Feminist Movement: Advocating for Gender Equality & Rights - Essay Sample

Introduction

Feminist movement refers to a movement that strongly opposes patriarchy. Patriarchy is a structure where male members of the society hold key positions in the government and private sectors. Portray a believe that male members are more superior to females in a community. Claim that men dominate women and implement gender duties that oppress them. Feminist movement advocates for reproductive rights and equal pay, access to education and occupations, and right to hold public office. Additionally, they fight to be given paid work, own property and sign contracts, right to vote, discourage sex violence and violence against women, and fight for gender equality. Feminism can also be described as a set of theories concerning the oppression of women and a set of solutions to embrace change (Allspach, date).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Feminism address for equality of all gender in social, economic, and political fields (Hobbs, & Rice, 2018). Additionally, it advocates for equality of all persons irrespective of sexual orientation, age, religion, class, and race. Currently, feminism promotes equality for marginalized groups, racial and ethnic minorities, poor, disable, and LGBTQIA. Some false perceptions about feminism are that it is against men, does not believe in marriage, are only women, and hate sex. Also, they are believed to be career women who do not support stay at home moms, advocate for more power than men, hate being feminine and attractive, and are run by lesbians. Feminism gives priority to gender

The political ideologies and waves for feminists are post-colonial and third world feminism, critical race feminism, Marxist, radical feminism, and liberty. Post-colonial and third world feminism critique how white feminist gives support. Critical race feminism states that oppression of women is based on race, class, and gender, which sums up to intersectionality. Marxist states that women are oppressed based on their class and gender. Radical feminism aims at eliminating present oppressive structures and giving a new order in society. Liberty demands the civil rights movement, sexual liberation, free of choices, and equality (Hobbs, & Rice, 2018).

Feminist Criminology

Feminist criminology began in the 1970s and1980s. It critiques theories such as Ferrero and Lombroso, which states that women involved in crime because they are less intelligent than men. It compares women and men various causes criminality, such as social determinism and psychological positivism. It also opposes sexism in criminal justice, and they claim that the criminal justice system (CJS) participate in gender types of punishment and criminalization. The Inexistence of laws and regulations that protect women from violence continues to prolong violence against women. They assert that police mostly watch most black and poor women, and their significant number is put in incarceration. Feminist criminology puts much emphasis on gender as a critical impetus that forms crime and social control.

Central Contributions Feminist Criminology

Feminist criminology examines the contribution of gender in crime and other social challenges. All feminist does not only focus on women experience. However, since most women issues have not been featuring from mainstream criminology work for a very long time, a significant number of feminists give priority to women's behaviors, attitudes, and experience. The primary argument of feminist masculinities theories explains that there is no simple caliber of being a man, which gives direction to all men's behaviors, including crime. Masculinities theories who researched on crimes agree that, for several men, crime and violence are the best techniques for executing and proving masculinity.

For instance, several economically young men, irrespective of their cultural or ethnic background, do not efficiently assert their masculinity at the educational institution through involvement in extra-curricular activities, participation in sports, and academic advancement. These challenges make the young men get to experience a lot of frustration, which makes them drop out of school, and develop the culture with other men who share a similar experience. This subculture gives member's status based on fulfilling gender through violence and other illegal means (DeKeseredy, 2015).

The work of feminist criminologist is to research on the comparison of women abuse in rural and urban areas in countries. They specifically focused on violence against women and stressed on masculinity and violence. Additionally, they evaluate how the rural criminal justice system (CJS) responds to the abuse of women in rural areas. They also assess the role of rural racism and hate groups and their contribution to crime. The government involvement in crime (state and corporate or white-collar crime) in a rural setting has been researches are done by feminist criminologist. They claim that many genocide acts done by the state occurs in rural areas (DeKeseredy, 2015).

Feminist criminology is credited for its research to bring in-depth knowledge of how the criminal justice system views women and react to their social challenges. First, it explains that sex is the physiological or biological feature that distinct men and women. Gender is characteristics that define a person as either feminine or masculine. Initial research explains that female offenders were termed as masculine, and many people believe that most female offenders were most likely men than women. It contributed a lot to research about women offenders. Initially, the research about women was limited. The upsurge in the social and political system of feminism provided a platform where issues affecting women in the society could be raised. This platform transformed society, and the criminal justice system was not left behind. The challenges faced by women that were addressed are reproductive rights, legal inequalities, and sexuality topics (Sage publication Inc., 2019).

Women as victims of Violence

Women faced a lot of victimization, infarct they are victims of particular types of violent crimes. When women are victimized, and they report to authorities such as the criminal justice system, their charges are not documented and lessen through plea bargain making offenders fail to be punished. Through victimization, women are traumatized and physically injured (Sage publication Inc., 2019).

Women Who Offend

Women offenders get involve largely in a specific class of criminal activities. For example, they engage in prostitution crimes. The most significant percentage of arrest in prostitution crimes are women. Additionally, most girls involved in status offenses. This is a situation whereby an individual engage in crime because they got engaged at a certain age. For instance, the taking of alcohol is considered an offense if you are below 21 years in the USA. Gender also influences the way the criminal justice system reacts to people who participate in a crime. This is because society dictates how women should behave. When women participate in violent crimes, it is against the socially forbidden gender obligation of women. Hence, women in this form of crime are punished hard for going against socially prohibited duties, and for breaking the law (Sage publication Inc., 2019).

Patriarchy and Female Offending

Feminist opinion admits there is gender inequality. Patriarchy contributes a lot to gender inequality and explains how women face immense disadvantages in society. Through patriarchy, we are able to examine gender inequality in private and public organizations. Economic marginalization explains the link between patriarchy and female criminal activities. Women are economically disadvantageous in comparison to men.

Public Patriarchy

The primary cause of female crime is economic marginalization. The greatest number of unemployment among females has been linked to property offenses and female violence. Women lead households to contribute the greatest percentage of arrest as a result of prostitution, burglary, and property crime. There is a greater gender disparity between men and women in income and occupations. Women engage in property crime because of the lack of basic necessities for survival. Therefore, poverty is the sole cause of women's involvement in criminal activities (F. Parker & Reckdenwald, 2016).

Private Patriarchy

Power exists between men and women. Women are limited to performing domestic work and caring for children, and their economic activities are minimal, this makes them dependent on men. Since women are assigned an inferior rank of managing households, they go through socialization and experience that limit their activities. Hence, men dominate and maintain power over the management and control of resources than women (F. Parker & Reckdenwald, 2016).

Intersectionality

Intersectionality refers to the nature in which the social classification of people is interconnected. These social classifications are gender, class, and race. They apply to specific individuals or groups, considered as developing an interdependent system of discrimination or disadvantage. Intersectionality is the acceptance that among a group of people with a particular identity, whether it is race, religion, sexuality, and gender, or one of the other defining features of identity, there is an existence of an intragroup difference. Hence, every person will encounter social structure, which slightly varies because the interchange of their identities portrays an intersection of overlapping expression. The role of intersectionality was to motivate social movements to deeply analyze the societal issues by considering factors like sexuality, disability, gender, and race. It aims at minimizing oppression among these classes of individuals (Haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu, 2016).

Pamela George Case

The case of Pamela described the process of intersectionality. She experienced a combination of gender, class, and race form of oppression. Her murder was purely a form of colonial and racial gender violence. Everything was racially inclined from the police investigation, the trial of suspects, the court proceedings, and the verdict of the trial. Additionally, there was a refusal of the existence of racism, and encouraging impunity for colonial violence. Ternowetzky and Kummerfield belong to the white class, and they are privileged, they represent dominant class patriarchal and capitalist.

These students are privileged based on their education and their status in life, like buying sex, cars, partying, and vacation. They believe that enjoying fun means buying sex, and drinking alcohol are strictly gendered, class-based, and common in a patriarchal society. Pamela is from a lower class system, very poor, and practice prostitution to earn income. She has highly dehumanized has racially low class and an object that can be bought to enhance sexual satisfaction. Moreover, being non-white, she is less of a human being and deserves to die. The physical beating she was inflicted on her is a form of gender-based violence.

Policing

How police department did their work demonstrated the intersection of racial, gender, and class biases. The police assumed the homeless persons were guilty of murder since the diseased was from the same poor class. This is racial judgment since they ignored middle-class men.

Court Proceedings

The court proceeding displayed racial gender judgment. This is because Pamela was blamed for what befalls her. Her poverty-environment

Court Proceedings

The judge was gender-biased since she concluded that Pamela was actually a prostitute. The judge never did an in-depth analysis to ascertain whether the lady consented to the sex with the men.