ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on feminisms, written intentionally as plural, to denote the multiplicity of feminist approaches to thinking about and researching women’s struggles and issues. Feminisms reflect women’s interests in their lives within patriarchal cultures and against other various oppressive and hegemonic forces across the world and over time. In this chapter I discuss definitions of feminisms, according to their particular focus on women’s lives over time. The origins of feminisms can be traced to the first wave of stirrings of the women’s movement at the end of the 19th century in New Zealand and the UK, and it has paralleled key historical events since that time, some of which are traced in this chapter.
