Feminist thinkers

Question 1

Charlotte Perkins Gilman on economy

Answer 1

• Women need economic independence to be liberated
• freed from their role as domestic slaves

Question 2

Charlotte Perkins Gilman on gender

Answer 2

Gender stereotyping is wrong- from childhood, girls forced to congorm to a domestic role and motherhood

Question 3

Simone de Beauvoir views on human nature (4)

Answer 3

• Women taught and socialised into becoming women
• Cultural otherness- women considered fundamentally different
• “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman”
• Dismayed by idea of a separate, mystical ‘feminine nature’, (example of further oppression)

Question 4

Simone de Beauvoir ideas on change

Answer 4

• Believed that socialist development and class struggle was needed to solve society’s problems
  BUT
• later believed not sufficient to bring female liberation

Question 5

Sheila Rowbotham ideas on marriage

Answer 5

• Marriage closely resembled feudalism

Question 6

Sheila Rowbotham on economics (3)

Answer 6

• Women oppressed economically and culturally
• Capitalism and sexism closely linked
• Patriarchy allowed for capitalism need of reproduction of men’s labour

Question 7

Sheila Rowbotham on change

Answer 7

• Dual response examining both spheres of oppression needed for liberation
• ” a revolution within a revolution”

Question 8

Kate Millet on the family (4)

Answer 8

• Family was “patriarchy’s key institution”
• Undoing traditional family was key to the sexual revolution
• Family is where girls were socialised and taught their place
• called for an end to monogamous marriage

Question 9

Kate Millet on gender (3)

Answer 9

• Socialisation gives men power and denies women power
• culture supported masculine authority in all areas of life
• human nature is androgynous

Question 10

bell hooks on gender

Answer 10

• from a young age children socialised into gender roles
• believed that gender stereotyping is wrong

Question 11

bell hooks POC (2)

Answer 11

• Solidarity between genders, classes and races (need to create political solidarity)
• POC women in double bind

Question 12

Carol Gilligan

Answer 12

• Difference feminist
• women are culturally different but these differences should be celebrated

Question 13

Simone de Beauvoir on gender

Answer 13

Society has created an idea of women; that they are biologically and culturally inferior. Theory of “otherness”