Transcript Feminist theory

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Ali G interviews Sue Lees
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Do you consider yourself a feminist?
How do you define the term ‘feminist’?
Has feminism made life in the UK better?
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Equal opportunities in education
Equal opportunities in employment
Equal pay
A woman’s right to control her body
Sexual freedom
Violence against women (rape, domestic
abuse, etc)
 Maternity leave
 Childcare
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Any others?
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To understand the key differences between
the feminist theories.
Be able to describe the methods used by
feminists and know their reasons for using
these methods.
Be able to apply feminist theory to a
sociological understanding of crime and
deviance.
Liberal feminism Radical feminism Marxist/socialist
feminism
Difference
feminism &
poststructuralis
m
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The first organised wave of feminist protest
occurred in the mid to late-nineteenth century with
the activities of the Suffragettes and Suffragists.
Both these groups aimed to introduce the right to
vote for women, and both would utilise radical
means to achieve it.
In 1928, all women aged over 21 were given the right to vote
- and many suffrage groups disbanded. However, this did not
mean that women stopped writing and campaigning for
change. During the 1960s, a new, second-wave of feminism
began to gain momentum in Britain - influenced by three key
social events:
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The success of the Civil Rights movement
New technologies – the contraceptive pill
Women in employment during the war
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1960s and 70s - women's liberation groups
began to appear – dual function
 Consciousness raising - highlighting gender
inequalities and arguing that women's lives should
no longer be seen as trivial and unimportant.
 Campaigning to bring about direct social change
 feminists disrupting Miss World Contest 1970
 a forum for battered husbands in 2006
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Equality through legal reform.
Change the existing system “from within”.
1970 Equal Pay Act
1969 Divorce Reform Act
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Oakley (1972)
Sex –
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Gender –
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Must change socialisation patterns
Appropriate role models in education, family,
media.
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+ Very optimistic view
+ Their work helped to demonstrate that
gender differences are not inborn, but are
cultural
- Over-optimistic?
- Ignores the deep-seated structures causing
women’s oppression (capitalism & patriarchy)
- Fails to recognise the underlying causes of
women’s subordination
Use the handout on the sex discrimination and
equal pay act.
1. What are the terms of the Sex Discrimination
Act (1975)?
2.What are the terms of the Equal Pay Act
(1970)?
3.What are the exceptions to these laws?
4.How might gender equality be improved if
the 2008 Equality Bill is brought into law?
Society is patriarchal - that it is inherently and
structurally biased towards men.
 Lobbying for legal change in the ways suggested
by their Liberal counterparts is unlikely to bring
about equality
 If the system itself is patriarchal, changes to the
position of women brought about by working
within that system will always be within the
terms agreed by men.
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Suggest 3 ways in which patriarchal power may
be exercised within the family.
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Oppression in public sphere of work and
private sphere of family
Sexual politics
Sexual and physical violence
Sexuality
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Personal and sexual relationships must be
transformed if women are to be free.
How could this be done?
Separatism
Consciousness-raising
Political lesbianism
Which of these do you think would be most
successful? What are the problems with each
strategy?
+ draw attention to the political dimension of
areas such as marriage, rape & pornography
- Marxists say that class, not patriarchy is the
primary form of inequality
- No explanation of why female subordination
takes different forms in different societies
- Assumes all women are in the same position
- Inadequate theory of how patriarchy will be
abolished
Patriarchy as a product of capitalism.
Engels - the male dominated family is necessary for
capitalism
 Subordination of women performs a no. of
important functions for capitalism:
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 Women a source of cheap, exploitable labour
 Women are a reserve army of labour
 Women reproduce the labour force
 Women absorb anger – Ansley – women as ‘takers of shit’
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What do nurturing and socialising the next
generation of workers and maintaining the
current generation actually involve?
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How might women’s domestic role enable
capitalists to pay male workers less?
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Not just the economy that oppresses women
Why do women and marry and live in nuclear
families when this is what oppresses them?
The ideology of familism
Must overthrow this and capitalism in order
to secure women’s liberation.
+ greater understanding of the importance of
structural factors than liberal feminism.
- Fails to explain women’s subordination in
non-capitalist societies.
- Unpaid domestic labour may benefit
capitalism, but it doesn’t explain why it is
women and not men that do it.
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An attempt to combine Marxist feminism and
radical feminism
Hartmann – capitalism and patriarchy
Domestic work limits women’s availability for
paid work – but the lack of work
opportunities drives many women into
marriage and economic dependence on a
man.
Thus, the two systems reinforce each other.
+ shows how two systems interact and
structure one another.
- Patriarchy is not actually a system in the same
sense as capitalism. Patriarchy is merely a
descriptive term for a range of practices such
as male violence and control of women’s
labour.
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Arose out of a concern that mainstream
feminism only accounted for the experience
of white women.
Due to racism, black women faced a dualoppression, and a new form of feminism was
needed in order to explain their situation.
Using your textbooks, find studies to support
this theory. Also provide an evaluation of this
theory.
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The starting point for this school is the notion - first outlined
by dual-systems feminism - that it is difficult to describe the
experience of all women as an homogenous group.
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For instance, women of different ethnicities, localities,
sexualities and (dis)abilities have different experiences - for
which the broad-brush approach of traditional feminism fails
to account. Postmodern feminists, such as Butler, therefore
reject the notion of femininity as a “catch-all” - and instead
argue that there are a range of different femininities. The
research of postmodern feminists is consequently an
attempt to sensitise the perspective to this diversity of
experience.
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Which type of feminism is being evaluated in
each of the statements on the handout?
Liberal
What is the main
cause of
oppression?
How is
oppression
maintained?
How will
oppression be
ended?
Major strengths
Major
weaknesses
Significant
authors
Radical
Marxist
Dual systems
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REVISE for your timed essay on feminism
next week
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