Transmitting feminist political culture Sample Clauses

Transmitting feminist political culture. A strong theme emerging from the interviews is that feminist political culture and feminist values are transmitted through families. Many of the respondents said that their mothers were feminist and that they had grown up thinking that feminism was ‘common sense’ (Xxxxxxx); several had been brought up by single mothers supported by women friends and other family members who were seen as ‘strong’ women. Some mentioned older sisters or other women relatives of their own generation who had become feminists on going to university and who had been influential. One or two said that their fathers were feminist and one recounted how her father had given her Xxxx’x Communist Manifesto to read when she was ten or eleven (Xxxx). They spoke about their parents being left wing, of having been taken on anti-war demonstrations as young children, and of politics being a topic of conversation at meal times. The younger women, who were still at school, said they had received support from their parents for their feminist activities, such as setting up feminist societies in their schools or speaking at a UK Feminista summer school. They also talked about their parents adopting an egalitarian gender division of labour in the home and of seeing women working alongside men when they were growing up. These young women had strong and, for many, feminist women as role models as they grew up. For some of the young women, however, the families they grew up in showed them the dynamics of gendered power in a different way and it was their reaction against this that led them to feminism. One young woman talked about how her male cousins were favoured in terms of education and she thought that this was quite unfair; others had lived in very male- dominated households and several had witnessed domestic violence, either between their parents or other close relatives. Their turn to feminism had been as a reaction against these abusive forms of male power and was often accompanied by considerable anger and emotional pain. Reproductive politics, such as a priest adopting an anti-choice view on abortion, was also a trigger for a turn to feminism. The education system was significant even for those young women who had grown up within a pro-feminist familial culture and it was often at school or university that young women became involved in feminist activism for the first time. At both school and university feminist teachers were identified who had been influential both through what they taught...