Women's movement: genesis and evolution

The article describes the general approaches to research of the political theory of feminism, the main scientific directions of researches of the phenomenon of gender and women's political movement. In modern use feminism is steadily connected with women's movement and attempt of change of the social role of women. In essence, feminism associates with two main beliefs: women are exposed to discrimination on the sexual basis, and this discrimination can and should be destroyed. Feminism does not represent a monolithic and universal theory, but has various ideological manifestations and a political strategy. Therefore, it is necessary to speak about feminism, its different - in time and space - discourses and politicians (liberal, Marxist, radical, post-modernist, ecological, psychoanalytic, anti-racist, etc. feminism). Depending on concrete historical conditions it can pursue various political aims: from achievement of the electoral right to vote for women, establishment of equal access to education and increase in number of women occupying top positions in public life, to legalization of abortions, prohibition of female trimming and cancellation of rules of carrying of clothes, which are limiting and humiliating for women. The ''first wave'' of feminism captured the period from the middle of the 19th century till the end of the 1920s. It is mainly connected with the requirement of women to have the same civil and political rights as men. The electoral right for women was the main goal of women's movement because they believed that if women could vote, all other types of sexual discrimination and prejudices would quickly disappear. It is paradoxical, but the gain of the right to vote weakened and undermined women's movement. Many activists fondly believed that having achieved the electoral right for women they achieved full emancipation. Only in the 1960s women's movement revived with the emergence of the ''second wave'' of feminism recognizing that achievement of the political and civil rights did not solve "women's issue". The purpose of the ''second wave'' feminism was political emancipation which could be reached not only via political reforms or legislation changes, but also demanded basic social changes. With the first blossoms of the radical feminist idea in the late 1960s and early 1970s feminism has further development as indisputable and authoritative ideology, whose ideas and values challenged the most fundamental representations of the traditional political thought. Feminism succeeded in creation of gender researches and gender concepts as important subjects among academic disciplines and in the increase of understanding of problems of gender in public life as a whole. By the 1990s feminist organizations existed in all western countries and appeared in the majority of the developing ones.

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