Australian-born English writer and feminist who championed
the
sexual freedom of women.
Greer was educated at the universities of Melbourne
and Sydney
before taking a doctorate in 1967 in literature at
the University of
Cambridge. She acted on television, wrote for journals,
and lectured
at the University of Warwick until her influential
first book, The
Female Eunuch (1970), was published. It postulates
that passivity
in women's sexuality is a characteristic associated
with a castrate,
hence the title, and is a role foisted on them by
history and by
women themselves. Greer moved to Italy and continued
to lecture.
Her other books include The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes
of
Women Painters and Their Work (1979); Sex and Destiny:
The
Politics of Human Fertility (1984); and The Change:
Women,
Ageing and the Menopause (1991).
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Women's liberation movement also called Feminist Movement,
social movement that seeks equal
rights for women, giving them equal status with men
and freedom to
decide their own careers and life patterns.
Concern for women's rights dates from the Enlightenment,
when the
liberal, egalitarian, and reformist ideals of that
period began to be
extended from the bourgeoisie, peasants, and urban
labourers to
women as well. The period's nascent ideas concerning
women's
rights were fully set forth in Mary Wollstonecraft's
A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman, published in England in 1792,
which
challenged the idea that women exist only to please
men and
proposed that women receive the same opportunities
as men in
education, work, and politics. In the 19th century,
however, the
awareness of women's need for equality with men crystallized
in the
movement to obtain woman suffrage, rather than in
any fundamental
or far-reaching reevaluation of women's social status,
roles, and
their place in the economy. In the later 19th century
a few women
began to work in the professions, and women as a whole
achieved
the right to vote in the first half of the 20th century,
but there were
still distinct limits on women's participation in
the workplace, as well
as a set of prevailing notions that tended to confine
women to their
traditional roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers.
(See
"Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A".)
Meanwhile, the economic conditions underlying women's
inferior
(or at least dependent) status were changing as women
had fewer
children and as household appliances freed them from
many of the
labour-intensive chores formerly associated with housekeeping.
The
growth of the service sector in the Western world's
economies in the
decades following World War II also helped create
new types of
jobs that could be done as well by women as by men.
All these
factors made growing numbers of women aware that society's
traditional notions of them had failed to change as
rapidly as
women's actual living conditions had. In addition,
the Civil Rights
Movement in the United States during the 1960s inspired
women to
try to obtain better conditions for themselves through
similar
campaigns of mass agitation and social criticism.
A milestone in the rise of modern feminism was Simone
de
Beauvoir's book Le Deuxième Sexe (1949; The
Second Sex),
which became a worldwide best-seller and raised feminist
consciousness by appealing to the idea that liberation
for women
was liberation for men too. Another major work was
The Feminine
Mystique, published in 1963 by Betty Friedan, an American.
She
attacked deadening domesticity--the conditioning of
women to
accept passive roles and depend on male dominance.
In 1966
Friedan and other feminists founded the National Organization
for
Women. Other women's organizations for equal rights
proliferated
in the United States and in western Europe immediately
thereafter.
These organizations sought to overturn laws and practices
that
enforced the inferior status of women by discrimination
in such
matters as contract and property rights, employment
and pay issues,
and management of earnings and in matters related
to sex and
childbearing (i.e., contraception and abortion).
More broadly, the growing feminist movement sought
to change
society's prevailing stereotypes of women as relatively
weak,
passive, and dependent individuals who are less rational
and more
emotional than men. Feminism sought to achieve greater
freedom
for women to work and to remain economically and psychologically
independent of men if they chose. Feminists criticized
society's
prevailing emphasis on women as objects of sexual
desire and
sought to broaden both women's self-awareness and
their
opportunities to the point of equality with men. Another
of
feminism's aims was to advance women's participation
in political
decision-making and all areas of public life.
Feminists in western developed countries have agitated
against
mass-media presentations of women that seemed biased,
stereotypical, or discriminatory. In parts of Africa,
feminists' goals
may be more basic--such as removal of the bride-price.
In the
Muslim Middle East, they may seek relaxation of the
dress code
and the code of seclusion. In many countries they
may decry the
wife's need to get her husband's permission to sign
a contract or
bring a lawsuit.
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Family Feminist Perspectives
One effect of the feminist movement has been an increase
in
sociological studies directed specifically at the
roles of women in
society in general and in the family and marriage
in particular. The
American sociologist Jessie Bernard, for instance,
argued that the
study of marriage must focus both on husbands' and
on wives'
expectations and achievements. She noted that married
men are
generally more successful than single men in achieving
their goals in
life, whereas the opposite is true for modern married
and unmarried
women. This view contradicts that of Young and Willmott,
who saw
the modern symmetrical family as a step toward greater
equality and
similarity of roles between husband and wife. Much
of the data
Bernard cited was psychological: American wives are
known to be
much more prone to anxiety and depression than their
husbands,
and this, she argued, reflects the unfairness in marital
roles as
conceived in American society.
Ann Oakley made a similar case for Britain. She examined
the
changing roles of women since the Industrial Revolution
and, in
particular, the emergence of a new status of woman
as housewife.
Oakley, and many others in feminist circles, have
regarded the role
of housewife as degrading to women in that it prevents
them from
achieving economic and social independence on the
same basis as
men.
Another effect of the feminist movement has been a
greater
awareness in society as a whole of a double standard
in sexual
behaviour and a growing feeling that such a standard
is unfair to
women. Under this code of conduct it is permissible
for men to
engage in premarital and, to some extent, even extramarital
sexual
intercourse, while women are expected to remain chaste
before
marriage and faithful to their husbands afterward.
This double
standard and its inherent assumption of sexual inequality
is a cause
of concern for many women.
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Gentileschi, Artemisia
b. 1593, Rome, Papal States [Italy]
d. 1652/53, Naples, Kingdom of Naples
Italian painter, daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, who
was a major
follower of the revolutionary Baroque painter Caravaggio.
She was
an important second-generation proponent of Caravaggio's
dramatic
realism.
A pupil of her father and of his friend, the landscape
painter
Agostino Tassi, she painted at first in a style indistinguishable
from
her father's somewhat lyrical interpretation of Caravaggio's
example.
Her first known work is "Susanna and the Elders" (1610),
an
accomplished work long attributed to her father. She
was raped by
Tassi, and, when he did not fulfill his promise to
marry her, Orazio
Gentileschi in 1612 brought him to trial. During that
event she herself
was forced to give evidence under torture. She married
a Florentine
shortly after the trial and joined the Academy of
Design in Florence
in 1616. While in Florence she began to develop her
own distinct
style. Her colours are more brilliant than her father's,
and she
continued to employ the tenebrism made popular by
Caravaggio
long after her father had abandoned that style. Although
her
compositions were graceful, she was perhaps the most
violent of all
the Caravaggisti; she illustrated such subjects as
the story from the
Apocrypha of Judith, the Jewish heroine, beheading
Holofernes, an
invading general.
Artemisia Gentileschi was in Rome for a time and also
in Venice.
About 1630 she moved to Naples and in 1638-39 visited
her father
in London. There she painted many portraits and quickly
surpassed
her father's fame. Later, probably in 1640 or 1641,
she settled in
Naples, but little is known of the final years of
her life.
Bibliography
Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of
the
Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (1989).
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