The Evolution of Feminism in Asia

The feminist movement known as the women's liberation movement in Asia began in the late 1960s and lasted until the 1970s. Asian women's liberation groups aimed to change how women exhibited their sexuality and their relationships with their families. Asian women's liberation also addressed specific issues that set the movement apart in other nations.

The Communist Revolution in China during the 20th century had a direct impact on women's social status, which rapidly increased. At first, Chinese people thought patriarchy would be abolished by the Communist Revolution. Women were praised during the Cultural Revolution with phrases like "Women Hold Up Half the Sky," but they were also forbidden from talking about gender issues since they were viewed as "reactionary."

The 1970s saw the establishment of new organizations that catered to women and employed them, such as nurseries, kindergartens, and cafeterias. There was no separate feminist movement at the time, and the state itself oversaw women's rights. However, because radical feminists were frequently politically associated with the left, many of the concepts developed during the revolution later influenced women's groups in the West.

Following Stalinist purges and invasions, socialists in the divided camps during the Cold War era shifted away from copying Soviet communism. Key principles of Western feminists after 1960 were derived from Maoist thought. Key elements like consciousness-raising and egalitarian consensus-based policies "were inspired by similar techniques used in China," and slogans like "workers of the world unite" evolved into "women of the world unite."

With the formation of countless special-interest groups to combat corruption and the economic catastrophe brought on by disastrous development – high inflation that reduced the country’s exports while increasing its imports, Indian politics became radicalized in the late 1960s. By the 1970s, many people's circumstances had gotten worse due to the Maharashtra state's drought. Encouraged by the Navnirman Movement, women from a variety of social groups started taking direct action against leadership in 1974. Beginning in the 1970s, the concept of "women's liberation" gained respectability in India. Women realized that the reality of their life was not being much altered by legal protections. Rural women in poverty started to perceive themselves as being at a double disadvantage due to their poor social standing and economic disadvantage. Women from lower castes, including Dalits, came to understand that they needed to struggle against sexism and class discrimination after being oppressed and discriminated by the patriarchal society. However, the majority of women involved in the 1970s women's liberation movement were educated, urban, middle class, or from the upper caste.

Two American immigrants at the University of Haifa, Marylin Safir and Marcia Freedman, who had both participated in feminist activities in the US, started the women's liberation movement in Israel in the early 1970s. Their seminars in Haifa about the oppression of women in a male-dominated society soon sparked radical activity in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. The first liberationist organization was founded in 1972, and it led to the development of consciousness-raising organizations that addressed women's issues through direct action.

The emergence of women's studies brought attention to the historical achievements made by Israeli women.

Freedman claimed: "It really wasn't that difficult translating American feminism to Israel, with many of the same issues: the ability of women to work outside the house, abortion and issues of women controlling their bodies, although on Israel a very common response was that no women's movement was needed because Israeli women were already 'liberated'."

The ūman ribu, or women's liberation movement, changed the social and political landscape for women in Japan. The term ūman ribu, which was a transcription of the English word "women's lib," was intended to convey "both the activists' specificity as a new Japanese women's movement and their solidarity with other women's liberation movements around the world." In contrast to Western women's liberation groups, Ūman ribu's objectives were more centered on women's roles in Japan and "called for liberation from their sex," or sei no kaihō.

The first South Korean women's organizations were founded in response to worker struggles during Park Chung-hee's dictatorship. These organizations focused on the exploitation of women in the home and the unfavorable working conditions that resulted from a system that forced women to work in order to support their families and pay for their brothers' educations. Professor Yi Hyo-jae of Ewha Womans University (EWU) started criticizing the Korean women's organizations that were in place in 1975, arguing that they were more concerned with changing the law to benefit women than with freeing them from social norms about what women should be. When western works such as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, and Juliet Mitchell's Woman's Estate were translated into Korean in 1973, Korean intellectuals were exposed to the concepts of radical feminists. By 1977, EWU had a department dedicated to women's studies. The course was developed with feedback from students and requested course materials from 150 U.S.

universities that offered women's studies courses. Students showed "strong interest" in the seminars, despite criticism that the women's studies department relied too much on Western concepts. Within the larger struggle against authoritarianism, the feminist movement known as Minjung feminism, which emerged in South Korea in the 1980s, combined liberationist concepts with worker concerns.

In 1972, Nalla Tan demanded that a council of women be established in Singapore to promote the rights of women. In 1975, Singapore celebrated International Women's Year, which galvanized the country's women's liberation movement. In the same year, the National Council of Women (NCW) was established to assist eradicate prejudice against women and to coordinate the efforts of women's organizations around the nation. In Singapore, the "Great Marriage Debate" in 1983 sparked a discussion concerning feminism, motherhood, and eugenics. The government, concerned about the nation's declining fertility rate, pushed young people to get married and start a family. In November 1984, the National University of Singapore Society hosted a forum to address the concerns brought up in the "Great Marriage Debate." The "Women's Choices, Women's Lives" discussion was organized by Zaibun Siraj and Vivienne Wee, who also brought in speakers Margaret Thomas, Hedwig Anuar, and Kanwaljit Soin.