A Wonderful Book on Women's History
Lucy Delap’s Feminisms: A Global History is a magnificent book that widens the entire field of feminist
studies and employs a uniquely creative format to do so. The author, eager to overcome the exclusively white
and Euro-American sources of previous accounts, has used persons and sources from throughout the world
to narrate this saga. Employing a thematic approach rather than a chronological one, she is able to overcome
the limitations and biases of past histories. This tactic also enables her to show the connections and
influences among both disparate regions and time periods. She accurately surveys the last 250 years of
women’s activism. Feminisms, A Global History successfully remakes an entire field of study.
The range of Delap’s scholarship is astonishing. She begins by citing an unnamed “lady of Africa”
claiming feminism in 1886. In her first few chapters, she goes on to portray feminists from India, Brazil,
China, Algeria, Trinidad, Japan, Burma, and Nigeria. And she doesn’t just mention these
activists. She conveys how they came to be feminists, what they did, and who they influenced. She also
demonstrates the conflicts and tensions they experienced and produced. “As a movement, feminism insists
on women’s inclusion in all areas of social and political life,” she writes in her Introduction. “But feminism
has its own forms of marginalization and has struggled to extend its boundaries to all women on equal
terms. Black, working-class, lesbian, trans, and bi-sexual, disabled, non-Western and non-Christian women
have often been shut out….” Delap also includes better-known European and American feminists. Arguing
that feminism is best understood as a “conversation,” she advances the concept of “mosaic feminism” with
“politics in the cracks.”
Here are some specific examples of these methods. In her second chapter, Delap has a section on the
Chinese concept of nannü. Composed of the Mandarin words for “man” and “woman,” “nannü” enabled the
early twentieth-century Chinese feminist He-Yin Zhen to link “distinctions of gender to the organization of
bodies, labor and power through cultural and economic life.” Ignoring Western European concepts, nannü
let He-Yin conceive of a world where the concepts of “man’s nature” and “women’s nature” would no longer
be necessary. “For her,” Delap concludes, “this implied the end of capitalism, the state, private property, as
well as racial and sexual difference.”
In this same chapter, Delap reaches out to trans activists. Citing Raewyn W. Connell, a trans Australian
theorist, she details her analysis of the advantages of being male. Men’s incomes are twice that of women’s;
men have ten times the political accession of women; world-wide, men control the means of violence,
weapons and armed forces. “I call these advantages the ‘patriarchal dividend,’ for men, and this dividend is
not withering away!” Connell concludes. This section contributes powerfully to Delap’s discussion of
patriarchy.
In another important example of Delap’s inclusivity, she analyzes early twentieth-century women’s
protests in British-governed Nigeria. The Igbo people of the Niger Delta gave women the power to control
their own market activities, the “omu.” When the British challenged this female authority, Nigerian women
contested their actions, using traditional methods. They stripped themselves almost naked to protest, threw
sand at the authorities, and loudly insulted them. Carrying machetes, the women opposed both
colonial and local male authorities. This so-called “women’s war” ended in disaster, as troops fired on the
protesters, killing 21 of them. Despite this loss, Delap concludes that these “memorable protests of 1929 can
be read as a contribution to the anti-colonial movements that resulted in the eventual ejection of British
rulers in 1960,” citing later women’s protests in the 1940s as well.
While describing global feminist actions, Delap does not neglect European and North American ones.
Her fourth chapter begins with a detailed description of the English abolitionist Anne Knight’s creation of
brightly colored labels crammed with feminist inscriptions to be glued to letters. “‘Never will the nations of
the earth be well governed,’” began one, ‘until both sexes…are fairly represented, and have an influence, a
voice, and a hand in the enactment and administration of the laws.’” In this chapter on objects feminists
created, Delap easily segues to describing the colors suffragists wore to distinguish themselves. She also cites
later feminists writing chain letters to publicize their protests as well as using clothing, sanitary pads, and
colored wool to mark the fence they built to protest the missile site at Greenham Common in the 1980s.
These events are detailed in Delap’s fourth chapter, entitled “Objects.” Her method of organizing chapters
thematically adds to her revolutionizing the subject of feminism. Most of these themes work extremely well.
Chapter One, “Dreams,” surveys utopian books and conceptions which furthered feminism. In addition to
citing the well-known Western novel, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland of 1915 with its all-female society,
Delap analyzes the Bengali Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain’s Sultana’s Dream of 1905. In “Ladyland,” women
govern and set standards while men are confined to a harem. Arguing that Islam could set women free,
Rokeya also founded a Muslim Women’s Association, campaigned for female education, and translated
feminist texts from Britain and Afghanistan.
Delap then turns to actual attempts to liberate women. She recounts the Russian Alexandra Kollontai’s
efforts advance women’s lives in the new Soviet Union. She then discusses the Indian Pandita Ramabai’s
Arya Women’s Society of 1882 which attempted to educate women. This effort influenced a young
Indonesian, Kartini, who went on to campaign for female education and against polygamy. After describing
a feminist dream of the English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, Delap concludes this chapter with a
discussion of late twentieth-century women’s poetry by Adrienne Rich and Audre Lord.
Delap’s other thematic chapters are equally global and rich. “Ideas” surveys feminism’s opposition to
patriarchy and male domination. Drawing on such disparate traditions as “Christianity, socialism,
liberalism, constitutionalism, nationalism and republicanism,” feminism contends that
“sexual difference is not a natural division, but is imposed in different forms across time and space.” Her
third chapter, “Spaces,” details how feminists have created not only “rooms of their own,” but also libraries,
presses, markets, shelters, and worship areas. Chapter 4, “Objects” is discussed above. Chapter 5, “Looks,”
delineates how feminists displayed themselves, whether in pink pussy hats, male clothing, Bloomer
costumes, or hijabs. Her section on “hijabistas” is sophisticated, recounting how some Muslim women wore
the veil to gain power against colonialism. Chapter 6, “Feelings,” explores how feminists have used anger,
the Chinese concept of “speaking bitterness,” and love for themselves and other women to advance their
actions. Chapter 7, “Actions,” follows naturally. While feminists avoided harming others, they used attacks
on property, strikes, and marches to oppose their antagonists. The universal Icelandic women’s “national
day off” in 1975 was especially effective, engaging 95 percent of the female population.
Delap’s last chapter, “Songs,” is her least successful. It’s difficult to convey music in words. But her
conclusion regains this book’s power. Delap invokes Betty Friedan’s fear that feminism might have to “start
over.” Her book ends by asserting that “the richness of the global feminist past suggests otherwise.”