Social justice feminism

Last updated March 26, 2024

Social justice feminism is the practice of recognizing issues of oppression dealing with race, class, sexuality, and citizenship and challenging them through practice rather than theory. This form of feminism allows for a broader audience beyond the white middle aged^{[ citation needed ]} women who began the movement. It actively fights racism and class privilege by “ensuring that those most affected by policies and practices are at the decision making table.” It advocates for more women of color in leadership roles and allows recognition for global gender justice and women's rights.^[1]

Florence Kelley

In response to the obstacles women faced in the workplace involving wages, hours, and conditions, Florence Kelley from Philadelphia initiated and coined the term social justice feminism in the early 1900s. Kelley envisioned the passage and implementation of labor legislation for working women. When Kelley died in 1932, Melly Dewson, her protege, takes over the movement.^[2]

History

During the 1899 New Women's Movement Initiative (NWMI), Social Justice Feminism was made the emphasis of the women's movement. The NWMI was a series of meetings meant to “build relationships, trust, and analysis necessary to revitalize US feminism”^[1] During these meetings, there was a struggle to agree on, “whether the women’s movement should aspire to be about [women’s] rights or social justice”.^[1] Those who wanted it to be about women's rights feared that a social justice title would ignore the discrimination that women face.^[1] This is due to the fact feminism and the beginnings of the woman's movement was portrayed as for white middle aged women. Therefore, these white women did not want the movement to be seen as social justice.^[1] They did not understand that by viewing it as social justice feminism, it includes more people's right than just theirs; it includes minorities just as much.^[1] Ultimately, the NWMI wanted to “regain momentum in the political arena”^[3] so the women agreed to base the movement on promoting principles of social justice feminism.

Social Justice Feminism first focused on labor reforms.^[3] This included advocating for reduced working hours and better working conditions for women.^[3] This turns from protecting women workers to expanding workplace protections for all employees after some time.^[3] In the Muller V Oregon Supreme Court Case, the issue of a minimum work was addressed. Muller had required one of his employees at his factory to work beyond the minimum hour work day and was taken to court due to this. Florence Kelly assisted Oregon's attorney, Louis D. Brandeis, in the case and luckily the outcome was in their favor.^[3] “By a 9-0 vote, the justices upheld the Oregon law,”^[4] As a response to this case, Kelly and other social justice feminists lobbied for minimum wage laws. Their success consisted of twelve states obtaining such legislation by 1917.^[4]

Intersectionality

Social Justice Feminism is built on the fundamentals of intersectionality. Intersectionality is defined as, “the theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual,”^[5] As an example, one can be discriminated against based on their gender for being a woman, but one can also be discriminated based on their race and gender for being a Latina woman. These layers of oppression intersect with one another, making it harder on them.

In relation to Social Justice Feminism, the movement is about evoking change for all rights therefore intersectionality must be looked at. It allows us to view the different ways men and women can be oppressed thus leading to taking action.^[1] During the National Women's Movement Initiative, “participants were diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, economic status, sexuality, geographic locale and age. There was a strong presence of women of color as well as a cross generational representation of women who became active in the women’s movement"^[3] A more diverse group of people were wanting to participate in the movement but worried about feeling accepted. They questioned whether they were accepted in the movement.^[3] Ultimately, these women felt welcome and valued as they shared a similarity with the rest of the women; a desire to “maximize the potential of the movement as a social change agent”.^[3]

Social Justice Feminism today

Social Justice Feminism is not a thing of the past. We still see it today around the world. As an example, in San Francisco, the Young Women's Freedom Center (Formally, Center for Young Women's Development) becomes the first United States non-profit that is run and led entirely by young women. These cis and trans women are “Building a movement of formerly incarcerated and system involved young women to transform the systems that keep us living in poverty, stuck in cycles of violence, and incarcerated” Their goal is to, “change the systems, policies, services, and narratives that ensnare young women of color, poor young women, and queer and transgender young women in cycles of violence, economic marginalization, incarceration, and self destruction,”.^[6]

One of the organizations provided by this group is called Sisters Rising. The women who lead this provide young women that have been in the juvenile system with paid internships. Because it is difficult to obtain a job with their status, Sisters Rising is truly providing these girls with great resources.^[6] The internships, “incorporate healing, skills development, political education, community organizing and reintegration into the community”^[6] Overall, Sisters Rising is helping young women who struggle to stay out of the criminal justice system by providing with meaningful employment. This is more than what most of our world does today to help young women like this.^[6] Another organization that provides social justice is the National Latina Business Women Association-Los Angeles (NLBWA-LA). This organization offers workshops, programs and networking connections to Latinas who are expanding their business. The goal of NLBWA-LA is to support Latina women in the business industry allowing women of color to be noticed more.^[7]

Social Justice Feminism today, like it always has, consists of making change happen for all those who are oppressed whether that be due to sex, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, etc. The difference is that since the New Women's Movement Initiative in 1899, there have been various waves of Feminism that have been tacked onto the movement.^[3] Issues that social justice feminists have fought such as, suffrage, education, representation, have broadened to equality, sexism, environmental justice, and domestic violence. Although the issues continue to change or become broader, social justice feminists is continuing to fight.

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Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment of, or exercise of power over, a group of individuals, often in the form of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. It is related to regimentation, class, society, and punishment. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination when the injustice does not target and may not directly afflict everyone in society, but instead targets or disproportionately impacts specific groups of people.

Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, but began in the late 1960s and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, sexism within the gay liberation movement, and homophobia within popular women's movements at the time. Many of the supporters of Lesbianism were actually women involved in gay liberation who were tired of the sexism and centering of gay men within the community and lesbian women in the mainstream women's movement who were tired of the homophobia involved in it.

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Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, height, age, weight and physical appearance. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing. However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the practical uses of intersectionality.

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Intersectionality is the interconnection of race, class, and gender. Violence and intersectionality connect during instances of discrimination and/or bias. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a feminist scholar, is widely known for developing the theory of intersectionality in her 1989 essay, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics". Crenshaw's analogy of intersectionality to the flow of traffic explains, "Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination."

Multiracial feminist theory is promoted by women of color (WOC), including Black, Latina, Asian, Native American, and anti-racist white women. In 1996, Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill wrote “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism," a piece emphasizing intersectionality and the application of intersectional analysis within feminist discourse.

White feminism is a term which is used to describe expressions of feminism which are perceived as focusing on white women but are perceived as failing to address the existence of distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges.Whiteness is crucial in structuring the lived experiences of white women across a variety of contexts. The term has been used to label and criticize theories that are perceived as focusing solely on gender-based inequality. Primarily used as a derogatory label, "white feminism" is typically used to reproach a perceived failure to acknowledge and integrate the intersection of other identity attributes into a broader movement which struggles for equality on more than one front. In white feminism, the oppression of women is analyzed through a single-axis framework, consequently erasing the identity and experiences of ethnic minority women the space. The term has also been used to refer to feminist theories perceived to focus more specifically on the experience of white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied women, and in which the experiences of women without these characteristics are excluded or marginalized. This criticism has predominantly been leveled against the first waves of feminism which were seen as centered around the empowerment of white middle-class women in Western societies.

Carceral feminism is a critical term for types of feminism that advocate for enhancing and increasing prison sentences that deal with feminist and gender issues. The term criticises the belief that harsher and longer prison sentences will help work towards solving these issues. The phrase "carceral feminism" was coined by Elizabeth Bernstein, a feminist sociologist, in her 2007 article, "The Sexual Politics of the 'New Abolitionism'". Examining the contemporary anti-trafficking movement in the United States, Bernstein introduced the term to describe a type of feminist activism which casts all forms of sexual labor as sex trafficking. She sees this as a retrograde step, suggesting it erodes the rights of women in the sex industry, and takes the focus off other important feminist issues, and expands the neoliberal agenda.

Feminism and racism are highly intertwined concepts in intersectional theory, focusing on the ways in which women of color in the Western World experience both sexism and racism.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Janus, Kathleen Kelly (Spring 2013). "Finding Common Feminist Ground: The Role of the Next Generation in Shaping Feminist Legal Theory". Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy. 20 (2). Durham: 255–285. ProQuest 1449792413.
↑ McGuire, John Thomas (2004). "Two Feminist Visions: Social Justice Feminism and Equal Rights, 1899–1940". Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. 71 (4): 445–478. JSTOR 27778638.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Social Justice Feminism" (PDF).
1 2 "Key Court Cases: Muller V Oregon".
↑ "Intersectionality".
1 2 3 4 "Young Women's Freedom Center".
↑ "NLBWA-LA - About Us". nlbwa-la.org. Retrieved 2019-03-30.