Feminism and Women's Rights

The term feminism refers to the belief that men and women are politically and morally equal and should be treated as such. The term is most often attached to various movements over the last two centuries that have acted to implement this vision of equality by embedding it in law and throughout the culture.

Diverse schools exist within the feminist tradition, however, and they often disagree on the definition of equality. For individualist feminists, equality means equal treatment under laws that respect the person and property of all human beings regardless of secondary characteristics such as sex, race, and ethnicity. For another school, known as radical or gender feminism, equality means socioeconomic equality, in which power and wealth are redistributed by law throughout society so that ...