Feminism in Practice

Book excerpt: Feminism in Practice uses feminism as a blueprint for exploring change strategies. It features twenty contemporary feminists from diverse arenas, including activists, comedians, musicians, politicians, poets, and showrunners. The women come to life through line drawings, brief biographies, extensive quotations, their definitions of feminism, and the change strategies they employ. Questions for reflection encourage readers to think through their own relationship to feminism and change. Chapter 1 defines feminism, raising issues with the typical definition of feminism as the effort to achieve equality between women and men. It concludes with a description of over twenty types of feminism. Chapter 2 describes the triggering events, happening places, and key ideas of the four waves of feminism. The opening chapters provide a comprehensive understanding of the diversity and complexity of feminist movement. The book is organized around five primary objectives that animate contemporary change efforts—proclaiming identity, naming a problem, enriching a system, changing a system, and creating an alternative system. Each objective is developed through theoretical assumptions and twelve change strategies that show it at work in feminist movement. Feminism in Practice also serves as a practical handbook that readers can use to experiment with the strategies and expand their toolkits for creating change in their lives and worlds. The authors are uniquely qualified to explore issues of feminism and change. Karen Foss and Sonja Foss are second wave feminists who have written extensively on alternative change strategies, feminist communication, and feminist theory. Alena Ruggerio brings to the project the standpoint of a third wave feminist at home in pop culture. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of rhetoric, feminism, and religious studies. To learn more about Feminism in Practice, listen to the authors’ October 2021 interview on The Jefferson Exchange.