Feminist Theories Flashcards
Ann Oakley
Liberal Feminist
Women experience social inequality in the labour market as a result of the continued dominance of the mother-housewife role for women. Patriarchal ideology stresses the view that a woman’s major function is to stay at home and produce children.
Liberal Feminists
Look at socialisation as responsible for inequalities, but argue equal opportunities can be created by legislation and by changing attitudes.
Females have also enjoyed greater educational success than males in recent years, therefore liberal feminists have an optimistic view of the future for women. In the family, they see evidence of both partners accepting equal responsibility for domestic work and childrearing.
Sue Sharpe
The inequality of women is coming to an end. Sue Sharpe conducted interviews with girls in the 1970s and 1990s and found that after 20 years, the priority of young women moved from having a husband and children, to having a good education and a career. Suggests that women now feel capable to have a life without being reliant on men- thus are no longer experiencing inequality.
Ann Oakley Evaluation
This is supported by the fact that being childless increases a woman’s chances of becoming a director of a major company, suggesting that due to society’s patriarchal beliefs, society believes that women with children belong at home.
Sue Sharpe Evaluation
The fact that shared maternity-paternity leave has been introduced, and the fact that organisations such as GIST are promoting the involvement of female students in science subjects shows that Government recognise the importance of equal opportunities and changing attitudes put forward by these feminists.
Benston
Marxist Feminist (the subordination of women to men is directly linked to their position within a capitalist society). Women experience inequality because this benefits capitalism. They provide free domestic labour, which makes the male workers more efficient. The housewife provides a comfortable home, meals, etc, emotional and domestic support so he can return to work as a healthy worker.
Benston Evaluation
Marxist Feminists explain that female subordination in society is a result of its benefit to capitalism, but Walby pointed out that it could quite as easily have been argued that women staying at home harmed capitalism because women competing with men for jobs would lower wages and increase profits.
Also difficult to blame capitalism for female inequality when women take the primary care giving role in communist/socialist societies, and they fulfilled such as role before capitalist Industrialisation.
Walby
Dual Systems Approach- combines radical-feminist and Marxist approaches to explain that capitalism and patriarchy work alongisde each other to exploit women.
The inequality of women in society has changed as patriarchy has evolved from ‘private patriarchy’ in which women were limited to the domestic sphere, to ‘public patriarchy’, in which women have entered the public arenas of employment, politics etc but are still disadvantage. For example, in paid work they experience discrimination and restricted entry into careers becuase of the Ideology that a woman’s place is in the home, and they experience low pay.
Walby Ethnicity
Patriarchy and capitalism work alongisde each other to exploit women- female inequality has evolved from ‘private patriarchy’ to the ‘public patriarchy’, in which women have entered the public arenas of employment, politics and so on, but are still disadvantaged. She concludes that patriarchy continues to exist but that different gender regimes affect groups of women differently. For example, the experience of White single mothers is likely to be different to the experience of Asian married women.
Evaluation of Walby
Explanation of how female inequality has changed over time. Her research (1990) involves a lot of thorough analysis of current social data that shows exploitation of women linked to arange of feminist theories.
Marxist Feminists
Argue that the subordination of women to men is directly linked to their position within a capitalist society.
Radical Feminist
Argue that gender inequality is more important than class inequality. Society is divided into two fundamental gender classes- men and women- whose interests are opposed. Modern societies are patriarchal societies in which women are exploited and oppressed by men in all aspects of social life.
Dual-Systems Approach Feminist
Walby suggests that the radical-feminist and Marxist approaches could be combined. She argues that capitalism and patriarchy work alongside each other to exploit women.
