Literature Unit 4: independent and further

reading
Feminism
‘Feminism saw very clearly that the widespread negative stereotyping of women
in literature and film (we can now add rock videos) constituted a formidable
obstacle on the road to true equality.’ - Bertens

‘The private sphere is, just like the public realm, thoroughly political: it is a
political arena where the same power-based relations exist as in the public
world.’ - Bertens

‘Feminist critics showed how often literary representations of women repeated

familiar cultural stereotypes. Such stereotypes included the women – fast car or
not – as an immoral and dangerous seductress, the women as eternally
dissatisfied shrew, the women as cute but essentially helpless, the women as
unworldly, self-sacrificing angel, and so on.’ - Bertens
Liberal Feminism
• Liberal feminists do not advocated revolutionary changes, but the
empowerment of women within existing social structures: education,
employment, the family, gender representation.
• They promote day‐to‐day questions of legal, political, economic and social
equality for women.
• They draw media attention to issues of overt discrimination against women
in all areas of social life, such as work, education, the mass media.
• They advocate legal protection and social rights for women.
• Women have by right the same political, legal, economic and social rights and
responsibilities as men.
• They seek, through the promotion women’s rights, “Equality of opportunity”.
Marxist Feminism
• Explains gender inequalities from the viewpoint of Karl Marx's analysis of
capitalism.
• Women are put into a domestic role in order to allow men to work.
• When women do work, it is to sustain the ever expanding demands of our
consumerist society – this is not empowerment, but necessity.
• This is what Marxist Feminists refer to as the “Reserve army of labour”.
• The importance of economic need in determining people’s relationships is
stressed.
• In the traditional family unit, the woman becomes dependent upon her
partner for survival.
Radical Feminism
• Takes the view that female empowerment can only be achieved through
the explicit denial or reformation of our male-dominated society.
• We are living in a ‘patriarchy’, or what RW Connell calls the ‘gender
hierarchy’ – men are always politically and economically superior, and this is
the default position within our society.
• Male ideals and influences permeate all levels of our society (social,
economic, political), and therefore any challenge to this must first position
itself outside of this society.
Radical Feminism
For a truly radical perspective, Firestone (1970) presents us with a new
societal structure in which there is not such thing as ‘family’, since the
biological (reproductive) division between the sexes is the origin of all other
divisions ‐ economic, political and ideological:

“The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be
replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would be
born to both sexes equally, or independently of either. However one chooses
to look at it, the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa)
would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of
others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strength
would be compensated for culturally. The division of labour would be ended
by the elimination of labour altogether (through cybernetics). The tyranny of
the biological family would be broken.”

– Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (1970)