Feminism

Question 1

First wave

Answer 1

19th and early 20th century: Legal inequalities such as voting are addressed

Question 2

Second wave of feminism

Answer 2

1960s to 1980s: Looked at a wider range of issues and aimed to tackle what had not been solved by the first wave (employment equality, sexual rights, family)

Question 3

Third wave of feminism

Answer 3

1990s: Intersectionality appears – the idea that not just gender oppresses women. Attempt to abolish gender stereotypes

Question 4

Fourth wave of feminism

Answer 4

2010s: Continued the theme of intersectionality, tackles workplace harassment (#metoo movement). Looks at equal opportunities for boys and girls and for the overcoming of gender norms for boys and girls.

Question 5

Liberal feminist

Answer 5

• Liberty – women should be able to choose the nature of their own lives
• Reform rather than revolution against the patriarchy
• Equality of opportunity with men
• Gilman

Question 6

Socialist feminist

Answer 6

• Women were the victims of capitalism as the reserve labour force.
• They seek to liberate women from their economic dependency on men
• Shelia Rowbotham

Question 7

Radical feminist

Answer 7

• Destruction of the patriarchy
• Revolutionary rather than reformist
• Personal IS political
• Kate Millet

Question 8

Post Modern

Answer 8

• Argues that patriarchy appears in different ways depending on a women’s race, class or
  identity.
• Intersectionality
• Criticism of the second wave of feminism which focussed on white middle class women.
• bell hooks

Question 9

Sex

Answer 9

For feminists this is the biological differences between men and women. They are seen as inevitable.

Question 10

Gender

Answer 10

The cultural differences between sexes. According to feminists, these are not inherent, and are created by societies.

Question 11

Patriarchy

Answer 11

Used by feminists to describe a society which is dominated by men political, economically and socially.

Question 12

Intersectionality

Answer 12

Post-modern idea among feminists that suggests women have multiple identities as well as their sex and gender.

Question 13

Otherness

Answer 13

Refers to the position of women in patriarchal society, treated as separate to society, an inferior minority

Question 14

Essentialism
(also known as ‘difference’ feminists)

Answer 14

A contested idea which refers to the fundamental nature if the biological differences between men and women.

Some feminists say such differences are essential to an understanding of the status of women.

Other claim it should be irrelevant.

Question 15

Personal is political

Answer 15

Liberal feminists focus on the public sphere of society, such as equal pay and conditions in the workplace.

They argue that the private sphere (home) is outside the political remit.

Radicals, however, argue that all elements
are life are effected by the patriarchy,
therefore the personal IS political.

Question 16

Gilman - human nature

Answer 16

“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex.”

Question 17

Gilman - society

Answer 17

“And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.”

Question 18

Gilman - economy

Answer 18

“The labour of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way,
women are economic factors in society. But so are horses”

Question 19

De Beauvoir - human nature

Answer 19

“one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”

“humanity is male and man defines woman not in relation to herself but as relative to him; she is not
regarded as an autonomous being”

Question 20

De Beauvoir - society

Answer 20

“Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male’s superiority”

Question 21

Millet - state

Answer 21

“it is precisely because certain groups have no representation in a number of recognised political structures that their position tends to be so stable, their oppression so continuous”

Question 22

Millet - society

Answer 22

“Many women do not recognise themselves as being discriminated against; no better proof could be found of the totality of their conditioning”

“Patriarchy, reformed or unreformed, is patriarchy still: its worst abuses purged or foresworn, it might actually be more stable and secure than before”

“when one group rules another, the relationship between the two is political. When such an arrangement is carried out over a long period of time it develops an ideology (e.g. feudalism, racism etc.). All
historical civilisations are patriarchies; their ideology is male supremacy”

Question 23

Rowbotham - society

Answer 23

“It is only when women start to organize in large numbers that we become a political force, and begin to move towards the possibility of a truly democratic society in which every human being can be brave, responsible, thinking and diligent in the struggle to live at once freely and unselfishly.”

“the so-called women’s question is a whole-people question”

Question 24

bell hooks - human nature

Answer 24

“Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed static entities then you see that people can change and that there is hope”

Question 25

bell hooks - society

Answer 25

“The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love
ethic”

“No other group in America has so had their identity socialised out of existence as have black women…when black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women”