.

	FEMINIST PARTY

.
The Feminist Party, according to its charter, was committed to "fighting for the rights of liberties of women". The party was originally established to promote the participation of women in politics, with its founder saying that the larger parties, while not necessarily acting out of deliberate bias, were failing to provide women with the opportunity to participate in government. Later, not having met with any real success, the party became progressively more radical. In the end, the party was captured by an extreme group which held that the entire structure of society (but particularly the government) was intrinsically biased towards men, and that real equality could only be achieved if society were rebuilt from the ground up. The triumph of the radicals prompted an exodus of the more moderate members, resulting in the party's rapid collapse.

Colour and Emblem

The official colour of the Equality Party was violet. This colour was chosen specifically because it has traditionally been associated in Lendosa with "femininity", just as pink has been in other countries. When the prospect of a feminist party was first put forward, a notable public commentator ridiculed the idea of "the traditional red [communism], green [environmentalist], and black [fascist] flags being joined by a banner of violet". The party's founders deliberately selected violet as its colour to indicate that they were "female and proud of it". The party's official emblem was the widely recognised "female symbol".

-----

The party's official name in Lendian was "lo Partida Feminista". The name is interesting because it technically violates the rules of Lendian grammar - officially, the word for "party" is "partido", with the nominally masculine "o" ending. Although the classification of words as "masculine" and "feminine" is generally arbitrary, and thus not really discriminatory, the Feminist Party felt it appropriate to use the feminine "a" ending, giving "partida", even though no such word officially exists.

Quote

"Merely opening the way for women to succeed is not sufficient to guarantee equality. The present biased system has persisted for so long that it will remain intact no matter what nominal opportunities women have. To give women equal power in government will take a deliberate and proactive effort - it cannot be accomplished passively."

History of the Party

The Feminist Party was established in 267 AP, towards the end of the period when feminism had become a popular ideology. Its founder, Julia Adosa, lectured in politics at the University of Gloria Libertatis, and was considered an authority on feminist theory. Adosa established the party in order to increase the number of women participating in politics, saying that proactive steps were necessary to "break the pattern" of under-representation. Adosa did not intend the Feminist Party to be a permanent organisation, instead saying that once the fight for equality had been won, the organisation would be disbanded. According to Adosa, "the goal of the Feminist Party is to make itself unnecessary. If we ever achieve our goal of abolishing inequality, the party's purpose will have been served."

The Feminist Party began with only a handful of members, but was soon joined by people from other feminist groups. Soon, however, tensions arose as to the policies of the group. Many of the newcomers were also active in causes such as pacifism and environmentalism, and believed that the Feminist Party should support those causes as "natural allies" of the feminist movement. Severina Ora, the Feminist Party's deputy leader, even went so far as to suggest a merger of the Feminist Party with the Utopian Party (pacifist), the Ecological Party (environmentalist), and the Advancement Party (mild communist), saying that the causes of these groups were all merely "different aspects of the same struggle for justice". The original founders of the party, led by Adosa, objected to talk of other non-feminist policies, saying that the Feminist Party should be "for all women", not restricted to women who shared a particular political philosophy. After many bitter debates, Adosa resigned from the party in 269 AP, prompting it to collapse into chaos and lose its official registration.

For about three years, the Feminist Party was officially gone, although meetings still occurred by many of its former leaders. After long negotiations, the party was officially relaunched in 272 AP. Its leader was Nadia Relure, generally regarded as a compromise candidate between the two main factions. Julia Adosa remained outside the organisation, and did not comment on its revival. In 275 AP, the party mounted its first election campaign (having been inactive at the time of the 270 AP elections). It failed to win any seats, although the party claimed that the high number of seats won by women that year was because other parties "recognised the threat that we pose to them".

In 277 AP, however, more internal tensions broke out when a large number of people from the True Feminist Association, a more extremist feminist group, joined the Feminist Party en masse, staging what one member described as a hostile takeover. Many members of the Feminist Party objected to the newcomers, but as they complied strictly with the party's rules, nothing could reasonably be done. The True Feminist Association members were able to gain sufficient numbers within the Feminist Party to begin challenging its policies, attempting to shift the group towards more radical positions. To many, it appeared that the radicals were slowly gaining the upper hand, and in early 278 AP, a large number of more moderate feminists quit the party, believing that an eventual takeover by the radicals was inevitable. Among those who departed was Nadia Relure - the leader elected to replace her, Bernadeta Valfara, was a radical.

Under the leadership of the radicals, the Feminist Party re-orientated itself towards a much more extreme brand of feminism. According to the new leadership, the country's social structure itself has been "created exclusively by men", and was therefore could not be anything other than fundamentally biased against women. The Feminist Party therefore set out a program to "rebuild society from nothing". The platform was widely dismissed as "laughably impractical" both by non-feminists and by more moderate feminists like Adosa and Relure. The party performed poorly in the 280 AP elections, something which it said was "only natural, in a male-designed political system". Two years later, the Feminist Party officially declared that it was not possible for a women's party to triumph in the "patriarchal" world of politics, and cancelled its registration. The remnants of the group are now known as the Feminist Political Association, although the modern organisation has lost some of the radical nature that once characterised it.

List of Leaders

• Julia Adosa (267 - 269)
• [party collapsed] (269 - 272)
• Nadia Relure (272 - 278)
• Bernadeta Valfara (278 - 282)