Introduction to Suffrage Movement
The Women’s Suffrage Movement was the struggle for the right of women to vote and run for office and is part of overall women’s rights movement. In the nineteenth century, women in many countries—including, the U.S. and Britain formed organizations to fight for suffrage.
Suffrage Movement
The suffrage movement was a broad one, surrounding women and men with a wide range of views. The first country to grant national-level voting rights to women was the self-governing British colony of New Zealand, which passed the Electoral Bill in 1893. The major division in Britain was between suffragists, who sought to create change and suffragettes, led by English activist Emmeline Pankhurst, who in 1903 formed the militant Women’s Social and Political Union. Throughout the world, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) established in the US in 1873, campaigned for women’s suffrage. Suffragist themes included the concepts that women were naturally kinder and more concerned about children and elders. As Kraditor shows, it was frequently presumed that women voters would have a polishing effect on politics, facing domestic violence, liquor and highlighting cleanliness and community. They should be equal in every way and that there was nothing as a woman’s “natural role”. Despite this discouragement, black suffragists continued to insist on their political rights. “If white American women, with all their natural and acquired advantages, need the ballot,” argued Adella Hunt Logan of Tuskegee, Alabama, “how much more do black Americans, male and female, need the strong defense of a vote to secure their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”
Introduction to Postmodern Feminism
Postmodern feminism is an approach to feminist theory that includes postmodern and post-structuralist theory, seeing itself as moving beyond the modernist polarities of liberal feminism and radical feminism.
Postmodern Feminism
Postmodern Feminists welcome the male/female binary as a main categorizing potency in the society. The general statement of postmodern social theory is a rejection of the western ideal of establishing universal grand accounts as a means of understanding and explaining society. Postmodern theory challenges claims of a united subject, which is presented as representing an objective point of view, a “view from nowhere.” Postmodern theory and practices recognize differences, making room for everyone to contribute and thus having a “view from everywhere,” and eliminating the practice of postulating one understanding as representing or being “truth.” The combination of postmodernist theory and feminism allows for questioning of essentialist approaches within and outside of feminism, an expansion of feminist scholarship as well as contributing the lens of “gender” and other issues essential to feminism to the body of postmodern scholarship.
Introduction to Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalism is a configuration for building theory that sees society as a multiplex system who work together to promote solidarity and stability. Functionalism addresses the whole society in terms of the function of its integral elements; norms, customs, traditions, and institutions.
Structural Functionalism
The Structural Functionalism theory perceives society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the social needs of the people in society. Functionalism is a standpoint that claims that our lives are guided by social structures, which are stable influences of social behavior. Social structures give the shape of our lives – for example, in families, community and through religious organizations. and definite rituals, such as complex religious ceremonies, give structure to individual’s lives. Durkheim visualized society as an organism and each component within an organism plays a necessary part, but none can function alone and if any part fails, other parts must adapt to fill the void in any way. Each social structure has social consequences for the operation of society as an entity. Education has important roles in society, such as socialization, enlightenment and social placement.
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