Feminism - Different types - final

Question 1

What sort of feminism was first-wave feminism?

Answer 1

Liberal feminism

Question 2

What are the key principles of liberal feminism?

Answer 2

• Liberty - women should be free to choose the nature of their own lives.
• Equal opportunity - full access to education and a career of their choosing.
• Civil rights - the law must never discriminate against women.
• Private rights - women should be able to own property.
• Democracy - the right to vote and stand for election.

Question 3

What did Betty Friedan call patriarchy?

Answer 3

‘the problem with no name’

Question 4

Other than male superiority, what else does patriarchy involve according to Betty Friedan?

Answer 4

the self-assigned inferiority of women that could not see their own oppression.

Question 5

What is meant by ‘otherness’?

Answer 5

Treating women as separate to society and inferior to men.

Question 6

What 3 forms of action do liberal feminists propose to combat patriarchy?

Answer 6

• Gender equality - the end of discrimination and allowing women to make their own life decisions.
• Education - meant to combat cultural attitudes that reinforced women’s inferiority.
• Formal equality - equal treatment before the law and equal protection of rights between men and women.

Question 7

When did liberal (or first-wave) feminism dominate up to?

Answer 7

1960s

Question 8

What are the characteristics of radical feminism?

Answer 8

• The destruction of patriarchal society through revolution.
• Female consciousness.
• They are difference feminists, stressing and celebrating the differences between men and women.

Question 9

How are women exploited in marriage according to Kate Millet?

Answer 9

Sexually and economically

Question 10

What did Germaine Greer assert in her 1970 book ‘The Female Eunuch’?

Answer 10

• men oppress women because they hate them.

- women have been taught to hate themselves.

Question 11

What did Andrea Dworkin believe women needed to do?

Answer 11

Form lesbian communities to stop being seen as sex objects to men.

Question 12

How do radical feminists propose to combat patriarchy?

Answer 12

• Abolition of the nuclear family and the creation of communal child rearing.
• Sexual liberation by escaping traditional male-female relationships.
• The elimination of biological roles, where androgynous people no longer need men to reproduce using technology to reproduce instead.

Question 13

What is cultural feminism?

Answer 13

A type of feminism that accepts that women are born culturally and biologically different, and that these differences are both useful to society and superior to men’s characteristics.

Question 14

How do cultural feminists view women’s roles?

Answer 14

They accept that women are more likely to take up domestic roles but value them as highly, if not higher, than roles played by men.

Question 15

Where do socialist feminists focus their efforts?

Answer 15

On the plight of working-class women.

Question 16

What do socialist feminists argue women will be liberated from their inferior economic position?

Answer 16

The extreme modification of capitalism.

Question 17

In the eyes of socialist feminists, who draw on the ideas of Engels, what are women in the capitalist system?

Answer 17

A source of low-paid and expendable labour.

Question 18

What do socialist feminists seek above all?

Answer 18

The liberation of women from their economic dependence upon men.

Question 19

How do liberal feminists suggest bringing about the end of female economic oppression by men?

Answer 19

• Power is to be distributed more evenly in society.

- A change in culture through education.

Question 20

What is post-modernism?

Answer 20

A general term for rejecting thinking that is limited to traditional ways of viewing the world; for feminism this means rejecting socialist and radical feminist ideas.

Question 21

What do post-modern feminists stress the importance of?

Answer 21

The importance of language in carrying forward patriarchal attitudes towards sexism.

Question 22

What do post-modern feminists believe?

Answer 22

That women should be given the freedom to make their own choices and choose the nature of their relationships; they may choose traditional roles, or they may choose less traditional ones.