lecture 10 - feminism Flashcards
what is feminism?
- feminists share a common concern with women’s unequal position in society, calling into question power relations between women and men traditionally defended as ‘natural’
- feminist approaches (like Marxist approaches) are explicitly political/normative in that they seek not only to recognize and understand gender power relations, but also to change them
why is feminism often antifoundational and interpretivist
feminists often argue that gender is socially constructed
+ focus on peoples understanding of society, of the role of women and men
!feminism can also be combined with other approaches, e.g. behavioural feminism (normative motivation for research + positivist epistemology + methods)
history of western feminism
- Olympe de Gouges: 18t century france writer, human rights not only for men (French revo. rights for hommes)
- Mary Wollstonecraft: philosophical text (clearly, women are inferior: they behave inferior, but this is how they have been taught -> to see if they are equal, we have to teach them differently) = !!!!! constructivist idea (way before constructivism)
*this is a strategy: she already believes they are equal, but this way she can prove it
influential in the start of first wave feminism
feminism first wave
19th - early 20th century
focus on equal legal and constitutional rights = public sphere
these issues remained important after this period, e.g. Switzerland 1971
- still gap in men and women actually representing in politics: being elected
feminism second wave
more attention to workplace and family equality, domestic violence and reproductive rights
= questions the distinction between public and private
- e.g. abortion, rape culture
these concerns still exist + are still protested for
suffrage
kiesrecht
how do the waves relate to each other
they don’t replace each other, they are stacked kind of
feminism third wave
critical of ‘liberal feminism’ (isolates gender equality for overall equality): women should break the glass ceiling + not questioning the structures that might have led to it (e.g. capitalism)
- only focused on leveling up white women
draws attention to intersectionality, generally sex-positive
sex-positive: acceptance of sexual freedom, women should be freed from sexual constrains
also interest in binary distinction between men and women (be some is considered as 4th wave): sex and gender can’t be understood in binary terms anymore
intersectionality
we shouldn’t only look at gender for inequality, it intersects with other fights: disabled, appearence, age, etc.
we can’t isolate one criteria
women in politics
- historically excluded (e.g. to vote, be elected)
- now still hugely underrepresented
- women make up 30% of the discipline of political science
female hysteria
idea that women are less rational than men, that they act on hysteria rather than rationality
- can be found in political right and left, they are infused in our day-to-day life
feminist critiques of ‘malestream’ polisci
- fudging the footnotes: usually male texts become dominant, while these texts aren’t necessarily the first articles about a certain
- assuming male dominance
- accepting masculinity at the political ideal
- explaining political behaviour through unexamined stereotypes of the roles of women
- excluding what women have traditionally done from the definition and scope of politics (arena view of politics: women excluded from the political agenda)
is sex/gender constructed
3d/4th wave of feminism
femininity and masculinity are socially constructed, perhaps gender and sex are as well
question the binary of gender: the idea that human bodies are constructed as male and female
gender constructed -> we can also theorize gendered institutions (constructed as male and female, they aren’t actually male or female)
!sex and gender can be constructed in different ways
