Feminism

Question 1

What is Feminism?

Answer 1

A structural conflict approach that focuses on the idea that women are oppressed by the patriarchy and male stream ideas. It focuses on the conflict between men and women, and consists of 5 different waves and many different forms of feminism.
Conflict theory that suggests a patriarchal oppression of women in society; they believe sociology is malestream (male thinkers who focus on male issues) and has evolved over time to deal with contemporary issues and intersectionality of women’s experiences

There are 4 waves of feminism that each tackle a different set of issues in contemporary society
- First wave - political equality - Wollenscroft, Martineau, Suffragettes, Suffragists
- Second wave - social and economic equality - Oakley, De Beauvoir, women’s liberation movement
- Third wave - intersectionality, focusing on rights of those ignored in second wave feminism
- Fourth wave - empowerment of women and digital feminism (#MeToo)

Question 2

Difference / intersectional feminism

Answer 2

• Do not see all women as a single homogenous group who all share the same issues and problems
• Other feminisms are essentialist and have created a false universality based around white western middle class women
• (Essentialist = concerned about one issue)
• White middle class women dominate the feminist movement and falsely claim the universality of female experiences
• However, our identities are constituted through many different discourses (discourses = a way of thinking, speaking or seeing about something)
• Judith Butler - key thinker
• This form of feminism allows for discussion and analysis of different forms of oppression

Question 3

Evaluation of intersectional feminism

Answer 3

Allow for the analysis of different forms of oppression
Allows for different forms of resistance and struggles to achieve equality
Having so many sub groups weakens the feminist movement
Segal: abandons any notion of objective social structures

Question 4

Liberal Feminism

Answer 4

• Liberalism - The idea that all humans should have equality, rights and freedoms
• As women, we should have the same rights and freedoms as men
• They believe in the idea of reformism where equality can be achieved through gradual reform and change to policies / laws without the need for violence
• Two examples of key thinkers are Anne Oakley and Sue Sharpe
• Liberal feminists believe that there need to be certain changes in order to aid the path to equality, and that changes should be achieved through reform and education e.g. the Equal Pay Act and more women pursuing careers
• Liberal feminism - tackle inequality by utilising existing systems - legal reform and legal changes have impacted many aspects of women’s lives, including education, family, work and stratification
• Despite notable successes, inequality still exists and has evolved to take newer forms that liberal feminism continues to challenge

Question 5

Evaluation of Liberal Feminism

Answer 5

• Can be criticised for being overly optimistic
• Deals with the symptoms of oppression, not the cause of it
• Ignores the need for revolutionary action
• Has had important influences on social policy
• Shows that gender differences are socially constructed
• Shows that gender inequality and discrimination can be overcome without violence

Question 6

Radical feminists

Answer 6

• Women’s main enemy are men - all men benefit from the patriarchy
• Legal change is unlikely to bring change or equality
• Patriarchy is universal, derived from women’s ability to bear children
• Three requirements to overcome patriarchy - Some radical feminists advocate political lesbianism (don’t need men), collective action and separationism (women do not need men for anything e.g. a political stance to not have babies to show women are worth more than that)
• Create female independence as a new culture free from the patriarchy
• Greer argues for the creation of ‘matrilocal’ households as an alternative to the heterosexual family
• Radical feminism - patriarchy is present in all aspect of society, and recent chanegs are superficial and token gestures, with the only solution being a complete restructure of society - female separatism and female supremacists are extreme variations (political lesbianism etc)
• Millet - women are controlled physically, psychologically and ideologically by men
• Ignore progress and intersection between women’s lives

Question 7

Evaluation of radical feminism

Answer 7

• Raises the profile of what has previously been considered private issues
• Exposes the social construction of gender and gender roles
• Uses violence to achieve its aims; makes wider feminism seem silly and men hating
• Ignores the element of choice within a relationship
• Jenny Sommerville; ignores the progress that has been made - damaging to LGBTQ+ women etc.

Question 8

Marxist Feminism

Answer 8

• Capitalism is patriarchal and the cause of women’s oppression
  1. Women create and socialise the next generation of workers
  2. Women can act as a reserve labour force
  3. Women absorb men’s frustrations at their own oppression
• Key thinker; Michele Bartlett
  1. In a capitalist system, women were forced to rely on the men during the late stages of pregnancy and after giving birth
  2. The patriarchal nuclear family is portrayed as the only place in which women can attain fulfillment
  3. Once capitalism is overthrown the ideology of familism will follow allowing for equality
• Marxist feminism - women are being exploited by both capitalism and men, referred to by Benston as the ‘reserve army of labour’ and Ansley who noted that women are ‘takers of shit’ and absorb the frustrations of men; Delphy and Leonard noted that women are exploited through domestic labour
• Men control workforce and women’s part in the workforce - there is inequality in the workplace but changes have occurred with feminisation of the workplace

Question 9

Evaluation of Marxist Feminism

Answer 9

• Shows the importance of economic production in all areas of social life
• Shows greater understanding of the structural causes of women’s oppression
• Women are still oppressed in non-capitalist societies
• Doesn’t explain why women perform unpaid domestic labour and not men
• Lack of emphasis of how men not capitalism oppress women

Question 10

Postmodern / Poststructural Feminism

Answer 10

• Some feminists agree with postmodernist theory that we are now in a new era of human history from that of modernity - this era is believed by feminists to be characterised by the patriarchy
• Postmodernist feminists agree with other feminists that gender is very important to identity and that women are often subject to discrimination
• However, they are interested in how people can pick and mix their identities, including gender and are also interested in the nature of masculinity
• Rather than rejecting stereotypical aspects of female gender identity they often embrace their femininity as a positive identity
• This is also discussed sometimes in terms of waves - all the different types of feminism still exist, but are mainly associated with one particular period
• Camille Pagilia and Christine Hoff Summers and key modernist thinkers involved with feminist theory.
• We should challenge the idea of femininity as a metanarrative, and feminism should highlight the difference and diversity in women’s experience of the world, as lumping them together marginalises groups - everyone has a different experience that should be understood
• Evaluation - This is helpful in promoting more positive forms of the female identity, rather than making being a woman about erasing what gets in the way of being one; however, it is ignorant of the negative parts of society that often define women; focuses on individuals

Question 11

What do all feminists have in common?

Answer 11

• The patriarchy is oppressive for all women and that legal policies are the main proprietors of female issues and institutional misogyny - all feminists agree there are societal broad scale issues facing women
• Rights, freedoms and equality for women are all important goals (radical feminism takes this equality to an extreme in terms of wanting the same power over men that has previously been had over women)

Question 12

Feminism Summarized (includes all key words)

Answer 12

Feminism is a conflict structural approach with many different waves. All views have a common belief that we live in a patriarchal society and women are oppressed; society has inequality of the sexes. Marxist feminists such as Bartlett argue that capitalism exploits women and forces them to rely on men. However, they don’t argue what the radicals do for separationism. Radical feminists also argue more extreme ideas such as political lesbianism to encourage the separation of women and men and to emphasise that women do not need to rely on the hetero-normative family structure, but are independent of men. However this poses ethical issues and thus weakens their arguments; as does their violent methods towards reform and change. On the other hand, Liberal feminists believe that inequality can be solved by reformism and education - ultimately leading to more equality for all women. Intersectional feminism argues that in order to create more equality for all women, we must focus on the individual experiences of different groups of women and different discourses are needed to solve inequality, rather than focusing effort into the essentialist approach of other feminism groups, which fight for issues that only face white middle class women.

Question 13

The Feminist methodology

Answer 13

• Feminist methodology - have massively contributed to the methodology of sociology, as they were critical of malestream research and reject traditional research methodologies that are objective and scientific - suggested there was no empathy for those studied, and the feminist methodology was adapted from interpretivist methods of the unstructured interview, and the role of a sociologist is to offer help when needed
• Oakley introduced feminist interviewing that sought out a rapport with respondents and a two-way dialogue between researcher and respondent done through interventions in respondent’s lives, offering advice and guidance and engaging them in discussion about findings - criticism for interviewer bias and subjectivity

Question 14

Evaluation of feminism - criticism

Answer 14

1) Aims to tackle inequality but global inequalities between women remain
2) Intersectional nature of women’s experiences leads to criticism that feminism focuses more on Western women’s desires rather than basic needs of women in a developing world - women in the West fight for a seat at the table, women in the rest of the world fight for their lives
3) Can be argued to have a fragmented nature with disagreements from within the movement, causing subjective judgements

Question 15

Evaluation of feminism - strengths

Answer 15

1) Introduced greater understanding of gender differences in society and increased knowledge of women in comparison to the ‘boy’s club’ of malestream sociology
2) Evolved to tackle contemporary issues, including forms of postmodern feminism and arguments centred on specific social contexts
3) Created legal changes that have improved educational outcomes, employments opportunities and reproductive rights of women - will remain relevant for many years to come

Question 16

Sylvia Walby - 6 structures of patriarchy; paid work and household production

Answer 16

Paid Work:
- Walby believes that paid employment remains a key structure for disadvantaging women in Britain. Today, men continue to dominate the best paid jobs and women are still paid less than men, and do more part-time work.
- Many women choose not to work, or work part-time because of poor job opportunities
- Yes - huge wage gap (7.9% in 2020), hospitality and care sectors dominated by women, No - Equal Pay Act 1970, women are more likely to be in 0-hour contracts, part time

Household Production:
- According to Walby, individual men still benefit from women’s unpaid labour. Women still do most of the housework and childcare. However easier divorce means women are not as trapped as the once were by marriage and some black feminists see family life as less exploitative than the labour market, where there is considerable racism.
- Oakley - women do more housework, 52 weeks of maternity but only 2 weeks of paternity (priority of men’s work), 2013 most housework was women

Question 17

Sylvia Walby - 6 structures of patriarchy; Culture and Sexuality

Answer 17

Culture:
- Religion, media, education and other institutions all reinforce patriarchy.
- The culture of Western societies has consistently distinguished between men and women and expected different behaviours from them, but the expected patterns of behaviour have changed. The key sign of femininity today is sexual attractiveness to men, and not just for younger women, but increasingly for older women.
- Pressure in media to look a certain way, sexualisation of female characters in media e.g. Florence Pugh / contrast is expansion of media to accomodate all beauty types, less of a narrative in culture now, media presentation in magazines, accurate for sport
- Arranged marriage

Sexuality:
- Despite the sexual liberation of the 1960s, there is still a ‘sexual double standard’ in society – males condemn women who are sexually active as slags and those who are not as drags, which males with many sexual conquests are admired. Walby also argues that ’heterosexuality constitutes a patriarchal structure’ – there is more pressure today for women to be heterosexually active and to service males through marrying them.
- Dress codes, condemnation of women in media - however, liberalisation of sex work

Question 18

Sylvia Walby - 6 structures of patriarchy; Violence and the State

Answer 18

Violence:
- Like many other Feminists Walby sees violence against women as a form of male control of women, which is still a problem for many women today, although she concedes that it is difficult to measure how much progress has been made in this area, because of validity problems where the stats are concerned.
- Domestic violence, sexual assault - yes, men cannot report

The state:
- To Walby, the state is still patriarchal, racists and capitalist. She argues that there has been little attempt to improve women’s position in the public sphere and equal opportunities legislation is rarely enforced.
- Some institutions reinforces, but it exists in all institutions even though it isn’t reinforced - e.g. education teaches capitalism is wrong but still pushes students into the system, less female MPs but it has increased massively (3 female prime ministers) but men still outnumber men

Question 19

Key sociologists - wave of feminism / history of feminism

Answer 19

Wave 1 - Early feminism
- Late 1700’s, Mary Woolstonecraft, “The Vindication of rights of women”

Wave 2 - First wave feminism
- 1900’s, Emmeline Pankhurst, Suffragettes, Votes for Women
- The first organised wave of feminist protest occurred in the mid to late-nineteenth century with the activities of the Suffragettes and Suffragists. Both these groups aimed to introducing the right to vote for women, and both would utilise radical means to achieve it.
- The two groups did, however, have differing views on the extent to which women’s liberation should be achieved. The Suffragettes campaigned mainly for the introduction of the vote only for those women who owned property.
- Suffragists, by contrast, argued that partial enfranchisement would never be sufficient. For these activists, all adults - regardless of social class - should be entitled to vote at the age of 21. This position would mean the enfranchisement of women, but also for the small number of working-class men who were still unable to vote.

Wave 3 - Second wave feminism
- 1960’s, Gloria Steinem, “The Personal is the Political”, What were once private issues were now in the public realm.
- In the 1960s and 70s, women’s liberation groups began to appear - these groups aimed to fulfil a dual function.
- Firstly, they engaged in consciousness raising - highlighting gender inequalities and arguing that women’s lives should no longer be seen as trivial and unimportant.
- At the same time, these groups began campaigning to bring about direct social change - for instance, organising protest marches, and more specific direct actions. In 1969, for instance, feminists famously infiltrated and
disrupted the Miss World contest.

Wave 4 - Third wave feminism
- 1990’s, Issues of identity and stereotypes, .e.g. media portrayal of women.

Wave 5 - Fourth wave feminism
- 2012+, empowerment, digital feminism, intersectionality, Nadia Kamil (Smash the Kyriarchy, comedian), Laura Bates (Everyday Sexism Project), Tarana Burke (#MeToo), Lucy-Anne Holmes (No More Page 3 campaign)

Question 20

What is sociological feminism?

Answer 20

Sociological Feminism:
- Society is based on the exploitation of women by men (Patriarchy).
- This exploitation is possible due to the vulnerability of women due to pregnancy and childbirth. It is also possible due to the men being physically stronger and bigger than women.

Non-sociological feminism:
- Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of equality of the sexes

Key feminists:
- Bell Hooks - intersectional feminism; black women are more affected
- Van Zoonen - women are oppressed by the patriarchy
- Judith Butler - due to the media, repeated stereotype exposure results in us being socialised into believing what is masculine and feminine
- Still needed today, with growing wage gaps and domestic violence, and is gaining popularity as feminism shifts into changing culture and not just laws

Question 21

The 4 basic tenants of feminism

Answer 21

1) Inequality between women and men
2) The importance of patriarchy in explaining equality
3) Gender inequalities are socially constructed
4) Conflict between men and women

Question 22

Feminism and sociology

Answer 22

• Feminism has sensitised sociology to the experience of women in existing malestream topics of research and introduced new topics to the field of study such as looking at childhood and families
• Feminism has also impacted how research is conducted, criticising malestream methodologies and arguing positivist research is distant and detached and creates a research hierarchy which mirrors the power dynamic experienced by participants in everyday lives
• They argued studying marginalised groups in this structured way meant control was exercised over participants by reinscribing inequality - they have therefore created a feminist-standpoint methodology

Soft-feminist methodology -
- views positivist-quantitative methodology as salvageable; Jayrante argues that although large-scale survey type research tends to be patriarchal, it should be taken and made as gender neutral as possible, and so can be used in some regard

Hard-feminist methodology -
- rejects the use of this method, with sociologists such as Oakley and Mies advocate a more collaborative approach, conducting unstructured interviews to create more informal researcher relationships, and break down the power dynamic more by giving participants co-authorship

Question 23

Dual-systems feminism

Answer 23

• Hartman - patriarchal capitalism; patriarchy is universal but takes a specific form in capitalist society, with a focus on the relationship between women’s position in the domestic division of labour and paid work
• General beliefs - Seeks to combine Marxist and radical feminism; two systems of oppression being the economy (capitalism) and the sex gender system (patriarchy)
• Walby - patriarchy and capitalism are at odds with one another, as capitalism wants cheap female labour and patriarchy wants dominance of women through the private sphere (public vs private control); capitalism is more powerful and so patriarchy adapts by keeping women in low status jobs

Evaluation -
1) Anna Pollert - Patriarchy is not a system in the same way as capitalism; it is instead a descriptive term for practices such as male violence and control of women’s labour.
2) Expands on radical ideas and liberalises them in line with Marxist theory, adding an intersectional lens to radical ideas

Question 24

Main contributions of feminist theory

Answer 24

• Made sociological research more sensitive to women’s experiences
• Focused research on gender identity and social construction of gender, including masculinity and sexuality
• Influenced research methods chosen by sociologists to ensure that gender imbalance in power was considered and participants given the chance to open up
• Difference feminism has exposed issues with traditional feminist theories - the theory is self-correcting
• Feminism is still relevant and popular today, with a new technological age allowing difference feminism and postmodern feminism to solve the niches in inequality rather than broader inequality, and change culture

Question 25

Issues in contemporary society

Answer 25

• Representation of women in high profile positions in government - Discussions over women being involved in the cabinet and shadow cabinet and the roles that they take in the respective cabinets
• # MeToo - Allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct by high profile males against female actors
• The ability to self-select one’s gender - Debates over the biological and social construction of gender roles including high profile women such as JK Rowling

Question 26

Cause and effect for feminists

Answer 26

1) Society’s control over women -> Women are controlled in the public sphere and therefore have limited opportunities to commit crime. Their behaviour is monitored through informal control of others in society -> Women less likely to commit crimes
2) Gender socialisation -> Changes to gender socialisation have led girls to be more aspirational in their outlook on life and they have embraced opportunities presented to them -> Increase in achievement of girls in recent decades
3) Increased financial freedom of women -> Women’s greater financial independence has led to an increase in women delaying marriage until they find a partner that can contribute more than just financially to the family unit -> Changes in the structure and organisation of the family
4) Representations of women in the media -> Women are represented in the media as being able to achieve in the workplace and have the ‘perfect home and family’ – this places a burden upon them to ‘have it all’ as the domestic sphere is still perceived as the feminine domain -> Women endure a dual burden and triple shift of domestic and emotional labour
5) Changes in the law -> Increased employment opportunities- due to Equality Act, Equal Pay Act, Sex discrimination act etc have seen more females take on higher positions in businesses and within the media – and these act as role models for younger girls aspire to this -> More female role models in the media

Question 27

Cause and effect for feminists pt 2

Answer 27

6) Changing power relationships -> Increased involvement of women in research positions in sociology has led to the development of feminist methodology which seeks to replace the power imbalance between researcher and research subject and create a more equitable power relationship between the two -> More empathetic research methodology
7) More women in the workplace -> Women working has led to increased financial independence which has enable them to leave abusive partners. It can also be argued that in some relationships, the female becoming the main wage earner can cause conflict also. -> Domestic violence between males and females
8) Movement to postmodernity -> With increased globalisation and media saturation, the differences in women’s experiences have become more evident. This has given a platform to a more diverse range of feminists to challenge their own forms of oppression in society – including those of middle-class feminism -> Differing levels of oppression between women
9) Changes in the structure of the family -> Greater symmetry in gender roles in recent years has changed gender socialisation of children. Particularly for girls who see having a career as the norm rather than in previous generations where they may be socialised into expressive role. Can also impact on boys as they see their fathers being more engaged with their children. -> Changes in gender socialisation

Question 28

Writing a theory 20 marker in paper 3

Answer 28

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TWHEVKd3g9W6sxSvcTB5BtLdU03LoXf4c1OcE-g8gs8/edit#slide=id.gf0da1dc684_0_0