I Am A Woman,Too: Feminism To The Black Woman

In history, women have always struggled to gain equality, respect, and the same rights as men. Women had had to endure years of sexism and struggle to get to where we are today. The struggle was even more difficult for women of color because not only were they dealing with issues of sexism, but also racism. Many movements have helped black women during the past centuries to overcome sexism, racism, and adversities that were set against them. History tells us that movements such as the Feminist Movement helped empower all women, but this fact is not totally true. In this paper, I will discuss feminism, the movements, and its "minimal" affects on black women.

The word feminism comes from the word féminisme, which was thought of by Utopian socialist Charles Fourier. He argued that the extension of women's rights was the general principle of all social progress. This later led to the organized movement that dated from the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 (See Exhibit:3). There is no one definition of feminism. It is a view that women are inherently equal to men and deserve equal rights and opportunities. Feminism can be described as the following:

a range of contemporary theoretical perspectives, including political, sociological, legal, psychoanalytic, literary, philosophical, in which women's experiences are examined in relation to actual and perceived differences between the power and status of men and women;

A social justice movement in which issues of particular importance for women, such as domestic violence, pay equity, globalization, are analyzed, understood, and addressed from feminist perspectives (familypride.uwo.ca/glossary/glossary5.html).

Feminism became a larg...

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...edmon Fauset

Althea Gibson

Billie Holiday

Lena Horne

Zora Neale Hurston

Harriet Jacobs

Mae Jemison

Marjorie Stewart Joyner

Nella Larsen

Toni Morrison

Rosa Parks

Leontyne Price

Condoleezza Rice

Bessie Smith

Maria Stewart

So it is seen today that women, especially black women, have come a long way since the 1800s. In today's society, women have a voice and are being heard. We have more rights and opportunities now than we ever did. I believe that we need to look to our past to correct our future. We need to take the experiences and knowledge that our ancestors have left us and use it to better the future of all women.

Works Cited

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism

http://familypride.uwo.ca/glossary/glossary5.html

http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/thistle/v9/9.01/6blackf.html