In a speech yesterday, Joan Scott, professor of Social Sciences at Princeton University, urged people to reconsider the way society views feminism.
Scott spoke about her recent book "'Women Who Have Only Paradoxes to Offer:' French Feminists, 1789-1944" to faculty and students yesterday afternoon.
"The book is an attempt to rethink the history of feminism," she said.
She said one of the paradoxes of feminism is the need to both accept and refuse sexual differences.
Universalist discourses, such as individualism lead to feminism, she said. Throughout history, society has "equated individuality with masculinity," she said.
Scott said the concept of "abstract individualism," which was the basis for the ideas of numerous revolutionary philosophers, fostered the notion that "for this self to exist, there had to be an other to set the boundaries of existence." She said the female was "the other" rather than the individual, and therefore confirmed male individuality.
In her book Scott discusses the individual accomplishments of four women who shaped the evolution of feminism in France.
They include Olympe de Gouges, an outspoken feminist during the French Revolution; Jeanne Deroin, who argued during the revolution of 1848 about the differences and similarities between the sexes; Hubertine Auclert, a suffragist during the Third Republic in France and Madeleine Pelletier, a psychiatrist and suffragist during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Scott said.
She said examining the activities of individual feminists helped her to do "close readings" of history.
Scott said the feminists revealed faults of repressed ideological systems.
She said Auclert believed in the use of persuasion and logic, not force, in advancing the equality of women.
But that in itself was a paradox, since the contemporary view of women claimed they were illogical, she said.
"The concepts of feminists were rooted in their time," Scott said.
She said the four women discussed in the book were ridiculed and mocked by their contemporaries, adding that Gouges was executed for her ideas.
"Feminist paradoxes have often been represented as the results of women's own confusion," she said.
Scott said "the problem is not with feminism," but rather with the "universal discourses" that shape the ideology of the current society.
Later she added that universal discourses can benefit feminism by enabling "women to conceive of themselves as political agents," despite being excluded, she said.
The proportion of women in the French National Assembly is the smallest in a western European democracy, she said.
Scott has written numerous books on the topic of gender relations including "Women, Work, and Family."
