ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on explaining the meaning of feminism as the amalgamation of the ideology and movement, and discusses similarities of thought shared by feminists across various schools and delineates differences across diverse feminist theories. Feminism is an ideology, a form of social political philosophy, which aspires to explain the world and to change it for achieving equality. In this regard, feminism is an emancipatory theory that intends amelioration of gender having the lower status in the society. Feminism advocates gender equality for women, men and transgender and campaigns for equal rights for different gender groups. Feminism as a socio-political philosophy critically analyses the mainstream discourse of philosophy from the feminist stand point and then argues how women’s questions have not been adequately addressed. The chapter discusses feminism and various perspectives of feminism, including liberal feminism, socialist Marxist feminism, radical feminism, black feminism and postmodern feminism. The chapter also focuses on ecofeminism and the dalit feminism.
