feminism

English

Woman suffrage headquarters in Upper Euclid Avenue, Cleveland--A, 1912.

Wikipedia

Etymology

From French féminisme circa 1837, ultimately from Latin fēminīnus, from fēmina (“woman”). First recorded in English in 1851, originally meaning "the state of being feminine." Sense of "advocacy of women's rights" is from 1895.

Noun

feminism (countable and uncountable; plural feminisms)

1. (dated) The state of being feminine. [from 1851; less common after 1895]
2. A social theory or political movement arguing that legal and social restrictions on females must be removed in order to bring about equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life.
   • 1926 November 27, “The Talk of the Town”, The New Yorker, ISSN 0028-792X, page 17: 

     Women are still forbidden to smoke there... Ardent though we are in feminism, we applaud this stand...

   • 1996, Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A feminist international politics, pages ix-x:

     There are by now many feminisms (Tong, 1989; Humm, 1992). Alongside and often overlapping with older-identified distinctions between liberal, socialist, radical and cultural feminisms, for example (important as they are in their different accounts of sexual difference and gender power), are variously named black, third-world ethnic-minority feminisms, themselves far from homogenous.

Antonyms

• masculism

Derived terms

• feminazi
• feminist

Related terms

• femicentric
• feminine
• feminocentric
• feminocentrism

Translations

the social theory or political movement

• Arabic: حركة حقوق المرأة (ar) (Harakat Huquuq al-mara'a) f, أنثوية (ar) ('unthawíyya) f, نسوية (ar) (niswíyya) f, فيمينيزم (ar) (fiminiizm) m
• Armenian: ֆեմինիզմ (hy) (feminizm)
• Belarusian: фемінізм (be) (feminízm) m
• Bengali: নারীবাদ (bn) (nārībād)
• Bulgarian: феминизъм (bg) (feminízǎm) m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 女權主義 (cmn), 女权主义 (cmn) (nǚquánzhǔyì), 女性主義 (cmn), 女性主义 (cmn) (nǚxìngzhǔyì), 女權擴張論 (cmn), 女权扩张论 (cmn) (nǚquánkuòzhānglùn)

• Czech: feminismus (cs) m
• Danish: feminisme (da)
• Dutch: feminisme (nl) n
• Esperanto: feminismo (eo)
• Estonian: feminism (et)
• Finnish: feminismi (fi)
• French: féminisme (fr) m
• Georgian: ფემინიზმი (ka) (peminizmi)
• German: Feminismus (de) m
• Greek: φεμινισμός (el) (feminismós) m
• Hebrew: פמיניזם (he)
• Hindi: नारीवाद (hi) (nārīvād) m
• Hungarian: feminizmus (hu)
• Icelandic: feminismi (is) m
• Ido: feminismo (io)

• Irish: feimineachas (ga) m
• Italian: femminismo (it) m
• Japanese: フェミニズム (ja) (feminizumu), 女権拡張論 (ja) (じょけんかくちょうろん, jokenkakuchōron)
• Korean: 페미니즘 (ko) (peminijeum)
• Latin: feminismus (la) m
• Latvian: feminisms (lv) m
• Lithuanian: feminizmas (lt) m
• Macedonian: феминизам (mk) (feminízam) m
• Persian: فمینیسم (fa) (feminism)
• Polish: feminizm (pl) m
• Portuguese: feminismo (pt) m
• Russian: феминизм (ru) (feminízm) m
• Scottish Gaelic: boireann-dhligheachas (gd) m
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: феминизам (sh) m

  Roman: feminizam (sh) m

• Spanish: feminismo (es) m
• Swedish: feminism (sv) n
• Thai: สตรีนิยม (th) (sàtdtreeníyom)
• Turkish: feminizm (tr)
• Ukrainian: фемінізм (uk) (feminízm) m
• Urdu: ناریواد (ur) (nārīvād) m
• Vietnamese: chủ nghĩa nam nữ bình quyền (vi), chủ nghỉa nư quyền (vi)

See also

• egalitarianism, equalism (ideology promoting treating the sexes (or other human divisions) equally), Wicca