Chapter 12 Feminism

Question 1

Core ideas and principles - Sex and Gender

Answer 1

Sex - refers to the biological differences between men and women. Two main debates concerning sex within feminism is difference feminists vs equality feminists

Difference feminism vs equality feminism - DF argue that biological differences between women and men are important and they believe in essentialism (the fundamental differences in nature are natural not constructed). However, EF argue that a women’s nature is socially constructed.

Gender - used to explain the roles of men and women. Feminists argue that gender roles are socially constructed and form gender stereotypes. Simone de Beauvoir argued that the biological differences between men and women had been used by a male dominated society. Men had characterised themselves as the norm whilst women were the others (otherness). ‘One is not born but rather becomes a women’.

Equality feminists argue that human nature is androgynous and that feminism should aspire to genderless personhood. CPG believes that subordination is constructed from a young age. Kate Millet and bell hooks argues that it begins within the family unit.

Question 2

Key Thinker Simone de Beauvoir

Answer 2

1. Argued that femininity was a societal construct
2. More of a humanist ‘the fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important
3. Otherness is imposed by men. Second Sex 1949

Question 3

First Wave Feminism

Answer 3

First wave feminism extended classical liberalism’s ideas about human nature and freedom of the individual to explicitly include women. It was an argument for the rationality and formal equality of women.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued that women should have equal opportunities in the workplace and introduced the idea of economic independence.

Question 4

Second Wave Feminism

Answer 4

Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics 1970. Shelia Rowbotham’s Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World 1973

Second Wave Feminism shared the understanding that women were being oppressed by what became known as the patriarchy.

However, second wave feminism had divergent solutions for this problem.

1. Liberal Feminists - influenced by first wave argued for the state to reform society and economy
2. Radical feminists - influenced by Millet saw the state as part of the problem and wanted radical changes to the public and private spheres of society.
3. Socialist feminists - influenced by Rowbotham argued that only under a socialist feminist revolution could the inequalities of capitalism and female oppression be solved.

Question 5

Core ideas and principles - patriarchy

Answer 5

Kate Millet argues it means the rule of men in both the private and public spheres.

1. Liberal feminists argue that discrimination rather than patriarchy within society and economy can be reformed by the state. These reforms include emancipation, access to education, legislation of abortion
2. Radical feminists focus on patriarchy in both the public and private spheres and believe that patriarchy is too pervasive to be reformed. Instead, there must be a revolutionary change, but revolutionary feminists have different suggestions for what that change might be.
3. Socialist feminists believe that female consciousness is created by men as part of the capitalist machine. Shelia Rowbotham concluded that women have always been oppressed and that a revolution was needed to destroy both capitalism and patriarchy.

Question 6

Third Wave and Fourth-wave feminism

Answer 6

1. Expanded on the works of Millet and identified six overlapping patriarchal - the state, household, violence, paid work, sexuality, culture
2. bell hooks argued that feminist discussions have primarily been from a white middle-class perspective and that women of different ethnicities and socio-economic classes were neglected by mainstream feminism.

Question 7

To what extent do feminists agree over the concept of patriarchy? agree

Answer 7

1. Gilman and de Beauvoir were among the first to identify gender stereotyping. Feminists then argued discrimination as a cultural not biological concept.
2. There is agreement among equality feminists that patriarchy is not a static concept
3. The majority of equality feminists agree that patriarchy must be opposed in the public sphere of society.

Question 8

To what extent do feminists agree over the concept of patriarchy? disagree

Answer 8

1. Liberal feminists tend to discuss discrimination rather than patriarchy and focus on the public sphere of society.

Radical feminists argue that it must be challenged in both the public and private spheres

2. Liberal feminists believe state, society, and economy can be reformed of discriminatory tendencies, while radical feminists often argue that there must be revolutionary change in both the public and private spheres of society.
3. Post-modern feminists argue that the patriarchy is more complicated than radicals or socialists argue because of intersectionality

Question 9

Core ideas and principles - personal is political

Answer 9

Liberal feminists focus on the public sphere of society arguing that the private life of women is the outside the remit of political analysis.

Radical feminists refute this arguing that the ‘personal is political’. Gilman berated the misery of women’s private lives, and argued that conditioning was taking place from birth.

Rowbotham argued that marriage was like feudalism, with women akin to serfs. De Beauvoir championed contraception to allow women control over their bodies. Millet believed family was a social construct.

1. Patriarchy granted men ownership over their wife and children, entrenching the idea of male superiority.
2. The family socialised the young into recognising masculine authority.

Question 10

Key Thinker Kate Millet

Answer 10

1. Kate Millet was an American academic an her most famous work, Sexual Politics 1970 is regarded as the first systemic analysis of the patriarchy. Personal is political.
2. Millet saw the family unit as the foundation of patriarchal thought, as children were socialised into gender roles that they grew up perceiving as normal. Marriage also saw women lose their identity
3. Patriarchy reinforced heterosexualism as superior
4. Women’s gender roles were stereotyped in art and literature.

Question 11

Core ideas and principles - equality feminism and difference feminism

Answer 11

Equality feminism - believe biological differences are inconsequential and that gender differences are socially constructed. De Beauvoir dismissed the idea of innate female characteristics.

Difference feminism - biological differences are consequential

Difference feminism can be traced back to first-wave feminists who, while believing that women were men’s intellectual equals, also believed in gender-specific characteristics. Gilman is the only one of the key thinkers who believed in innate female qualities, while also believing in the societal conditioning of women of gender roles.

Question 11

Core ideas and principles - intersectionality

Answer 11

bell hooks criticised second-wave feminists for conceptualising feminism from a white middle-class perspective.

Question 12

Key Thinker bell hooks

Answer 12

1. women of colour: hooks broadened the feminist debate as she felt it was too focused on middle- and upperclass, college-educated white women. She focused on women of colour and all social classes.
2. Intersectionality: hooks’ ideas greatly influenced the idea of intersectionality - challenged the idea that gender was the most important factor in determining a woman’s life experiences

Question 13

Different types of feminism - liberal feminism

Answer 13

argues that reform can come through democracy

influenced by liberal values of individualism, foundational equality, and equality of opportunity.

Concepts of otherness can be fixed through campaigning too end discrimination in workplace and end outdate cultural attitudes.

Question 14

Different types of feminism - socialist feminism

Answer 14

Socialist feminists argue that economics leads to gender inequality and that capitalism causes patriarchy.

1. Reformist socialist feminists - Gilman thought of herself as a humanist. Gilman believed that capitalism’s exploitative qualities reinforced patriarchy and that socialism would gradually succeed, allowing women and men to coexist in egalitarian.
2. Revolutionary socialist feminism - Rowbotham working-class women found employment in factories were they were paid less than men and then had a role in the home.

Rowbotham argues that men do not understand the nature of their oppression and she advocates for a revolution within a revolution.

Question 15

Different types of feminism - Radical feminism

Answer 15

1. Kate Millet Sexual Politics 1970 was critical of romantic love and monogamous marriage.
2. radical feminism argues that patriarchy’s social construction creates a society where men dominate the public sphere and women play a supportive role in the private sphere

Question 16

Key Thinkers Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Answer 16

1. Sex and domestic politics - for Gilman sex and the capitalist economy were interlinked. Women were reliant on their sexual assets to gratify their husbands, who in turn would support them financially.
2. Societal pressures - gender roles are socially constructed from a young age, and Gilman argued that children should play with gender-neutral toys.
3. Proposed solutions - Gilman sought economic independence for women and advocated centralised nurseries and co-operative kitchens to give women freedom and autonomy.

Question 17

Key Thinker Shelia Rowbotham

Answer 17

1. Capitalism - Rowbotham was influenced by Marx and Engels, who inform her socialist feminism. Capitalism worsened the oppression of women, forcing them to sell their labour to survive in the workplace and to cede their labour in the family home.
2. Family - Rowbotham stresses that the family performs a duel function: to subject and discipline women to the demands of capitalism and to offer a place of refuge for men from the alienation.

Question 18

Different types of feminism - Postmodern feminism

Answer 18

Rejects the simplistic, broad generalisations of earlier feminist traditions. There are numerous interacting factors in addition to gender. Intersectionality put forward by bell hooks challenges the understanding that gender is the most damning issue.

Question 19

To what extent do feminists agree and disagree on human nature? agree

Answer 19

1. Equality feminists argue that human nature is androgynous, and that gender is a cultural and not biological construct. Masculinity and femininity should not be considered as natural but are artificially created.
2. Liberal, radical, socialist and postmodern, believing that biological differences are inconsequential and women are just as rational as men.
3. Most feminists agree with de Beauvoir and Milett that these gender roles are imposed upon women

Question 19

To what extent do feminists agree and disagree on human nature? disagree

Answer 19

1. Difference feminists believe in essentialism and women should embrace and not reject their natural femininity.
2. Difference and cultural feminism is a more extreme version that challenges the dominance of male values in society and argues that ‘women’s values’ should be promoted as they are superior.
3. Transfeminists argues that sex and not just gender is socially constructed.
4. Post modern feminists are more influenced by an intersectional approach to human nature

Question 20

To what extent do feminists agree and disagree about the role of the state? agree

Answer 20

1. Feminists broadly agree that the state can be restructured to enhance the position of women within society and the economy
2. Majority of feminists agree with reform and tackling the patriarchy within the public area.

Question 21

To what extent do feminists agree and disagree about the role of the state? disagree

Answer 21

1. Radical feminists are more critical of the state than liberal feminists and see the state as promoting and sustaining the patriarchy.
2. There is no consensus whether the state should intervene on private matters.
3. Socialists feminists argue that the state must be abolished so women can be free of the oppression of the patriarchy and capitalism
4. Post modern feminists argue that there is a complexity to state oppression and that feminism should not treat it as a monolith

Question 22

To what extent do feminists agree and disagree on society? agree

Answer 22

1. Societal attitudes have seen women play a subordinate role to men and these gender roles have been normalised says de Beauvoir
2. Equality and advancement within society have been difficult for women because of the innate institutionalised cultural disadvantages

Question 23

To what extent do feminists agree and disagree on society? disagree

Answer 23

1. Liberal feminists argue that there is discrimination in the public sphere of society. However, radical feminists go further arguing that patriarchy iis pervasive and is present in every facet of society.
2. Liberal feminists prefer the term discrimination rather than patriarchy and argue that society can be reformed via the state

Radical feminists agree on Millet’s definition.

Socialist feminists argue that society is economically determined by male capitalism.

3. Postmodern feminists argue that it is simplistic to view the problems women face in society by only looking at gender

Question 24

To what extent do feminists agree and disagree about the economy? agree

Answer 24

1. Feminists are united in their belief that the economic world discriminates against women in the workplace.
2. The labour market is divided because of gender roles, with women being employed in professions that are seen as feminine and men in roles that are seen as masculine.
3. Senior roles in business are dominated by men because stereotypically men are perceived as being more logical and better at decision making.
4. Feminists all agree that with the breakdown of gender stereotypes, women can achieve equality in the workplace and be no longer economically dependent on men.

Question 25

To what extent do feminists agree and disagree about the economy? disagree

Answer 25

1. Equality feminists argue that biological differences are of no consequence in the workplace, while difference feminists argue that they do matter.
2. Liberal feminists argue that the workplace can be reformed by the state, but socialists feminists such as Rowbotham argue that women’s place in the economy and sexual equality can only be achieved via a revolution.
3. Radical feminists argue that patriarchy is essentially cultural and psychological and that socialist feminists re unduly fixed on economic concerns
4. Postmodern feminists argue that feminists fail to appreciate intersectionality and that race intersected with gender delivers a different kind of economic oppression.