WW: CH 23 pt. 2

     The second part of Chapter 23 starts off by talking about the feminist movement. Throughout the twentieth century the idea of liberation spread like wildfire across the globe. A time period in which this was the main focus, in terms of worldwide politics, was the 1960's. It was as if the entire world came together and decided to deal with the topic/issue of liberation. For example, here in the United States you had civil rights movements, not to mention Antiwar protests. In Europe, particularly in France during 1968, you had protests against the middle class and its value system. In addition to that, Europe was plagued with protests having to do with consumerism as well as having an unresponsive bureaucracy. 

     In the Communist side of the issue, you had things like socialism attempted in Czechoslovakia. This movement was quickly ended thanks to the Soviet Union. While all this was going on, further towards the east, China was having a Cultural Revolution. 

     By the 1960's, organized feminism was revived in the West. Women were sick and tired of being unequal and regarded as "other" or "deviant". The part that really got my attention was how they wanted to "control" their own bodies. I guess it struck me as odd simply because we live in a completely different time period in which women have more or less the same rights as men. In addition to that, we are also taught at a young age to keep our hands to ourselves. However, the one that seemed most important to me was the fact that they wanted equal opportunities. They wanted the right to have jobs that men had and wanted a right to go to school and get an education, something women had been greatly denied throughout the majority of time. 

     As we all know the issue with women and their liberties were a huge topic of discussion throughout much of the twentieth century. As the twentieth century progressed, patriarchy lost power and people were starting to refrain from resorting to that. Women were really vocal and were very persistent, so persistent that the UN officially declared 1975 International Women's Year. Not only that, in addition to the title granted in 1975, the UN also declared the decade following International Woman's Year was the Decade for Women. Recently in 2006, over one hundred and eighty-three different Nations had agreed that the UN absolutely eliminate discrimination against all women. 

     Although women finally had their voices heard, this topic of discussion presented some problems. For example, who was going to represent the women? Were they to have one leader or a group of leaders? In addition to that, people weren't fully on board, for example, developing nations had different interests and things they were more concerned about, as opposed to already developed countries that were already well established.