Marxist Feminists

Question 1

Who recognises that women are exploited in marriage and family life but emphasis the relationship between capitalism and the family rather than the families effects upon women?

Answer 1

Engels and Zarektsky

Question 2

Margaret Benston

Answer 2

Argue that women are exploited by the amount of unpaid labour that they are expected to do within the home

Question 3

What else does Benston argue?

Answer 3

If women were paid for their contributions within the home there would be a massive redistribution of wealth and consequently, power within society

Question 4

Fran Ansley (1972)

Answer 4

One of the roles of the wife within the family is to act as a safety valve for the frustrations of the husband so that he is less likely to revel against the thing causing his frustrations (capitalist society)

Question 5

What do they believe the family to be a powerful apparatus for?

Answer 5

Ideological conditioning

Question 6

Freely

Answer 6

Passed on Norma and values which maintain the capitalist society by encouraging children to accept their place within an authoritarian hierarchy

Question 7

What does freely say about children and women?

Answer 7

They are expected to submit to their parents and women submit to he men of the household

Question 8

Criticisms

Answer 8

1) assume that the nuclear family is the dominant family within society and fail to address diversity
2) they exaggerate the harm done to women
3) they portray women as the passive victims of exploitation and ignore changes in the family