• Feminism
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Defined: Women should enjoy equal rights in
• Society, law, business, government
• Decisions about their bodies especially abortion, birth control
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The Issue
• By 1920s: Women have the vote but this is not equality
• By 1940s: Latin American women generally have the vote
• Opposition to feminism came from both left, right
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Left felt women would vote conservative, listen to their husbands
– Right felt women would be liberals, vote to change society
• Post War Europe saw the rise of feminism
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Simone de Beauvoir: society oppresses women, creates differences
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1960s
• Feminism becomes a middle class movement
• Pill, right to work and education helped movement
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NOW: National Organization of Women (USA)
• Pressed for legislation to end discrimination towards women
• 1973: Roe v. Wade made abortion legal and strengthened women’s movement
• Presses for equal access to jobs
• Runs up against the glass ceiling
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An artificial barrier women cannot pass into management
– Women not entering the board rooms (CEOs), senior government positions

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Feminism and equal rights
Early century: World War I saw Western women get vote
Status of women changed dramatically after WWII in industrialized states
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Women mobilized to support war; some actually fought in war
Women demanded full equality with men, access to education and employment
Birth control enables women to control their bodies and avoid "biology destiny"
U.N. Declaration of Women’s Rights officially grant women international rights
U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids discrimination on basis of race or sex
In Western Europe, US, Oceania women entered politics, board rooms
Gender equality in Communist Countries?
Communist states often improved women's legal status
Despite legal reforms, women have not yet gained true equality
In USSR, Eastern Europe many women entered medicine, science but second to men
In China, one-child policy encourages infanticide or abandonment of baby girls
The Developing World: Africa, SW Asia
Decolonization often as much from colonizing country as husbands, males
Domesticity and abuse restricting rights of women
Women in Arab and Muslim societies twice as likely as men to be illiterate
Most Indian women illiterate (75 perecent in 1980s) and confined at home
"Dowry deaths" common in India; burning of wives in Pakistan
Women leaders in South Asia
Effective political leaders: Indira Gandhi (India) and Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan)
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Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga became president of Sri Lanka, 1994
Democratic activist Aung Sang Suu Kyi
Received Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 when under house arrest in Myanmar
Seeks democracy in Burma
UN launched a Decade for Women program in 1975
Latin America, Japan, Little Tigers beginning to follow early 20 th century West

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East Asia
– China
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Communists push women into society
– Women are comrades aiding the revolution
– True also of USSR, Eastern Europe; to a lesser extend also true in Vietnam, North Korea
• In China
– 1960s Cultural Revolution pushed this idea
– 1980s economic liberalization seems to have hurt progress
– Japan
• Meiji women entered workforce (2/3 of work force); poor conditions
• World War II
– Women enter into all workforces to free up men for army
– This is true of every major combatant in World War II (US, UK, USSR, Germany)
• US Occupation changed Japanese society beginning in 1945
– US insisted on equal rights, women’s vote, equal pay
– Women enter grassroots politics, consumer groups, environmental issues
• Religious States
– Muslim states
• Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Malaya, Pakistan, Libya saw some positive changes
• Muslim states ruled by Communists, USSR saw progress but only to a certain level
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Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia so no significant changes and experienced some decline
– Christian societies
• Divorce, ownership of property allowed; control of bodies (birth control, abortion) opposed
• Many Catholic societies repeatedly blocked abortion, divorce
– Attempts to liberalize repeatedly drew intervention of the Church, Pope
– True of much of Latin America, African countries, Philippines, Catholic Europe
• Protestant fundamentalist forces in the US, Latin America opposed liberalized women’s rights

• Urbanization effects family structure
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Industry replaced family centered production
– Breadwinners left home to earn money from outside work
– All characteristics true world wide to greater, lesser extent
• Women
– Mothers increasingly primary family care givers
– Women gradually make all family decisions
– Women often had familial jobs and worked outside family
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Men
– Fathers often out of contact with family for hours, days
– Promiscuity, divorce become more common
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Boys often assumed senior male roles earlier
• Children
– Education generally became universally mandated
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Children gradually excluded from industrial work (not farm labor)
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Onset of puberty delayed by foods, expectations
– Adolescence becomes a stage between childhood, adulthood
– Marriage age increases

• Causes of poverty
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Inequities in resources and income separate rich and poor societies
– Attendant problems: malnutrition, environmental degradation
– Legacy of colonialism: economic dependence
• Labor servitude increasing
– Slavery abolished worldwide by 1960s
– Tacitly tolerated in some Muslim nations even today
– Millions still forced into bonded labor, debt work, sharecropping
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Child-labor servitude common in South, Southeast Asia
• Trafficking of persons across international boundaries
– Widespread
• Illegal labor, workers
• Latin America, China are largest sources
– Girls, Women
• Lured with promises of work
• Often in sex industry; hugely profitable though criminal

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– Is not new but was an elite past-time
– Grand Tour of France, Italy, Germany common for nobles
– Pilgrimages included travel, sights
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– Tourism fashionable for rich Europeans, Americans
– Later adopted by working people especially middle class
– First travel agencies established in nineteenth century
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– Leisure travel another form of consumption
– After WWII, packaged tours took tourists across the world
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– Now travel, tourism is largest single industry on the planet
– Low-paying jobs; profits go mostly to developed world
– Many poorer countries try to develop tourist industries
– Tourism exposes cultural variations, diversity
– Tourism leads to transformation of indigenous cultures
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