Feminism Research Paper

What is a Feminist?

A Research Paper

Frank Carlo

Borough of Manhattan Community College

This paper was prepared for Psy 245-002, instructed by Professor Dalmau.

The purpose of this research project is to see who is considered a feminist, and why, in the eyes of three women and three men. To see what they believe the behaviors, ideologies, beliefs, and values of a feminist is. The participants have been interviewed and given questions towards feminism found in the textbook "The Psychology of Women" by Margaret Matlin. I chose to do this particular study because there seems to be a lot of controversy about just the word feminism. There are so many mixed beliefs about it. This seems like the perfect study to really see what women and men think about it, at least six participants think about it.

In an online article titled "What is Feminist Theory" by Erwin Z, he writes about what the feminist theory is. The feminist theory, in simple terms, is a theory on the rights for women and equality for all genders. The theory involves the study of women's roles in society including their privileges, interests, rights, and concerns. It turns out that there were many different feminist theories that were released as early as 1792. Many of these publications featured limited privileges and rights of women due to wrong perceptions against them. The feminist theory can be applied to several disciplines, one being language. The feminist theory also points out the world's bias on women's bodies. According to history, men were associated with the brain while women were associated with the body.

In another online article titled "Feminism: What is it?", it explains what feminism is. According to the article, feminism i...

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...greatly. We as a people need to remember that anytime objectification, infringements of all human rights, stereotyping, or gender and sexuality based oppression happens, it is a feminist issue. While in the midst of the interviews, my hypothesis was the older interviewees would score the same on the tests and that the younger ones would score the same. As it turns out, the younger ones did score the same and half of the older ones scored the same, while the other half did poorly. It seems that two of the three males had negative views on feminism but it is all about perception. Also, the statement and study that women who work are less likely to marry is completely false. The media was trying to blame feminism for unmarried women when it's feminism that is creating longer lasting marriages which is what I find to be the most interesting in my finding.

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