ABSTRACT
What is feminism? Who is a feminist? How do we understand feminism across national boundaries? Across cultures? Across centuries? These questions are raised every day, by activists in the contemporary women’s movement, by scholars, in the press and in informal conversation. Everyone seems to have different answers, and every answer is infused with a political and emotional charge. The word ‘feminism’ continues to inspire controversy-indeed, even to evoke fear among a sizeable portion of the general public. If words and the concepts they convey can be said to be dangerous, then ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ must be dangerous words, representing dangerous concepts. Despite Virginia Woolf’s attempt some fifty years ago to ‘kill’ the word ‘feminism’, it continues to be used. The concepts it stands for clearly retain ‘a force of tremendous power’.1
