feminism

English

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

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.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈfɛmɪnɪz(ə)m/
• Hyphenation: fem‧in‧ism

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

feminism (countable and uncountable, plural feminisms)

1. (obsolete) The state of being feminine; femininity. [from 1851; less common after 1895]
   • 1875 July 24, The Medical Times and Gazette, age 105:

     His hair is delicate and silky, and of a light chesnut — one of M. Lorrain's signs of feminism.

2. A social theory or political movement which argues that legal and social restrictions on women must be removed in order to bring about equality of the sexes in all aspects of public and private life.
   • 1926 November 27, “The Talk of the Town”, in 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.

   • 2017 October 8, John Oliver, “Confederacy”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 4, episode 26, HBO:

     Ooh! “Even the ladies!” #feminism #confedera-she !

Antonyms

• antifeminism
• masculism

Hyponyms

Hyponyms of feminism

• Afrofeminism
• Afro-feminism
• analytical feminism
• analytic feminism
• anarcha-feminism
• anarchist feminism
• anarcho-feminism
• black feminism
• capitalist feminism
• communist feminism
• conservative feminism
• cyberfeminism
• cyborg feminism
• difference feminism
• differential feminism
• ecofeminism

• equality feminism
• equity feminism
• Euro-feminism
• Eurofeminism
• first-wave feminism
• fourth-wave feminism
• gender feminism
• global feminism
• individualist feminism
• international feminism
• intersectional feminism
• left-wing feminism
• liberal feminism
• libertarian feminism
• nego-feminism

• online feminism
• opportunity feminism
• outcome feminism
• postcolonial feminism
• postfeminism
• post-feminism
• postmodern feminism
• postmodernist feminism
• power feminism
• protofeminism
• proto-feminism
• queer feminism
• radical feminism
• religious feminism
• right-wing feminism

• second-wave feminism
• secular feminism
• sex-negative feminism
• sex-positive feminism
• snail-sense feminism
• social feminism
• socialist feminism
• standpoint feminism
• state feminism
• third-wave feminism
• transnational feminism
• victim feminism
• white feminism
• whitestream feminism
• world feminism

Derived terms

Derived terms

• antifeminism
• feminazi

• feminist
• feministic

• postfeminism
• profeminism

• unfeminism

Related terms

Terms related to feminism

• femicentric

• feminine

• feminocentric

• feminocentrism

Translations

the social theory or political movement

• Arabic: حَرَكَة حُقُوق اَلْمَرْأَة‎‎ f (ḥarakat ḥuqūq al-marʾa), أُنْثَوِيَّة‎‎ f (ʾunṯawiyya), نِسْوِيَّة‎‎ f (niswiyya), فِيمِينِيزْم‎‎ m (fiminizm)
• Armenian: ֆեմինիզմ (hy) (feminizm)
• Asturian: feminismu m
• Belarusian: фемінізм m (feminízm)
• Bengali: নারীবাদ (nārībād)
• Bulgarian: феминизъм m (feminízǎm)
• Catalan: feminisme m
• Chinese:

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

• Czech: feminismus (cs) m
• Danish: feminisme c
• Dutch: feminisme (nl) n
• Esperanto: feminismo (eo)
• Estonian: feminism (et)
• Finnish: feminismi (fi)
• French: féminisme (fr) m
• Galician: feminismo (gl) m
• Georgian: ფემინიზმი (peminizmi)
• German: Feminismus (de) m
• Greek: φεμινισμός (el) m (feminismós)
• Hebrew: פמיניזם \ פֶמִינִיזְם‎‎ (he) m (feminízm)
• Hindi: नारीवाद m (nārīvād)
• Hungarian: feminizmus (hu)
• Icelandic: feminismi m
• Ido: feminismo (io)
• Irish: feimineachas m
• Italian: femminismo (it) m

• Japanese: フェミニズム (feminizumu), 女権拡張論 (じょけんかくちょうろん, jokenkakuchōron)
• Korean: 페미니즘 (ko) (peminijeum)
• Latin: feminismus m
• Latvian: feminisms m
• Lithuanian: feminizmas (lt) m
• Macedonian: феминизам m (feminízam)
• Malay: faham kewanitaan, faham feminis, feminisme
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: feminisme m

  Nynorsk: feminisme m

• Persian: فمینیسم‎‎ (fa) (feminism)
• Polish: feminizm (pl) m
• Portuguese: feminismo (pt) m
• Russian: фемини́зм (ru) m (feminízm)
• Scottish Gaelic: boireann-dhligheachas m
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: феминизам m

  Roman: feminizam (sh) m

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

See also

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

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Swedish

Noun

feminism c

1. feminism

Declension

Declension of feminism
	Uncountable
	Indefinite	Definite
Nominative	feminism	feminismen	—	—
Genitive	feminisms	feminismens	—	—

Related terms

• feminist
• feministisk