Western Feminism in the 21st Century
In the West, where modern feminism had begun. a new phase of that movement took shape during the 1960s and after. Moving well beyond the earlier focus on suffrage and property rights, “second-wave” feminists gave voice to a wide range of new issues: the value of housework, discrimination in the workplace, media portrayal of women, sexuality and the family, reproductive rights, lesbianism, violence against women, pornography, and prostitution.
At the opening of the twenty-first century, Western feminists continued to advance a broad agenda, as reflected in the two images that consitute the following sources. Source 1 depicts a 2012 slutwalk in London protesting against rape culture. This march was one of many around the world, the first of which occurred in Canada in 2011 when a policeman told a group of students that in order to avoid being raped “women should avoid dressing like sluts.” Source 2 documents a 2017 protest in Toulouse, France, that advocated for women’s rights in the workplace, another major goal of modern Western feminism. The banner in the foreground reads, “Precarious, underpaid, harassed. It’s enough!”
nstructions
Answer the following questions based on the primary sources on Western Feminism in the 21st Century:
1. What strategies are these protestors employing to secure the changes that they advocate for?
2. What do the issues raised by participants and the types of protests depicted in these images reveal about Western feminism in the first decades of the twenty-first
