Study about Feminism and Shashi Deshpande's Views on Feminism

Abstract

Feminism stands a socio-economic movement, demanding legal and political rights for women. The term denotes the movement for women’s equality, legal rights and about women living on equal terms with man and not pushed down, by law or culture into a subservient role and heavy further rights to her ‘body’. It is an anti-musculinist movement of the women, by the ‘women’ and for the ‘women’. The history of the modern western feminist movement is generally broken down into three ‘waves’ dealing with different aspects of feminist issues . The first wave movement comprises of nineteenth to early twentieth century dealing mainly with suffrage, working conditions and educational rights for women. The second wave belonged to 1960’s and 80’s dealt with the inequality of laws, as well as culture inequalities and the role of women in society .The third wave of feminism (late 1980’s to early 1st decade of 21st century) is seen as both the continuation of the second way of celebrating and asserting womanhood and feminine experience, thus emphasizing the difference as against the stereotype of main stream literature.