European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History
by Karen Offen
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Description
This ambitious book explores challenges to male hegemony throughout continental Europe. It focuses especially on France, but it also offers comparative material on developments in the German-speaking countries and in the smaller European nations and aspiring nation-states. Spanning 250 years, the sweeping coverage extends from Portugal to Poland, Greece to Finland, Ireland to Ukraine, and Spain to Scandinavia—as well as international and transnational feminist organizations. The study has show more several objectives. For general readers and those interested primarily in the historical record, it provides a comprehensive, comparative account of feminist developments in European societies, as well as a rereading of European history from a feminist perspective. By placing gender, or relations between women and men, at the center of European politics, where the author argues that it belongs but from which it has long been marginalized, the book aims to reconfigure our understanding of the European past and to make visible a long but neglected tradition of feminist thought and politics. On another level, by providing a broad and accurate historical analysis, the book seeks to disentangle some misperceptions and to demystify some confusing contemporary debates about the Enlightenment, reason, nature, equality vs. difference, and public vs. private, among others. The author argues that historical feminisms offer us far more than logical paradoxes and contradictions; feminisms are about sexual politics, not philosophy. Feminist victories are not, strictly speaking, about getting the argument right, nor is gender merely “a useful category of analysis”; sexual difference lies at the heart of human thought and politics. show lessTags
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European feminism, Europe, history
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Author Information
10+ Works 165 Members
Karen Offen is a historian and independent scholar, affiliated as a Senior Scholar with the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University. Her previous publications include European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History (2000).
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, Sexuality and Gender Studies, Politics and Government, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.42 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity Women Social role and status of women
- LCC
- HQ1586 .O33 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Women. Feminism
- BISAC
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- Reviews
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- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
