Feminism:
Feminism is the principle that women
should have political, economic and social rights equal to those of men. Feminist movement is the movement to win such
rights for men.
Feminism is a movement concerned
with the dignity, rights and liberation of women and the implications of this
for humanity.
Feminist
Theology:
Feminist Theology is a theology
sharing the concerns of feminism, in Christianity especially focusing on the
critique of the tradition as patriarchal and on reconceiving it in
non-patriarchal terms.
Hauge defines Feminist Theology as
‘reflection on the content and meaning of religion with particular regard to
women’s status and situation, which recognizes the use and misuse of religion
in the past and the present for the oppression of women and has as its aim to
contribute to the liberation of women.
The
origin and development of Feminist Theology:
Feminist Theology emerged in the USA,
at the end of 1960s. It is rooted
primarily in Christian women’s experience of living under the pressure of
patriarchal ideology and structures claimed to be the eternal will of God. We can say this emerge as re-emergement and
the ‘second wave of feminism’. Its aim
was to pursuit meaning, wholeness, and equality for women. The first wave began in the late 1700s when
as English woman, Mary Wollstone Craft, penned ‘A Vindication of the Rights of
Women’.
In 1848, hundred American women gathered at New York and ratified a ‘Declaration of Sentiments’ regarding the basic natural rights of women. After this, the women’s movement gained momentum over the next few decades as women witnessed doors opening to higher education and many professions.
In 1920, women in US finally
obtained the right to vote. By 1930,
they attained education and removed the political, economic and educational
barriers and stepped out into man’s world with passion and zeal. But within one generation some women ceased
to pursue professional ends and returned home to take up the profession of home
maker and wife and their equality became dormant and French Philosopher Simone
de Beauvoir says, that they were trapped into a restrictive role of ‘kuche,
kirche, and kinder’ i.e., kitchen, church and children. According to De, women were to exist solely
for the convenience and pleasure of men.
Women were imprisoned by the roles of mother, wife and sweetheart. Therefore, she maintained that all forms of
socialism, wresting woman away from the family, favor her liberation. So again Feminism has drawn attention to
crucial problems that exist for women in society and in the church. Thus the development of feminism can be
traced quite clearly and comprehensively up until the mid 1970s.
Locating
Feminist Theology:
The
liberation theology movement was partly inspired by the second Vatican council
and the 1967 Papal Encyclical Populorum Progressio. Its leading exponents
include Gutierrez, Leonardo, Boff of Brazil and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay.
By the virtue of the book ‘A Theology Liberation’; Gutierrez became the
acknowledged leader of the liberation theology movement and called as the
father of Liberation Theology.
