FEMINISM (from the French féminisme). - It is the complex of theories, issues and struggles agitated and conducted on the feminist front for the equalization of woman with man on the civil, social and political plane and, implicitly, for her emancipation. Such emancipation, already matured in its fundamental postulates especially through the work of Christianity, whereby physiological differences constitute no barrier to moral equality, although it was halted or slowed over the centuries, from classical antiquity down to the whole of the eighteenth century, gave rise to the emergence of the true and proper feminist problem only in quite recent times, so that the feminist movement is a typically modern phenomenon: just as modern and for the most part, indeed, contemporary are its most decisive moments and its most advanced progress. One cannot in fact attribute a feminist spirit to that certain emancipation, political or cultural, enjoyed by woman in Roman or Renaissance or eighteenth-century society; because those were, so to speak, occasional parentheses of a relative social influence and prominence of hers, but not stages of a true and proper campaign of demands such as the one to which the name f. is now specifically given.
F. is a product of the evolution of society, of its structure, of its changed conditions and economic-juridical conceptions. Therefore it too goes back to the French Revolution, that is, to the movement which revolutionized, with its many defenses of the rights of man, also the ideological fabric of the old anti-feminist conservatism. Indeed, the Déclavation des droits de la femme which Olympe de Gauges presented to the Constituent Assembly in 1791 is considered the birth certificate of f. Her proposals, petitions and protests, the women's clubs she organized were the first bold manifestations of the feminist idea which was establishing itself as a movement, or which later found credit among French socialist theorists, such as Ch. Fourier, E. Cabet, P.-J. Proudhon, C.-H. Saint-Simon. Fourier was the first to use, with regard to woman, the word "emancipation." Shortly afterwards, in 1792, in England too the feminist first-fruit was launched, the "Vindication of the Rights of the Women" of Mary Wollstonecraft, which postulated for women an education equal to that of men and advocated the mixed state school. Also from 1792, in Germany, is the writing Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Welter by Th. von Hippel.
Thus framed, the feminist question found itself in Europe on the threshold of the nineteenth century. The novelty and development of the European economy of the early nineteenth century and the ferment of social ideas on the national and international ground facilitated over the course of the century the consolidation of feminist theories and their gradual social recognition. Effective promoters of such f., at first essentially theoretical, were intellectuals and writers of democratic-socialist tendencies, such as George Sand, or economists, such as Stuart Mill, strong in their liberal individualism in the more integral defense of the human personality. The fact of finding this movement promoted by coryphaei of socialism and liberalism, and more the exaggerations to which these abandoned themselves, caused the Catholic side to look at first with suspicion upon the movement (cf. N. Marini, Il valore scientifico delle moderne teorie intorno alla donna, Rome 1887), but in the end the healthy demands, fully responding to Christian thought, were separated from doctrinal and practical exaggerations.
Stuart Mill's book, The Subjection of Women (London 1869; Italian trans., Lancinno 1926) is considered the basic text of feminist doctrine and contains the theoretical and popularizing presuppositions of its modern development. Through it the first feminist demands came about precisely in England: admission of women to the vote in municipal councils (1869) and in county councils (1880), abolition of marital authorization (1882), freedom of organization such as the Social and Political Union of suffragettes (directed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst), freedom of public meetings and demonstrations.
For the same demands the feminist associations of the other nations were fighting at the same time, until the world war of 1915-18, through the urgent exigencies of war, marked an imposing turning point in the history of f., and guaranteed its most rapid fortune. The obligatory employment of women in all offices, public and private, not ceased but rather intensified in the post-war period, was strengthened by the output of female personnel in every form of activity (manual, professional, clerical) and gave the test to the economic-productive equalization of the two sexes and hastened their equalization on the juridical-social plane. Already from 1915-17 in Germany, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, the U.S.S.R., Spain, the United States, women were voters and elected as deputies, ministers, undersecretaries, diplomats. From 1918 women were voters and elected also in England, from 1946 they are so also in Italy. Here the feminist movement was never organized and clamorous as in England and America, but no less felt morally and economically, so as to achieve notable results. A f. less socialistic and materialistic, more idealistic and spiritualistic; less theoretical and more practical.
Now that the ancient prejudice of female inferiority and of the exclusive hegemony of man has decayed, women have by now entered into all forms of activity: commercial, industrial, cultural, artisanal, political, parliamentary; to women are open all university faculties, almost all careers and professions.
Economic and ideal reasons have concurred together in these successes of f., which today, in the middle of the twentieth century, may be said to have reached the culminating point of its parabola of realized demands. Upon them it must also stop, so as not to harmfully degenerate by going too far. Some extremist currents of f. would, in fact, for example, be in favor of the disappearance of the family as a moral, economic, juridical institution.
"Toward woman various political movements turn - as His Holiness Pius XII recently and authoritatively observed - in order to win her to their cause. Some totalitarian system sets before her eyes wondrous promises: equality of rights with man, protection of pregnant women and of puerperae, kitchens and other common services that free her from the weight of domestic cares, public nursery gardens and other institutions maintained and administered by the State and by the municipalities, which exempt her from maternal obligations toward her own children, free schools, assistance in case of illness." What S. Samiti observed on the subject on the same occasion can sum up the whole feminist movement: "One does not wish to deny the advantages that may be drawn from one or another of these social measures, if applied in the proper ways... There remains, however, the essential point of the question... has the condition of woman thereby become better? The equality of rights with man has, with the abandonment of the home where she was queen, subjected woman to the same weight and time of labor. Her true dignity and the solid foundation of all her rights, that is to say the proper character of her feminine being and the intimate coordination of the two sexes, have been sadly neglected; the end intended by the Creator for the good of human society and especially of the family has been lost sight of. In the concessions made to woman it is easy to discern, more than respect for her dignity and her mission, the aim of promoting the economic and military power of the totalitarian State, to which everything must be inexorably subordinated" (AAS, 37 [1945], p. 288).
However, as that authoritative voice still taught, in the present juridical, social, economic and moral condition of woman, under a regime of perfect equalization, however desirable it may be to restore as far as possible the honor of woman's mission in the domestic hearth, she must not show herself reluctant toward the movement that draws her, willingly or unwillingly, into the orbit of social and political life. She must cooperate with man for the good of the civitas, in which she is equal to him in dignity, and must cooperate in it according to her nature, her characteristics, her physical, intellectual and moral aptitudes.
All this is a question not so much of distinct attributions as of the manner of judging and of arriving at concrete applications.
Bibliography22 works
Ada Ruschioni