Women and Political Thought provides an in-depth analysis of women’s role and place in political thought.

Beginning with Greek political thought, Sushila Ramaswamy traces the history of eighteenth-century liberalism, which, she demonstrates, carried the seed of modern feminism.

She discusses the effects the philosophies of Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Hegel had on eighteenth-century feminists. She offers detailed accounts of the main proponents of liberal feminism—for example, Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Stanton—and the historical contexts that shaped them. She also analyses the works of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and John Stuart Mill as central to later revised liberal feminism.

Ramaswamy also focuses on women thinkers from other ideological standpoints—the early socialists, the Marxists and the social democrats—that formed parts of the first wave feminism. She concludes by tracking the rise of radical feminism and its core ideas; the second-wave liberal feminism of Betty Friedan; the rise of postmodern feminism and eco-feminism during the third wave.

This is a comprehensive and detailed history of key women political thinkers and various schools of feminist thought.

Sushila Ramaswamy is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University.

Preface and Acknowledgements 

Publisher’s Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Women and Political Thought: From the Greeks to the Rise of Liberal Individualism

Chapter 2 Enlightenment Liberal Feminism: Quest for Gender Parity

Chapter 3 Origins of US Feminism: Republican Motherhood to Assertion of Women’s Equal Rights

Chapter 4 Rational Protest against the Subjugation of Women: The Philosophical Radicals

Chapter 5 Rational Protest against the Subjugation of Women: The Philosophical Radicals  

Chapter 6 Rise of Social Democracy in Germany: Its Vision for Women’s Emancipation

Chapter 7 Reform or Revolution: Two Contrasting Models within German Social Democracy

Chapter 8 Feminism in Russia: Before and After the Bolshevik Revolution

Chapter 9 Feminism in Post-Second World War Phase: From Sameness to Difference

Chapter 10 Contemporary Concerns in Feminism: From Difference to Differences

Bibliography 

Author

Index

Subject Index