Let's review some of the things that Feminism has achieved since 1920,

[Squinch]

notwithstanding the fact that there are many who say Feminists are ineffectual because we are not honing our "fly catching" abilities.

Other than the Civil Rights Movement, no other social movement has ever had such an impact on social institutions that were previously thought to be the "natural order."

This is NOT to suggest that we don't still have a very long way to go, but it does suggest that those calling for a "redefinition" of feminism are either ignorant of the achievements of feminists, or would like to stop the achievements of feminism by halting their activities.

So here we go. Before 1920:

.women couldn't vote (till 1920)
.husbands could rape their wives with impunity (till effing 1993!)
.husbands could beat their wives with impunity (the VAWA was enacted in 1994)
.woman had no access to safe and effective birth control
.women were not allowed to legally use birth control (till 1965)
.women's education was substandard and designed to make them economically and intellectually impotent (title IX enacted 1972)
.women who did work were paid at a level that was understood to be "insufficient for a man to survive." But it was OK to pay women that wage, even though women were often supporting a household alone on this substantially lowered wage. (Corning glass v Brennan was in 1974, Ledbetter passed in 2009. These and other achievements have brought us up to 77 cents on the dollar that men earn. As I say, we still have a long way to go.)
.women were routinely shut out of the vast majority of jobs, and had no access to economic security without a husband
.women who divorced, despite the fact that they had no access to self sustaining work, were entitled only to the settlements that their husbands chose to give them.
.women who divorced were routinely ostracized socially
.women had no access to credit (till 1974)
.women who did make it into the workforce were routinely subject to debilitating forms and amounts of sexual harassment (civil rights act of 1991 expanded right to sue and collect punitive damages.)
.women were fired from their jobs if they got pregnant (happened in my experience through the 1980's, though it was illegal by then)
.in many states women were prohibited from serving on a jury (till 1975!)
.women did not have the right to establish a separate domicile from her husband (till the 1970's)
.within marriage the husband had control of the community property, including property the wife brought to the marriage (in some states this persisted till the 1970's)

Again, there are miles to go before there is anything like true equality, but I'd say that Feminists have been pretty effective in changing a situation that has been in place and considered unchangeable pretty much since recorded history began. And they have done it in two generations. Though this is painfully slow for those of us who experience life as women, it is historically quite a quick turnaround for such entrenched institutions.

All this says to me we are doing just fine, screeds and all, and the approval of those who say differently is not really necessary to our continued success.

I am sure I have missed a ton of the achievements of Feminists. Feel free to add them.

[BainsBane]

1. abortion rights

Title IX for college sports.

[Squinch]

2. Jeez. How did I forget that?

[BainsBane]

3. Women's history/ gender studies

which in turn led to queer studies.

[Squinch]

5. Starting a whole new group on the path to civil rights.

[Squinch]

4. And actually participation in all sports, pro and amateur.

[ismnotwasm]

6. Heres a cool timeline site

http://www.mmu.ac.uk/humanresources/equalities/doc/gender-equality-timeline.pdf

[Squinch]

7. Hmmmm! That's quite the fabulous list. I think Feminists are doing just fine. Screeds and all.

[ismnotwasm]

8. PEDANTIC screeds thank you very much

Can't have a screed without the pends.

[Squinch]

17. They just don't have the same impact without the pedans.

[niyad]

9. quite a fabulous list--will have to see if there is a similar one for this country.

and to think what it took to achieve that much--certainly not be being meek and sweet, and non-confrontational (as anybody who watched "shoulder to shoulder"-about the british suffrage movement knows)

have you seen the movie "made in dagenham" about that strike? very interesting.

[ismnotwasm]

10. No I haven't

I'll have to put it on the list, it looks good

[ismnotwasm]

11. Here's a really good salon article about feminist victories against rape

Feminism’s amazing achievement: Changing the conversation — and laws — about rape

The revival of the feminist movement during the 1960s, and its growing influence over the following decades, moved the public conversation about rape from silence to exposure and political activism.” Second-wave feminists tried to put women’s experience of sexual violence at the center of a new political analysis of rape. Although they built upon many of the historical precedents set in the suffrage era, including the demand for women’s legal rights, the new generation of feminists in the later twentieth century launched a more radical critique that explicitly linked the problem of sexual violence to male privilege. As it evolved from the radical margins to the political mainstream, the movement proved far more effective than its predecessors in changing both laws and institutional practices. The rapidity of the shift, evidenced by an explosion in media coverage and legal reform, suggests that the spark of feminist politics ignited a backlog of fear and resentment among American women, many of whom had felt both physically at risk and politically disempowered by the threat of rape. Applying the radical feminist dictum “The personal is political,” writers and organizers reframed sexual violence not merely as a private trauma but also as a nexus of power relations and a public policy concern.

Both the black freedom movement and the sexual revolution fueled this new analysis of rape. In the postwar decades black women in the South had begun to press rape charges against white men and to politicize interracial rape as a civil rights issue. Young white women who cut their political teeth in southern voter registration and community organizing campaigns in the 1960s brought the concept of personal empowerment they learned there into the revived women’s movement. At the same time, the “sexual revolution” created both new opportunities and new dilemmas for white women. The decline of the purity ideal, the belief that sex was acceptable as an individual pleasure apart from any reproductive goals, and the availability of contraception all encouraged nonmarital sex. In the past, preserving chastity and preventing out-of-wedlock births had given them leverage in negotiating whether to consent to sex. In the new sexual order, the standard for consent had to be renegotiated. Why would a woman say no if sex presumably resulted in no harm? And who would believe that a woman had withheld consent, given new expectations of participation in the sexual revolution? Interracial relations created further dilemmas, as white women in the civil rights movement learned. While some chose to break the taboo on interracial sexual relations, others hesitated to acknowledge that they had unwanted sex with black men, knowing the consequences these men faced in the racist South.

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/25/how_feminism_redefined_rape/

[ismnotwasm]

12. And this collection from women's History month

http://womenshistorymonth.gov/collections.html


I know there's an American timeline, odd I can't easily find one. Maybe I'm just too tired.

[niyad]

13. here are a couple (googled women's rights timeline in US--this is part of first page)

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womenstimeline1.html

http://dpsinfo.com/women/history/timeline.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/prism/mar98/path.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/prism/mar98/path.html

http://www.womenatworkmuseum.org/Womens-Rights-timeline.pdf

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawstime.html

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/timelines/timelinetopics.cfm?tltopicid=3

http://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/history/woman-suffrage-timeline

[ismnotwasm]

14. Nice!

We should compile a decent, comprehensible as possible list and pin THAT to the top of the page

[niyad]

15. a most excellent idea

[Squinch]

18. I wish there was some way we could do a split screen, and next to all the achievements,

list the comments from the idiots telling us that "feminism will never succeed until..." or "if you don't change in this way, you feminists will never get anywhere..." or "the reason no one supports feminist goals is because..."

[niyad]

16. . . .