FEMINISM, WOMEN’S ACTIVISM AND GENDER EQUALITY

Today, we have the great pleasure of presenting you to Juliet Mitchell, one of the leading figures – indeed one of the founders – of the second wave of the women’s movement. Juliet went on to establish the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Here, she takes us back into the analysis which stimulated her thinking about women and shaped her groundbreaking essay, ‘The Longest Revolution’, which came out in its first form in 1966.

She thinks of this book as a deconstruction of the situation of women, as identified with the family.

Our learning objectives today are:

· To discover the radicalism of the feminists who made the movement come to life in the seventies.

· To understand the most important phrase of second wave feminism: “the personal is political”

· To reflect on what makes women “the Other”?

Professor Hannah Dawson of King’s College London takes us into the early history of women, passionately reflecting on their condition and pointing out its wrongs, which have lasted for centuries. For her, the history of feminism is a history of trying to make visible things that are completely apparent to some, and yet remain invisible to others.

Our learning objectives today are:

· To identify the blind spots in the history of feminism.

· To discover key historical figures in the first wave of feminism.

· To explore gender as a social construct.

· To describe the meaning of women’s work through the lens of Marxism.

Leading sociologist, Maxine Molyneux from University College London, presents global feminism as constituting four distinct waves of action. She has participated in several of these.

Our learning objectives today are:

· To understand what the focus of feminist action has been through history.

· To locate feminist demands for education, social and sexual justice, and equal rights through the last three centuries.

· To date the various discussions about women’s place in society and gender equality.

Welcome to today’s talk on The History of Global Feminisms with Professor Durba Mitra of Harvard University. She will show us how the history of global feminisms is deeply entrenched in the history of colonialism, as well as in the history of the rise and fall of slavery.

Our learning objectives today are:

· To understand how the history of global feminisms is linked to the histories of slavery and colonialism.

· To think about the systematic exclusion of women of colour treated as less than human and how they become leaders in pushing against these limitations.

· To apply an intersectional analysis in considering women’s rights more broadly.

Welcome to today’s lecture on Learning from the Feminist Past with historian Professor Lucy Delap of the University of Cambridge. She tells us that there are important ways in which we should be looking back at feminist histories.

Our learning objectives today are:

· To identify what is usable in historic feminist tactics for fighting male violence and for resisting sexism and patriarchy.

· To reflect on whom feminism is for and what feminism in the past can teach us.

· To start exploring the potential for the women’s movement to develop in new ways.

Welcome to today’s talk on Feminist Economics for Everyone, with economist Professor Susan Himmelweit. She will tell us how feminist economics looks at the economy from the point of view of women’s everyday lives and how it can achieve a better effect for everyone.

Our key learning objectives today are:

· To analyse how feminist economics differs from mainstream economics.

· To understand the importance of an economy of care as an alternative to a model centred in economic growth.

· To reflect upon feminist economic theory and how gender must influence macroeconomic models.

Welcome to today’s talk on How Gender Shapes Technology with sociologist Professor Judy Wajcman of the London School of Economics. She will detail for us the crucially important way the notion of masculinity has affected scientific, technical and industrial work and our current world of algorithms.

Our learning objectives today are:

· To examine the notion of masculinity and how it is being associated with scientific, technical and industrial work.

· To understand how gender relations shape technology.

· To recognise gender biases in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Welcome to today’s talk on the #MeToo movement and the Need for Structural Change with Professor Durba Mitra of Harvard University. Durba will tell us why it is essential for feminist thought to be enacted in a political movement that starts with the individual but shapes a collective imagination.

Our learning objectives today are:

· To examine the influence of the #MeToo movement in making gender equality issues mainstream.

· To enrich the meaning of political protest for women.

· To understand why environmentalism is fundamentally tied to the rise of feminist thought.

We are coming to the end of this course.

What have we learned?

We examined the history of feminism and understood why women’s history matters and how historical, social, political and economic processes shaped gender inequalities.

We went through the different waves of feminism.

We discovered key concepts and terminology, such as gender and intersectionality.

We saw how feminism grew out of women’s experience of family life and relationships. We focused in on women’s ability to organise politically, socially and economically.

We examined contemporary feminist issues and the growing participation in women’s social and political movements.