Rethinking the Socialist Construction and International Career of the Concept 'Bourgeois Feminism'
Author(s)
Boxer, Marilyn J.
Abstract
“Rethinking the Socialist Construction and International Career of the Concept ‘Bourgeois Feminism'” by Marilyn J. Boxer addresses a major theme in women’s history and historiography: the widespread and persistent categorization of women’s movements that distinguishes the thought and action of feminists on the basis of their alleged class interests. Focusing on the origins and usages of the concept “bourgeois feminism,” her article shows how it was deployed by leftists, ranging from socialist women of the Second International to activists of “second wave” feminism, in order to trivialize and dismiss nonsocialist feminist claims. And she also demonstrates the role played by historians and feminist theorists in passing along the rhetoric and politics of the earlier era to a new generation of students and activists. While questioning the class basis on which the distinction between socialist women and nonsocialist feminists rests and the extent to which it affected the potential for collaboration among women’s groups, Boxer suggests the need for new histories of feminism and the left no longer encumbered by problematic assumptions about women’s class interests or by socialist politics of the past.
