Liberal Feminism

Liberal feminism is a form of feminist theory that has been instrumental in fueling women's
rights movements and significant legal, educational, and policy initiatives that have increased
women’s rights in diverse contexts grounded in political traditions of Liberalism. It emerged as a
distinct political tradition during the Enlightenment (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). It
was the time when two strong values developed viz. rationality and individuality. The
philosophy of individualism and rationalism enabled them to project women as independent
and autonomous individual having her own identity and interests.

Early feminism, particularly the 'first wave' of the women's movement was deeply influenced by
the ideas and values of liberalism. Liberal feminists believed that given equal education, women
will be equally rational as men. This premise is explained by traditional and modern liberal
feminists.

Marry Wollstonecraft is one of the famous liberal feminists who criticized Rousseau’s view that
women are defective in reasoning and that women are not entitled to get education. Mary
advocated for equal voting right and equal educational and legal opportunities for women.
Wollstonecraft is widely regarded as the "grandmother" of first wave feminists in the United
Kingdom

Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women ([1792) 1967), argued that women
should be entitled to the same rights and privileges as men on the ground that they are 'human
beings'. She claimed that the 'distinction of sex' would become unimportant in political and
social life if women gained access to education and were regarded as rational creatures in their
own right. Wollstonecraft believes that proper education, proper training in critical thinking, is
the most important single item on the feminist agenda.

John Stuart Mill's On the Subjection of Women ((1869], written in collaboration with Harriet
Taylor, proposed that society should be organized according to the principle of 'reason' and
that 'accidents of birth' such as sex should be irrelevant. Women would therefore be entitled to
the rights and liberties enjoyed by men and, in particular, the right to vote. It was believed that
if women could vote, all other forms of sexual discrimination or prejudice would quickly
disappear.

The arguments of Wollstonecraft, Taylor and Mill shaped and oriented the women’s movement
in the 19th and early 20th centuries-the suffragette movement, the struggle for women’s
education, the efforts to change the legal system in order to achieve a greater equality between
men and women.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were leading figures of nineteenth century
women's movement in America. Stanton was architecture of Declaration of Sentiments in
Seneca Falls convention (1848), which marked the birth of the US women's rights movement.
Anthony was an ardent suffragist who dedicated to the cause of women's emancipation and
right to enfranchisement in America. The culmination was US Constitution granting right to vote
to American Women in 1920. The franchise was extended to women in the UK in 1918

The leading figure in the 20th century liberal feminism is Betty Friedan, an American activist
and writer. Her book The Feminine Mystique (1974), is credited with sparking of the ‘second
wave’ of Feminism. Friedan set out to explore what she called 'the problem with no name: the
frustration and unhappiness many women e xperienced as a result of being confined to the
roles of housewife and mother. That feminine behavior serves to discourage women from
entering employment, politics and public life in general.

Another important liberal feminist thinker is Susan Moller Okin who in his 1989 book Justice,
Gender and Family (1989 ) criticizes of modern theories of justice ( Rawls, Nozick, Walzer ) that
these theorists write from a male perspective that wrongly assumes that the institution of the
family is just. She believes that the family perpetuates gender inequalities throughout all of
society, particularly because children acquire their values and ideas in the family. Therefore,
Okin asserts that in real sense to establish justice in society first to start with family and address
the gender inequalities.

Thus, the 18th century liberal feminists argued that women as well as men had natural rights.
The 19th century feminists extended the arguments in favour of equal rights for women under
the law to own property and to vote. The contemporary liberal feminists adopt the theory of
welfare state and demand that the State should actively pursue social reforms and ensure equal
opportunities for women. They oppose laws that establish different rights for women and for
men. In the twentieth century they fought against laws which gave men more rights in contrast
to women.

Tenets of Liberal Feminism

The basic tenets of liberal feminism are:

1. Individualism: Liberal feminism focuses on personal freedom and autonomy. More radical
feminist activists criticize this individualist sensibility and emphasize the need for broad, class-
based solidarity and collective organizing for effective social change.

2. Legal and political reform: Liberal feminists tend to focus on using existing power systems,
such as the courts and government, to secure rights and make progress in women’s lives.
Historically, women have fought for equal access in public institutions and the workplace, and
representation in top industries is a mark of progress.

3. Pragmatism: Many liberal feminists are pragmatic in their approach to reform. They look for
political battles that seem winnable and gains they can make within the current political and
economic social structures.

Main Features:

1. They place great emphasis on the rights of individuals to compete in the public sphere
and also on what they see as corresponding responsibilities of individuals to take part in
public life.
2. They emphasize that women’s unequal position is a result of artificial barriers to
women’s full participation in the public sphere and hence inability to fulfil their potential
as human beings (as men’s equal).
3. One of the key political goals associated with liberal feminism in equality of opportunity.
4. Public citizenship and attainment of equality with men in the public sphere is central to
this approach.
5. Recognising that mere formal equality is not enough they advocate the passing of laws
to outlaw discrimination against women and give them equal rights.
6. Liberal or reformist feminists have been concerned to demonstrate that the observable
difference between sexes is not biological but a result of socialization or sex role
conditioning.
7. Women’s subordination is not due to structure and institution of the society but the
culture and attitude that is responsible for inequality.
8. The creation of equal opportunities particularly in education and work is the main aim of
liberal feminist.
9. They do not want revolutionary changes but want reforms in society in the existing
social structure.

Critique:

1. They accept male culture as superior to female culture. This is seen when they say that
women can become like men and should aspire to obtain masculine traits.
2. They did not question gender based division of labour in the family and advocated
fulfillment of human potential for women through domestic roles.
3. Black feminists have criticized Betty Freidan saying that her views refer to the upper
class and highly educated women, who are bored in the home and want to go out.
 4. They don’t question capitalism and did not see the link between women’s oppression,
traditional gender based division of labour and capitalism. They are reformists as they
believe that demanding women’s rights will improve their position in society without
making any attempt at radically restructuring it.
5. They stress on individual freedom. This prevents women from coming together as a
group. This trend does not attack the capitalist system but believes that women can
achieve liberty, equality, fraternity, freedom etc, through legal reforms. Thus they are
reformist.
6. They don’t deal with the root cause of gender inequalities and the inter-relations
between its different forms.

Conclusion: However, in spite of its limitations, liberal feminism has contributed much to the
women's movement. It was the liberal feminists who agitated for and won educational and
legal reforms that have changed life so drastically for women, who enabled women to attain a
professional and occupational stature within the workplace.
 Contribution of Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) A British social theorist, Wollstonecraft was a pioneer feminist
thinker, drawn into radical politics by the French Revolution. Her A Vindication of the Rights of
Women ( 1792) stressed the equal rights of women, especially in education, on the basis of the
notion of 'personhood'. Wollstonecraft's work drew on an Enlightenment liberal belief in
reason, but developed a more complex analysis of women as the objects and subjects of desire;
it also presented the domestic sphere as a model of community and social order.

Mary Wollstonecraft ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Moral

and Political Subjects, is one of the famous liberal feminists. Let us discuss the main
features of her theory.

1. Women remain enslaved of men because of a wrong socialization, which

teaches women that their purpose in life is to serve men.

2. Wollstonecraft believes that proper education, proper training in critical thinking,

is the most important single item on the feminist agenda.

3. Women must think clearly and rationally about their own situation which will
make them less trustful and less likely to forget their own self-interest.

4. According to Wollstonecraft men and women have the same moral and
intellectual core; they should receive the same mental and spiritual training.

5. Women should get access to the great enterprises of public life and not be
confined to the domestic sphere. They should be allowed into various
professions such fields as medicine, scholarship and business.

Wollstonecraft's views initially met resistance and extreme criticism, she is now held in
high regard for seeking to empower a previously oppressed sex.

Her work is important to literary criticism because she found in literature, the same
sexual inequality and incoherence she was arguing against in society at large.
 Radical feminism

Context of emergence

Radical feminism developed mainly during the "second wave" of feminism from the 1960s
onwards in Western countries, mainly in France, England, Canada and especially the United
States, under the influence of various left-wing social movements such as the civil rights
movement, the student movement or the hippy movement. However, women are still
considered as second-class activists within these movements and they continue to refuse the
idea of an autonomous feminist fight.

Meaning of Radical Feminism

Radical Feminism meaning is a feminist philosophy that seeks to dismantle traditional

patriarchal power and gender roles. The term ‘radical’ refers to ‘roots’ and therefore implies
going to the roots. The root of all forms of oppressions is in the oppression of women . It
addresses the root cause of the problem: patriarchy, the system, and not its manifestations
(such as certain specific laws). Radical feminists go to the root of women's oppression, which is
a structural problem and therefore requires a global change of the system. Radical feminists
believe that women have always been exploited and that only revolutionary change can offer
the possibility of their liberation.

Radical feminists see society as patriarchal - it is dominated and ruled by men. Men are ruling
class and women the subject class. The family is seen as the key institution oppressing women
in modern societies. Women are seen to be exploited because they undertake unpaid labor for
men by carrying children and housework, and because they denied access to position of power.
Radical feminists argue that women are not just equal but are actually morally superior to men.
They wish to see patriarchy replaced by matriarchy.

Difference with Liberal and Marxist Feminism:

Radical feminism is also constructed in opposition to liberal and Marxist feminisms, the former
demanding only equal rights, while the latter confines itself to an economic analysis of women's
oppression and believes that the abolition of capitalism will be enough to liberate them. Radical
feminism, on the other hand, seeks to address the root causes of patriarchal oppression, not
just legislative or economic changes. Unlike liberal feminism, which focused on the individual,
radical feminism sees women as a collective group that has been and still is oppressed by men .
Radical feminists insist that women's oppression is of a systemic nature: patriarchy is a system
of oppression, found in all societies and at all times.

Notable advocates:

A French novelist, Simone de Beauvoir's work reopened the issue of gender politics and
foreshadowed the ideas of later radical feminists. The Second Sex, de Beauvoir had famously
stated, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." In The Second Sex (1949), she
developed a complex critique of patriarchal culture, in which the masculine is represented as
the positive or the norm, while the feminine is portrayed as the 'other' - fundamentally limiting
women's freedom and denying them their full humanity. Thus, Woman is the other, man is the
essential being.

Figes's Patriarchal Attitudes (1970) drew attention not to the more familiar legal or social
disadvantages suffered by women, but to the fact that patriarchal values and beliefs pervade
the culture, philosophy, morality and religion of society. In all works of life women are
portrayed as inferior and subordinate to men.

In The Female Eunuch (1970), Greer suggested that women are conditioned to a passive sexual
role, which has repressed their true sexuality as well as the more active and adventurous side
of their personalities. In effect, women have been 'castrated' and turned into sexless objects.

In Sexual Politics (1970), Millett described patriarchy as a 'social constant' running through all
political, social and economic structures and found in every historical and contemporary
society, as well as in all major religions. The different roles of men and women have their origin
in a process of 'conditioning': from a very early age boys and girls are encouraged to conform to
very specific gender identities. This process takes place largely within the family - 'patriarchy's
chief institution' - but it is also evident in literature, art, public life and the economy. Millett
proposed that patriarchy should be challenged through a process of 'consciousness-raising.

Shulamith Firestone in The Dialectic of Sex believes that the basis of women’s oppression lies in
her reproductive capacity in so far as this has been controlled by men. She stated that
patriarchy is not natural or inevitable but its roots are located in biology.

The ideas of radical feminism

1. The appropriation of women

The appropriation of women by men within the framework of a patriarchy is manifested in the
control over their bodies, including their sexuality and motherhood. Patriarchy is thus strongly
expressed within the family, although it is also manifested in every area of society.

Marriage is defined by radical feminists as a patriarchal institution, as it assimilates women as

men’s private property (their fathers and then their husbands). It reinforces their control over
women's bodies and in particular their reproductive rights. Marriage was thus conceived as a
contract by which, until recently, the woman swore obedience and submission to her husband
while the man made sure to fulfill her material needs. Even today, marriage can be seen as an
institution perpetuating inequalities, for example through unpaid domestic work, most of which
is still done by women. Radical feminists therefore demand greater freedom when it comes to
love but also sex.
Radical feminists also claim the right to not have children, in contrast to a society that still
pressures women achieve fulfillment solely through motherhood. Women who do not wish to
bear children are therefore denigrated, labelled as being selfish or discredited, while men who
do not wish to have children do not generally encounter a similar type of reaction. The reason
behind this lies in the persistent myth about maternal instinct.

Other institutions are involved in the control over women's bodies, such as the state, through
restrictive laws on abortion or contraception for example, but also traditionally the church,
which has long restricted women to their maternal role and rejected the idea of non-
reproductive sexuality or women's freedom to choose for their bodies. The medical field is also
under attack, whether it be because of doctors refusing to perform abortions or the
development of dangerous contraceptive methods by pharmaceutical companies.

Through these more or less explicit means of control by religious, medical and family
institutions as well as marriage and constrained motherhood, women are objectified and
dispossessed of their own bodies, their health and their sexuality.

One of the key slogans of the second-wave radical feminism was "My body belongs to me”,
which reflects women's desire to reclaim their bodies in a patriarchal society that dispossesses
them. To control one's body is to control one's life and thus to regain power

2. The objectification of women

From a radical feminist’s standpoint, sexual violence, but also the cultural industry, sexist
advertising, prostitution and pornography all contribute to the objectification of women. They
accuse pornography, for example, of objectifying and humiliating women by representing
sexualities that are considered degrading, patriarchal and that reproduce male-female power
relations. With regard to prostitution, they consider, among other things that it trivializes rape
in return for payment and that prostitutes are sexually exploited.

These criticisms of prostitution and pornography as forms of exploitation give rise to debate
within feminist movements and are for instance rejected by pro-sex feminists. The latter speak
of sex work and not prostitution, in order to emphasize that it is a job like any other and results
from their own choice.

The solutions put forward by radical feminism

The main objective of radical feminists is the abolition of patriarchy. Radical feminists place
particular emphasis on the theme of the body, and on the reappropriation of the body by
women, as well as on the freedom of choice. They demand sexual and reproductive freedom,
which includes free access to abortion and contraception. Women must be able to choose what
to do with their bodies, which include the freedom to have non-reproductive or non-
heterosexual sex. Isn't their criticism of prostitution and pornography paradoxical?
Radical feminists have argued that women have a legitimate right to be angry. This anger can
be expressed through various forms of activism and strategies: the creation of shelters for
abused women, health centers, demands for sex education to raise awareness of consent,
demonstrations against pornography, against beauty contests, for abortion, etc.

Radical feminists' ways of resisting can also be more extreme: refusing to have a child, refusing
to marry, or even refusing to have any relations with men (separatism). In the same spirit, they
also defend non-mixed activism between women or between lesbians. Many also reject
traditional gender roles and patriarchal beauty norms, such as wearing of make-up, bras,
dresses or skirts, which radical feminists believe reinforces the objectification of women.

Central issues engaged by radical feminists include:

1. Radical feminism looked at women as one homogeneous group and recognized them to
be oppressed by men; this gave the movement a universal vision
2. Reproductive rights for women, including the freedom to make choices to give birth,
have an abortion, use birth control, or get sterilized.
3. Evaluating and then breaking down traditional gender roles in private relationships as
well as in public policies
4. Understanding pornography as an industry and practice leading to harm to women,
although some radical feminists disagreed with this position
5. Understanding rape as an expression of patriarchal power, not a seeking of sex
6. Understanding prostitution under patriarchy as the oppression of women, sexually and
economically.
7. A critique of motherhood, marriage, the nuclear family, and sexuality, questioning how
much of our culture is based on patriarchal assumptions.
8. A critique of other institutions, including government and religion, as centered
historically in patriarchal power

Radicals present a social and political change required to overthrow the system of male
domination as far-reaching. They generally advocate a revolutionary model of social change and
want women to unite and become self-reliant and overthrow male dominance by a complete
sexual revolution.

Rosemarie Tong (1998) distinguishes between two groups of radical feminist:

Radical-libertarian feminists believe that it is both possible and desirable for gender
differences to be eradicated, or at least greatly reduced, and aim for a state of androgyny in
which men and women are not significantly different.

Radical-cultural feminists believe in the superiority of the feminine. According to Tong radical
cultural feminists celebrate characteristics associated with femininity such as emotion, and are
hostile to those characteristics associated with masculinity such as hierarchy.
Weaknesses

Radical feminists have faulted in their exclusive focus on patriarchy. This focus seems to
simplify the realities of social organization and inequalities. A.Jagger criticized the radicals for
ignoring the causes that led to the origin of patriarchy and its structure.

Radical feminist’s methods for resolving tensions are impractical and inhumane Exclusion of
men cannot bring about a revolution, as any such revolution must take into account that
women and men co-exist within the patriarchal structure which needs to be transformed.

Radical feminism has also sometimes been criticized for its lack of intersectionality, seeing
women as a homogeneous group, collectively oppressed by men, without taking into account
the different experiences of oppression suffered by radicalized women, women with disabilities,
women in prison, migrant women etc.

Radical feminism often resorts to violence and proclaims hate speech. This hate speech can be
seen in the SCUM (Society for Cutting up Men) Manifesto.

Marxiat feminists critique radical feminists for ignoring the historical, economic and material basis of
patriarchy and therefore the later are trapped in a historical biological deterministic theory.

Finally, radical feminism has also given rise to a controversial and transphobic sub-movement: the Trans
Radical Exclusionary Feminists (TERFs) who exclude trans women from their struggles and from feminist,
particularly genderless, circles. TERFs claim that trans women are men infiltrated to undermine
feminism, and therefore trans women are not women. They link womanhood to having a vagina, to
biology, as opposed to simply feeling like a woman.

Conclusion
The important contribution of Radical feminism is the conviction that while the sexuality of women
might have been a source of danger in the past, it can become a locus of power for women in the future.
Radical feminism is very analytical, as it seeks to understand and dismantle the roots of
women's oppression. Thanks to the struggles and activism of radical feminists, sexual violence
such as rape and domestic violence are now considered crimes in most Western countries.
Society has now become aware that these are not isolated cases of violent men but rather a
societal and gender-related phenomenon.
.
Radical Feminism – Seeded in Patriarchy. Social domination of women by men. Skeptical of
political action and focus on cultural change. Hate patriarchy but not men. Dismantle patriarchy
rather than adjusting the system through legal changes. Radical feminists also resist reducing
oppression to an economic or class issue, as socialist or Marxist feminism. Reproductive rights,
breaking through gender roles, regarding pornography and prostitution as oppression, criticism
against motherhood, marriage, institutions, government.
Criticism – Opposition for transgender liberation movement, anti- pornography work, division
of the world into men and women, disregarding intersectionality, espouse gender assigned at
birth, silent on racism.

Liberal feminism Radical feminism

1. female emancipation 1. women's liberation
2. gender inequality 2. patriarchy
3. individualism 3. sisterhood
4. conventional politics 4. the personal is political
5. public/private divide 5. transform private realm
6. access to public realm 6. gender equality
7. equal rights/opportunities 7. sexual politics
8. reform/gradualism 8. revolutionary change
9. political activism 9. consciousness raising