

S is a woman iff [by definition] S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction.

S is a man iff [by definition] S is systematically privileged along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a male’s biological role in reproduction. (2003a, 6–7)

These are constitutive of being a woman and a man: what makes calling S a woman apt, is that S is oppressed on sex-marked grounds; what makes calling S a man apt, is that S is privileged on sex-marked grounds.

Haslanger’s ameliorative analysis is counterintuitive in that females who are not sex-marked for oppression, do not count as women. At least arguably, the Queen of England is not oppressed on sex-marked grounds and so, would not count as a woman on Haslanger’s definition. And, similarly, all males who are not privileged would not count as men. This might suggest that Haslanger’s analysis should be rejected in that it does not capture what language users have in mind when applying gender terms. However, Haslanger argues that this is not a reason to reject the definitions, which she takes to be revisionary: they are not meant to capture our intuitive gender terms. In response, Mikkola (2009) has argued that revisionary analyses of gender concepts, like Haslanger’s, are both politically unhelpful and philosophically unnecessary.

Note also that Haslanger’s proposal is eliminativist: gender justice would eradicate gender, since it would abolish those sexist social structures responsible for sex-marked oppression and privilege. If sexist oppression were to cease, women and men would no longer exist (although there would still be males and females). Not all feminists endorse such an eliminativist view though. Stone holds that Haslanger does not leave any room for positively revaluing what it is to be a woman: since Haslanger defines woman in terms of subordination,

any woman who challenges her subordinate status must by definition be challenging her status as a woman, even if she does not intend to … positive change to our gender norms would involve getting rid of the (necessarily subordinate) feminine gender. (Stone 2007, 160)

But according to Stone this is not only undesirable – one should be able to challenge subordination without having to challenge one’s status as a woman. It is also false: “because norms of femininity can be and constantly are being revised, women can be women without thereby being subordinate” (Stone 2007, 162; Mikkola [2016] too argues that Haslanger’s eliminativism is troublesome).

Theodore Bach holds that Haslanger’s eliminativism is undesirable on other grounds, and that Haslanger’s position faces another more serious problem. Feminism faces the following worries (among others):

Representation problem : “if there is no real group of ‘women’, then it is incoherent to make moral claims and advance political policies on behalf of women” (Bach 2012, 234). Commonality problems : (1) There is no feature that all women cross-culturally and transhistorically share. (2) Delimiting women’s social kind with the help of some essential property privileges those who possess it, and marginalizes those who do not (Bach 2012, 235).

According to Bach, Haslanger’s strategy to resolve these problems appeals to ‘social objectivism’. First, we define women “according to a suitably abstract relational property” (Bach 2012, 236), which avoids the commonality problems. Second, Haslanger employs “an ontologically thin notion of ‘objectivity’” (Bach 2012, 236) that answers the representation problem. Haslanger’s solution (Bach holds) is specifically to argue that women make up an objective type because women are objectively similar to one another, and not simply classified together given our background conceptual schemes. Bach claims though that Haslanger’s account is not objective enough, and we should on political grounds “provide a stronger ontological characterization of the genders men and women according to which they are natural kinds with explanatory essences” (Bach 2012, 238). He thus proposes that women make up a natural kind with a historical essence:

The essential property of women, in virtue of which an individual is a member of the kind ‘women,’ is participation in a lineage of women. In order to exemplify this relational property, an individual must be a reproduction of ancestral women, in which case she must have undergone the ontogenetic processes through which a historical gender system replicates women. (Bach 2012, 271)

In short, one is not a woman due to shared surface properties with other women (like occupying a subordinate social position). Rather, one is a woman because one has the right history: one has undergone the ubiquitous ontogenetic process of gender socialization. Thinking about gender in this way supposedly provides a stronger kind unity than Haslanger’s that simply appeals to shared surface properties.

Not everyone agrees; Mikkola (2020) argues that Bach’s metaphysical picture has internal tensions that render it puzzling and that Bach’s metaphysics does not provide good responses to the commonality and presentation problems. The historically essentialist view also has anti-trans implications. After all, trans women who have not undergone female gender socialization won’t count as women on his view (Mikkola [2016, 2020] develops this line of critique in more detail). More worryingly, trans women will count as men contrary to their self-identification. Both Bettcher (2013) and Jenkins (2016) consider the importance of gender self-identification. Bettcher argues that there is more than one ‘correct’ way to understand womanhood: at the very least, the dominant (mainstream), and the resistant (trans) conceptions. Dominant views like that of Bach’s tend to erase trans people’s experiences and to marginalize trans women within feminist movements. Rather than trans women having to defend their self-identifying claims, these claims should be taken at face value right from the start. And so, Bettcher holds, “in analyzing the meaning of terms such as ‘woman,’ it is inappropriate to dismiss alternative ways in which those terms are actually used in trans subcultures; such usage needs to be taken into consideration as part of the analysis” (2013, 235).

Specifically with Haslanger in mind and in a similar vein, Jenkins (2016) discusses how Haslanger’s revisionary approach unduly excludes some trans women from women’s social kind. On Jenkins’s view, Haslanger’s ameliorative methodology in fact yields more than one satisfying target concept: one that “corresponds to Haslanger’s proposed concept and captures the sense of gender as an imposed social class”; another that “captures the sense of gender as a lived identity” (Jenkins 2016, 397). The latter of these allows us to include trans women into women’s social kind, who on Haslanger’s social class approach to gender would inappropriately have been excluded. (See Andler 2017 for the view that Jenkins’s purportedly inclusive conception of gender is still not fully inclusive. Jenkins 2018 responds to this charge and develops the notion of gender identity still further.)

In addition to her revisionary argument, Haslanger has suggested that her ameliorative analysis of woman may not be as revisionary as it first seems (2005, 2006). Although successful in their reference fixing, ordinary language users do not always know precisely what they are talking about. Our language use may be skewed by oppressive ideologies that can “mislead us about the content of our own thoughts” (Haslanger 2005, 12). Although her gender terminology is not intuitive, this could simply be because oppressive ideologies mislead us about the meanings of our gender terms. Our everyday gender terminology might mean something utterly different from what we think it means; and we could be entirely ignorant of this. Perhaps Haslanger’s analysis, then, has captured our everyday gender vocabulary revealing to us the terms that we actually employ: we may be applying ‘woman’ in our everyday language on the basis of sex-marked subordination whether we take ourselves to be doing so or not. If this is so, Haslanger’s gender terminology is not radically revisionist.

Saul (2006) argues that, despite it being possible that we unknowingly apply ‘woman’ on the basis of social subordination, it is extremely difficult to show that this is the case. This would require showing that the gender terminology we in fact employ is Haslanger’s proposed gender terminology. But discovering the grounds on which we apply everyday gender terms is extremely difficult precisely because they are applied in various and idiosyncratic ways (Saul 2006, 129). Haslanger, then, needs to do more in order to show that her analysis is non-revisionary.

Charlotte Witt (2011a; 2011b) argues for a particular sort of gender essentialism, which Witt terms ‘uniessentialism’. Her motivation and starting point is the following: many ordinary social agents report gender being essential to them and claim that they would be a different person were they of a different sex/gender. Uniessentialism attempts to understand and articulate this. However, Witt’s work departs in important respects from the earlier (so-called) essentialist or gender realist positions discussed in Section 2: Witt does not posit some essential property of womanhood of the kind discussed above, which failed to take women’s differences into account. Further, uniessentialism differs significantly from those position developed in response to the problem of how we should conceive of women’s social kind. It is not about solving the standard dispute between gender nominalists and gender realists, or about articulating some supposedly shared property that binds women together and provides a theoretical ground for feminist political solidarity. Rather, uniessentialism aims to make good the widely held belief that gender is constitutive of who we are. [ 9 ]

Uniessentialism is a sort of individual essentialism. Traditionally philosophers distinguish between kind and individual essentialisms: the former examines what binds members of a kind together and what do all members of some kind have in common qua members of that kind. The latter asks: what makes an individual the individual it is. We can further distinguish two sorts of individual essentialisms: Kripkean identity essentialism and Aristotelian uniessentialism. The former asks: what makes an individual that individual? The latter, however, asks a slightly different question: what explains the unity of individuals? What explains that an individual entity exists over and above the sum total of its constituent parts? (The standard feminist debate over gender nominalism and gender realism has largely been about kind essentialism. Being about individual essentialism, Witt’s uniessentialism departs in an important way from the standard debate.) From the two individual essentialisms, Witt endorses the Aristotelian one. On this view, certain functional essences have a unifying role: these essences are responsible for the fact that material parts constitute a new individual, rather than just a lump of stuff or a collection of particles. Witt’s example is of a house: the essential house-functional property (what the entity is for, what its purpose is) unifies the different material parts of a house so that there is a house, and not just a collection of house-constituting particles (2011a, 6). Gender (being a woman/a man) functions in a similar fashion and provides “the principle of normative unity” that organizes, unifies and determines the roles of social individuals (Witt 2011a, 73). Due to this, gender is a uniessential property of social individuals.

It is important to clarify the notions of gender and social individuality that Witt employs. First, gender is a social position that “cluster[s] around the engendering function … women conceive and bear … men beget” (Witt 2011a, 40). These are women and men’s socially mediated reproductive functions (Witt 2011a, 29) and they differ from the biological function of reproduction, which roughly corresponds to sex on the standard sex/gender distinction. Witt writes: “to be a woman is to be recognized to have a particular function in engendering, to be a man is to be recognized to have a different function in engendering” (2011a, 39). Second, Witt distinguishes persons (those who possess self-consciousness), human beings (those who are biologically human) and social individuals (those who occupy social positions synchronically and diachronically). These ontological categories are not equivalent in that they possess different persistence and identity conditions. Social individuals are bound by social normativity, human beings by biological normativity. These normativities differ in two respects: first, social norms differ from one culture to the next whereas biological norms do not; second, unlike biological normativity, social normativity requires “the recognition by others that an agent is both responsive to and evaluable under a social norm” (Witt 2011a, 19). Thus, being a social individual is not equivalent to being a human being. Further, Witt takes personhood to be defined in terms of intrinsic psychological states of self-awareness and self-consciousness. However, social individuality is defined in terms of the extrinsic feature of occupying a social position, which depends for its existence on a social world. So, the two are not equivalent: personhood is essentially about intrinsic features and could exist without a social world, whereas social individuality is essentially about extrinsic features that could not exist without a social world.

Witt’s gender essentialist argument crucially pertains to social individuals , not to persons or human beings: saying that persons or human beings are gendered would be a category mistake. But why is gender essential to social individuals? For Witt, social individuals are those who occupy positions in social reality. Further, “social positions have norms or social roles associated with them; a social role is what an individual who occupies a given social position is responsive to and evaluable under” (Witt 2011a, 59). However, qua social individuals, we occupy multiple social positions at once and over time: we can be women, mothers, immigrants, sisters, academics, wives, community organisers and team-sport coaches synchronically and diachronically. Now, the issue for Witt is what unifies these positions so that a social individual is constituted. After all, a bundle of social position occupancies does not make for an individual (just as a bundle of properties like being white , cube-shaped and sweet do not make for a sugar cube). For Witt, this unifying role is undertaken by gender (being a woman or a man): it is

a pervasive and fundamental social position that unifies and determines all other social positions both synchronically and diachronically. It unifies them not physically, but by providing a principle of normative unity. (2011a, 19–20)

By ‘normative unity’, Witt means the following: given our social roles and social position occupancies, we are responsive to various sets of social norms. These norms are “complex patterns of behaviour and practices that constitute what one ought to do in a situation given one’s social position(s) and one’s social context” (Witt 2011a, 82). The sets of norms can conflict: the norms of motherhood can (and do) conflict with the norms of being an academic philosopher. However, in order for this conflict to exist, the norms must be binding on a single social individual. Witt, then, asks: what explains the existence and unity of the social individual who is subject to conflicting social norms? The answer is gender.

Gender is not just a social role that unifies social individuals. Witt takes it to be the social role — as she puts it, it is the mega social role that unifies social agents. First, gender is a mega social role if it satisfies two conditions (and Witt claims that it does): (1) if it provides the principle of synchronic and diachronic unity of social individuals, and (2) if it inflects and defines a broad range of other social roles. Gender satisfies the first in usually being a life-long social position: a social individual persists just as long as their gendered social position persists. Further, Witt maintains, trans people are not counterexamples to this claim: transitioning entails that the old social individual has ceased to exist and a new one has come into being. And this is consistent with the same person persisting and undergoing social individual change via transitioning. Gender satisfies the second condition too. It inflects other social roles, like being a parent or a professional. The expectations attached to these social roles differ depending on the agent’s gender, since gender imposes different social norms to govern the execution of the further social roles. Now, gender — as opposed to some other social category, like race — is not just a mega social role; it is the unifying mega social role. Cross-cultural and trans-historical considerations support this view. Witt claims that patriarchy is a social universal (2011a, 98). By contrast, racial categorisation varies historically and cross-culturally, and racial oppression is not a universal feature of human cultures. Thus, gender has a better claim to being the social role that is uniessential to social individuals. This account of gender essentialism not only explains social agents’ connectedness to their gender, but it also provides a helpful way to conceive of women’s agency — something that is central to feminist politics.

Linda Alcoff holds that feminism faces an identity crisis: the category of women is feminism’s starting point, but various critiques about gender have fragmented the category and it is not clear how feminists should understand what it is to be a woman (2006, chapter 5). In response, Alcoff develops an account of gender as positionality whereby “gender is, among other things, a position one occupies and from which one can act politically” (2006, 148). In particular, she takes one’s social position to foster the development of specifically gendered identities (or self-conceptions): “The very subjectivity (or subjective experience of being a woman) and the very identity of women are constituted by women’s position” (Alcoff 2006, 148). Alcoff holds that there is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals on the grounds of (actual or expected) reproductive roles:

Women and men are differentiated by virtue of their different relationship of possibility to biological reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-feeding, involving one’s body . (Alcoff 2006, 172, italics in original)

The thought is that those standardly classified as biologically female, although they may not actually be able to reproduce, will encounter “a different set of practices, expectations, and feelings in regard to reproduction” than those standardly classified as male (Alcoff 2006, 172). Further, this differential relation to the possibility of reproduction is used as the basis for many cultural and social phenomena that position women and men: it can be

the basis of a variety of social segregations, it can engender the development of differential forms of embodiment experienced throughout life, and it can generate a wide variety of affective responses, from pride, delight, shame, guilt, regret, or great relief from having successfully avoided reproduction. (Alcoff 2006, 172)

Reproduction, then, is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals that takes on a cultural dimension in that it positions women and men differently: depending on the kind of body one has, one’s lived experience will differ. And this fosters the construction of gendered social identities: one’s role in reproduction helps configure how one is socially positioned and this conditions the development of specifically gendered social identities.

Since women are socially positioned in various different contexts, “there is no gender essence all women share” (Alcoff 2006, 147–8). Nonetheless, Alcoff acknowledges that her account is akin to the original 1960s sex/gender distinction insofar as sex difference (understood in terms of the objective division of reproductive labour) provides the foundation for certain cultural arrangements (the development of a gendered social identity). But, with the benefit of hindsight

we can see that maintaining a distinction between the objective category of sexed identity and the varied and culturally contingent practices of gender does not presume an absolute distinction of the old-fashioned sort between culture and a reified nature. (Alcoff 2006, 175)

That is, her view avoids the implausible claim that sex is exclusively to do with nature and gender with culture. Rather, the distinction on the basis of reproductive possibilities shapes and is shaped by the sorts of cultural and social phenomena (like varieties of social segregation) these possibilities gives rise to. For instance, technological interventions can alter sex differences illustrating that this is the case (Alcoff 2006, 175). Women’s specifically gendered social identities that are constituted by their context dependent positions, then, provide the starting point for feminist politics.

Recently Robin Dembroff (2020) has argued that existing metaphysical accounts of gender fail to address non-binary gender identities. This generates two concerns. First, metaphysical accounts of gender (like the ones outlined in previous sections) are insufficient for capturing those who reject binary gender categorisation where people are either men or women. In so doing, these accounts are not satisfying as explanations of gender understood in a more expansive sense that goes beyond the binary. Second, the failure to understand non-binary gender identities contributes to a form of epistemic injustice called ‘hermeneutical injustice’: it feeds into a collective failure to comprehend and analyse concepts and practices that undergird non-binary classification schemes, thereby impeding on one’s ability to fully understand themselves. To overcome these problems, Dembroff suggests an account of genderqueer that they call ‘critical gender kind’:

a kind whose members collectively destabilize one or more elements of dominant gender ideology. Genderqueer, on my proposed model, is a category whose members collectively destabilize the binary axis, or the idea that the only possible genders are the exclusive and exhaustive kinds men and women. (2020, 2)

Note that Dembroff’s position is not to be confused with ‘gender critical feminist’ positions like those noted above, which are critical of the prevalent feminist focus on gender, as opposed to sex, kinds. Dembroff understands genderqueer as a gender kind, but one that is critical of dominant binary understandings of gender.

Dembroff identifies two modes of destabilising the gender binary: principled and existential. Principled destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ social or political commitments regarding gender norms, practices, and structures”, while existential destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ felt or desired gender roles, embodiment, and/or categorization” (2020, 13). These modes are not mutually exclusive, and they can help us understand the difference between allies and members of genderqueer kinds: “While both resist dominant gender ideology, members of [genderqueer] kinds resist (at least in part) due to felt or desired gender categorization that deviates from dominant expectations, norms, and assumptions” (2020, 14). These modes of destabilisation also enable us to formulate an understanding of non-critical gender kinds that binary understandings of women and men’s kinds exemplify. Dembroff defines these kinds as follows:

For a given kind X , X is a non-critical gender kind relative to a given society iff X ’s members collectively restabilize one or more elements of the dominant gender ideology in that society. (2020, 14)

Dembroff’s understanding of critical and non-critical gender kinds importantly makes gender kind membership something more and other than a mere psychological phenomenon. To engage in collectively destabilising or restabilising dominant gender normativity and ideology, we need more than mere attitudes or mental states – resisting or maintaining such normativity requires action as well. In so doing, Dembroff puts their position forward as an alternative to two existing internalist positions about gender. First, to Jennifer McKitrick’s (2015) view whereby gender is dispositional: in a context where someone is disposed to behave in ways that would be taken by others to be indicative of (e.g.) womanhood, the person has a woman’s gender identity. Second, to Jenkin’s (2016, 2018) position that takes an individual’s gender identity to be dependent on which gender-specific norms the person experiences as being relevant to them. On this view, someone is a woman if the person experiences norms associated with women to be relevant to the person in the particular social context that they are in. Neither of these positions well-captures non-binary identities, Dembroff argues, which motivates the account of genderqueer identities as critical gender kinds.

As Dembroff acknowledges, substantive philosophical work on non-binary gender identities is still developing. However, it is important to note that analytic philosophers are beginning to engage in gender metaphysics that goes beyond the binary.

This entry first looked at feminist objections to biological determinism and the claim that gender is socially constructed. Next, it examined feminist critiques of prevalent understandings of gender and sex, and the distinction itself. In response to these concerns, the entry looked at how a unified women’s category could be articulated for feminist political purposes. This illustrated that gender metaphysics — or what it is to be a woman or a man or a genderqueer person — is still very much a live issue. And although contemporary feminist philosophical debates have questioned some of the tenets and details of the original 1960s sex/gender distinction, most still hold onto the view that gender is about social factors and that it is (in some sense) distinct from biological sex. The jury is still out on what the best, the most useful, or (even) the correct definition of gender is.

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5 Essays About Feminism

On the surface, the definition of feminism is simple. It’s the belief that women should be politically, socially, and economically equal to men. Over the years, the movement expanded from a focus on voting rights to worker rights, reproductive rights, gender roles, and beyond. Modern feminism is moving to a more inclusive and intersectional place. Here are five essays about feminism that tackle topics like trans activism, progress, and privilege:

“Trickle-Down Feminism” – Sarah Jaffe

Feminists celebrate successful women who have seemingly smashed through the glass ceiling, but the reality is that most women are still under it. Even in fast-growing fields where women dominate (retail sales, food service, etc), women make less money than men. In this essay from Dissent Magazine, author Sarah Jaffe argues that when the fastest-growing fields are low-wage, it isn’t a victory for women. At the same time, it does present an opportunity to change the way we value service work. It isn’t enough to focus only on “equal pay for equal work” as that argument mostly focuses on jobs where someone can negotiate their salary. This essay explores how feminism can’t succeed if only the concerns of the wealthiest, most privileged women are prioritized.

Sarah Jaffe writes about organizing, social movements, and the economy with publications like Dissent, the Nation, Jacobin, and others. She is the former labor editor at Alternet.

“What No One Else Will Tell You About Feminism” – Lindy West

Written in Lindy West’s distinct voice, this essay provides a clear, condensed history of feminism’s different “waves.” The first wave focused on the right to vote, which established women as equal citizens. In the second wave, after WWII, women began taking on issues that couldn’t be legally-challenged, like gender roles. As the third wave began, the scope of feminism began to encompass others besides middle-class white women. Women should be allowed to define their womanhood for themselves. West also points out that “waves” may not even exist since history is a continuum. She concludes the essay by declaring if you believe all people are equal, you are a feminist.

Jezebel reprinted this essay with permission from How To Be A Person, The Stranger’s Guide to College by Lindy West, Dan Savage, Christopher Frizelle, and Bethany Jean Clement. Lindy West is an activist, comedian, and writer who focuses on topics like feminism, pop culture, and fat acceptance.

“Toward a Trans* Feminism” – Jack Halberstam

The history of transactivsm and feminism is messy. This essay begins with the author’s personal experience with gender and terms like trans*, which Halberstam prefers. The asterisk serves to “open the meaning,” allowing people to choose their categorization as they see fit. The main body of the essay focuses on the less-known history of feminists and trans* folks. He references essays from the 1970s and other literature that help paint a more complete picture. In current times, the tension between radical feminism and trans* feminism remains, but changes that are good for trans* women are good for everyone.

This essay was adapted from Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability by Jack Halberstam. Halberstam is the Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is also the author of several books.

“Rebecca Solnit: How Change Happens” – Rebecca Solnit

The world is changing. Rebecca Solnit describes this transformation as an assembly of ideas, visions, values, essays, books, protests, and more. It has many layers involving race, class, gender, power, climate, justice, etc, as well as many voices. This has led to more clarity about injustice. Solnit describes watching the transformation and how progress and “ wokeness ” are part of a historical process. Progress is hard work. Not exclusively about feminism, this essay takes a more intersectional look at how progress as a whole occurs.

“How Change Happens” was adapted from the introduction to Whose Story Is it? Rebecca Solnit is a writer, activist, and historian. She’s the author of over 20 books on art, politics, feminism, and more.

“Bad Feminist” extract – Roxane Gay

People are complicated and imperfect. In this excerpt from her book Bad Feminist: Essays , Roxane Gay explores her contradictions. The opening sentence is, “I am failing as a woman.” She goes on to describe how she wants to be independent, but also to be taken care of. She wants to be strong and in charge, but she also wants to surrender sometimes. For a long time, she denied that she was human and flawed. However, the work it took to deny her humanness is harder than accepting who she is. While Gay might be a “bad feminist,” she is also deeply committed to issues that are important to feminism. This is a must-read essay for any feminists who worry that they aren’t perfect.

Roxane Gay is a professor, speaker, editor, writer, and social commentator. She is the author of Bad Feminist , a New York Times bestseller, Hunger (a memoir), and works of fiction.

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277 Feminism Topics & Women’s Rights Essay Topics

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Feminism topics encompass a comprehensive range of themes centered on advocating for gender equality. These themes critically address the social, political, and economic injustices primarily faced by females, aiming to dismantle patriarchal norms. Feminism topics may span from intersectional feminism, which underscores the diverse experiences of women across various intersections of race, class, and sexuality, to reproductive rights that advocate for women’s bodily autonomy and healthcare accessibility. They also involve the examination of workplace discrimination through concepts, such as the gender wage gap and the glass ceiling. Violence against women, including work and domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment, is a hot aspect, providing many discussions. In turn, one may explore the representation of women in media, politics, and STEM fields. Explorations of gender roles, gender identity, and the significance of male feminism are integral parts of these discussions. As society continues to evolve, feminism topics persistently adapt to confront and address emerging forms of gender inequality.

Best Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Achievements of Women in Politics: A Global Perspective
Emphasizing Gender Equality in the 21st-Century Workplace
Evolving Representation of Women in Media
Fight for Women’s Voting Rights: The Historical Analysis
Intersectionality: Examining its Role in Feminism
Unpacking Feminism in Third-World Countries
Dissecting Misogyny in Classical Literature
Influence of Religion on Women’s Rights Worldwide
Unveiling Bias in STEM Fields: Female Experiences
Gender Pay Gap: Global Comparisons and Solutions
Probing the Historical Evolution of Feminism
Reshaping Beauty Standards Through Feminist Discourse
Importance of Reproductive Rights in Women’s Health
Exploring Women’s Role in Environmental Activism
Glass Ceiling Phenomenon: Women in Corporate Leadership
Trans Women’s Struggles in Feminist Movements
Empowering Girls: The Role of Education
Intersection of Race, Class, and Feminism
Effects of Feminism on Modern Art
Impacts of Social Media on Women’s Rights Movements
Deconstructing Patriarchy in Traditional Societies
Single Mothers’ Challenges: A Feminist Perspective
Dynamics of Feminism in Post-Colonial Societies
Queer Women’s Struggles for Recognition and Rights
Women’s Contributions to Scientific Discovery: An Underrated History
Cybersecurity: Ensuring Women’s Safety in the Digital Age
Exploring the Misrepresentation of Feminism in Popular Culture
Repositioning Sexuality: The Role of Feminism in Health Discourse
Women’s Economic Empowerment: The Impact of Microfinance
Investigating Sexism in Video Gaming Industry
Female Leadership During Global Crises: Case Studies

Feminism Topics & Women’s Rights Essay Topics

Easy Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Power of Women’s Protest: A Historical Study
Feminist Movements’ Role in Shaping Public Policy
Body Autonomy: A Key Aspect of Feminist Ideology
Cyber Feminism: Women’s Rights in Digital Spaces
Violence Against Women: International Legal Measures
Feminist Pedagogy: Its Impact on Education
Depiction of Women in Graphic Novels: A Feminist Lens
Comparing Western and Eastern Feminist Movements
Men’s Roles in Supporting Feminist Movements
Impacts of Feminism on Marriage Institutions
Rural Women’s Rights: Challenges and Progress
Understanding Feminist Waves: From First to Fourth
Inclusion of Women in Peace Negotiation Processes
Influence of Feminism on Modern Advertising
Indigenous Women’s Movements and Rights
Reclaiming Public Spaces: Women’s Safety Concerns
Roles of Feminist Literature in Social Change
Women in Sports: Overcoming Stereotypes and Bias
Feminism in the Context of Refugee Rights
Media’s Roles in Shaping Feminist Narratives
Women’s Rights in Prisons: An Overlooked Issue
Motherhood Myths: A Feminist Examination
Subverting the Male Gaze in Film and Television
Feminist Critique of Traditional Masculinity Norms
Rise of Female Entrepreneurship: A Feminist View
Young Feminists: Shaping the Future of Women’s Rights

Interesting Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

Roles of Feminism in Promoting Mental Health Awareness
Aging and Women’s Rights: An Overlooked Dimension
Feminist Perspectives on Climate Change Impacts
Women’s Rights in Military Service: Progress and Challenges
Achieving Gender Parity in Academic Publishing
Feminist Jurisprudence: Its Impact on Legal Structures
Masculinity in Crisis: Understanding the Feminist Perspective
Fashion Industry’s Evolution through Feminist Ideals
Unheard Stories: Women in the Global Space Race
Effects of Migration on Women’s Rights and Opportunities
Women’s Land Rights: A Global Issue
Intersection of Feminism and Disability Rights
Portrayal of Women in Science Fiction: A Feminist Review
Analyzing Post-Feminism: Its Origins and Implications
Cyberbullying and Its Impact on Women: Measures for Protection
Unveiling Gender Bias in Artificial Intelligence
Reimagining Domestic Work Through the Lens of Feminism
Black Women’s Hair Politics: A Feminist Perspective
Feminist Ethical Considerations in Biomedical Research
Promoting Gender Sensitivity in Children’s Literature
Understanding the Phenomenon of Toxic Femininity
Reconsidering Women’s Rights in the Context of Climate Migration
Advancing Women’s Participation in Political Activism

Feminism Argumentative Essay Topics

Intersectionality’s Impact on Modern Feminism
Evolution of Feminist Thought: From First-Wave to Fourth-Wave
Gender Wage Gap: Myths and Realities
Workplace Discrimination: Tackling Unconscious Bias
Feminist Theory’s Influence on Contemporary Art
Intersection of Feminism and Environmental Activism
Men’s Roles in the Feminist Movement
Objectification in Media: A Feminist Perspective
Misconceptions about Feminism: Addressing Stereotypes
Feminism in the Classroom: The Role of Education
Feminist Analysis of Reproductive Rights Policies
Transgender Rights: An Extension of Feminism
Intersection of Feminism and Racial Justice
Body Shaming Culture: A Feminist Viewpoint
Feminism’s Influence on Modern Advertising
Patriarchy and Religion: A Feminist Critique
Domestic Labor: Feminist Perspectives on Unpaid Work
Sexism in Sports: The Need for Feminist Intervention
The MeToo Movement’s Influence on Modern Feminism
Feminism and the Fight for Equal Representation in Politics
Women’s Rights in the Digital Age: A Feminist Examination
Feminist Critique of Traditional Beauty Standards
Globalization and Its Effects on Women’s Rights
The Role of Feminism in LGBTQ+ Rights Advocacy
Popular Culture and Its Reflection on Feminist Values

Controversial Feminist Research Paper Topics

Intersectionality in Modern Feminist Movements: An Analysis
Representation of Women in High-Powered Political Roles
Cultural Appropriation Within the Feminist Movement: An Inquiry
The Role of Feminism in Defining Beauty Standards
Women’s Reproductive Rights: A Debate of Autonomy
Feminism and Religion: The Question of Compatibility
Male Allies in the Feminist Movement: An Evaluation
Shift in Traditional Gender Roles: Feminist Perspective
Impacts of Media on Perceptions of Feminism
Dissecting the Wage Gap: A Feminist Examination
Menstrual Equity: A Battle for Feminist Activists
Feminism in Popular Music: Power or Appropriation?
Climate Change: The Unseen Feminist Issue
Education’s Role in Shaping Feminist Beliefs
Power Dynamics in the Workplace: A Feminist Scrutiny
Cyber-Feminism: Harnessing Digital Spaces for Activism
Healthcare Disparities Faced by Women: An Analysis
Transgender Women in Feminist Discourse: An Exploration
Feminist Perspectives on Monogamy and Polyamory
Feminist Analysis of Modern Advertising Campaigns
Exploring Sexism in the Film Industry through a Feminist Lens
Debunking Myths Surrounding the Feminist Movement
Childcare Responsibilities and Their Feminist Implications
Women’s Sports: Evaluating Equity and Feminist Advocacy

Feminist Research Paper Topics in Feminism Studies

Evaluating Feminist Theories: From Radical to Liberal
Women’s Health Care: Policies and Disparities
Maternal Mortality: A Global Women’s Rights Issue
Uncovering Sexism in the Tech Industry
Critique of Binary Gender Roles in Children’s Toys
Body Positivity Movement’s Influence on Feminism
Relevance of Feminism in the Fight Against Human Trafficking
Women in Coding: Breaking Stereotypes
The Role of Women in Sustainable Agriculture
Feminism in the Cosmetics Industry: A Dual-Edged Sword
The Influence of Feminism on Modern Architecture
Bridging the Gap: Women in Higher Education Leadership
The Role of Feminism in Advancing LGBTQ+ Rights
Menstrual Equity: A Key Women’s Rights Issue
Women in Classical Music: Breaking Barriers
Analyzing Gendered Language: A Feminist Approach
Women’s Rights and Humanitarian Aid: The Interconnection
Exploring the Role of Women in Graphic Design
Addressing the Lack of Women in Venture Capitalism
Impact of Feminism on Urban Planning and Design
Maternal Labor in the Informal Economy: A Feminist Analysis
Feminism’s Influence on Modern Dance Forms
Exploring the Role of Women in the Renewable Energy Sector
Women in Esports: An Emerging Frontier
Child Marriage: A Grave Violation of Women’s Rights

Feminist Topics for Discussion

Feminist Criticism of the Fashion Modelling Industry
Domestic Violence: Feminist Legal Responses
Analyzing the Success of Women-Only Workspaces
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Human Rights Issue
Women’s Role in the Evolution of Cryptocurrency
Women and the Right to Water: A Feminist Perspective
Gender Stereotypes in Comedy: A Feminist View
Intersection of Animal Rights and Feminist Theory
Roles of Feminism in the Fight Against Child Labor
Representation of Women in Folklore and Mythology
Women’s Rights in the Gig Economy: Issues and Solutions
Revisiting Feminism in Post-Soviet Countries
Women in the Space Industry: Present Status and Future Trends
The Influence of Feminism on Culinary Arts
Unraveling the Impact of Fast Fashion on Women Workers
Feminist Perspectives on Genetic Engineering and Reproduction
Assessing the Progress of Women’s Financial Literacy
Sex Work and Feminism: A Controversial Discourse
Women in Cybernetics: An Untapped Potential
Uncovering the Women Behind Major Historical Events
The Impact of the #MeToo Movement Globally
Women’s Rights in the Cannabis Industry: Challenges and Progress
Redefining Motherhood: The Intersection of Feminism and Adoption
Roles of Feminist Movements in Combatting Child Abuse

Women’s Rights Essay Topics for Feminism

Evolution of Women’s Rights in the 20th Century
Roles of Women in World War II: Catalyst for Change
Suffrage Movement: Driving Force Behind Women’s Empowerment
Cultural Differences in Women’s Rights: A Comparative Study
Feminist Movements and Their Global Impact
Women’s Rights in Islamic Societies: Perceptions and Realities
Glass Ceiling Phenomenon: Analysis and Impacts
Pioneering Women in Science: Trailblazers for Equality
Impacts of Media Portrayal on Women’s Rights
Economic Autonomy for Women: Pathway to Empowerment
Women’s Rights in Education: Global Perspective
Gender Equality in Politics: Global Progress
Intersectionality and Women’s Rights: Race, Class, and Gender
Legal Milestones in Women’s Rights History
Inequities in Healthcare: A Women’s Rights Issue
Modern-Day Slavery: Women and Human Trafficking
Climate Change: A Unique Threat to Women’s Rights
Body Autonomy and Reproductive Rights: A Feminist Analysis
Globalization’s Effect on Women’s Rights: Opportunities and Threats
Gender Violence: An Erosion of Women’s Rights
Indigenous Women’s Rights: Struggles and Triumphs
Women’s Rights Activists: Unsung Heroes of History
Empowerment Through Sports: Women’s Struggle and Success
Balancing Act: Motherhood and Career in the 21st Century
LGBTQ+ Women: Rights and Recognition in Different Societies

Women’s Rights Research Questions

Evolution of Feminism: How Has the Movement Shifted Over Time?
The Workplace and Gender Equality: How Effective Are Current Measures?
Intersectionality’s Influence: How Does It Shape Women’s Rights Advocacy?
Reproductive Rights: What Is the Global Impact on Women’s Health?
Media Representation: Does It Affect Women’s Rights Perception?
Gender Stereotypes: How Do They Impede Women’s Empowerment?
Global Disparities: Why Do Women’s Rights Vary So Widely?
Maternal Mortality: How Does It Reflect on Women’s Healthcare Rights?
Education for Girls: How Does It Contribute to Gender Equality?
Cultural Norms: How Do They Influence Women’s Rights?
Leadership Roles: Are Women Adequately Represented in Positions of Power?
Domestic Violence Laws: Are They Sufficient to Protect Women’s Rights?
Roles of Technology: How Does It Impact Women’s Rights?
Sexual Harassment Policies: How Effective Are They in Protecting Women?
Pay Equity: How Can It Be Ensured for Women Globally?
Politics and Gender: How Does Women’s Representation Shape Policy-Making?
Child Marriage: How Does It Violate Girls’ Rights?
Climate Change: How Does It Disproportionately Affect Women?
Trafficking Scourge: How Can Women’s Rights Combat This Issue?
Female Genital Mutilation: How Does It Contradict Women’s Rights?
Armed Conflicts: How Do They Impact Women’s Rights?
Body Autonomy: How Can It Be Safeguarded for Women?
Women’s Suffrage: How Did It Pave the Way for Modern Women’s Rights?
Men’s Role: How Can They Contribute to Women’s Rights Advocacy?
Legal Frameworks: How Do They Support or Hinder Women’s Rights?

History of Women’s Rights Topics

Emergence of Feminism in the 19th Century
Roles of Women in the Abolitionist Movement
Suffragette Movements: Triumphs and Challenges
Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Advocacy for Women’s Rights
Impacts of World War II on Women’s Liberation
Radical Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s
Pioneering Women in Politics: The First Female Senators
Inception of the Equal Rights Amendment
Revolutionary Women’s Health Activism
Struggle for Reproductive Freedom: Roe vs. Wade
Birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement
Challenges Women Faced in the Civil Rights Movement
Women’s Roles in the Trade Union Movement
Intersectionality and Feminism: Examining the Role of Women of Color
How Did the Women’s Rights Movement Impact Education?
Sexuality, Identity, and Feminism: Stonewall Riots’ Impact
Influence of Religion on Women’s Rights Activism
Women’s Empowerment: The UN Conferences
Impact of Globalization on Women’s Rights
Women’s Movements in Non-Western Countries
Women in Space: The Fight for Equality in NASA
Achievements of Feminist Literature and Arts
Evolution of the Women’s Sports Movement
Advancement of Women’s Rights in the Digital Age
Cultural Shifts: The Media’s Role in Promoting Women’s Rights

Feminism Essay Topics on Women’s Issues

Career Challenges: The Gender Wage Gap in Contemporary Society
Examining Microfinance: An Empowering Tool for Women in Developing Countries
Pioneers of Change: The Role of Women in the Space Industry
Exploring Beauty Standards: An Analysis of Global Perspectives
Impacts of Legislation: Progress in Women’s Health Policies
Maternity Leave Policies: A Comparative Study of Different Countries
Resilience Through Struggles: The Plight of Female Refugees
Technology’s Influence: Addressing the Digital Gender Divide
Dissecting Stereotypes: Gender Roles in Children’s Media
Influence of Female Leaders: A Look at Political Empowerment
Social Media and Women: Effects on Mental Health
Understanding Intersectionality: The Complexity of Women’s Rights
Single Mothers: Balancing Parenthood and Economic Challenges
Gaining Ground in Sports: A Look at Female Athletes’ Struggles
Maternal Mortality: The Hidden Health Crisis
Reproductive Rights: Women’s Control Over Their Bodies
Feminism in Literature: Portrayal of Women in Classic Novels
Deconstructing Patriarchy: The Impact of Gender Inequality
Body Autonomy: The Battle for Abortion Rights
Women in STEM: Barriers and Breakthroughs
Female Soldiers: Their Role in Military Conflicts
Human Trafficking: The Disproportionate Impact on Women
Silent Victims: Domestic Violence and Women’s Health

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How to convince sceptics of the value of feminism

An essay written in three parts based on reader feedback, by laura bates, founder of the everyday sexism project website.

Welcome to our Open Essay, a new format in which a writer develops an argument in three instalments over the course of a week, in conversation with readers.

Part One (August 13th)

Part Two (August 16th)

Part Three (August 20th)

Part One: August 13th

To be a feminist is simply to believe that everybody should be treated equally, regardless of sex. It means you think that there should be equality of the sexes economically, socially, politically and personally. When you put it like that, it’s surely difficult for anybody to deny being a feminist. But for such a simple concept, it is often dramatically misunderstood.

Perhaps the most common objection to feminism is the argument that it is unnecessary, because equality has already been achieved. This idea feeds into the common stereotype of feminists as angry, man-hating witches, who must be overreacting since there is no real problem to solve. So how do we convince sceptics that feminism is still necessary and, indeed, valuable?

The easiest place to begin is by disproving the notion that gender inequality no longer exists. This is simple enough. Globally, according to the United Nations, at least one in three women is beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of her lifetime. In 2016, a UNESCO report estimated that over 130m girls worldwide were out of school. And campaign group Girls Not Brides reports that each year 12m girls are married before the age of 18.

In Britain, official analysis from the Crime Survey of England and Wales revealed that in the 12 months leading up to March 2017 over 510,000 women experienced some type of sexual assault, including an estimated 144,000 who experienced rape or an attempted rape or assault by penetration. A quarter of women and one in two disabled women in Britain experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Almost a third of 16-18 year old girls report experiencing unwanted sexual touching at school.

It is undeniable that these problems, and a great many more, from wage inequality to so-called “honour” violence, female genital mutilation to workplace sexual harassment, disproportionately affect women.

It is also easy to demonstrate that women are far from equal when it comes to representation in positions of power and influence. As of 2017 less than a third of British MPs were women, just a quarter of members of the House of Lords and less than a quarter of judges in the Court of Appeal and the High Court. More FTSE 100 CEOs are called David than are female. The representation of women of colour is particularly low. The first public statue of a named black woman in Britain (Mary Seacole) was erected in 2016.

Some sceptics will argue that feminism remains problematic because its true objective is not to achieve equality, but to advantage women at all costs, to the detriment of men. Many fear that focusing on women’s rights means neglecting men’s problems, such as the high male suicide rate.

Not so. I urge sceptics to take any issue that particularly affects men. It is often closely connected to the sort of outdated gender stereotypes that feminists are committed to tackling.

The tragically high male suicide rate, for example, cannot be divorced from the fact that men are far less likely than women to seek support for mental health problems. When we bring men up in a world that teaches them it’s not manly to talk about their feelings, we damage them terribly. And gender stereotypes don’t exist in a vacuum. They are two sides of a coin. In this case, the other side is the common notion that women are over-emotional, hormonal and hysterical; a cliché which disadvantages women in the workplace. Feminists are eager to dismantle these stereotypes, in all their forms. So tackling gender inequality at its root, as feminists seek to do, would help everybody, regardless of sex.

Finally, an argument for the sceptics who don’t oppose feminism, but simply feel that it has nothing to do with them. We can show them that it is not just at an individual level that feminism is in everybody’s interest: at a wider organisational and societal level, too, its benefits are demonstrable. Research has repeatedly revealed that gender diversity on companies’ boards is correlated with higher productivity growth and returns to investors. And at an international level, the very best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not its level of wealth, its level of democracy, or its ethno-religious identity; but how well its women are treated.

The media often portray any question related to feminism as a battle pitting men against women. “The battle of the sexes.” “Gender wars.” These might be catchy, clickbait headlines, but they give an inaccurate and (sometimes deliberately) misleading impression of the objectives of feminism.

We are often encouraged to win over sceptics by imploring them to think of their sisters, their mothers, or their girlfriends. But really, we shouldn’t need to imply that men are damaged by association when the women attached to them are harassed, discriminated against or assaulted. It should be enough to argue that any woman, related to you or not, deserves equality, and to live a life free of these forms of abuse. Isn’t that reason enough to call yourself a feminist?

Part Two: August 16th

Thank you for your numerous comments on the first part of this essay. I have read your thoughts in the comments section, as well as on Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook and Instagram and will respond to as many of the points as possible.

It has been said that the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism, and there were a few readers who seemed determined to prove this. Feminists were described as “Satan-adoring witches”, women were accused of simply having inferior brains, and one commenter succinctly demanded : “don’t blame me for your bitterness and frustration.”

Yet the vast majority of those who commented did so in good faith, raising nuanced, varied and interesting questions.

One of the most common was about the use of the word “feminism”. As one reader asked : “if someone “genuinely” believes in equality between men and women, why would they insist on a term that is inherently preferential to one sex by its very name”? Other readers suggested that “egalitarianism” and “humanism” might be more appropriate labels.

The short answer to this is that you have to name a problem in order to solve it. We use the label “feminism” because it is women who are disproportionately harmed by gender inequality, in its structural, systemic forms. Of course, men also suffer in a misogynistic society. Indeed, as outlined in the first part of this essay, many of the things that harm men and boys could be alleviated by dismantling gendered stereotypes and power dynamics.

Many readers also took issue with what they described as a feminist insistence on equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. “Women and men are equally valuable but are of different vocation, predisposed biologically for some tasks or other tasks,” tweeted one. Another said : “There need not be equal numbers of men and women in nursing and engineering if the talents and interests of men and women differ, for instance.”

The trouble is that this makes unproven assumptions about biological determinism. It is very easy to say that girls simply are not as interested in maths and technology; that women just have no drive to be business leaders; or, as one commenter put it, that: “women are just not that interested.” But it could just as easily be argued that girls’ school subject choices or women’s job applications are heavily influenced by the gender stereotypes that bombard us from childhood. Think of “Pretty as a Princess” baby clothes for girls, while the boys’ version reads “Future astronaut”. Or media that present far fewer female role models in the arenas of sport, science or mathematics.

There is extensive research to rebut the notion that men and women have different brains, with different career choices hardwired into our DNA. Rather, the disparities are much more likely to be caused by the fact that half of women in STEM have experienced gender discrimination at work. A study in 2018 revealed that college-bound women aren’t deterred from entering specific fields because of tough maths or science requirements, but because of the gender discrimination which they are likely to encounter in those fields.

Linked to this was a repeated suggestion that it is, as one commenter put it, “natural for a woman's career advancement to stall when compared to her male colleague if she decides to take three years off from work while her male colleague keeps turning up at the office day in, day out.” To consider this “natural” though is to accept that our society, workplaces and businesses are structured so that when people have children, it has a very negative impact on women’s careers, while men’s careers are largely unaffected (and can even be positively affected ). To see this as a woman’s “choice” is to ignore the structural barriers in place.

Parental leave policies that heavily prioritise maternity- over paternity leave push mothers into the primary caregiver role from the start while effectively denying fathers the same opportunity. Discrimination against new mothers when they come back to work can further damage their professional prospects. None of this is “natural” or fair. Correcting it could have a hugely positive impact on our economy , as well as bring benefits to men, women and children.

Part Three: August 20th

Thank you to all those who have added their comments to the conversation.

Many readers have focused on the argument that feminism presents “a kind of reverse discrimination”, as one person described it. Concerns were raised about affirmative action, with one commentator suggesting : “We should celebrate women as individuals for their brilliant achievements, not for being women.” While this is an admirable sentiment, it isn’t particularly effective in a world where there is strong evidence that women in many fields face both direct and subconscious discrimination.

Positive action is often seen as a form of discrimination because of the assumption that we are starting from a level playing field, and thus giving women (or other groups) an unfair extra boost. But such measures are used only in situations where discrimination already exists—in the form of a system of unofficial, normalised inequality which we have come to accept as “just the way things are”. It might be useful, therefore, to think of these measures as correcting existing inequality rather than creating it.

While I believe quotas may be a useful tool in certain circumstances, there is a broader range of possible solutions to help achieve gender equality, and many commenters asked what these might look like. In the workplace, parental-leave policies must offer more flexibility in order for families to choose the solutions that make sense for them, instead of being bound by rigid gender stereotypes. At policy level, the ratification of the Istanbul Convention is urgently needed. Signed by the British government in 2012 but still not ratified, this convention is a comprehensive legal framework to help tackle violence against women and girls. And ring-fenced funding would provide necessary support for survivors. Legislating for (and in Britain’s case reinstating) employers’ responsibility to protect their workers from third-party harassment would support those experiencing abuse from clients and customers. At school, good-quality, compulsory sex and relationships lessons could help challenge the normalisation of abuse, giving all young people the tools they need to create healthy and respectful relationships later on.

One commenter suggested that male violence is innate and unstoppable: “A dysfunctional minority of the male population will always act badly.” It is an argument I hear often and it implies that we should simply give up trying to tackle sexual violence. I cannot agree. This is enormously insulting to the vast majority of men. Male violence is not genetic or inevitable. It is my belief that the above-mentioned education from a young age would do much to support young people of all genders to realise this.

Another area of focus was the recent #MeToo movement, and a fear of what one commenter described as “unproven accusations destroying many men's careers without due process”. It is true that we have seen a small number of men face repercussions as a result of allegations disclosed during the recent public conversation about sexual harassment and assault. In many of those cases due process is indeed being followed, with lawsuits filed against Harvey Weinstein, for example. It is not my impression that there is a vast wave of men experiencing career damage as a result of women’s allegations, as many, who have ironically used the phrase “witch hunt”, would suggest. Indeed, the flourishing careers of certain very powerful men in spite of dozens of sexual-assault allegations would suggest otherwise. Meanwhile millions of women have shared their experiences of sexual harassment, abuse and assault stretching back decades. Almost none of them has seen justice.

The women sharing their stories and experiences on social media are finally speaking out publicly. The majority of them are doing so as part of a collective sharing of testimony of grief and pain. It is an act of solidarity and protest, not a vindictive quest for revenge. But for those few who have named perpetrators, due process and robust reporting procedures have often failed. In many workplaces such processes simply don’t exist. In other cases, women who have come forward to report have been dismissed, not believed, or seen their careers ruined. To experience the victim-blaming, slut-shaming and violent abuse that greets those who make allegations in the public eye is not a first choice. It is a last resort.

In fact, you could say that feminism is itself a last resort. It isn’t about glossy hair, or cool T-shirts, or calling everything women do “empowering”, no matter how much advertisers might like you to believe it. It isn’t about hating men, or vindictive power trips, or wasting time trying to skew statistics, as a few commenters seem bent on believing. It is a battle cry against the discrimination, inequality, harassment, violence and abuse that have affected the lives of millions of women for centuries and still continue today. It doesn’t need to explain itself or make excuses or apologise for demanding that women be treated as human beings. We can engage with sceptics, we can present them with the proof and try to convert them, but ultimately we will fight on, whether they join us or not.

What are your views? Contribute to the conversation by leaving comments here or on social media using #openfuture.

Laura Bates is a writer and the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project website, at everydaysexism.com (on Twitter at @EverydaySexism ). She was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2015 Birthday Honours for her work on gender equality.

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Feminist persuasive speech topics

108 feminist persuasive speech topics

- the top current women's rights & feminist issues.

By: Susan Dugdale

There are 108 persuasive speech topics here covering many current feminist issues. For example:

that copy-cat fast fashion reinforces the relentless consumer cycle and the poverty trap,
that the advertising industry deliberately manufactures and supports body image insecurities to serve its own ends,
that gendered language reinforces the patriarchal structure of society...

They're provocative and challenging topics raising issues that I like to think should be of concern to us all!

Use the quick links to find a topic you want to explore

25 feminist persuasive speech topics about beauty and fashion
16 the media and feminism topics
8 the role of language and feminism speech ideas

8 feminist speech ideas about culture and arts

9 topics on education and gendered expectations, 27 feminist topics about society & social inequality, 8 business & work related feminist speech topics.

Resources for preparing persuasive speeches
References for feminism

What is 'feminism'?

Feminism is defined as belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.

(See: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism )

Return to Top

25 feminist speech topics about beauty & fashion

that from puberty onward a woman is targeted by cosmetic companies
that the shape of woman’s body is valued over its health
that physical beauty in a woman is conferred by popular beliefs
that striving for what is regarded as the epitome of female physical perfection destroys women
that physical perfection is a myth
that compassion and collaboration is needed between women (and men) rather than competition and comparison
that beauty, fashion and feminism can co-exist
that clothing reflects social position or class
that the fashionable clothing of any era reflects its dominate cultural beliefs
that a modern feminist does not need to ban either the bra or the razor
that prescriptive beauty norms (PBNs) reinforce sexism, racism, colorism, classism, ableism, ageism, and gender norms
that western feminine beauty standards dominate globally
that there is no legitimate historical or biological justification for the ‘white’ beauty myth
that modern beauty standards were used as “political weapons" against women’s advancement (see Naomi Wolfe - The Beauty Myth )
that the beauty industry cynically and callously exploits women through “self-empowerment” campaigns – eg L'Oreal's “Because you're worth it”
that beauty shaming of any sort is shameful
that health and beauty need to work together for the empowerment of women
that beauty and fashion role models need to be independent of major brands
that fashion and cosmetic industries have a moral responsibility to use the immense power they have in shaping people’s lives for their betterment
that the unfair balance of power between the consumers of fashionable clothing and those who make it is a feminist issue
that copy-cat fast fashion reinforces the relentless consumer cycle and the poverty trap
that genuinely sustainable fashion is only responsible way forward
that clothing/fashion can make a feminist statement. For example: the 1850s “freedom” or “bloomer” dress named after women’s rights and temperance advocate Amelia Bloomer , the wearing of trousers, shorts, or mini skirts by women, or skirts and dresses by men
that boss dressing for women is unnecessary and toxic
that establishing superiority through wearing elitist fashion is an age old ploy

16 the media and feminism speech topics

that feminism in mainstream media is often misrepresented through lack of understanding
that some media deliberately encourages a narrow polarizing definition of feminism to whip up interest and drama for its own sake
that mainstream media plays a significant role in keeping women marginalized
that social media has created an independent level playing field for feminists globally
that the #metoo movement reaffirmed the need for community and solidarity amongst feminists
that the advertising industry deliberately manufactures and supports ongoing body image insecurities to serve its own ends
that the advertising industry decides and deifies what physical perfection looks like
that the ideal cover girl body/face is a myth
that eating disorders and negative body image problems are increased by the unrealistic beauty standards set by mainstream media
that women get media coverage for doing newsworthy things and being beautiful. Men get media coverage for doing newsworthy things.
that social media gives traditionally private issues a platform for discussion and change: abortion, domestic abuse, pay equity
that print media (broadsheets, magazines, newspapers...) have played and continue to play a vital role in feminist education
that ‘the women’s hour’ and similar radio programs or podcasts have been and are an important part in highlighting feminist issues
that ‘feminist wokeness’ has been hijacked by popular media
that social media reinforces prejudices rather than challenges them because the smart use of analytics means we mainly see posts aligned with our viewpoints
that social media has enabled and ‘normalized’ the spread of pornography: the use of bodies as a commodity to be traded

8 the role language and feminism speech ideas

that frequently repeated platitudes (eg. girls will be girls and boys will be boys) are stereotypical straitjackets stifling change
that the derogatory words for females and female genitalia frequently used to vent anger or frustration demonstrate the worth and value placed on women
that feminism is neither male nor female
that gendered language reinforces the patriarchal structure of society
that sexist language needs to be called out and changed
that gendered language limits women’s opportunities
that gendered languages (French, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi...) need to become more inclusive
that the real enemy of feminism is language
that limitations in any arena (work, sports, arts) placed on woman because they are women need challenging
that male bias in the organizations awarding major awards and grants needs to change
that the ideal woman in art is a figment of a male imagination
that historically art has objectified women
that heroic figures should be celebrated and honored for their deeds – not for what they look like or their gender
that strong feisty female characters in literature can inspire change eg. Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s novel of the same name, and Offred from Margaret Atwood’s The Hand Maiden’s Tale.
that the role of feminist art in any field: literature, film, theatre, dance, sculpture..., is to transform and challenge stereotypes. Examples of feminist artists: Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro, Barbara Kruger (More: feminist art )
that feminist musicians have used their influence as agents of change, and to inspire: Beyonce, Queen Latifah, Pussy Riot, Lorde, Aretha Franklin, Carole King, Nina Simone
that there no subjects more suitable for boys than girls, or subjects more suitable for girls than boys
that toys, clothing, and colors should be gender neutral
that student achievement and behavioral expectations should be gender free
that feminism should be actively modelled in the classroom
that eligibility for educational institutions should be merit based
that boys should not ‘punished’ or blamed for our patriarchal history
that gendered performance is actively supported and encouraged by some educational philosophies and schools in order to maintain the status quo
that the belief that ‘male’ and ‘female’ intelligence are different and that male intelligence is superior is false
that education is vital for the advancement of black feminism
that rigidly adhered to gendered workplace and domestic roles sustain and support inequalities
that domestic violence is typically a male gendered crime
that patriarchal attitudes toward women make sexual harassment and rape inevitable
that a safe legal abortion is a fundamental right for every person who wants one
that humiliation and control either by fear and threat of rape, or rape itself, is an act toxic entitlement
that a person is never ever ‘asking for it’: to be sexually harassed, or to be raped
that safe methods of birth control should be freely available to whomever wants them
that full sexual and reproductive health and rights for all people is an essential precondition to achieving gender equality
that men should not have control over woman's sexual and reproductive decision-making
that the increase in sperm donation is a feminist victory
that a person can be a domestic goddess and a feminist
that there is a positive difference between assertive and aggressive feminism
that the shock tactics of feminist anarchists is justified
that powerful feminist role models open the way for others to follow
that intersectional feminism is essential to fully understand the deep ingrained inequalities of those experiencing overlapping forms of oppression
that a feminist’s belief and practices are shaped by the country they live in, its dominant religious and cultural practices
that female circumcision is an example of women’s oppression disguised as a cultural tradition
that honor crimes are never justifiable
that period poverty and stigma is a global feminist issue
that we need to accept that some women want to remain protected by patriarchal practices and beliefs
that environmental issues are feminist issues
that everybody benefits from feminism
that feminism works towards equality, not female superiority
that anti-feminist myths (that feminists are angry women who blame men for their problems, that feminists are anti marriage, that feminists have no sense of humor, that feminists are not ‘natural’ mothers, that feminists are anti religion, that feminists are actually all lesbians ...) are desperate attempts to maintain the patriarchal status quo
that toxic femininity is a by-product of fear and insecurity eg. The need to ridicule another woman in order to impress a man, shaming a man for not being ‘manly’, raging against a women for being seen to be powerful, competent and successful in a leadership position ...
that blaming the patriarchy is far too simple
that one can hold religious beliefs and be feminist
that gendered jobs and job titles belong in the past
that pay scales should be based on merit, not gender
that adequate maternity and child care plus parental leave provisions should be mandatory
that flexible working hours benefits both the business and its employees
that token feminism is not enough
that corporate feminism is for wealthy white women
that feminism and capitalism are in conflict
that women in power owe it to other women to work for their empowerment

Useful resources

The first three resources below provide an excellent starting point to get a broad overview of feminism: its history, development and current issues.

I've included the fourth link because I'm a New Zealander, and proud of what its women's suffrage movement achieved: the vote for women in 1893.

What’s the definition of feminism? 12 TED talks that explain it to you
An overview of feminist philosophy – Stanford University, USA
Britannica: an excellent over of the history and development of feminism
The symbolism of a white camellia and the Suffrage Movement in New Zealand

How to choose a good persuasive speech topic and preparing a great speech

For a more in-depth discussion about choosing a good persuasive topic, and crafting a persuasive speech please see:

persuasive speech ideas and read all the notes under the heading “What make a speech topic good?"
writing a persuasive speech . You’ll find notes covering:
setting a speech goal,
audience analysis,
evidence and empathy (the need for proof or evidence to back what you’re saying as well as showing you understand, or empathize with, the positions of those for and against your proposal),
balance and obstacles (to address points against your proposal, the obstacles, in a fair and balanced way),
varying structural patterns (ways to organize you material) and more. And click this link for hundreds more persuasive speech topic suggestions . ☺

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The Case Against Contemporary Feminism

It’s the same with feminism as it is with women in general: there are always, seemingly, infinite ways to fail. On the one hand, feminism has never been more widely proclaimed or marketable than it is now. On the other hand, its last ten years of mainstream prominence and acceptability culminated in the election of President Donald Trump. (The Times published an essay at the end of December under the headline “ Feminism Lost. Now What? ”) Since November 9th, the two main arguments against contemporary feminism have emerged in near-exact opposition to each other: either feminism has become too strict an ideology or it has softened to the point of uselessness. On one side, there is, for instance, Kellyanne Conway, who, in her apparent dislike of words that denote principles, has labelled herself a “post-feminist.” Among those on the other side is the writer Jessa Crispin, who believes that the push to make feminism universally palatable has negated the meaning of the ideology writ large.

Crispin has written a new book-length polemic on the subject, called “Why I Am Not a Feminist,” in which she offers definitions of feminism that are considerably more barbed than the earnest, cheeky slogans that have become de rigueur—“The future is female,” for example, as Hillary Clinton declared in her first video statement since the election, or “Girls just want to have fun-damental rights,” or “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” The dissidence at the root of these catchphrases has been obscured by their ubiquity on tote bags and T-shirts, and for Crispin the decline of feminism is visible in how easy the label is to claim. Feminism, she tells us, has become a self-serving brand popularized by C.E.O.s and beauty companies, a “fight to allow women to participate equally in the oppression of the powerless and the poor.” It’s a “narcissistic reflexive thought process: I define myself as feminist and so everything I do is a feminist act.” It’s an “attack dog posing as a kitten,” and—in what might be Crispin’s most biting entry—a “decade-long conversation about which television show is a good television show and which television show is a bad show.”

Crispin is the founder of Bookslut , a literary Web site that she started, in 2002, when she was a full-time employee at Planned Parenthood, in Austin, Texas. (She was ahead of the word-reclamation curve that culminated in the Slutwalk marches, which were first held in 2011.) After accumulating a modest but enthusiastic following, Crispin closed down Bookslut in 2016, with minimal ceremony. “I didn’t want to become a professional,” she told Vulture, adding, “I just don’t find American literature interesting. I find MFA culture terrible. Everyone is super-cheerful because they’re trying to sell you something, and I find it really repulsive.” Crispin is happy to take the contrarian stance, particularly within spheres that lend themselves to suppressive positivity. The point of “Why I Am Not a Feminist” isn’t really that Crispin is not a feminist; it’s that she has no interest in being a part of a club that has opened its doors and lost sight of its politics—a club that would, if she weren’t so busy disavowing it, invite Kellyanne Conway in.

The effect of the catchy title stands regardless. Crispin’s argument is bracing, and a rare counterbalance; where feminism is concerned, broad acceptability is almost always framed as an unquestioned good. “Somewhere along the way toward female liberation, it was decided that the most effective method was for feminism to become universal,” Crispin writes. And the people who decided this “forgot that for something to be universally accepted, it must become as banal, as non-threatening and ineffective as possible.” Another, and perhaps less fatalistic, way of framing the matter: feminism is a political argument of such obvious reason and power that it has been co-opted as an aesthetic and transformed into merchandise by a series of influential profiteers.

Crispin notes, accurately, that feminism’s history has been marked by a “small number of radical, heavily invested women who did the hard work of dragging women’s position forward, usually through shocking acts and words,” and that the “majority of women benefited from the work of these few, while often quickly trying to disassociate themselves from them.” Reading that second line, I immediately thought of an irksome scene in Megyn Kelly’s memoir , in which Kelly tells Sheryl Sandberg that she’s not a feminist, and Sandberg—whose entire feminist initiative is based on making the movement palatable to people like Kelly, and whose awkward accommodation of the Trump Administration should surprise no one—“passed no judgment” on Kelly’s distaste for the term. Crispin mostly focusses on younger and newer feminists, castigating them as selfish and timid, afraid of the second wave. They make Andrea Dworkin into a scapegoat, she writes; they “distance themselves from the bra-burning, hairy-armpitted bogeywomen.”

Here, and in some other places where Crispin’s argument requires her to take a precise measure of contemporary feminism, she—or this book’s production schedule—can’t quite account for the complexity of the times. From 2014 to 2016, I worked as an editor at Jezebel, a site that, when it was founded, in 2007, helped to define online feminism—and served ever afterward as a somewhat abstracted target for women who criticized contemporary feminism from the left. These critics didn’t usually recognize how quickly the center is always moving, and Crispin has the same problem. Much of what she denounces—“outrage culture,” empowerment marketing , the stranglehold that white women have on the public conversation—has already been critiqued at length by the young feminist mainstream. Her imagined Dworkin-hating dilettante, discussing the politics of bikini waxing and “giving blow jobs like it’s missionary work,” has long been passé. It’s far more common these days for young feminists to adopt a radical veneer. Lena Dunham’s newsletter sells “ Dismantle the Patriarchy ” patches; last fall, a Dior runway show included a T-shirt reading, “We Should All Be Feminists.” (The shirt is not yet on sale in the United States; it reportedly costs five hundred and fifty euros in France .) The inside threat to feminism in 2017 is less a disavowal of radical ideas than an empty co-option of radical appearances—a superficial, market-based alignment that is more likely to make a woman feel good and righteous than lead her to the political action that feminism is meant to spur.

The most vital strain of thought in “Why I Am Not a Feminist” is Crispin’s unforgiving indictment of individualism and capitalism, value systems that she argues have severely warped feminism, encouraging women to think of the movement only insofar as it leads to individual gains. We have misinterpreted the old adage that the personal is political, she writes—inflecting our personal desires and decisions with political righteousness while neatly avoiding political accountability. We may understand that “the corporations we work for poison the earth, fleece the poor, make the super rich more rich, but hey. Fuck it,” Crispin writes. “We like our apartments, we can subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu, the health insurance covers my SSRI prescription, and the white noise machine I just bought helps me sleep at night.”

That this line of argument seems like a plausible next step for contemporary feminism reflects the recent and rapid leftward turn of liberal politics. Socialism and anti-capitalism, as foils to Donald Trump’s me-first ideology, have taken an accelerated path into the mainstream. “Why I Am Not a Feminist” comes at a time when some portion of liberal women in America might be ready for a major shift—inclined, suddenly, toward a belief system that does not hallow the “markers of success in patriarchal capitalism . . . money and power,” as Crispin puts it. There is, it seems, a growing hunger for a feminism concerned more with the lives of low-income women than with the number of female C.E.O.s.

The opposing view—that feminism is not just broadly compatible with capitalism but actually served by it—has certainly enjoyed its share of prominence. This is the message that has been passed down by the vast majority of self-styled feminist role models over the past ten years: that feminism is what you call it when an individual woman gets enough money to do whatever she wants. Crispin is ruthless in dissecting this brand of feminism. It means simply buying one’s way out of oppression and then perpetuating it, she argues; it embraces the patriarchal model of happiness, which depends on “having someone else subject to your will.” Women, exploited for centuries, have grown subconsciously eager to exploit others, Crispin believes. “Once we are a part of the system and benefiting from it on the same level that men are, we won’t care, as a group, about whose turn it is to get hurt.”

A question of audience tugs at “Why I Am Not a Feminist.” It seemed, at points, as though anyone who understands the terms of Crispin’s argument would already agree with her. I also wondered how the book might land if Hillary Clinton had won—if the insufficiently radical feminism Crispin rails against had triumphed rather than absorbed a staggering blow. Instead, her book arrives at a useful and perhaps unexpected cultural inflection point: a time when political accommodation appears fruitless, and when, as Amanda Hess noted in the _Times Magazine _this week, many middle-class white women have marched in closer proximity to far-left ideas than perhaps they ever would have guessed. Exhortations to “transform culture, not just respond to it” are what many of us want to hear.

Of course, this being a polemic, there’s not much space given to how , exactly, the total disengagement with our individualist and capitalist society might be achieved. “Burn it down”—another nascent feminist slogan—is generally received as an abstract, metaphorical directive. The final chapter of Crispin’s book, titled “Where We Go From Here,” is four pages. In an earlier section of “Why I Am Not a Feminist,” Crispin rails against feminist flippancy toward men, writing, “It is always easier to find your sense of value by demeaning another’s value. It is easier to define yourself as ‘not that,’ rather than do an actual accounting of your own qualities and put them on the scale.” I agree.

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The Radical Possibility of the Women’s March

Essays About Feminism: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

When writing essays about feminism, there are a lot of aspects you can focus on. We have collected some of the best essay examples with prompts.

Feminism is a socio-political movement that is about fighting for equal rights and opportunities for all genders. While many point its beginnings to the women’s rights movements in the 19th century, when women were liberated and finally allowed to vote, feminist thinking can actually be traced back to as early as the late 14th century with the works of French writer Christine De Pizan , touted the first feminist philosopher.

Today, the definition of feminism has expanded to end discrimination, oppression and stereotyping of all genders from all walks of life. It aims to make radical reforms to eliminate cultural norms and push the legislation of equality-supporting laws.

Because feminism is a widely relevant topic, you may be asked to write an essay about feminism either as a student or a professional. However, it may be difficult to find a starting point given the broad spectrum of areas in which feminism is found relevant.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essays on feminism to provide inspiration:

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1. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

2. bad feminist by roxane gay, 3. civic memory, feminist future by lidia yuknavitch, 4. trickle-down feminism by sarah jaffe, 5. emily ratajkowski explores what it means to be hyper feminine by emily ratajkowski , 1. definition of feminism, 2. does feminism still matter in the workplace, 3. would you consider yourself a feminist, 4. historical evolution of feminism, 5. criticisms against feminism, 6. how can we achieve gender equality , 7. who are the feminists in your community and what are they fighting for.

“The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women — of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.

Solnit starts with amusing narratives of real-life experiences with men who have critiqued her books wrongly. Solnit points out that men’s arrogance and tendency to explain things to women, thinking they know better, have forced women into silence and weakened their credibility even in places where their voices are crucial – such as in the court stand when women testify to being raped. Solnit, thus, emphasizes that the fight against mansplainers is important to the feminist movement. For more, check out these articles about feminism .

“I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to. I have a job I’m pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to cry at work, so I close my office door and lose it.”

Gay reveals a series of secrets that make her believe she is a “bad feminst.” At first, she had tried to hide her fondness for men, fashion and thuggish rap, among many other things that gave her joy but went against the ideal feminist image etched in the mind of many. Eventually, Gay embraces the “mess of contradictions” that she is, proudly owning the label of a “bad feminist” while she speaks up on issues critical to the feminist movement and debunks myths on the unrealistic standards surrounding the sisterhood.

“There is no photo for what my father did to his daughters. It came into our bodies as a habit of being, a structure of consciousness, a way of life. Maybe it is akin to feeling discovered and conquered and colonized. Maybe the first colonizations are of the bodies of women and children, and from there they extend like the outstretched hand of a man grabbing land. Cultures.”

Yuknavitch highlights her rage against “fathers” both in her personal life and in each political administration that she survived. Yuknavitch described how these fathers and father images try to take control of others’ bodies and lives and crush others’ spirits. In her confrontation and memory of such men, however, Yuknavitch also learned to create art and find her feminist purpose.

“Women may be overrepresented in the growing sectors of the economy, but those sectors pay poverty wages. The public sector job cuts that have been largely responsible for unemployment remaining at or near 8 percent have fallen disproportionately on women (and women of color are hit the hardest). Those good union jobs disappear, and are replaced with a minimum-wage gig at Walmart—and even in retail, women make only 90 percent of what men make.”

Jaffe gives an in-depth view of the gains and impasse in the fight to improve women’s working opportunities. She stresses that women’s breakthroughs in the workplace may not always be a cause for celebration if these do not translate to long-term and more concrete changes for women to be treated better in the workplace. Jaffe encouraged feminists to continue organizing themselves to focus on solutions that can address the continued low wages of women, gender pay gaps and the minimal choice of professions offered to women.

“I often think about this. Why, as a culture, do we insist on separating smart and serious from sexy? Give women the opportunity to be whatever they want and as multifaceted as they can be.”

American model Ratajkowski writes a candid memoir on what it means to be hyper feminine in a society that represses and shames sexuality. She recounts how a misogynistic culture heavily influenced her early adventures on exploring her feminine side, how she took it to her advantage and turned being “sexy” into her strength. Ratajkowski also reveals how she feels about feminism today and women, in general, having their own decision and choices.

Writing Prompts on Essays about Feminism

For more help in picking your next essay topic, check out these seven essay prompts that can get you started:

Feminism is largely believed to be women’s fight against the patriarchy. Could it be a fight against all forms of oppression, discrimination, objectification and stereotyping? Could it be something more? You may even investigate some common myths about feminism. You might be interested in our list of adjectives for strong women .

Essays about Feminism: Does feminism still matter in the workplace?

Now that several women are climbing to the top of corporate ladders, have the right to vote and could get a doctorate, does feminism remain relevant?

Your article can explore the continued challenges of women in the workplace. You may also interview some working women who have faced obstacles toward certain goals due to discrimination and how they overcame the situation.

This would tie in closely to the topic on the definition of feminism. But this topic adds value and a personal touch as you share the reasons and narratives that made you realize you are or are not a feminist.

A common misconception is that only women can be feminists.

The First Wave of feminism started in the 19th century as protests on the streets and evolved into today’s Fourth Wave where technologial tools are leveraged to promote feminist advocacies. Look at each period of feminism and compare their objectives and challenges.

While feminism aims to benefit everybody, the movement has also earned the ire of many. Some people blame feminism for enabling hostility towards men, promiscuity and pornography, among others. You can also touch on the more controversial issue on abortion which feminists fight for with the popularizd slogan “My body, my choice.” You can discuss the law of abortion in your state or your country and what feminist groups have to say about these existing regulations.

Gender equality is pursued in various fields, especially where women have had little representation in the past. One example is the tech industry. Choose one sector you relate closely with and research on how gender equality has advanced in this area. It may be fun to also interview some industry leaders to know what policy frameworks they are implementing, and what will be their strategic direction moving forward.

Everyone surely knows a handful of feminists in their social media networks. Interview some friends and ask about feminist projects they have worked on or are working on. Of course, do not forget to ask about the outcomes or targets of the project and find out who has benefitted from the cause. Are these mothers or young women?

WRITING TIPS: Before you head on to write about feminism, check out our essay writing tips so you can have a struggle-free writing process.

If writing an essay still feels like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead

Feminist Arguments

Cite this chapter.

Elizabeth Cowie 2

Part of the book series: Language, Discourse, Society ((LDS))

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The issue of representation has been fundamental for the modern feminist movement. While equality, especially in relation to equal pay and equal opportunity, continued to be a fundamental objective of women activists, what marked the re-emergence of feminism as a political and social movement from the late 1960s was a new articulation of the contradictions of ‘femininity’, of motherhood and gender for women in the industrial West, together with a new analysis of the conditions — social as well as economic — producing these contradictions. The conditions which made possible this new articulation were the series of conjunctural changes in the decade 1960–1970. The ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s refers to the tumultuous personal experience of a generation for whom sex and sexual pleasure came out of the bedroom and the closet, off the back seat of cars and cinemas, and into the public sphere. Sexuality and its pleasures were asserted as an affirmation of identity and as a human right. But the ‘sexual revolution’ also refers to the gradual development of a broad acceptance in western societies of new norms of sexual activity involving non-marital sexuality both heterosexual and, with its decriminalisation, of homosexuality (in Britain, for those over 21 years of age). 1

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Notes and References

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1915), trans. Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).

Google Scholar

Jacques Derrick, Positions (1972), trans. Alan Bass (London: Athlone Press, 1981), p. 23.

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (1967), trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 13, my emphasis.

This point is made by Mark Cousins in ‘The Logic of Deconstruction’, The Oxford Literary Review , vol. 3, no. 2, 1978, p. 74.

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Roland Barthes, ‘Rhetoric of the Image’, in Image-Music-Text (1964), trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977).

Lévi-Strauss had attended Jakobson’s lectures in exile in New York in 1942/3 and his introduction to the publication of these lectures in 1976 acknowledges his debt, in Roman Jakobson, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning , trans. John Mepham (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978).

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (1958), trans. C. Jacobson and B. G. Schoepf (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 61.

‘Now, there is an intermediary between images and concepts, namely signs. For signs can always be defined in the way introduced by Saussure in the case of the particular category of linguistic signs, that is, as a link between images and concepts’: Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1962) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), p. 18.

Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), trans. James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 482.

In the matrilineal and matrilocal Hopi Native American society the men were the hunters and conducted the religious ceremonies, while the women undertook agriculture, and though helped by the men it was the women who owned the land as well as the produce. See Robin Fox, Kinship and Marriage (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 89.

Jacques Lacan, Écrits, A Selection , trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1977), p. 66. Ibid, p. 67. Ibid, p. 319.

Molly Haskell, ‘Howard Hawks: Masculine Feminine’, Film Comment , vol. 10, no. 2, 1974, p. 39.

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Visconti (London: Secker & Warburg, 1967), pp. 9–12.

Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema , revised third edition (London: Secker & Warburg, 1972), p. 93.

Claire Johnston, ‘Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema’ (1973), in Sexual Strategems , ed. Patricia Erens (New York: Horizon Press, 1979), p. 27. My argument here, however, is that the differentiation of sexual difference never involves positive terms or full signifieds as essential meanings outside the system of signification.

Robin Wood, Howard Hawks (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1968, 1981), p. 182.

Jacques Rivette, ‘The Genius of Howard Hawks’ (1953), in Cahiers du Cinéma — the 1950’s ed. Jim Hillier (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 131.

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Cowie, E. (1997). Feminist Arguments. In: Representing the Woman. Language, Discourse, Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25269-5_2

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Essay on Feminism

500 words essay on feminism.

Feminism is a social and political movement that advocates for the rights of women on the grounds of equality of sexes. It does not deny the biological differences between the sexes but demands equality in opportunities. It covers everything from social and political to economic arenas. In fact, feminist campaigns have been a crucial part of history in women empowerment. The feminist campaigns of the twentieth century made the right to vote, public property, work and education possible. Thus, an essay on feminism will discuss its importance and impact.

Importance of Feminism

Feminism is not just important for women but for every sex, gender, caste, creed and more. It empowers the people and society as a whole. A very common misconception is that only women can be feminists.

It is absolutely wrong but feminism does not just benefit women. It strives for equality of the sexes, not the superiority of women. Feminism takes the gender roles which have been around for many years and tries to deconstruct them.

This allows people to live freely and empower lives without getting tied down by traditional restrictions. In other words, it benefits women as well as men. For instance, while it advocates that women must be free to earn it also advocates that why should men be the sole breadwinner of the family? It tries to give freedom to all.

Most importantly, it is essential for young people to get involved in the feminist movement. This way, we can achieve faster results. It is no less than a dream to live in a world full of equality.

Thus, we must all look at our own cultures and communities for making this dream a reality. We have not yet reached the result but we are on the journey, so we must continue on this mission to achieve successful results.

Impact of Feminism

Feminism has had a life-changing impact on everyone, especially women. If we look at history, we see that it is what gave women the right to vote. It was no small feat but was achieved successfully by women.

Further, if we look at modern feminism, we see how feminism involves in life-altering campaigns. For instance, campaigns that support the abortion of unwanted pregnancy and reproductive rights allow women to have freedom of choice.

Moreover, feminism constantly questions patriarchy and strives to renounce gender roles. It allows men to be whoever they wish to be without getting judged. It is not taboo for men to cry anymore because they must be allowed to express themselves freely.

Similarly, it also helps the LGBTQ community greatly as it advocates for their right too. Feminism gives a place for everyone and it is best to practice intersectional feminism to understand everyone’s struggle.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Feminism

The key message of feminism must be to highlight the choice in bringing personal meaning to feminism. It is to recognize other’s right for doing the same thing. The sad part is that despite feminism being a strong movement, there are still parts of the world where inequality and exploitation of women take places. Thus, we must all try to practice intersectional feminism.

FAQ of Essay on Feminism

Question 1: What are feminist beliefs?

Answer 1: Feminist beliefs are the desire for equality between the sexes. It is the belief that men and women must have equal rights and opportunities. Thus, it covers everything from social and political to economic equality.

Question 2: What started feminism?

Answer 2: The first wave of feminism occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It emerged out of an environment of urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics. This wave aimed to open up new doors for women with a focus on suffrage.

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The ancient world

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The race factor
The globalization of feminism
Foundations
Manifestations
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The fourth wave of feminism

Who were some early feminist thinkers and activists?

What is intersectional feminism, how have feminist politics changed the world.

January 21, 2017. Protesters holding signs in crowd at the Women's March in Washington DC. feminism

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Table Of Contents

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

What is feminism?

At its core, feminism is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. Feminism largely arose in response to Western traditions that restricted the rights of women, but feminist thought has global manifestations and variations.

In medieval France philosopher Christine de Pisan challenged the social restrictions on women and pushed for women’s education. In 18th-century England Mary Wollstonecraft ’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman became a seminal work of English-language feminist philosophy. Feminism in the United States had a number of prominent activists during the mid- to late-19th century. Notable mainstream activists included Lucretia Mott , Elizabeth Cady Stanton , and Susan B. Anthony . Less mainstream but similarly important views came from Sojourner Truth , a formerly enslaved Black woman, and Emma Goldman , the nation’s leading anarchist during the late 19th century.

Intersectionality is a term coined by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe how different social categories interact, sometimes resulting in compounding effects and tensions. Her paper on the subject argued that discrimination specifically against Black women is different from general anti-woman discrimination or anti-Black racism. Instead, it involves the unique compound experience of both sexism and racism. Initially used in the context of discrimination law, the concept saw a resurgence in the 21st century among left-wing activists who broadened intersectionality to include categories such as class and sexual orientation.

Feminism has provided Western women with increased educational opportunities, the right to vote, protections against workplace discrimination, and the right to make personal decisions about pregnancy. In some communities, feminism has also succeeded in challenging pervasive cultural norms about women. Outside of the Western world, activists such as Malala Yousafzai have highlighted issues such as unequal access to education for women.

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feminism , the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes. Although largely originating in the West, feminism is manifested worldwide and is represented by various institutions committed to activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.

Why is International Women's Day on March 8?

Throughout most of Western history, women were confined to the domestic sphere, while public life was reserved for men. In medieval Europe, women were denied the right to own property , to study, or to participate in public life. At the end of the 19th century in France, they were still compelled to cover their heads in public, and, in parts of Germany, a husband still had the right to sell his wife. Even as late as the early 20th century, women could neither vote nor hold elective office in Europe and in most of the United States (where several territories and states granted women’s suffrage long before the federal government did so). Women were prevented from conducting business without a male representative, be it father, brother, husband, legal agent, or even son. Married women could not exercise control over their own children without the permission of their husbands. Moreover, women had little or no access to education and were barred from most professions. In some parts of the world, such restrictions on women continue today. See also egalitarianism .

History of feminism

There is scant evidence of early organized protest against such circumscribed status. In the 3rd century bce , Roman women filled the Capitoline Hill and blocked every entrance to the Forum when consul Marcus Porcius Cato resisted attempts to repeal laws limiting women’s use of expensive goods. “If they are victorious now, what will they not attempt?” Cato cried. “As soon as they begin to be your equals, they will have become your superiors.”

That rebellion proved exceptional, however. For most of recorded history, only isolated voices spoke out against the inferior status of women, presaging the arguments to come. In late 14th- and early 15th-century France, the first feminist philosopher, Christine de Pisan , challenged prevailing attitudes toward women with a bold call for female education. Her mantle was taken up later in the century by Laura Cereta, a 15th-century Venetian woman who published Epistolae familiares (1488; “Personal Letters”; Eng. trans. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist ), a volume of letters dealing with a panoply of women’s complaints, from denial of education and marital oppression to the frivolity of women’s attire.

The defense of women had become a literary subgenre by the end of the 16th century, when Il merito delle donne (1600; The Worth of Women ), a feminist broadside by another Venetian author, Moderata Fonte, was published posthumously. Defenders of the status quo painted women as superficial and inherently immoral, while the emerging feminists produced long lists of women of courage and accomplishment and proclaimed that women would be the intellectual equals of men if they were given equal access to education.

The so-called “debate about women” did not reach England until the late 16th century, when pamphleteers and polemicists joined battle over the true nature of womanhood. After a series of satiric pieces mocking women was published, the first feminist pamphleteer in England, writing as Jane Anger, responded with Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women (1589). This volley of opinion continued for more than a century, until another English author, Mary Astell, issued a more reasoned rejoinder in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694, 1697). The two-volume work suggested that women inclined neither toward marriage nor a religious vocation should set up secular convents where they might live, study, and teach.

The feminist voices of the Renaissance never coalesced into a coherent philosophy or movement. This happened only with the Enlightenment , when women began to demand that the new reformist rhetoric about liberty , equality, and natural rights be applied to both sexes.

Initially, Enlightenment philosophers focused on the inequities of social class and caste to the exclusion of gender . Swiss-born French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau , for example, portrayed women as silly and frivolous creatures, born to be subordinate to men. In addition, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , which defined French citizenship after the revolution of 1789, pointedly failed to address the legal status of women.

Female intellectuals of the Enlightenment were quick to point out this lack of inclusivity and the limited scope of reformist rhetoric. Olympe de Gouges , a noted playwright, published Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791; “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen”), declaring women to be not only man’s equal but his partner. The following year Mary Wollstonecraft ’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the seminal English-language feminist work, was published in England. Challenging the notion that women exist only to please men, she proposed that women and men be given equal opportunities in education, work, and politics. Women, she wrote, are as naturally rational as men. If they are silly, it is only because society trains them to be irrelevant.

The Age of Enlightenment turned into an era of political ferment marked by revolutions in France, Germany, and Italy and the rise of abolitionism . In the United States, feminist activism took root when female abolitionists sought to apply the concepts of freedom and equality to their own social and political situations. Their work brought them in contact with female abolitionists in England who were reaching the same conclusions. By the mid-19th century, issues surrounding feminism had added to the tumult of social change , with ideas being exchanged across Europe and North America .

In the first feminist article she dared sign with her own name, Louise Otto, a German, built on the work of Charles Fourier , a French social theorist, quoting his dictum that “by the position which women hold in a land, you can see whether the air of a state is thick with dirty fog or free and clear.” And after Parisian feminists began publishing a daily newspaper entitled La Voix des femmes (“The Voice of Women”) in 1848, Luise Dittmar, a German writer, followed suit one year later with her journal, Soziale Reform .

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487 Feminism Essay Topics

Women make up half of the world’s population. How did it happen they were oppressed?

We are living in the era of the third wave of feminism, when women fight for equal rights in their professional and personal life. Public figures say that objectification and sexualization of women are not ok. Moreover, governments adopt laws that protect equal rights and possibilities for people of all genders, races, and physical abilities. Yes, it is also about feminism.

In this article, you will find 400+ feminism essay topics for students. Some raise the problems of feminism; others approach its merits. In addition, we have added a brief nuts-and-bolts course on the history and principal aspects of this social movement.

❗ Top 15 Feminism Essay Topics

💻 Feminism Research Topics
📜 History of Feminism Topics
🙋‍♀️ Topics on Feminism Movements

🔥 Famous Feminists Essay Topics

👩‍🎓 Topics on Women’s Rights in the World
👸 Antifeminism Essay Topics

📚 Topics on Feminism in Literature

🔗 references.

Compare and contrast liberal and radical feminism.
The problem of political representation of feminism.
Is Hillary Clinton the most prominent feminist?
How can feministic ideas improve our world?
What is the glass ceiling, and how does it hinder women from reaching top positions?
What can we do to combat domestic violence?
Unpaid domestic work: Voluntary slavery?
Why do women traditionally do social work?
What are the achievements of feminism?
Why is there no unity among the currents of feminism?
Pornographic content should be banned in a civilized society.
Does feminism threaten men?
What is intersectional feminism, and why is it the most comprehensive feminist movement?
Those who are not feminists are sexists.
Why are women the “second gender?”

💻 Feminism Research Topics & Areas

Feminism is the belief in the equality of the sexes in social, economic, and political spheres. This movement originated in the West, but it has become represented worldwide. Throughout human history, women have been confined to domestic labor. Meanwhile, public life has been men’s prerogative. Women were their husband’s property, like a house or a cow. Today this situation has vastly improved, but many problems remain unresolved.

A feminism research paper aims to analyze the existing problems of feminism through the example of famous personalities, literary works, historical events, and so on. Women’s rights essay topics dwell on one of the following issues:

Healthcare & Reproductive Rights of Women

Women should be able to decide whether they want to have children or not or whether they need an abortion or not. External pressure or disapprobation is unacceptable. In many countries, abortions are still illegal. It is a severe problem because the female population attempts abortions without medical assistance in unhygienic conditions.

Economic Rights of Women

Women’s job applications are often rejected because they are expected to become mothers and require maternity leave. Their work is underpaid on a gender basis. They are less likely to be promoted to managerial positions because of the so-called “ glass ceiling .” All these problems limit women’s economic rights.

Women’s Political Rights

Yes, women have voting rights in the majority of the world’s countries. Why isn’t that enough? Because they are still underrepresented in almost all the world’s governments. Only four countries have 50% of female parliamentarians. Laws are approved by men and for men.

Family & Parenting

The British Office for National Statistics has calculated that women spend 78% more time on childcare than men. They also perform most of the unpaid domestic work. Meanwhile, increasingly more mothers are employed or self-employed. It isn’t fair, is it?

Virginity is a myth. Still, women are encouraged to preserve it until a man decides to marry her. Any expression of female sexuality is criticized (or “ slut-shamed “). We live in the 21st century, but old fossilized prejudices persist.

📜 History of Feminism Essay Topics

First wave of feminism & earlier.

Ancient and medieval promoters of feminist ideas.
“Debate about women” in medieval literature and philosophy.
The emergence of feminism as an organized movement.
Enlightenment philosophers’ attitudes towards women.
The legal status of women in Renaissance.
Women’s Liberation Movement Evolution in the US.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s views on women’s rights.
Sociopolitical background of the suffrage movement.
The most prominent suffrage activists.
The Liberation Theme Concerning Women.
“Declaration of sentiments”: key points and drawbacks.
What was special about Sojourner Truth and her famous speech?
The significance of the first feminist convention in Seneca Falls.
The National Woman Suffrage Association: goals and tactics.
The influence of abolitionism on feminism ideas.
Why did some women prefer trade unions to feminism?
Radical feminists’ criticism of the suffrage movement.
The UK suffragists’ approach to gaining voting rights for women.
Alice Paul and Emmeline Pankhurst’s role in the suffrage movement.
The Nineteenth Amendment: the essence and significance.
Infighting in the post-suffrage era.

Second Wave of Feminism Essay Titles

How did second-wave feminism differ from the suffrage movement?
The roots of the second wave of feminism.
John Kennedy’s policies concerning women’s rights.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s contribution to feminism.
Debates on gender equality in the late 1960s.
Feminism activists’ achievements in 1960-1970.
What was the focus of second-wave feminist research?
Why was there no comprehensive feminist ideology?
Anarcho-, individualist, “Amazon,” and separatist feminism: key ideas.
The nature of liberal feminism.
How did liberal and radical feminism differ?
Why was cultural feminism also called “difference” feminism?
Liberal and Postmodernist Theories of Feminism.
What is the difference between liberal and radical feminism?
Black feminists’ challenges and input to the fight for equity.
Sociocultural differences in views on female liberation.
The globalization of feminism: positive and negative aspects.
Taliban’s oppression of Afghani women.
Women in the US Military: World War II.
What were the main concerns of feminists from developing countries?
Why did Third World women criticize Western feminists?
Feminism achievements to the end of the 20th century.

Third Wave of Feminism Research Topics

What was peculiar about the third wave of feminism?
Why did third-wave feminists consider their predecessors’ work unfinished?
Social, political, economic, and cultural premises of third-wave feminism.
How did the information revolution impact feminism?
Third Wave Foundation’s major goals.
Women’s Rights and Changes Over the 20th Century.
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards’ views on feminism.
The impact of second wavers success on third-wave feminism.
New approaches in fighting discrimination, utilized by third-wave feminists.
The influence of the postmodern movement on feminism.
The concept of a gender continuum.
How did sexist symbols turn into female empowerment tools?
What was specific about third-wave feminist art?
Third-wavers’ redefinition of women as powerful and assertive figures.
“Girl power” in pop culture.
How did the Internet impact third-wave feminism?
Sexualized behavior: sexual liberation or oppression in disguise?
Why was third-wave feminism criticized?
The multifaceted nature of third-wave feminism.
Is multivocality a strength or weakness of third-wave feminism?
How did third wavers counter the criticism?

Fourth Wave of Feminism Essay Topics

The premises of fourth-wave feminism.
Feminism’s major goals after 2012.
Peculiarities of fourth-wave feminism.
What behavior is sexual harassment?
Gender Equality at the Heart of Development.
Sexual harassment: different gender-based perspectives.
Social media: a feminist tool.
Can social media deepen discrimination?
Gender discrimination in video games.
Musical Preferences: Race and Gender Influences.
GamerGate’s alleged “men’s rights campaign.”
Sexism in Donald Trump’s speech.
Women’s March: reasons and significance.
Main steps in MeToo’s development.
Tarana Burke’s fight for justice.
Gender Stereotypes of Superheroes.
MeToo’s contribution to women’s rights.
The most impactful MeToo stories.
Harvey Weinstein’s case: outcome’s implications.
Gender Roles in the Context of Religion.
Sexual harassment awareness after MeToo.
MeToo’s influence on Hollywood’s ethics.
Reasons for criticism of MeToo.
Social Change and the Environment.
Are sexual violence discussions necessary?

🙋‍ Argumentative Essay Topics on Feminism Movements

Mainstream feminism topics.

What is the focus of mainstream feminism?
Mainstream feminism predispositions in the 19th century.
The place of politics within mainstream feminism.
What is males’ place in mainstream feminism?
The correlation of mainstream feminism and social liberalism.
The correlation between mainstream feminism and state feminism.
Gender equality in the doctrine of mainstream feminism.
Why sunflower is the symbol of mainstream feminism?
Anthony Gidden’s ideas regarding liberal feminism.
Liberal feminism, according to Catherine Rottenberg.
Mary Wollstonecraft and her vision of liberal feminism.
Liberal feminism through John Stuart Mill’s perspective.
Interdependence of mainstream feminism and political liberalism.
NOW’s activities and mainstream feminism.
LWV’s activities and mainstream liberalism.
LGBT’s place in mainstream liberalism’s doctrine.
Discourse Analysis of the Me Too Movement’s Media Coverage.
Frances Wright’s role in establishing mainstream feminism.
Mainstream feminism and the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
Constitutional Equity Amendment and mainstream feminism.
International Woman Suffrage Alliance’s activities and mainstream feminism.
Mainstream feminism and Gina Krog’s works.
Betty Friedan’s understanding of mainstream feminism.
Gloria Steinem’s theoretical contribution to mainstream feminism.
Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas and the framework of mainstream feminism.
Rebecca Walker and her vision within the scope of mainstream feminism.
NWPC’s activities and mainstream feminism.
WEAL’s activities and mainstream feminism.
Catherine Mackinnon and mainstream feminism’s critique.
“White woman’s burden” and mainstream feminism’s critique.
The roots of mainstream feminism in Europe.

Radical Feminism Essay Titles

Society’s order according to radical feminism.
Sexual objectification and radical feminism.
Gender roles according to radical feminism.
Shulamith Firestone’s ideas regarding the feminist revolution.
Ti-Grace Atkinson’s ideas in Radical feminism.
The vision of radical feminism on patriarchy.
Radical feminism’s impact on the women’s liberation movement.
Radical feminism’s roots in the early 1960s.
Kathie Sarachild’s role in radical feminism movements.
Carol Hanisch’s contribution to radical feminism.
Roxanne Dunbar and her radical feminism.
Naomi Weisstein and her vision of radical feminism.
Judith Brown’s activities in terms of radical feminism.
UCLA Women’s Liberation Front role in radical feminism.
Why have women come to be viewed as the “other?”
Ellen Willis’s ideas regarding radical feminism.
Redstockings’ role in radical feminism.
The feminist’s role in radical feminism.
Differences between The Feminists’ and Restokings’ positions.
The protest against Miss America in 1968.
11-hour sit-in at the Ladies Home Journal headquarters.
Forms of direct action in radical feminism.
Protest of biased coverage of lesbians in 1972.
Lisa Tuttle’s vision of radical feminism.
Catharine MacKinnon’s position regarding pornography.
Peculiarities of radical lesbian feminism.
Recognition of trans women in radical feminism.
Radical feminism in the New Left.
Mary Daly’s vision of radical feminism.
Robin Morgan’s vision of radical feminism.

🎯 Persuasive Women’s Rights Essay Topics

Healthcare and reproductive rights of women.

Is abortion morally acceptable?
Why is the fight for child care not over?
Should government participate in birth control?
Researching of Maternity Care in Haiti.
Government’s moral right to cancel abortions.
Should the government allow abortions?
What are birth control and its meaning?
Abortion rights recently disappeared in the US.
Gender Disparity in Colorectal Cancer Screening.
Why are women’s rights becoming less vital?
Western world’s degradation in women’s rights issue.
Canceling abortion endangers women’s human rights.
Female access to healthcare in developing countries.
Developed countries’ role in improving women’s healthcare.
Media’s contribution to legalizing abortions.
Middle-Aged Women’s Health and Lifestyle Choices.
Female genital mutilation’s moral side.
Feminism’s impact on LGBTQ healthcare rights.
The reproductive rights of women are everyone’s problem.
Abortion rights’ impact on country’s economy.
Protection From Infringement and Discrimination.
Women’s reproductive rights in developing countries.
Abortion rights crisis and the UN’s failure in achieving SDG#4.
UN’s contribution to achieving equal healthcare rights.
IGO’s impact on women’s reproductive rights issue.
Report on the Speech by Gianna Jessen.
Is birth control already at risk?
Why should abortions not be allowed?
Meaning of reproductive justice.
Reproductive rights movement’s role in the country’s development.
Single Mothers, Poverty, and Mental Health Issues.
The reproductive rights movement, as all social movements’ drivers.
Abortion’s relation to healthcare rights.
Healthcare rights’ impact on a country’s economic development.
Political agenda behind abortion cancellation.
Feminism’s role in national healthcare.

Economic Rights, Salaries, and Access to Education for Women

Definition of women’s economic rights.
Female economic rights’ impact on the economy.
Female economic rights and education.
Gender Prevalence in Medical Roles.
Can women do “male jobs”?
Gender inequality in the workplace.
Women’s economic rights movements.
How Wealth Inequality Affects Democracy in America.
Barriers to gender-equal economic rights.
Gender inequality by social classes.
Female economic rights and poverty.
Can equal economic rights solve SDG#1?
Gender-Based Discrimination in the Workplace.
Why is it important to have equal access to education?
How did the gender pay gap appear?
Why does the gender pay gap exist?
Women’s economic rights and industrialization.
Characteristics of Mayo Clinic.
Female economic rights worldwide.
Legal rights of women workers.
Laws that protect women’s economic rights.
Women as leaders in the workplace.
The Future of Women at Work in the Age of Automation.
Why are companies against women workers?
Fertility’s impact on female economic rights.
Quiet revolution’s impact female workforce.
Reasons to monitor occupational dissimilarity index.
Women’s Roles in Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism.
Female economic rights in developing countries.
Democracy and female economic rights.
Gender pay gap as a global problem.
ILO’s role in the fight for equal economic rights?
Politics’ impact on female economic rights.
Health Disparities: Solving the Problem.
Female economic rights movement and the fight against racism.
The best practices in achieving gender-equal economic rights.
Democracy and gender pay gap.
Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value.

Women’s Political Rights Essay Topics

Women’s suffrage movement definition.
Female suffrage movement’s significance.
Causes of gender inequality in politics.
Women’s suffrage movement’s role today.
Female suffrage’s impact on democracy.
Women’s suffrage and economy.
Suffrage movement’s effect on politics in the US.
Do women need the right to vote?
Effects of gender inequality on politics.
Suffrage movement and politics in Britain.
Laws for gender-equal political rights.
The correlation between gender inequality in politics and authoritarianism.
The possible solutions to gender inequality in politics.
The role of IGOs in solving gender inequality in politics.
How has the UN participated in the women’s suffrage movement?
What is women’s role in politics in developing countries?
How can women improve politics in their countries?
What can men do for women’s equal political rights?
Why equal rights to vote are everyone’s problem?
The impact of Antoinette Louisa Brown on women’s suffrage.
The effect of equal rights to education on equal political rights.
Are western policies for equal rights applicable in developing countries?
The importance of equal rights to vote.
How to eliminate the gender pay gap?
Why had women not had equal rights in politics?
Is politics a “male job”?
Benefits of appearance of female leaders in politics.
Who created the women’s suffrage movement?
How does women’s suffrage impact racism?
Women’s suffrage contribution to LGBTQ communities’ equal political rights.

Family and Parenting Research Titles

Female and male roles in a family.
Sexism in families.
Eliminating sexism in families is the best solution to gender inequality.
Why is feminism a pro-family movement?
The Childbirth Process in Women’s Experiences.
The benefits of feminist upbringing.
The causes of sexism in families.
How does feminism help LGBTQ parents?
Why should sexism be legally banned?
Healthcare Resources and Equity in Their Distribution.
The effects of sexism in families.
The influence of sexist customs on society.
Why should every family be feminist?
How can feminism help solve the domestic violence issue?
Government’s role in creating feminist families.
What is feminist family value?
The relation of authoritarian parent-paradigm on politics.
Can feminist families bring democracy?
Teaching feminism at home vs. at school.
Traditional vs. Feminist parenting.
Why should women have the right to be child-free?
The impact of bringing up feminist daughters.
Can feminist parents bring up mentally healthy children?
Does the government have a moral right to endorse feminist values?
The role of media for feminist families.
How does feminism transform parent-child relationships?
Can feminism help families overcome poverty?
The role of feminist families in the economy.
The influence of hierarchal husband-wife relationships on children.
Do IGOs have moral rights to intervene in feminist families?
The movements endorsing feminism in families.
The effect of different views on feminism in parents on children.

Sexuality Essay Ideas

The views of radical feminists on women’s sexuality.
Who are sex-positive feminists, and their values?
Feminism’s impact on sexual orientation.
The role of feminism in sexual identity matters.
Gender-Based Violence Against Women and Girls.
How does feminism help eliminate sexual violence?
What is harassment, and why are feminists fighting it?
The role of media in women’s sexuality.
Traditional views on women’s sexuality.
How is feminism transforming sexuality?
Domestic Violence and COVID-19 Relation.
What are feminist sex wars?
Why are some feminists against pornography?
What are pro-pornography feminist arguments?
How is feminism protecting the rights of sex workers?
Rights of sex workers in developed vs. developing countries.
Media Promotion of Cosmetic Surgery in Women.
Feminist critique of censorship.
What is behind the issue of sex trafficking?
Children’s rape problem and feminism.
The role of feminism in solving the sex trafficking problem.
The Influence of the Women Image in the Media.
R v. Butler case discussion.
How is pornography enhancing sexual objectification?
How is poverty causing prostitution?
Can feminism eliminate prostitution by solving poverty?
Child Marriage in Egypt and Ways to Stop It.
Pro-sex worker feminists and their beliefs.
What are the perspectives of pro-sex workers?
The consequences of violence against women.
The role of feminism to LGBTQ sex workers.
Why are feminists trying to decriminalize prostitution?
Beauty Standards: “The Body Myth” by Rebecca Johnson.
Prostitution in developed vs. developing countries.
The effect of class and race differences on prostitution.
Short- and long-term impacts on sex workers.

👩‍🎓 Essay Topics on Women’s Rights in the World

Essay topics on feminism in developing countries.

Social taboos and abortion in Nigeria.
Access to sexual healthcare in Asia.
Human Papillomavirus Awareness in Saudi Women.
Sexual health and access to contraception in developing countries.
Coronavirus pandemic’s impact on gender inequalities.
Health and education access for women in Afghanistan.
Female Empowerment in the Islamic States.
Does poverty result in increased sexual violence?
Regulations on gender equality in developing countries.
Unsafe abortion, contraceptive use, and women’s health.
Female genital mutilation in the 21st century.
Practicing female genital mutation in Africa.
Gender Discrimination After the Reemergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Which countries have the highest gender gap?
Forced and child marriages in humanitarian settings.
The Taliban’s view: Is woman a property?
Feminism in Latin America.
Honor killing in Pakistan: 1000 women are killed annually.
Women’s access to healthcare in Somalia.

Feminism Essay Topics in Developed Countries

“Broken Rung” and the gender pay gap.
What are the obstacles to reaching gender equality?
Do gender stereotypes result in workplace discrimination?
Increased educational attainment of young women.
Culture: Women With Hijab in Western Countries.
Ending sexual harassment and violence against women.
Is sexual harassment a form of discrimination?
Cracking the glass ceiling: What are the barriers and challenges?
Domestic drama: The impact of sexual violence on women’s health.
Socio-cultural Factors That Affected Sport in Australian Society.
Feminism and the problem of misogyny.
The challenges faced by women in developed counties.
Female participation in the labor market.
Discrimination Against Girls in Canada.
Unequal pay for women in the workplace.
How do developed countries improve women’s rights?
Nations with strong women’s rights.
Women’s employment: Obstacles and challenges.

👸 Antifeminist Essay Topics

Antifeminism: The right to abortion.
Gender differences in suicide.
Manliness in American culture.
Antifeminism view: Men are in crisis.
The threats of society’s feminization.
The meaning of antifeminism across time and cultures.
Antifeminism attracts both men and women.
Gender and Science: Origin, History, and Politics.
Antifeminism: The opposition to women’s equality?
How do religious and cultural norms formulate antifeminism?
Saving masculinity or promoting gender equality?
Traditional gender division of labor: Fair or not?
Are feminist theories of patriarchy exaggerated?
Oppression of men in the 21st century.
Psychological sex differences and biological tendencies.
Does feminism make it harder for men to succeed?
The change of women’s roles: Impact on the family.
How were traditional gender roles challenged in modern culture?
History of antifeminism: The pro-family movement.
Religion and contemporary antifeminism.
Antifeminist on the rights of minorities.
Heterosexual and patriarchal family: Facts behind antifeminism.
Women against feminism in Western countries.
Feminism versus humanism: What is the difference?
Does feminism portray women as victims?
Same-sex marriage: The dispute between feminists and antifeminists.
Male-oriented values of religions and antifeminism.
Does antifeminism threaten the independence of women?
Men’s rights movement: Manosphere.
Does antifeminism refer to extremism?
The fear of being labeled as a feminist.
A Vindication of the Right of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft.
Jane Austen: Criticism of inequitable social rules.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Frankenstein and aborted creations.
Undercutting female stereotypes in Jane Eyre.
“Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body” by Marion.
Oppression of woman’s traditional roles in The Awakening.
Virginia Woolf and her feminism.
Orlando: A Biography. Evolving from man to woman.
Harriet Jacobs’s Experiences as an Enslaved Black Woman.
Feminist criticism: A Room of One’s Own.
Social oppression in Three Guineas by Woolf.
Rape, illegitimacy, and motherhood in The Judge by Rebecca West.
Feminist utopias of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Women’s rights and societal reform views of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Feminist critics in a culture dominated by men.
Black women’s aesthetic in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Alice Walker’s ideas on Feminist women of color.
Female sexuality in Fear of Flying by Erica Jong.
How do feminist novels address race and ethnicity?
Social and emotional pressures in Love Medicine by Erdrich.
Feminist Parenting: The Fight for Equality at Home – Psychology Today
Feminist Parenting: An Introduction – Transformation Central Home
Women’s suffrage – Britannica
Only half of the women in the developing world are in charge of their own bodies – Reuters
Gender Equality for Development – The World Bank
How #MeToo revealed the central rift within feminism today – The Guardian
Feminist Novels and Novelists – Literary Theory and Criticism
Health Care & Reproductive Rights – National Women’s Law Center

Black, white and pink photograph of activists kissing

Friday essay: public ‘pash ons’ and angry dads – personal politics started with consciousness-raising feminists. Now, everyone’s doing it

Associate Professor, History, Macquarie University

Associate Professor, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University

Professor of History, Macquarie University

Professor of Modern History, Macquarie University

Disclosure statement

Leigh Boucher receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Barbara Baird receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition.

Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Robert Reynolds receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Macquarie University and Flinders University provide funding as members of The Conversation AU.

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On March 17–18 1973, more than 600 women gathered in Sydney for a “Women’s Commission”. Speaking to broad themes such as motherhood, work and sexism, dozens of women recounted their struggles: to obtain contraception, or a decent education, to complain about the chauvinistic men in their workplaces. Women shared personal stories they had never told in public before, building trust, forging sisterhood.

While most of the media were excluded from the gathering, a journalist from the Australian Women’s Weekly was permitted to attend. She explained to her readers this was not just a chance to complain, but “out of a mass of personal testimony, the nature and extent of the problems facing Australian women were gradually revealed”.

The event’s goal was to transform personal stories into shared knowledge and ballast for political action. It was emblematic of the new politics of gender and sexuality in the 1970s, and it would go on to produce enormous transformations in the lives of women and sexual minorities.

Thanks to “personal politics”, the everyday lives of Australians have been transformed in areas like no-fault divorce, providing safe abortions, decriminalising homosexuality, and introducing health and welfare programs tailored to women and LGBTIQ+ people.

Political change continues to be driven by personal stories.

Non-binary mother April Long was a co-complainant, with Equality Australia , to the Australian Human Rights Commission after the 2021 Census failed to ask questions about sexual orientation, gender diversity and variations in sex characteristics. When filling in the census, “I was invisible, [our child] was invisible, my family was invisible.” The Australian Bureau of Statistics issued a statement of regret and promised to review its gender and sexual classifications for the 2026 Census.

However, describing private pain and distress has not been the exclusive political strategy of the marginalised.

Our research reveals that groups and individuals we might regard as privileged have just as effectively deployed personal stories to secure what they describe as a “return” to traditional family forms, gender roles and sexual identities.

In the late 1970s, for instance, men’s rights groups described an epidemic of despair among divorced men to argue for changes in family law. They would begin to be successful in the mid-1990s – and family law is still hotly politically contested. More recently, claims of personal distress have been weaponised against gender diversity and trans rights .

And while some of those now using personal politics are clearly conservatives, political contests over gender and sexuality cannot solely be understood through the lens of left and right. Many of the parliamentary debates produced by these campaigns have been resolved by conscience votes, because party positions on questions of gender and sexuality remain elusive.

How, then, should we assess the impact and legacy of personal politics?

Making the personal political

The phrase, and later slogan, “the personal is political” is often credited to US feminist Carol Hanisch. In her 1970 essay of the same name, Hanisch described how a growing feminist movement had been propelled by women who had come together in small groups to discuss their experiences of intimate and everyday life, in a process called consciousness-raising.

“One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems,” she wrote. “There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution.”

Women who shared their problems in a supportive group not only realised their problems were widely shared, but helped build a political movement that sought to explain and overcome them. A question as simple as “who cleans the toilet in your house?” (the answer, almost always, was women) sparked wide-ranging conversations about women’s domestic labour, men’s attitudes towards housework, and the social and cultural system that naturalised women’s responsibility for all household chores, especially the most unpleasant ones.

The slogan had purchase in Australia too. The Women’s Commission of 1973 followed the establishment of local consciousness-raising groups as a tool of transformation and discovery.

One woman told Cleo magazine in May 1974 that consciousness-raising had created “the most unbelievable change” in her when she realised she shared the same problems as the women in her group: “Gee … if I’m crazy, then they’re all crazy too!”

Gays and lesbians also found the practice energising. In 1975, the Sydney Gay Liberation Front declared in a pamphlet that its consciousness-raising group was “the guts, the heart and soul of the movement”.

“The personal is political” became a call for feminists, as well as gay and lesbian activists, to develop theories about the structures and dynamics that limited their everyday lives, and a political practice to transform them. Within a few years, speaking and writing in public about experiences of discrimination had become a prominent part of Australian national culture.

These activists drew links between oppressions in the private space of the home, offhand comments in everyday life, and the legal regimes that constrained the lives of women and homosexuals. “Overt oppression faces me every day,” said Richard Wilson , a member of Gay Liberation in Sydney, in 1973.

My parents are continually trying to straighten me out. I am continually accosted by Jesus Freaks who angrily damn me for my unnatural sins, and hatefully threaten me with God’s judgement […] I am continually intimidated by authority figures.

He described being “harassed by pigs” for publicly showing affection to another man, and being “dragged” to Glebe Police Station for “a little talk” with two detectives who “leaned” on him and another man.

“I left my husband five years ago,” wrote a woman who had found refuge at Elsie, the first feminist women’s refuge, established in March 1974, in August of that year.

My husband used to make me write my grocery lists down on paper and then I had to read it out to him and he would tell me I didn’t need all these items and then I put the prices down beside each item and add it up and that is how much money he used to give me.

Some lawmakers and critics decried this public storytelling in moral terms. They suggested it was pornographic, scandalous, trivial or some combination of all three. They were suspicious this could be a foundation for political action, dismissing it as merely “navel gazing”. For them, these concerns did not belong to the domain of politics: they were complaints about private worlds.

In 1979, John Brown, a Labor parliamentarian, dismissed these stories as exaggerated accounts from “militant feminists who trumpet aloud” their intimate troubles and sexual lives. But these activists had moved the boundaries of acceptable political speech, as well as the kinds of evidence that would be used to support arguments for change.

In that same debate, his party colleague Barry Jones noted the House of Representatives did not contain a single female voice. Feminist and gay activists occasionally set up “embassies” outside parliaments precisely because their voices were not being heard where the decisions were being made.

Bill Hayden, then leader of the Labor opposition, insisted the only way to consider the “abortion question” was to listen to “experiences (of women from) real, practical life”. This, he argued, would produce legal regimes that demonstrated “sensitivity about the rights of those people”.

Women’s stories about their own lives and experiences were becoming an expected element of political debate.

Pursuing legal change

In 1970, in every state, sex between men was criminally sanctioned, but this soon began to shift. After very limited reforms in South Australia in 1972, which provided a legal defence of privacy to the crime of sodomy, more expansive reforms were passed in that state in 1975. Reformed legislation provided near equality for homosexual and heterosexual sex.

In 1980, after a concerted campaign by the Homosexual Law Reform Coalition, Victoria passed reforms that activist Jamie Gardiner proudly proclaimed were the “best in the English-speaking world”. They removed any reference to sexual orientation in the laws and drew boundaries between criminal and lawful sex. Policing practices, however, still targeted intimacy between men in public in ways they did not target heterosexual couplings.

Slowly, over the next two decades, sex between men was decriminalised in all states and territories. The campaigns were led by activists who spoke confidently about their own experiences. Sometimes, they performed their intimate lives in public to campaign for change.

Public “kiss-ins” were a useful strategy. In 1979, activists gathered outside a pub in Melbourne to protest discriminatory policing. And in 1995, activists “pash’d on” in Taylor Square in Sydney, inviting the public to discern any difference between the intimacies of straight, gay and lesbian couples.

In 1975, the Whitlam government finally passed the Family Law Act, after two previous attempts. The Act introduced no-fault divorce to Australia and was heralded as a feminist success story.

Since 1959, laws had required the attribution of fault in the legal dissolution of a marriage. This substantively shaped the financial settlements that followed. Women who found the courage to leave unhappy or violent relationships in the 1960s were often deemed to have “deserted” their marriages. It was no coincidence that nearly 50% of Australians beneath the poverty line in the early 1970s were single mothers.

Feminist activism had revealed the home could be a space of profound oppression, and argued for a legal framework that did not reinforce these inequalities. In 1976, stories abounded of women flocking to court to free themselves from coercive, limiting marriages.

Transforming abortion laws proved thornier. By 1975, abortion had been reformed in the Northern Territory and South Australia. In New South Wales and Victoria, evolving case law provided specific defences to the crime of abortion – enabling safe abortion to be provided more widely in private clinics and a few hospitals. From 1975, Medibank rebates were nationally available for the procedure, making it more accessible.

With these case law protections in place, by 1975, a reporter from The Age was surprised to discover an expansive abortion ecosystem. He noted a woman could procure a safe abortion “virtually on request and without fear of prosecution”. However, abortion retained an ambiguous legal status in many states.

Abortion is now decriminalised in every jurisdiction in Australia. A 2021 study found 76% of Australians support access to abortion. But abortion provision remains contested.

Some publicly funded Catholic hospitals will not provide terminations, producing what activists described last year as a postcode lottery for legal healthcare. Public and private provision is rare outside the big cities.

Strange political bedfellows

This new form of politics produced passionate commitment from those inside and outside parliaments, which also placed politicians under considerable pressure.

In relation to that 1979 debate, for example, more than 10% of all the petitions submitted to parliament that year concerned abortion. It took a long time to table all these representations.

Parliamentarians also complained their offices had ground to a halt under a deluge of phone calls and letters from concerned constituents. The attorney general was sure the 1975 Family Law debate was one of the longest in living memory.

These debates also confounded the two-party system that organised Australian parliamentary politics. While Labor and the Liberal party (and its predecessors) had long disagreed about the economic principles that should govern Australia, both parties assumed that a woman’s primary duty was to maintain a heterosexual family, and to produce children who would replicate this model in future generations.

Activism that challenged this view – often by telling stories about the inequalities and oppressions of sexual and family life – challenged the heteronormative foundations of both parties.

This often fractured parties down the middle, and consensus on the politics of gender and sexuality remained elusive. As a result, many of the debates prompted by personal politics were resolved in parliament by allowing politicians to cast conscience votes. This meant party discipline would not determine how MPs voted, nor how they would respond to this politics in public life. It sometimes produced strange political bedfellows, as Labor and Liberal MPs voted together.

Several key pieces of Commonwealth legislation were passed because members were released from party discipline: the 1975 Family Law Act, a 1979 motion to protect Medibank funding for abortions, the 1983 Sex Discrimination Act, and the more recent legalisation of same-sex marriage. Parliamentary debates about state abortion laws were almost always resolved by conscience votes.

This also made their outcomes much less predictable, and MPs sometimes found their individual positions scrutinised much more closely. From 1972, the Women’s Electoral Lobby surveyed individual candidates, rather than parties, about their positions on various issues concerning women.

Our research reveals a political culture less determined by party divides than we might expect: one often punctured and animated by questions of intimate, family and sexual life.

Intimate suffering as a political tool

Stories of distress and pain have often been key weapons in the arsenal of personal politics. In the 1980s, the intimate languages of grief and suffering often reinforced political claims during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

While gay men were not the only group affected by this epidemic, they were perhaps the most heavily impacted by its consequences. Candlelight vigils , held annually from 1985, combined the collective expression of grief with powerful claims for government action. The first vigil in NSW, in 1985, ended at the state parliament, where activists protested about recent legislation that forced doctors to disclose the identities of HIV-positive patients to the government.

Later, in 1992, activists recreated a hospital ward on the front lawn of the NSW health minister, where men forced a public engagement with their suffering and distress. This was no performance, however: the men in those beds needed hospital admissions. They confronted the public with their ravaged bodies to seek more hospital beds to deal with the epidemic. About a week later, on February 4, one of those hospital-bed protesters, Brian Hobday, lost his battle with HIV/AIDs.

Once, it would have been unthinkable for a government to fund a health program to address the needs of gay men. But by the 1990s, they were funding organisations that sent “ safe-sex sluts ” to hand out condoms at gay-dance parties to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDs.

But marginalised and oppressed groups who had been excluded from full citizenship and participation in political debate were not the only ones to mobilise stories of intimate distress to seek change. Groups that sought very different legal reforms were also using personal stories for political effect.

Family Court violence

Men’s and fathers’ rights groups emerged in the lead-up to the 1975 Family Law Act and have continued to push back against feminist-led reforms to family life since.

Groups such as the Divorce Law Reform Association emerged in the late 1960s, sharing stories of distressed fathers who were required, by law, to support their divorced spouses and children.

After the Family Law Act passed, a rather angry masculinist activism argued for the “return of the fault factor”. The association’s president threateningly predicted “violence” if these male “victims” of oppression did not have their grievances recognised.

The Lone Fathers’ Association circulated stories of men who “considered kidnapping, even suicide” because of delays in the Family Court and a sense they were not being given a “fair go”.

Such groups argued the Family Law Act had turned divorced fathers into wage-slaves because they were required to provide child support, even if they had very limited custody.

No-fault divorce, the Divorce Law Reform Association argued, was making it “too easy” for women to leave marriages. At a Senate inquiry in 1980, it argued legal determinations of fault were required to “preserve the benefits, worth, stability and integrity of marriage” and prevent an ocean of male distress that was unfolding without it. A father was, and should remain, “the head of his own house”, the association argued.

In the early 1980s, the Family Court, its judges and their families became the target of lethal violence . Between 1980 and 1985, a series of bombings and shootings resulted in the death of one Family Court judge and another judge’s wife. They also resulted in the serious injury of Family Court judges. In 1984, the Family Court in Parramatta was bombed, though in this case no one was injured.

One 1983 book published during this reign of terror argued fathers had been “judicially discarded” by the court and it was the denial of their rights as fathers that drove this violence. It opened :

Tragedy. Heartbreak. Shock. Confusion. Despair. These are too often the bitter fruits, the luckless harvest of so many people who have been through the process of the Family Court.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, activists secured sympathetic coverage of a spate of murder-suicides in which men killed their families and themselves. The press positioned these men as confused and desperate victims, driven to violence by a legal system that had been transformed by feminist thinking.

The “cause” of this violence, whether directed towards judges or families, was widely represented as a Family Court system that did not attend to men’s needs. As feminist scholar Therese Taylor observes, these activists had managed to turn “murder into the final proof of paternal love”.

Men’s sheds, Safe Schools and funding

From the mid-1990s, “men’s sheds” proliferated across Australia, and from 2010 , they began to receive Commonwealth funding. There are now at least 1,250 of them (with access usually restricted to men). They promise to address isolation, poor mental health and suicide among (particularly older) men by providing “traditional” male activities and social contact.

The Australian Men’s Shed Association provided personal testimonies in its submission to a 2009 Senate Inquiry, which would eventually lead to the first injection of Commonwealth funding. After retirement, said Rob ), “at times I was so distressed and nervous that I couldn’t think straight and in those darker moments I sometimes thought of doing myself in”. He said he “came to the men’s shed to get my mind out of the darkness and to occupy myself”.

Men’s sheds have been big winners under the National Men’s Health Policy, with additional remarkable success in state-based grant programs. In 2010, Men’s Sheds were awarded Commonwealth funding to support their expansion across Australia. In 2020, their funding was increased . A recent report commissioned by the Commonwealth government found most sheds reported being “well-funded and well-resourced”.

A very different fate befell the Safe Schools program, a health education project developed to better support gender- and sexually diverse children and teenagers. The voluntary program, which provides education materials and support for teachers, was developed in Victoria and was rolled out nationally with Commonwealth support in 2014.

Two years later, in 2016, conservative campaigners pressured schools and governments to wind back the program. This prompted an outpouring of community support. Queer and trans youth spoke powerfully in nationwide rallies about the impact the program had on their lives.

At a Perth rally in 2016, 15-year-old Oscar, a self-identified LGBTIQA+ Australian, explained why safe schools are needed . “For many students, school is a battleground – social rejection, abuse, peer-shunning and isolation turn life into a daily struggle,” he said. By “gutting” Safe Schools, the government was risking “not only the safety but the very mental health and the very lives of our children”.

A formal review commissioned by the Commonwealth government found that Safe Schools material was effective and appropriate. And yet, Commonwealth funding was discontinued after 2017 , although some state governments stepped in, either to directly replace the federal funding or to fund programs that reflected the principles of Safe Schools .

Both men’s sheds and the Safe Schools program provide safe spaces and address poor mental health. Both have used shared personal stories of distress to argue for their existence. But while funding for men’s sheds is ever increasing, a gender-specific program of support for young LGBTIQ+ people found that the dissemination of personal stories of distress could not defeat their opponents.

Personal stories of suffering and distress have been potent political tools for women’s and gay rights. But they have also been effectively wielded by groups that seek to reinforce what they describe as a “traditional” gender and sexual order. It seems important to remember, then, that 1970s activists identified how those “traditions” maintained inequality and oppression.

Today, the personal is (still) political. Political contests around gender and sexuality will inevitably continue to provoke and unsettle. The next battlegrounds are trans rights, the continuing struggle to maintain and expand reproductive health care, including abortion services, and meaningful action on gendered violence, including family law reform and improved support for legal aid and women’s refuge services.

Personal storytelling is affecting and politically effective, but justice cannot be achieved through storytelling alone. To rely on storytelling risks becoming trapped in a politics of competitive complaint that reinforces disagreement, rather than seeking collective transformation. Activists need to engage in full-throated, nuanced critiques of a gender and sexual order that still works to marginalise, exclude and oppress.

The most effective campaigns have not simply told personal stories; they have made powerful arguments about inequality and injustice that mobilised Australians to engage in the political process. They have also, more often than not, resisted a politics of reassurance and recognition. Instead, they have admitted they are actively challenging the status quo.

This essay draws on Personal Politics: Sexuality, Gender and the Remaking of Citizenship in Australia by Leigh Boucher, Barbara Baird, Michelle Arrow & Robert Reynolds (Monash University Press).

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All The Arguments You Need: To Convince Doubters of Feminism

For the next time you hear, “If feminism is about gender equality why isn’t it called human-ism?”

Common arguments against feminism and how to refute them.

In our All The Arguments You Need series, we take on mindsets standing in the way of progress and rebut them with facts and logic.

One of the most prominent aspects of my identity is that I am a feminist. To me, it is not only a personal belief, but also a political fight. When I identify myself as a feminist in social settings, I have noticed it almost serves as an invitation for sexists, doubters and Devil’s advocates to engage me in debates. They come armed with arguments against feminism consisting of myths, misunderstandings, and misconstructions. I don’t have a problem participating in a discourse about feminism. It is only when we talk to those who are in the dark about the movement, those who are on the fence about it, and those who are on the other side of the line, that we can achieve the goal of gender equality. But, this involves, on my part, constant engagement and a burden to educate — nay, convince — people that the advocacy of social, economic and political equality of all genders is valid and logically grounded in statistics and experiential evidence. It is exhausting to have to draw constantly on my lived experiences and recollect relevant research — only to be met with straw-man arguments and a condescending “Why are you getting worked up?”

If you’ve ever been in my place, and have wished you had facts and hard data to debunk some of the more absurd arguments against feminism thrown at you, here’s a quick primer for the next time it happens (which, it will).

“Where is the inequality? Men and women are already equal.”

According to the United Nations, one in three women is beaten , forced into sex or abused by an intimate partner. On each day of 2017, 137 women were killed by a family member. Women and girls together account for 71% of all human trafficking . A woman is raped every 13 minutes in India.

These are violent, obvious manifestations of inequality. We can see more subtle sexism in the fact that women’s clothes aren’t designed for them , school textbooks still propagate sexist stereotypes, 131 million girls are out of school globally, 113 countries don’t have laws to ensure equal pay for equal work , the majority of women in the Indian workforce earn roughly Rs. 62 for every Rs. 100 that men earn, while doing 10 times more unpaid labor than men do — the list really does go on. And, that is a fact, too: According to the World Economic Forum’s most recent Global Gender Gap report , at the current rate of progress, it will take another 108 years to reach gender parity. So, no; men and women are not already equal. This argument against feminism also resorts to the male-female binary, excluding transgender, gender-non-conforming and gender-fluid persons, which is simply the wrong way to go about discussing gender equality. On that front, too, we are lacking: Half of all transgender people are sexually abused at least once in their lifetime; 92% of the socio-economically challenged trans community cannot participate in India’s formal economy to this day. So, again, no; feminism is nowhere close to achieving its goal of equality. It’s going to take a minute.

“Women and men are biologically different, so how can they be equal?”

Sure, there are undeniable physiological differences between the two, but men and women don’t have different brains with different proclivities to certain vocations. Research has also found that men and women are essentially alike in terms of personality, cognitive ability, and leadership potential. Any difference between men and women is a part of socialization and not genetic coding . So, women aren’t missing from STEM fields because they’re ‘natural caregivers.’ Their absence is more likely because of structural barriers such as unfair parental leave policies in the workplace, or the fact that 71% of women field researchers have received inappropriate sexual remarks and 26% have reported experiencing sexual assault. If the counter to this argument against feminism is that men are stronger than women and carry out tasks that women can’t, that is also flawed. Men and women possess different kinds of physical strength; men have fast-twitch muscles that are good for actions like lifting and moving heavy objects, while women have slow-twitch muscles giving them the strength of endurance good for, say, assembly line jobs. Besides, statements such as “men are stronger than women” are missing a qualifier: Most men are stronger than women.

“What about male problems like high suicide rates and false rape charges? Feminism is just sexist against men.”

Men’s significantly higher suicide rate is directly linked to the fact that they are far less likely than women to seek support for mental health problems. This is because they are brought up in a world in which they can’t express emotions freely on account of it being perceived as a feminine trait. Feminism seeks to retire all gender stereotypes and inequality, which would help everyone, regardless of sex and gender. This means issues such as violence against men will be taken more seriously because it will be divorced from the idea that masculinity means being invulnerable. As for false rape accusations, approximately only 2% to 5% of all sexual assault accusations are false. That means, 98% of times, women are telling the truth. As unfortunate and illegal the cases of false charges may be, to expect feminists to drop the fight for equality is unreasonable and based only on the logically redundant argumentative technique: whataboutery. Finally, feminism can’t be sexist towards men because of how oppression works . It has a unidirectional, systemic flow, from a group at the top that has social and cultural sanction to misuse power, toward the group at the bottom. Patriarchy hurts everyone — even men — but as long as men are in a greater position of social power that allows them to oppress women culturally, socially, legally and financially, they can’t be victims of sexism.

Related on The Swaddle:

All the Arguments You Need: To Convince Doubters of #MeToo

“Feminist women are so angry and aggressive. Why can’t they relax?”

Of course, we’re angry. We are conditioned from day one to conform to a certain norm of femininity . We get harassed on the streets. We get raped, abused and killed disproportionately. We don’t get equal access to education and opportunity as men get, and when we do, we don’t get paid as much as they do for the same job. Our reproductive rights are heavily regulated by men who conveniently dominate most decision-making roles. We are objectified and sexualized to the extent that entire multi-billion dollar industries, such as fashion and make-up, thrive on women’s insecurities. All of these drivers of inequality are exasperating and very personal, lived experiences for us. It’s not just an intellectual exercise for us to talk about these things repeatedly. So, of course, we’ll get angry sometimes, as people do. But feelings and fact are not mutually exclusive — yet another untruth patriarchy has given us. Feminist women having feelings does not negate the entire movement. According to one study , asking women not to “make everything about feminism,” and insinuating that they are somehow overdoing it in demanding gender equality and respect, is itself a more recent manifestation of modern sexist behavior.

“If feminism cares about equality, why is it called feminism? Why not egalitarianism or human-ism?”

‘Humanism,’ it seems, has come up as an alternative simply because it sounds a little bit like feminism and, phonetically, it gives the sense that it might mean being in favor of all of humanity having equal rights. But that’s just misconception. Humanism is a branch of philosophy and ethics that says that the source of human morality isn’t God but humanity’s capacity to be logical and triumph over dogma. So… that’s why feminism isn’t called humanism.

Egalitarianism is a school of political thought that says that all human beings are fundamentally equal and therefore should have equal rights to all resources. Sure, in that regard, egalitarianism has informed feminism by being a broader view of the fight for equality. But egalitarianism has had its heyday and has been dormant as a social movement for a while now, and yet egalitarian laws and practices have not succeeded in elevating the position of women in society. This is why we need something more — why we need feminism.

Unlike egalitarianism, feminism is a social movement that is inherently about action; it’s about tackling the world as it is right now, in which one particular gender is being oppressed. If all goes well, hopefully, we will all be able to call ourselves egalitarians. But until then, we need something specific to solve the problem of wide-ranging discrimination against women and other gender identities. Feminism got the name because it started as a socio-political movement advocating for women’s rights based on the premise that gender, specifically, is not an acceptable basis for discrimination or oppression. Through its own chain of reasoning, it has evolved into a movement for equal rights of all genders, which at no point takes away from any other human rights movement.

“I believe in equal rights of all genders but I don’t call myself a feminist.”

Too late. That’s literally the definition: You are a feminist.

Pallavi Prasad is The Swaddle's Features Editor. When she isn't fighting for gender justice and being righteous, you can find her dabbling in street and sports photography, reading philosophy, drowning in green tea, and procrastinating on doing the dishes.

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380 Powerful Women’s Rights & Feminism Topics [2024]

Are you looking for perfect feminist topics? Then you’ve come to the right place. With our help, you can be sure to craft a great essay. Here, you can find feminist topics for discussion, feminism research topics and other ideas and questions for students.

Some people think all feminists hate men. It couldn’t be further from the truth! Feminists are people of all genders who believe that they are socially and politically equal. Thanks to their achievements, women’s rights around the world are progressing.

If you want to contribute to the discussion, this article has what you need. Here, our custom writing experts compiled:

Creative feminism topics for your paper,
Tips to help you pick the perfect topic.

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🔝 Top 10 Feminism Essay Topics

✅ How to Choose a Topic

⚖️ Top 10 Women’s Rights Essay Topics

🔬 top 10 feminism research topics.

📜 Women’s Rights History Topics
💪👩 Feminism Topics
📚 Feminist Theory
👩‍💻 Women Empowerment
👩‍🎓 Women’s Studies
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🙅‍♀️ Domestic Violence

🔍 References

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✅ How to Choose a Feminism Topic

Picking the right topic is a crucial first step for any assignment. Check out these tips for a little starting help:

Formulate your topic as a question , such as “What makes Alice Schwarzer a controversial feminist figure?” This trick will help you clearly determine what your essay will be about.
Compile a keyword list . Once you have a general idea of what you want to work on, think of related words and phrases. For example, if our area of interest is “ Feminism in America , ” some of our keywords might be women’s suffrage movement , Fifteenth Amendment, birth control . You can use them to outline your research.
A concept map can be a helpful brainstorming tool to organize your ideas. Put your area of interest (for instance, women empowerment ) in a circle in the middle. Write all related concepts around it, and connect them with lines.
Stay clear from overused themes . Writing on popular subjects might be tempting. But can you offer a unique perspective on the issue? Choose such topics only if your answer is “yes.”
Make sure there is enough information available . Sure, an essay on the role of women in 17th century Tongan culture sounds exciting. Unfortunately, finding good sources on this topic might prove difficult. You can refer to subjects of this kind if you’re researching a thesis or a dissertation.

Now you’re ready to find your perfect topic. Keep reading and let one of our exciting suggestions inspire you.

Gender bias in driving
Girls’ education in Afghanistan
Women’s political rights in Syria
Women’s land ownership rights
Overincarceration of women in the US
Resettlement of women refugees: risks
Abortion rights in conservative countries
Reproductive rights and HIV among women
Honor killings as women’s rights violation
Access to cervical cancer prevention for women of color
Gender equity vs. gender equality
Adverse effects of child marriage
#Metoo movement’s impact on society
Environmental crisis as a feminist issue
The importance of women’s education
Is gender equality a social justice issue?
Why is teen pregnancy dangerous?
How can gender biases be lessened?
Ethics of artificial reproductive technologies
Legacy of women’s suffrage movement

📜 History of Women’s Rights Topics

The history of women’s rights in America is long and full of struggles. The US is still far from having achieved complete equality. And in many developing countries, the situation is even worse. If you’re interested in the feminist movements and activists who paved the way thus far, this section is for you.

The role of women in the first American settlements.
Why weren’t women allowed to serve in combat positions in the US army until 2013?
What happened at the Seneca Falls Convention?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Women’s Suffrage in America.
Discuss the impact of Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman? speech.
Explore gender equality in 20th century Britain.
Trace the timeline of events that led to the 19th amendment.
Why was the invention of the pill a milestone in the fight for equal rights?
The legacy of Amelia Earhart.
What was The Bitch Manifesto ?
Outline the history of women in American politics.
The role of women in the Civil Rights Movement.
How did the Comstock Laws affect the struggle for women’s rights?
How did Ruth Bader Ginsburg fight against gender discrimination in the US?
In what ways did the introduction of Islamic law improve women’s rights in Arabia?
Artemisia Gentileschi: forerunner of feminism.
In 2016, the first female president was nominated by a major US party. Why did it take so long?
Explore the origins of witch trials in Europe.
What did Molly Dewson achieve?
The history of women’s rights in Russia vs. England.
How did WWI influence the fight for equal rights
What were the goals of the Women’s Trade Union League?
The effects of the Equal Pay Act.

Study the connection between women’s health and rights throughout history.
When did women receive the right to own property in America? Why was it important?
Debate the role of women in history of theater.
In the past, Russia was one of the first European countries to introduce women’s suffrage. In 2016, it decriminalized domestic violence. What led to this change?
Women in the workforce: the long road towards workplace equality .
Minna Canth: the history of women’s rights activism in Finland.
Who were “The Famous Five”?
Why was Japan quicker to enact equality laws than its European counterparts?
The role and visibility of women writers in the 19th century.
What problems did the National Organization for Women face?
Discuss the foundation and impact of the Redstockings. Did they reflect the general attitude of women towards liberation at the time?
Who or what was responsible for the failure of the ERA?
The role of women in Ancient Greek communities.
Alice Paul and the Silent Sentinels: how did they contribute to establishing the right to vote for women?
Why was Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique critical to the progress of feminism in the 20th century?
The presidential candidacy of Victoria Woodhull.
What was the purpose of the Hull House? How did it advance women’s rights?
Why did Elizabeth Cady Stanton oppose the Fifteenth Amendment?
Lucy Stone’s influence on the abolitionist and women’s rights movements.
Discuss the significance of literature for the success of the suffragist movement in America.
Slavery: compare women’s and men’s narratives.
How Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s speeches and poetry changed the world.
Emmeline Pankhurst as the central figure of the UK’s suffragette movement.
Why did it take so long for suffragette movements around the globe to gain traction?
From a historical perspective, why weren’t women’s rights the same as human rights?
Trace the development of women liberation in Morocco.
Investigate the founding of women’s day.

👩👍 Feminism Topics to Research

Feminism is a global phenomenon. That’s why it’s not surprising that the term has many definitions. What to consider sexism? What can we do about it? How important is the concept of gender? Those are central questions feminists around the world seek to answer. Feminism’s areas of study include politics, sociology, and economics.

Compare feminist issues on a global scale.
What distinguishes radical feminists from liberal ones?
Black feminism: is it a separate movement?
When does “being a gentleman” become sexist?
Is feminism always anti-racist?
What do we need gender concepts for?
Feminism oppression in Islamic countries.
How do gender stereotypes form in children?
Why are societies around the globe still struggling to achieve full equality?
The effects of gender-oriented politics.
Can men be feminists? (Consider Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists )
How did the patriarchy develop?
Would a matriarchal society be more peaceful than a patriarchal one? Draw your conclusions from real-life examples.
Compare and contrast Judith Butler and Alice Schwarzer.
Effectiveness of provocative methods in feminism.
What’s the problem with unisex bathrooms in restaurants and bars?
Discuss the prejudice transgender people face. What should we do about it?
Why are reproductive rights a crucial issue on the way to equality?
Describe various types of feminism.
How can hairstyle function as a political statement?
Which feminist movements are most prevalent in Asia?
Trace the history of feminist ethics.
What’s the “pink tax,” and why should it be abolished?
Discuss Audre Lorde’s feminism.
How does feminist research methodology influence education?
Sexism in advertising: why is it still a problem?
What are the goals of Girls Who Code?
The role of literacy politics in achieving gender equality.
Stay at home moms: are they a step back on the feminist agenda?
Explore the origins of color-coding pink and blue as girl and boy colors, respectively.
Are beauty pageants harmful to women’s positive body image?
The problem of ableism in intersectional feminist movements.
What is identity politics, and why is it important?
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, recently introduced her new cabinet. Of the 20 people who serve in it, eight are women, five Maori, three belong to the minority Pasifika, and three are queer. Is it what all future cabinets should strive for?
What makes racism a feminist issue?
Describe how objectification works and why it is harmful.
A history of women inventors who didn’t get credit for their innovations.
Female circumcision as an example of women’s oppression disguised as a cultural tradition.
The infantilization of women: origins and effects.

Define how feminism influences science.
How does one avoid gender bias when raising a child?
What popular ideas about feminism are myths?
Gender inequality in politics of India and Iran.
What is the definition of ecofeminism? Describe its merits.
How do men benefit from feminism?
Why do we need gender equality in language?
Problems of reconciling religion and the LGBTQ community.
More and more fitness clubs introduce “women’s hours.” Some bars are only open for women. They claim to do this to create safe spaces. What’s your position on this development?
Anti-feminism: is it a movement for the far-right?
The impact of #metoo on work culture.

📚 Feminist Theory Topics to Look Into

Feminist theory criticizes how culture perpetuates misogyny. The best way to look at it is to divide feminism into three waves:

First-wave feminism (the late 1700s – early 1900s). It includes the women’s suffrage movement.
Second-wave feminism (the 1960s – ’70s.) Key points are equal working conditions and feminist political activism.
Third-wave feminism (1990s – today). It encompasses not only women but all marginalized groups.

Take a look at culture from a feminist perspective with our topics:

Discuss the concept of feminism in Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy.
Explain the success of Gillian Armstrong’s Little Women.
What inequalities between men and women does Mary Wollstonecraft mention in A Vindication of the Rights of Women ?
Masculinity and femininity in William Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.
An existentialist view: how Simone de Beauvoir influenced the feminist discourse.
The role of women in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.
Discuss the power dynamics between men and women in the Terminator series.
How does rap music perpetuate traditional concepts of masculinity?
Daisy’s character in The Great Gatsby through a feminist lens.
Write about the depiction of women and the patriarchy in Mad Men.
What distinguishes the third wave of feminism from the other two?
Women’s history and media in Susan Douglas’ Where the Girls Are .
What is the goal of gynocriticism?
Possibilities of sisterhood in Hulu’s TV show A Handmaid’s Tale .
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar : where does Esther Greenwood see her place in society?
Early feminist perspectives in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.
Compare and contrast how the characters in Mulan react to the protagonist as a woman vs. a man.
Life stages of women in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma .
Why were feminists unhappy about Prado’s exhibition Uninvited Guests ?
Sexuality and society in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire .
Gender expectations in The Little Mermaid .
Feminist concepts and issues in Netflix’s Thirteen Reasons Why .
Challenging traditional femininity: independence and rebellion in Thelma and Louise.
The target audience of Mad Max: Fury Road is stated as male. Yet, the central character of the film Furiosa is a strong rebel woman. Does this make it a feminist movie?
Persepolis : what it means to grow up as a liberal woman in Iran.
Blockbuster movies have an enormous reach. Does it obligate them to support feminist issues?
Marjorie Liu’s Monstress : what does it tell us about feminism?
The Berlin Film Festival announced that they would no longer crown the best actor and actress. Instead, they honor the best performance in either a leading or supporting role. What are the consequences of this?
What does it mean to criticize an art piece from a feminist point of view?
Compare and contrast the portrayal of female characters in horror genre throughout the years.
Analyze Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto . Why does the author use the cyborg metaphor? What arguments does it help bring across?
How do black women characters in Toni Morrison’s novels experience society?
What makes various awards an important instrument of feminism?
Analyze Katniss Everdeen archetype in Hunger Games.
Many classic children’s stories include outdated depictions of women and people of color. Because of this, some people are demanding to ban or censor them. Do you think this is the right way to tackle the problem?
What does the term “male gaze” mean, and why is it a problem?
The role of the body in feminist aesthetics.
Discuss the impact of women philosophers on renowned male scholars of their time.
What distinguishes feminist art from other art forms?
Debate the political dimension of using women in body art.
Does the message in Lemonade make Beyoncé a feminist icon?
Why are misogynist song lyrics still widely accepted?
How did Aretha Franklin’s music impact the Civil Rights Movement in America?
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray from a queer theoretical perspective.
Objectification in film: analyzing Rachel’s character in The Dark Knight.
Investigate the Star Wars’ representation problem. How did the franchise develop into a battleground for diversity?
Misogynist vs. psycho: feminist aspects of David Fincher’s Gone Girl.
Was the diversity in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse a good thing?
The cultural significance of strong female characters.
Examine the concept of femininity in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

👩‍💻 Women Empowerment Topics to Write About

Women were excluded from crucial work areas such as the military and politics for a long time. This situation is changing now. Empowerment programs encourage women to seek professions in typically male-dominated areas. Do you want to research ways of increasing women’s control over their choices? Check out the following topics:

Joan of Arc as a leadership idol.
The role of She Should Run in encouraging women to run for political positions.
What should we do about higher education barriers for African American women?
Examine current trends in female empowerment.
Importance of the women’s empowerment principles.

How can businesses use the Gender Gap Analysis Tool to promote equality in their companies?
Why is there such a big gap between committing to advancing equality and corporate efforts to implement women’s empowerment programs?
What business practices need to change so that men and women benefit from work programs equally?
Analyse the reasons behind poor body image among young women.
How does the transition from cash to digital payrolls help empower women in developing countries?
What challenges do large companies face when it comes to gender equality?
How does making fashion a circular economy impact women?
Discuss what everyone can do to empower the women in their community.
Why is it important to demand fair pay?
The impact of Reese Witherspoon’s media company Hello Sunshine.
What does it mean to be empowered?
The influence of climate change on gender equality.
Women in leadership positions: the rhetoric and the reality.
Social stigma and family planning: the work of HER project in Kenya.
CARE: why providing women with access to clean water is crucial for empowerment.
How do you teach a girl that she can make a difference?
Achievements of the global Women Deliver Conferences.
How does Pro-Mujer help underprivileged women in Latin America?
Why is workplace health a particular concern for women empowerment?
What can businesses do to bridge the financial inclusion gender gap?
Debate how strengthening women’s social position helps fight discrimination against all kinds of marginalized groups.
Analyze the various benefits of women empowerment.
Fighting gender stereotypes in the 21st century.
The connection between a lack of women in politics and missing programs to support marginalized groups.
What are patriarchal taboos that keep women from seeking power?
How can a gender perspective on resilience activities assist businesses in finding ways to combat climate change?
What methods does the #WithHer movement use to raise awareness of violence against women?
The Spotlight Initiative: training sex workers to escape violence in Haiti.
Define the gender digital divide.
What’s the problem with the female gendering of AI assistants?
Criticize the Gender Empowerment Measure.
What role does the internet play in empowering girls?
Compare the Gender Parity Index in the US and South Africa.
How is Every Mother Counts working to decrease deaths related to pregnancies?
Debate the reliability of the Gender Development Index.
Child Marriage: the impact of Girls Not Brides.
What are the political and social constraints that hamper women’s empowerment in Nigeria?
How can you encourage women to give public speeches?
How does e-learning help women worldwide gain independence?
Explore the influence of the women’s rights movement on anti-descrimination activities.
Challenges of women business in Mauritius.
Labibah Hashim as an inspirational figure for women empowerment in Lebanon.
How did Malaka Saad’s magazine al-Jens al-Latif inspire women to educate themselves in the Arab world?
The development of sexual harassment policies in East Africa.
How does microfinance in South America help women to start businesses?

👩‍🎓 Interesting Women’s Studies Topics for an Essay

Women’s or gender studies is an interdisciplinary science. It combines research from many fields, such as economics, psychology, and the natural sciences. Key aspects are women’s experiences and cultural as well as social constructs surrounding gender.

What is velvet rope discrimination?
The IT sphere is comparatively modern. Why does it still have such a gender gap problem?
Is paid maternity/paternity leave a fundamental right for workers?
How do we break the glass ceiling in today’s society?
Discussing social taboos: postnatal depression.
Women in religion: why shouldn’t women be priestesses?
The queer of color critique: history and theory.
Should feminists be against supporting care policies?
Does foreign aid benefit women entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Gender bias in criminal justice.
What does legalized prostitution mean for sex workers?
Does “stealthing” make otherwise consensual sex nonconsensual? Should this practice have legal consequences?
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks : a gendered analysis.
Rojava: give an overview of the egalitarian feminist society.
The role of women in modern nation-building processes.
How do we include transgender athletes into sex-segregated competitive sports?
Discuss the significance of gender in the euthanasia debate.
Chivalry and capital punishment : why are women who commit murders less likely to be sentenced to death?
Why do men have less confidence in women’s abilities than in men’s?
Are hijabs always a symbol of oppression?
Write about the role of feminism in international relations.
Universal basic income: changing perspectives for women.
Gamergate: what does it tell us about some men’s view on the video game industry?
Discuss the social construction of gender roles.
What is benevolent sexism, and why is it a problem?
The military seems to be especially notorious when it comes to discriminating against LGBT people. Where might this originate from?
Many army officers don’t hide that they don’t want women to serve. Why do women still do it? Why should they?
The Eurovision Song Contest gave drag queen Conchita Wurst an enormous audience. How did she use this opportunity?
Why are men who wear typically female clothing stigmatized?
How have The Guerilla Girls shaped the art world in the past 30 years?
Healthcare: what challenges do transgender patients face?
Femme invisibility: discrimination inside the LGBT community.
How did the idea develop that gay men and lesbians have to act and look a certain way to be considered queer?
The history of sodomy laws in the US.
“The Squad” as an example of the current success of left-wing women in politics.
Should women use their attractiveness to get what they want?
Are the careers of women scientists more affected by turmoil than those of their male counterparts?

Some of the most important female scientists.

Do children’s toys restrict gender criteria?
Many drugs are only tested on male subjects. How does this affect women?
Enumerate some qualities that are seen as positive in men and negative in women. Why do you think this happens?
Discuss the significance of the “Transgender Tipping Point.”
The meaning of “home” and home spaces for women over the centuries.
How do gender issues influence lawmaking?
Analyze queer narratives from post-soviet states. How do gender norms in these countries differ from those in your community?
Transgender representation in media: views of Viviane Namaste and Julia Serano.
Nuclear power between politics and culture: a feminist perspective.
Women guards in national socialist concentration camps.
What reasons do women have for sex tourism?
The problem of eurocentrism in European education.
Explore the connection between citizenship and race.

🏥 Abortion Topics to Research

For some, abortion is a fundamental healthcare right. Others view it as a criminal act. Many conservative governments continue to restrict the access to this procedure. Because of this discrepancy, abortion remains a fiercely debated topic all around the globe. Consider one of these thought-provoking ideas:

Why was Roe v. Wade such a landmark decision?
Discuss why some CEOs step up against abortion bans .
Abortion in transgender and intersex people.
From a biological point of view, when does life begin?
What signs should indicate that it is too late to terminate the pregnancy?
Who influenced the abortion debate before Roe v. Wade?
Is abortion morally wrong? If so, does that mean it’s always impermissible?
Under what circumstances is terminating a life justified?
Who or what defines if a being has the right to life or not?
Analyse the access to abortion clinics as a policy issue.
Reproductive rights and medical access in Sub-Saharan Africa.
People terminate pregnancies, whether it’s illegal or not. Why would one still outlaw abortions?
Investigate the occurrence of forced abortions during China’s one-child policy .
Is the fetus’ right to life more important than the mother’s right to have control over her body?
What rights are more essential than the right to life?
Discuss women’s health as their integral right.
Should there be restrictions on abortions?
Can better access to contraceptives reduce the number of abortions?
At what point does a fetus become a human being?
Is selective abortion ethical?
Germany’s paragraph 219a prohibits the display of information on abortion services. In 2019, the government decided to revise it, and now patients can consult a list provided by the department for health education. Is this compromise enough?
What is the moral status of a human embryo?
Should pregnancy terminations be free for low-income women?
Is the criminalization of abortion discrimination?
The social and psychological impact of pregnancy terminations on families.
Should the man have a say in whether the woman has an abortion or not?
What non-religious persuasive arguments against abortion are there?
Are there good and bad reasons for ending a pregnancy?
Should it be required for teenagers to have their parents’ consent for the abortion procedure?
Examine the arguments of pro-life movement.
Analyze how the public’s attitude towards abortion has changed over the past 50 years.
Is withholding access to abortions a violation of human rights?
After week-long strikes, the Polish government has delayed its proposed abortion ban. Is this a victory for the local feminist movement?
Compare and contrast the various legal abortion methods.
Analyze A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson.
How is abortion viewed in Eastern vs. Western countries?
Describe potential health issues surrounding late-term pregnancy terminations.
How can we prevent unsafe abortions ?
What complications can occur during the abortion process?
Debate the impact of the March for Life.
Discuss whether women should have an abortion if diagnostics show fetal abnirmalities.
What does Planned Parenthood do, and why is the organization important?
Should Helms Amendment be repealed?
How does the Hyde Amendment impact women of color in particular?
Is forcing a woman to carry out an undesired pregnancy morally permissible?
Mexican newspaper coverage on issues surrounding abortions.
What are the possible health consequences of an abortion?
Reproductive justice and women of color: the history of SisterSong.
Compare organizations that offer information on abortions.
How is the topic of abortion approached in Jason Reitman’s film Juno ?

🙅‍♀️ Domestic Violence Topics for a Paper

Domestic violence comes in many shapes, and it’s not always directed against women. It traumatizes not only the victim but the whole family. The long-term impacts on the victims are catastrophic, too. If you want to write a research paper on this topic, be sure to steel yourself before starting your reading.

How did the COVID-19 lockdowns influence domestic violence cases?
Domestic violence in closed religious communities.
Does the type of abuse differ if the perpetrator is a man or a woman?
Compare the problem of spousal abuse in the US, Asia, and Africa.
Why do many victims choose not to report their cases of domestic violence?
From a psychological perspective, why does domestic violence happen?
Domestic violence prevention: the role of parental communication.
Should a person with a history of abuse have custody over their child?
Why are men more likely to resort to violence than women?
Identify risk factors that can lead to elder abuse.
Trace how the frequency of reports on domestic violence has changed in your community over the past 30 years.

Domestic abuse is characterized by the following pattern.

Why do some victims choose to stay with their abusive partners?
What actions would you classify as domestic abuse?
Domestic violence and feminism in Bell Hooks’ theory.
Cultural perspectives on domestic violence: Saudi Arabia vs. Japan.
What do different religions say about IPV?
If a victim kills its abuser to escape the violence, what legal consequences should they face?
Examine the legislature of different states concerning marital rape .
The social and legal concept of consent in marriage.
Domestic violence and integrity among women of color.
Abuse in teenage relationships.
Common psychological characteristics of a person who commits parricide.
Effects of emotional neglect on a child’s mental development .
Discuss the effectiveness of art therapy for victims of domestic violence.
The significance of Oregon v. Rideout.
Explore the link between spousal and animal abuse.
What is the Battered Woman Syndrome?
Analyze different forms of domestic violence using case studies.
Study the psychology behind victim blaming.
How do mental illnesses and domestic violence affect each other?
What are the signs of coercive control? How can one get out of it?
The problem of control in gay relationships.
How does one develop Stockholm Syndrome, and what does it entail?
Analyze the discourse surrounding domestic violence in Hong Kong.
The pseudo-family as a sociological concept.
Compare cases of domestic violence in military and religious families.
What is compassionate homicide, and how does the law deal with it?
If a juvenile delinquent was abused as a child, should that lessen their sentence?
Parental abduction: why do parents feel the need to kidnap their children?
Domestic violence: new solutions.
Is one sibling bullying the other a form of domestic abuse?
How do communities typically respond to domestic violence?
Explore the link between women’s suicide and abuse.
What can healthcare specialists do to identify victims of violence more effectively?
What are the economic and social consequences of leaving an abusive relationship
How does Netflix’s show You portray the relationship between a stalker and his victim?
Treatment of perpetrators of domestic violence.
Why do some people repeatedly end up in relationships with IPV?
What are the main motives for femicides?
Discuss the psychological aggression men and women suffer during separation processes.

With all these great ideas in mind, you’re ready to ace your assignment. Good luck!

Trump Picks His Running Mate, and Political Heir

Former president donald j. trump chose the 39-year-old senator j.d. vance of ohio as his vice-presidential nominee..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today, on the first day of the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump makes his choice of a running mate. We watched it unfold in real time from Milwaukee.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It’s Tuesday, July 16.

Are you OK?

I’m getting phone interference.

Oh no, maybe that’s from your phone. There’s like 16 phones in this car.

I’ll start it.

OK. It is 9:35 AM on Monday morning, and we are driving into downtown Milwaukee to the headquarters of the Republican National Convention. And it’s day 1, the opening hours of what will be the Republican Party’s crowning of their nominee, former President Donald Trump. And the singular event that hangs over this entire convention is the one that none of us expected, which is the attempted assassination of the presumptive Republican nominee.

And the news is just flying at us this morning. We just got word that he’s going to be announcing his running mate today, his choice of a VP. So this is a pretty extraordinary day already before 10:00 AM, and we’re going to try to make sense of it all.

We just went through the first round of secret service asking to see our badges. We are now stopped at a giant metal pop-up wall. And in front of us, cars are being slowly and very thoroughly inspected by bomb-sniffing dogs and security teams.

Hi. You guys are good. You just have to get screened through the checkpoint.

Perfect. OK, thank you. Thanks.

Secret Service? Should I open the trunk?

— turn the engine off and pop the hood for me, please?

Oh, the front hood? How do I do that? We’re in a rental car. Here we go.

She’s got it. Look at her.

And also, don’t run into my barricade. People keep doing that even though it says stop on it, you know? Keep your eyes open, all righty? Let’s be safe, everybody.

Great. Thank you so much.

So we’re headed into deeper security.

— take off your sunglasses. Can you back up for me real quick?

Good. Good to go. Carlos?

Good to go. And —

Good to go. Thank you.

There wasn’t a single package inside that bag that they didn’t search. Hi.

Check in over here. Thank you guys for coming.

Hi, I can take whoever’s next.

Once we made it through all that security, we walked into the first official event of the day, a briefing for reporters from the Trump campaign about what this first day of the convention would look like.

So we’re inside a very big ballroom that has a podium and two flags set up next to it. Wisconsin, United States, there’s about 200 journalists in here, filling a quarter of the room and a lot of red-shirted RNC staffers and volunteers who are kind of corralling us. And we’re going to wait and see what they have to say.

But just as this briefing was about to begin, we were told that it was for planning purposes only and that we couldn’t use any of the audio from it.

I just want to summarize what we heard in this news conference. Essentially, what senior advisors to the Trump campaign just told us is that this day is going to be very action-packed. It is going to begin in the early afternoon with the official technical nomination by delegates of Trump as the Republican nominee. And then in the early afternoon, around 3 o’clock or so, the nomination of a vice presidential candidate will occur.

What that means is that sometime between now, 10:30 AM or so, and 3:00 PM, we will know the identity of who Trump’s running mate will be. And finally, we are going to lay eyes on Donald Trump himself at around 9:00 PM in the evening. And the crowd is going to go wild because it’s the first time many of them, many of us will have seen him since the assassination attempt. So it’s a really packed schedule filled with a giant piece of news in the middle, which is who Trump picked as his running mate.

Mike Bender.

To get inside Trump’s decision making, we turn to our colleague Mike Bender, a politics reporter at “The Times,” who’s been on the VP beat for the past few months.

OK, we just want to bug you for a minute about what is the status of the VP choice. Last time we talked to you, you told us that there were three top contenders — Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Senator JD Vance. So where do things sit here at 11:00 at noon on Monday?

Just hours before he’s actually supposed to make the announcement and nominate the running mate? I mean, I literally ran into a couple of sources who are with other VP contenders who are telling me that they haven’t received word one way or the other yet. I don’t think he’s told the person yet. I mean, we’re three hours from a nomination. I seriously do not think that Trump has actually made the formal offer yet.

We have to go — I think we have to just, like, explain that to people. We’re three hours from the necessary public disclosure of this information, and it’s not clear the decision’s been made.

Yeah, no, it’s amazing. I mean, Trump is known to vacillate over big decisions. He did almost the same thing back in 2016 when he picked Mike Pence. He decided to pick Mike Pence and then spent the night before their first news conference together, complaining to aides that he had made the wrong choice, wondering if he could pick someone differently. My reporting over the last week has been that he’s been going through similar iterations on this decision.

So we’re going to lightly stalk you until we get the news. And hopefully, when we get the news, you can break it to us. Or it will be broken over our heads, and then we’ll talk about it. And we’ll make sense of it.

Yeah, definitely. I am also hoping to be the first to know. And if I’m the first to know, you guys will be the second to know.

OK thank you, Michael.

Yeah. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Just as we finished talking to Mike, he made a phone call.

Hey. You don’t think — why don’t you think it’s Marco? He called? Like, just now? OK, I just saw some folks outside for another contender who haven’t heard anything yet. So I mean, and that was 30 minutes ago. So I’m wondering if it’s happening now. No, I didn’t see that. OK. OK. OK. Thanks, bye.

So can you just tell us about that phone call you had?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. This was someone who is very close with one of the VP contenders, one of the final three. This contender just received a call from Trump’s team saying he’s not the pick.

Soon enough, Mike confirmed that Marco Rubio had been crossed off the VP list, and that Rubio wasn’t the only VP contender to receive that call.

So it’s 1:30 PM, and this is a little orthodox, but I’m peeking over the shoulder of my colleague Mike Bender. And I can see that he’s writing the following. Both Doug Burgum and Marco Rubio have been told that they are not Trump’s VP choice. So in real time, assuming that this is right, we’re left thinking that the choice is either JD Vance or some wildcard person who we haven’t even thought of.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin a very important part of our program. I would like to ask that the aisles be cleared and the delegates please take their seats. Thank you.

In the meantime, the official business of this convention began. The nomination of Trump as the Republican nominee.

Michael, tell me what’s happening.

OK. So at this point, 2:00 PM, the roll call of delegates is underway on the floor of the Convention Hall.

West Virginia, 32 delegates.

So what’s happening right now is that the delegates from each state are publicly pledging their support to Donald Trump. And the delegates from each state represent the outcome of the primary vote that happened many, many months ago. So like right now, West Virginia’s designated speaker with a red hard hat on, is saying, from the great state of West Virginia —

And to cast those 32 votes for our former and future president, Donald J. Trump!

— we are pledging our 32 delegates to Donald Trump, and on and on and on it will go. And so this is a formality, adding up all the delegates from all the states. But it’s actually a technically required component of Donald Trump becoming and accepting his party’s nomination. And Trump will become the official nominee when 1,215 delegates in this room have pledged their support to him, which will probably be in about 30 minutes.

I stand before you today on behalf of the great state of New Hampshire.

And after Trump is nominated, this entire exercise happens all over again for his running mate whose identity we still don’t know. So that’s where a lot of the suspense of this moment is, not in the obvious fact that Donald Trump is about to be nominated, but that everyone in this room is about to nominate a running mate that they don’t know the identity of, that we don’t know the identity of. And we have to know the identity of it before it happens.

And all of a sudden, after not knowing how or when we would learn Trump’s choice, we finally do. And it’s delivered in classic Trump fashion.

So I’ve just seen on Truth Social that Trump has announced his VP pick, and it is JD Vance of Ohio.

OK. “Daily” editor Rachel Quester breaking the news that it’s Vance, which we kind of thought it would be, but now we know.

After the break, Vance’s nomination and why Trump picked him.

We’ll be right back.

OK, so we’re walking to the Convention Hall. It’s a bit of a trek. It’s very hot outside and blazingly bright. And we are now entering the media doorway.

Hi. How are you? Thank you.

Where are you all trying to get?

To the floor.

To the floor? To the floor?

OK. Just right out there and then somebody on the direction.

Around 3:30 or so, we walked out onto the convention floor just as Vance was being nominated as Trump’s running mate.

USA! USA! USA!

All right, time for a little convention business here. The question is on the motion that Senator JD Vance be nominated by acclamation —

This room is about to complete the nomination of Vance as VP.

All those opposed signify by saying no. In the opinion of the chair, the “ayes” have it, and the motion is adopted. Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table.

And just to give you a little bit of a sense of the feel of the room, JD Vance is smiling really widely. He’s leaning back. He’s laughing. Crowd is chanting JD, JD. And he seems a little in awe of the moment.

I am proud to announce that Senator JD Vance has the overwhelming support of this convention to be the next vice president of the United states.

And that’s that. JD Vance, the vice presidential nominee. We got to get out of here.

The chair is pleased —

When that was over, we headed back to where Mike Bender was working to talk to him about Trump’s choice.

So welcome to “The Daily” studio here in Milwaukee.

Can you close this door?

You can shut that, yeah. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Mike, you’re ready?

So if you believe that Donald Trump made this decision, as we think he did kind of the last minute, even if he’d been thinking about it for a long time, what’s your understanding of why he chose JD Vance?

I think Trump is making this pick on who he thinks gives him the best chance to win in November. He announced this decision in a Truth Social post and mentioned a couple of key states in that statement, essentially saying that he thinks Vance can help him win in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, Wisconsin. These are essential states for victory in November, both for Trump and President Biden. Trump won them in 2016 but lost to Biden in those same states in 2020.

Hm! He’s very openly saying, I have made a strategic choice. What’s interesting about that, Mike, is that in our conversation a couple of weeks ago when we talked about who Trump was looking at closely, you had said that he wasn’t thinking about these traditional questions of, Does my VP win me X state, Y state? You know, he was engaging in questions of personal rapport. And he got along really well with Doug Burgum.

So clearly, the strategic question became front of mind for Trump. And I just want to understand, Was there something in the race that changed that made him suddenly think about this or what?

Well, well, well, look at “The Daily” fact-checking its reporters here on air. Well, you’re not wrong either, Michael. There has been a shift in the last few weeks with Trump. He’s gone from talking about finding a running mate who could help him govern, to finding a running mate who can help him govern and someone who can help him win.

And when he ran the analysis here, when he looked at the different set of candidates he has, his ultimate decision was that JD Vance is the one who can do that. Vance will take him deeper into the states where he needs to win in the Midwest and appeal directly to the working-class, blue-collar voters he needs to capture these battlegrounds.

Explain exactly why he thinks JD Vance helps him win those three or so key states? What is it about Vance’s story that maps on to that strategy?

The answer is both biographical and rooted in policy. Vance is a child of Appalachia. He grew up in a poor, working-class neighborhood in Ohio. He served in the military. And when he decided to run for his first elected office in 2022, he was very far right on a lot of issues. He is one of the most staunch anti-abortion voices in the Senate right now. He’s an economic populist, the sort of anti-trade isolationist.

He was one of the first voices urging the Senate to vote against aid for Ukraine at a time where his party leaders were supporting that. So for Trump, when it comes to selling the idea of Trumpism and MAGA-ism, JD Vance is a very effective communicator for him, particularly in a crucial area of the country, that if Trump wins some of these Midwestern states could mean the end of Biden as president.

Got it. So we should see this decision as Trump picking someone who is ideologically extremely aligned with him, perhaps even a little further to the right than Trump, an issue like abortion, and from and of the place in the country that Trump needs to win, the Midwest, Appalachia. And that combination means, for Trump, Vance.

Yeah, exactly. I think it’s also helpful to put this in the context of the other contenders.

Vance is not bringing a new piece of the puzzle to Trumpism. Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, would have been a Spanish-speaking advocate who may appeal more to Latinos. Governor Doug Burgum, from North Dakota, could have helped settle down that pro-business Republicans who are nervous about Trump’s unpredictability. Trump is sort of signaling here that he’s not interested in adding to the party. He doesn’t want to make the tent bigger. He’s doubling down on this sort of white working-class, pro-MAGA piece of the party that he sees not just as a way to win in November, but very clearly the path for the party in the future.

Of all the candidates Trump was thinking about for VP — and we’ve talked about this with you — they went on a journey, right, from Trump skeptic to Trump supporter. But JD Vance’s journey stood out because he was so unstinting in his criticism of Trump. When Trump first entered the political scene back in 2016, I remember interviewing Vance and talking to him about this stuff. I mean, he compared Trump to Hitler. He called Trump the opioid of the masses. He suggested Trump was a con man. That’s a lot to overcome, but he did.

But he did. I mean, this is the most stunning 180 degree political flip-flop of our time. To go from saying the sort of things that you just brought up to now being chosen as his most trusted advisor, a running mate, a number 2, who will serve as president if something should happen to him, is extraordinary. I mean, you may have to go back to post-revolutionary times when we used to pick vice presidents by who came in second place to find a vice president who has said such searing criticisms of a president.

Fascinating. And ultimately, what’s your understanding of why Trump could get past that, somebody who is not very good at accepting criticism?

No, that’s true. But as much as Trump hates criticism for his own actions and deeds, he loves the redemption narrative. And he loves being asked for forgiveness. And JD Vance has spent several years seeking Trump’s approval by going on television, making nice with all of the right-wing websites and media in order to show how much he has changed his mind on Trump, and maybe most effectively, blame the media.

That point has been proven by Vance himself, who has explained his new thinking, his evolution on Trump by saying he was lied to by a media narrative about Trump. And now that he’s gotten to know Trump and now that he’s seen him, Trump in action as president, he has changed his mind.

Right. And it sounds like he never really needed to change his mind about some of the fundamental ideas of Trumpism. He had to change his mind about Trump. He seems always to have been fundamentally aligned with the ideas that Trump embraces — economic populism, some pretty far-right social positions. He needed to change his mind on the man, not the message.

Yeah, it was very personal, I think, for both Trump and Vance in this instance. Again, Vance is someone who grew up in rural Ohio, whose family is from Appalachia, saw some of the things that Trump has railed against when it comes to manufacturing jobs that are being shipped overseas, you know, these sort of pillars and institutions of society that have failed to uphold their end of the bargain when it comes to working-class, blue-collar, small-town Americans like Vance is.

If you are the Democrats right now, Mike, and you’re absorbing this news, where do you see the greatest vulnerabilities are going to lie for Trump now picking Vance?

Democrats are definitely going to use Vance’s old words against him, this sort of library of video clips and audio interviews of Vance going after Trump. But Democrats will also seize on Vance as an extremist, whether that’s his ardent abortion view and support for a national ban and his willingness to do what his predecessor, Mike Pence, wouldn’t. Vance has been on record already saying that he would have blocked the certification of the 2020 result, and that would have helped overturn that election.

Right. So you’re saying one simple way that the Biden ticket can go after Vance is by saying that you will enable Trump to break the law, overturn the election. We should expect that.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, looking back on what happened after 2020, the system worked because there was a lot of people around Trump who maybe they weren’t guardrails, but maybe more speed bumps. And there’s no indication that Vance has any willingness to play that role in the next Trump administration.

In that vein, it was pretty widely noted that in the hours after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, we saw JD Vance come out with a statement. It was the most strongly worded of anyone seeking to be his VP. And it had some factual problems. Here’s what he said. He said, “Today, the attempted assassination is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” We should say. There’s no evidence that that’s true. We don’t know the motivations of the shooter. We don’t know that he consumed any of that rhetoric or that Vance is even characterizing it correctly. So what should we make of the fact that Trump chose that running mate who made that statement in this moment?

I think Vance in a lot of ways kind of embodies the id of Trump and that instinct to fight. And even though these sort of manufactured statements from the campaign are calling for unity and calling for peace, what Trump really wants —

Since the attempted assassination, right.

That’s right. What Trump really wants is someone who is going to keep fighting. You know, factual or not, I think this shows the passion and the energy Trump was looking in at running mate, valuing that interest in fighting more than —

Interest in unity and peace.

Yeah, or facts on the ground.

Right. I want to end, Mike, with something you hinted at earlier, which is when you said that Trump is looking to Vance to set a path for the future of the Republican Party. What is that path with Vance as number 2?

Vance is only 39 years old. He’s barely old enough to be president.

Right, 35 is the requirement.

Exactly. So he’s obviously going to be viewed very much as the heir apparent for Trumpism. Trump knows this. And the signal it’s sending to everyone, not just in the party but the rest of the country, is that any remnants of a debate about whether this party snaps back to its sort of pro-business establishment culture —

Pre-Trump era.

— the pre-Trump era is exactly that. It’s a pre-Trump era. It’s over for Republicans. And when it’s not Trump, it’s going to be JD Vance or someone exactly like him.

Right. In other words, Trumpism is here to stay. It is the Republican Party now that I’ve chosen JD Vance.

There’s no going back anymore, Michael.

Thank you, Mike. This is really helpful. I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Are you guys from — are you guys from Michigan?

We make “The Daily” podcast.

Back at the Convention Hall.

We wanted to ask folks from all the big swing states about the selection of JD Vance about an hour ago and what you make of that decision, and if you think it’s going to help Trump win this state.

Absolutely. Look, I think the key thing in the platform is that it is dedicated to the forgotten men and women, and that is the blue-collar workers in the flyover states. JD Vance gets that.

It was clear that Republican delegates saw JD Vance as helping Trump win those key Midwestern states that will be essential to Trump winning in November.

So if Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania, which we’re going to make damn sure he does, we’re going to work our asses off.

You think that Vance helps them do that?

And just to make sure — I want to understand why.

Because JD Vance is like the common man. He’s like the common guy.

And that like Trump, they do see Vance as the future of Trumpism.

And the other nice thing is he’s young. He’s 39 years old

Why’s that matter?

It’s good to have somebody young with somebody that’s old in case, God forbid, something ever happens to Trump.

In other words, you already see him as the successor, the inheritor of Trump’s message and the party in MAGA?

Well, yeah, he’s going to have to carry the mantle. That’s probably what’s going to end up happening. Trump is only there for four years. You need somebody afterwards for the next eight. You need somebody for the next eight after that.

OK, can I — [MUSIC PLAYING]

And you’re from Wisconsin. You’re a delegate from Wisconsin. This is important. Trump mentioned Wisconsin in announcing Vance. Why was Vance your number one choice?

I think he brings youth to the field, to the vice president. And I looked at the upcoming years in ‘28, what’ll happen. And I think he was the man that can do it in ‘28 for the Republican Party.

You’re already looking forward to the next race?

Yes, very much so.

Here’s what else you need to know today. In a stunning decision, the judge overseeing Trump’s classified documents case threw out all the charges against him. In the process, she rejected what was widely seen as the strongest federal charges against the former president. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled that the special counsel who filed the charges had been given his job in violation of the Constitution.

That finding flew in the face of previous court decisions reaching back decades. In response, the Department of Justice said that it plans to appeal Cannon’s ruling.

Today’s episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Clare Toeniskoetter, Jessica Cheung, Mooj Zadie, Eric Krupke, and Rikki Novetsky. It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg and Rachel Quester, with help from Paige Cowan.

Contains original music by Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Michael C. Bender

Produced by Carlos Prieto , Clare Toeniskoetter , Jessica Cheung , Mooj Zadie , Eric Krupke and Rikki Novetsky

Edited by Brendan Klinkenberg and Rachel Quester

With Paige Cowett

Original music by Dan Powell , Elisheba Ittoop , Marion Lozano and Corey Schreppel

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Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

On the first day of the Republican National Convention, Donald J. Trump chose his running mate: Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.

We watched the process unfold in real time in Milwaukee.

Michael C. Bender, who covers Mr. Trump and his movement for The Times, takes us through the day.

On today’s episode

Michael C. Bender , a political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump and his Make America Great Again movement for The New York Times.

J.D. Vance is standing in a crowd of people with a big smile on his face and a pale blue tie. The crowd are holding up Trump-signs.

Background reading

What to know about J.D. Vance , Mr. Trump’s running mate.

Mr. Trump’s decision to pick Mr. Vance signals concern for the future of his MAGA movement.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections. More about Michael C. Bender

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