Is feminism dead?

Craig has a post titled "The Death of Feminism" with the text "It's the left's fault, of course" and a link to an opinion piece from today's Australian. I know that Craig is generally not complimentary to either feminism or the left, but I thought this article raised some good points.

Pamela Bone writes "Let it be recorded that in the last decade of the 20th century the brave and great movement of Western feminism ended, not with a bang but with a whimper" and asks "On International Women's Day, where are the protests in our cities against stonings, honour killings or any other persecutions to which women are still subjected?"

Good question. Here are some more choice excerpts:

While a US administration that refused to fund programs against AIDS unless they taught about chastity instead of condoms could rightly be criticised, the mullahs whose abuses of women's rights were very many degrees worse could not.

Was it before or after September 11 that thinkers of the Left - for feminism was a movement of the Left - decided that racism was a far more serious crime than sexism? When did cultural sensitivity trump women's rights?

I don't hold much hope on this International Women's Day of seeing big protests in Australian cities against female genital mutilation; or against honour killings, stonings, child marriages, forced seclusion or any of the other persecutions to which women are still subjected. The fire of Western feminism has quietly died away, first as a victim of its success, lately as a victim of cultural relativism, of anti-Americanism and reluctance to be seen to be condemning the enemies of the enemy.

Yet as Western women take their rights for granted, other women are just beginning to demand theirs. There will be marches in Europe this International Women's Day, organised by Muslim (or ex-Muslim) women reformers. They will march through Germany and France to present a grievance to the European Parliament in Brussels, saying that the veil is "a manifestation of political Islam and a symbol of the oppression of women".

In Pakistan, the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Bill, which would ban forced marriages and give women rights over property, is before the national assembly. In Syria, the murder of a 16-year-old girl by her brother, at her family's request, has prompted a national debate about the leniency shown to perpetrators of honour killings.

In Saudi Arabia, Bill Gates, addressing a recent business seminar, told the segregated audience - women, their faces and bodies shrouded in black, behind a large partition - that the country would not achieve its ambition to become an economic power while it failed to use the talents of half the population. "One side of the audience loved it," he quipped later.

Maybe my report on the death of Western feminism is greatly exaggerated. I hope so. "Don't be so polite, girls!" the old feminists used to sing. "Show a little fight, girls, show a little fight!" ...Human rights are universal. And women's rights are human rights.

I don't agree with everything Pamela Bone writes, particularly on "sexual rights" and a woman's "right" to control her own body, but I think she has some good points. It seems to me that many young women of my generation do take their rights for granted, and forget that women had to fight to work outside the home, to vote, and to own property. While maybe these aren't all necessarily rights but privileges, men (white men, anyway) did not have to fight in the same way. Many opportunities were denied to women simply because they were women.

I remember an email debate with some uni friends about whether feminism was still necessary. I think I was the only person arguing that it was. The general argument from the other girls seemed to be that since there were more women than men in their workplace (medical science), feminism was no longer needed. OK, so perhaps you are not suffering from any discrimination or limitation of opportunities, but what about other women?

I started to become much more interested in feminism (and, I guess, more passionate about the issue) at the end of my honours year. As I was leaving for uni to hand in my thesis, I grabbed a book off the shelf to read on the train. It was a book called DIY Feminism that my mother had given me a few years earlier, but I hadn't had a chance (or perhaps hadn't been motivated enough) to read it. I can't remember now exactly what was in it, except for the general idea that there is no "Feminism" - it's what women make of it - and the fact that many women were struggling with gender discrimination. This alerted me to the fact that while my life had been all fine so far, not every woman is so lucky.

And this was just in Australia. When you start thinking about things that happen to women all around the world, the situation is more desperate. And Pamela Bone mentions some of these things - honour killings, genital mutilation and stonings for adultery. This last one is particularly unfair for women. In some countries, when a woman is raped it is considered adultery, unless more than one reputable male witness will come forward to say that it is rape. The woman is punished for the adultery, but what happens to the man?

I suppose that's enough of a rant for the time being. I'm not sure what the point of this rant is anyway. I guess it would just be nice to see more women getting angry and upset about the treatment of other women around the world.