The awakening of women’s self-awareness is always accompanied by radical social change and ideological transformation. Each awakening is closely linked to the reality of women’s position and the pressing needs of the moment and therefore focuses on different issues and manifests itself differently.
The awakening of women’s self-awareness in the West
- The first awakening: the awakening of a sense of rights
In the 18th century, the dramatic social changes in continental Europe led to a worldwide social movement in which the search for equal social status and the realization of equal rights became the focus of female thought. Inspired by the idea of human rights, they criticized the traditional view of the thinning out of women’s abilities on the grounds of biological differences. They focused their struggle on denying women’s educational and economic rights, demanding that women be given equal rights with men to education.
- The second awakening: the awakening of gender consciousness
In the 1930s, women’s rights to vote, education, and employment were also significantly improved. This period saw a shift from a desire to improve the realities of the situation to a theoretical search for the root causes of women’s current problem, an academic exploration of the nature of women’s oppressed status and the lack of self-awareness, and a search for women’s liberation. Early women called for gender equality, fought for women’s rights, and established them in institutions and laws. However, traditional gender roles remained unchanged, and the oppressed status of women remained fundamentally unchanged.
Gender theory presents a powerful challenge to the biological determinism and traditional social roles of women prevalent in the 19th century West, pointing out the crucial factors that shape gender inequality and deepening the understanding of the relationship between gender inequality. It expresses the view that biological differences are not the decisive factor in the differences between the roles and behaviors of the sexes, but that institutional and cultural factors are the leading causes of the differences between the parts and behaviors of men and women, and that people’s existing gender perceptions are a product of socialization, a manifestation of social relations and a way of being in relations of power, which can be changed.
- The third awakening: the awakening of identity consciousness
Women’s experience varies across class, race, ethnicity, and culture, so women’s identity cannot be confined to gender identity alone, but race and style are equally important. Postmodern feminism, however, does not agree with this and advocates the uprooting and reconstructing of the female ‘subject’ identity.
- Reflections on the awakening of women’s consciousness in the West
The development of the women’s movement and feminist theory has shown that the women’s movement cannot make substantial progress on its own. It requires the solidarity of women worldwide and the support and cooperation of men as the other half of humanity. Anne Ferri says that “the emphasis on the importance of gender differences is necessary, but only transitional, because I don’t want to see a woman speaking only as a woman or a man speaking only as a man.
We are faced with a social system and culture that is quite firmly male-dominated and dominant, and within which the movement for female liberation is bound to receive backlash and infiltration from existing ideologies, but at the same time, the awakening of female consciousness and the development of feminist theory is influenced by existing human civilizations and ideas. The question of how to reconcile and choose between multiple voices and one position, and to structure and at the same time construct a vision, is a question we still need to consider in the future.