Women in political thought : The quest for gender equality and beyond / Sushila Ramaswamy.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 347-366) and index.

Contents: Preface. Introduction. 1 Women and Political Thought: From the Greeks to the Rise of Liberal Individualism. 2 Enlightenment Liberal Feminism: Quest for Gender Parity. 3 Origins of US Feminism: Republican Motherhood to Assertion of Women s Equal Rights. 4 Rational Protest against the Subjugation of Women: The Philosophical Radicals. 5 Rational Protest against the Subjugation of Women: The Philosophical Radicals. 6 Rise of Social Democracy in Germany: Its Vision for Women s Emancipation. 7 Reform or Revolution: Two Contrasting Models within German Social Democracy. 8 Feminism in Russia: Before and After the Bolshevik Revolution. 9 Feminism in Post-Second World War Phase: From Sameness to Difference. 10 Contemporary Concerns in Feminism: From Difference to Differences. Bibliography. Index. Subject Index. 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. (