Gohar Blog # 10

Gohar Blog # 10


1. How did African American women approach the issues of reform and suffrage?

The women suffrage movements during the twentieth century was a huge achievement by the way it connected working women from different classes (middle-class, high class, and college educated women) and created bridges among those classes in order for women to have an equal voice when voting for the matters of high importance. On the other hand this movement, for the most part, did not create any sense of equality for the African American women. They were denied memberships and the movement failed to condemn discriminations against African American women.
Despite getting the cold shoulder from various white suffrage groups, African American women pursued their rights of equality aggressively by asserting their political rights in gaining right to vote and equal ballots. These movements were more aggressive and widely persuaded in south and amongst southern African American woman suffrage groups.

2. What were the main differences between the emerging feminist movement and the suffrage movement?

The main goal of the suffrage movement was to gain the right to vote for women which was equal to the right of vote for men. This movement was primarily concerned with the political rights of women as a whole. They mostly addressed masses and their activities were mostly directed towards grabbing the attention of influential politicians as well as law makers. On the other hand, the feminist movement started when some members of suffrage groups started the new school of thought regarding the modern notion of womanhood. They started to distinguish themselves as women who cared more about the individual rights for women, such as birth-control rights, sexual freedom, and etc. The feminist groups consider themselves as suffragists as well. This is well understood from the sentence; “All feminists are suffragist, but not all suffragists are feminists”.

3. What were the various definitions of feminism according “Talks of Feminism….”?

In Cooper Union twelve speakers gave different ideas about feminism but in conclusion all were agreed “that the movement sought freedom for women”. Young said that feminism to her was “some fight, some, fate, and some fun,” Bjorkman said “those women shall have the same right as man to be different,” and…. After reading that document I understand that feminism is everything about women, their rights their education, their life, their freedom, their movements, and everything they dreamed of having for years and years. They want to be independent and do what they really want. Women can not sit back and do what they are expected to do and what is the tradition because the modern woman is an independent entity capable of thinking for herself and making the right decisions for herself.

4. What role does women’s economic independence play in feminist thought?

According to feministic views, women are entitled to have economic independence. Gaining economic independence might seem a simple task in the first glance, but it has many crucial points asserting pressure and creating obstacles for women to gain their economic independence. The simple understanding is that if women are allowed to hold jobs and generate money, they will gain economic independence. This is true if we do not consider the fact that there are many jobs in the market that have been known to be male dominated industries. Therefore for a woman who has the ability and the talent to do a male dominated trade, it is still very hard or impossible to hold a position in such industry. This is a threatening fact to the economic independence of women which sometimes will lead to slow progress of the process.

5. What is you own definition of feminism?

In my opinion feminism is the central idea and school of thought that is created to safeguard and promote women’s rights and independence. The notion of feminism is adopted by females who seek female equality in all aspects of life. Feministic views are directed towards creating a world in which male and female equally contribute to the advancement and progress of their society. In the ideal world both genders contribute to the society based on their unique talents and individualistic abilities and everybody’s contributions are treated equally and valued uniformly. Therefore males and females work to complement and not compete with each other in order to create a better world.