Feminist perspective

Question 1

Liberal feminsim:

EVALUATION:

Answer 1

• They are concerned with fighting against sex discrimination and equal rights for women
• although they have a similar view to the march of progress view, they still see that full gender equality within the family has not been reached and only gradual progress. E.g men do more domestic labour and children are more gender wise equally socialised.
  They believe further improvements would depend on the patterns of socialisation and attitudes of both sexes.
• other feminist critise liberals for failing to challenge underlying issues and believing law change and people attitude change can be enough to bring equality

Question 2

Marxist feminist:
Three functions womens oppression perform:

Answer 2

• Believe that capitalist are the main oppression to women
• 4 functions:
  1) women reproduce the labour force - through their unpaid domestic labour by socialising next generation whilst maintaining and servicing the current one
  2) women absorb anger - the anger that a man should take out on his workforce boss ends up being displaced on his wife. Fran ansley describes the wives as the ‘takers of shit’ who soak up that frusration of their husband from the exploitation from work and for marxist this also explains domestic violence against women.
  3) women are an army of cheap labour - they can be taken when extra workers are needed and let go when no longer needed to return to their primary job of unpaid domestic labour.

Question 3

Radical feminist:

Their solution:

EVALUATION:

Answer 3

• They argue that patriarchy is main problem. They say key division is between men and women.
  -men are the enemy and source of womens exploitation and oppression
  -the family is key in patriachal society where men benefit from womens unpaid labour and sexual services and plus these men dominate women through domestic/sexual violence and threat.

They believe family need to be abolished along with the patriarchal system. They believe the only way to achieve is through seperatism where women should learn to live without men.
They can also try political lesbianism - the idea that heterosexual relationships are oppressive bcos we sleep with the enemy.

• liberal feminists such as Somerville, argues that radical fem fail to realise the considerable improvement of womens position with better access to divorce and job opportuinity and more control of their own fertility and ability to choose marriage or cohabit.
  Somerville also argues that heterosexual attractions make it unlikely seperatism would work. However, Somerville does realise women have yet to achieve full equality and theres need for family friend policies such as making more flexible working hours to promote greater equality between partners.

Question 4

Difference feminist:

EVALUATION:

Answer 4

• argue that we cant generalise all womens experiences as they dont assume all women live in a nuclear family. They say hetero/homo sexual, black/white/asians, w/c and m/c women all have different experiences of family. E.g white feminists see all family as negative but black feminist see it as a source of support to racism
• Other feminist say they ignore the same shared experiences all women have. E.g domestic/sexual violence, low pay etc.