Feminist Society (Gender Equality/Intersectionality)

Question 1

What are 3 general agreements between feminists on gender equality?

Answer 1

• They all support gender equality
• They all agree women have been traditionally discriminated against as a sex
• They widely agree that gender should move towards being androgenous

Question 2

What do Liberal Feminists believe about Gender Equality?

Answer 2

• Equality in the Political and Legal spheres for men and women is essential, and only through this can women be free to act and think as genuine individuals and be able to achieve gender equality within wider society. Based on equal opportunities and the individual desire to do well in life.

Question 3

What do Socialist Feminists believe about Gender Equality?

Answer 3

• Believe liberal idea is not sufficient for all women to be equal. When equality extended to economic sphere women gain equality. -
• Capitalism replaced by socialism. Equality is achieved through collective efforts and equality of outcome (particularly working-class women)
• Moran/Walby say female freedom is unlikely to occur within the inequalities produced by neo-liberalism, and that the egalitarianism of the social democrat approach is much more likely to deliver both women’s liberation and genuine equality with men.

Question 4

What do Radical Feminists believe about gender equality?

Answer 4

• Equality in Family/ Personal Life, in areas such as childcare, housework and domestic tasks, social life, arts, culture and entertainment, in sexual expression and fulfilment. Gender equality needs to occur in all areas of life, in addition to those advocated by socialists and liberals.

Question 5

What do Post-Modernists believe regarding gender equality?

Answer 5

• Interests of all women, black, disabled, working-class and LGBT women, and not just white middle-class women need to be addressed equally and together.

Question 6

What do Difference Feminist believe regarding gender equality?

Answer 6

• Do not seek gender equality. Equality, androgyny and personhood ignore differences between men and women. If gender equality is strived for women will be forced to be more similar to me, rather than meeting in the middle or men becoming more like women. Unsuitable for women.
• Men are aggressive, competitive, warlike and uncaring result of biology ‘biology is destiny’. Men seek to dominate women who are nurturing, cooperative, emotional, peaceful, intuitive, empathetic and closer to nature. Women should seek to be culturally and socially different to men, as biology would indicate.
• Women’s liberation achieved through separatism. Create men-free spaces. Women acquire the necessary skills to live separately from men. Political lesbianism as relationships between men and women can never be based on equality. Women celebrate their differences from men – sisterhood, childbirth, menstruation and motherhood.
• To be culturally different from men rather than aiming simply for a second-rate similarity – Cultural Feminism. Women need to pursue their own freedoms, whilst men do the same for themselves.

Question 7

What is Intersectionality and who agrees with it?

Answer 7

• Post-Modernist Feminist concept which identifies how interlocking systems of power impact those who are most marginalised in society. Considers that various forms of social stratification, such as class, race, sexual orientation, age, disability and gender, do not exist separately from each other but are interwoven together.
• First-wave feminism focused on political equality and are seen as focused on middle-class white women’s feminism.
• Women’s experiences of class, gender, and sexuality cannot be understood unless race is considered. Highlighted by bell hooks, ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ (1981)
• It disputes the idea that women are a homogeneous category. Different women experience patriarchy in different ways.
• All the groups marginalised by patriarchy need to recognise each other’s particular form of oppression and liberate themselves together. Third-wave feminism criticised the lack of attention to marginalised groups by early feminists and highlights issues faced by women in all these areas.

Question 8

What were the criticisms of Intersectionality?

Answer 8

• Ideas are contradictory, too theoretical, vague, over-complex, short on solutions and lack clear examples of how they would work in practice.
• Liberal/Socialist Feminists: their desired societies included freedoms that are universal, applying to all women. Post-modernists are unnecessarily complicating feminist thinking.
• Radical Feminists: all women are specifically oppressed by their gender, this is the significant form of oppression. A form of oppression in common, a shared experience and a need to unite and oppose patriarchy as a gender class. ‘sisterhood’ alone should be sufficient to unite women.
• Heavily interlinked with Identity Politics – a person’s political ideas being determined by who they are, rather than what they believe – creating divisions and fragmenting the Feminist movement and ideology.