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First of all, I learned again about some aspects of liberal, radical and Marxist feminisms. To some readers' surprise, there is no one, single feminism. There are different, diverse and multiple feminisms. No woman or female scholar can insist that her feminism is the right, perfect feminism. This fact is true because no one theory can explain every aspect of human lives across the world.
In the U.S., what was called the "women's liberation movement" evolved out of the New Left movement in the late 1960s. To be more precise, the New Left movement was influenced and affected by the May 1968 movement in France. The women's liberation movement is usually dubbed the "second wave," as the first wave started in the 19th century in connection with movements to gain women's voting rights and the slavery abolition movement in the U.S. and western Europe.
In the second wave of the women's liberation movement, the main tasks were attempts to theorize the causes and origins of women's oppression. To my knowledge, probably the first of such attempts could be seen as the famous "The Origin of Family, Private Property and State" written by F. Engels, a close friend of K. Marx in the 19th century. It is well known that Engels' book was influenced mainly by L. Morgan's book, "Ancient Society."
No matter how hard sophisticated theorists may explicate causes of women's oppression, they normally depict incidents of the far past. So, I have a feeling that such theories might not be able to explain and solve current women's issues, as modern society has changed so much from those past societies. Nonetheless, theories of the causes of women's oppression do shed much light on current women's problems.
With respect to liberal feminism, I used to think of it as something of the past, not influential as a school of thought any more. Since the late 18th century, women have been given many nominal equal chances and opportunities with men in lots of social sectors, including law, institutions, education and employment.
In particular, in Korea, women's education levels seem to be even higher than those of men. Of course, there still remain plenty of problems regarding gender imbalances and inequalities such as unequal pay, the lack of women in high government and corporate positions, unstable women's employment and ― worst of all ― the increase in sex crimes against women. At the end of the day, I ask this question: are women leading decent lives in our society? If women are equal to men, women should have equal opportunities to men. Thus, such slogans of liberal feminism are still valid.
Dr. Lee Nan-hee (godorchid@gmail.com) studied English in college and theology at Hanshin University.
