GENDER STUDIES

LECTURE 3
PART III. Feminist Theories
and Practice
• What is Feminism
• Liberal Feminism
• Radical Feminism
• Marxist/Socialist Feminism
• Psychoanalytical Feminism
• Men’s Feminism
• Postmodern Feminism
What is Feminism
• “Female is a deformed male” – Aristotle
• Women are created from the souls of the most wicked and irrational
men – Plato
• All types of feminism agree on a single basic tenet i.e. women are
oppressed!
• The theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes
or an organized activity on behalf of women rights – Merriam
Webster
Liberal Feminism
Liberal Feminism
• Liberal Feminism draws on the diversity of liberal thought dominant in
Western Society during the Enlightenment and affirms that women’s
subordinate social position can be addressed by existing political
processes under democracy
• “Who made men the exclusive judge, if women partake with him the gift
of reason?” – Mary Wollstonecraft
• Wollstonecraft was a liberal feminist and this type of feminism was the
most prominent in the first wave, thus liberal feminism can be termed as
the starting point for all types of feminism whereby the forms that came
later built on the base built by it
• She asserts that a key battle for the liberal feminists is access to education
due to the belief that equal education leads to equal access to society
Liberal Feminism
• Liberal feminists believe that women have the same mental capacity as their male counterparts and
should be given the same opportunities in the legal, political, economic and social spheres.
• Their motto is equality in the public sphere of life
• They seek reforms in education, politics, employment and reproductive rights through which
equality can be established and maintained
• Equality to liberal feminists refers to equal access to the public realm
• Liberal feminism takes a gender neutral approach deeming men and women as equal and
reforming oppressive and exclusionary systems, thus it wants to bring women in the political realm
• The key problem of gender inequality is domination of institutions by men, where they control
politics, economy, judiciary, medicine etc
• Key contributors were Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Betty Friedan etc
• John Stuart Mill stressed that “until conditions of equality exist, no one can possibly assess natural
differences b/w men and women. What is natural to the two sexes can only be found out by
allowing both to develop and use their bodies freely”
• Mill also compared sexual inequality to slavery in his book ‘Subjection of Women’
Liberal Feminism
• Entire focus is on reforming existing systems to include women in traditionally
male dominated areas since women have the same inalienable rights as men and
are equally rational signifying that they should also have the same rights as of men
• The liberal feminists have generally focused on reforming existing systems and
institutions
• Betty Friedan’s book “The Feminine Mystique” crystallized the idea of liberal
feminism by identifying ‘the problem that has no name’ referring to the white
middle class women going through the happy home maker syndrome
• The feminine mystique name of the book came from the idea sold to the women
of the time that marriage and motherhood are the sole sources of fulfillment for
women
Liberal Feminism
• Achievements:
• Equal Pay Act 1963
• Civil Rights Act 1964 with a provision outlawing sexual discrimination at work
• National Organization of Women founded in 1966
• Abortion Rights, Violence against women, Constitutional equality, economic justice
• Educational Amendment of 1972 barring any discrimination in any
educational programme based on sex
• Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 affirming men and women have equal rights
legally
• Legalization of abortion in 1973
Liberal Feminism
• Critique:
• Many started assuming that liberal feminism deemed men and masculine
values as the ideal and aspired for women to achieve the same masculine
values
• The main focus of liberal feminism was on white, middle class, heterosexual
women
• Despite weaknesses in the ideology, all women owe it to liberal feminism their
civil, educational, occupational and reproductive rights that they enjoy today
Radical Feminism
Patriarchy
• Patriarchy is a social system where men hold power and exert
authority over women
• All women are oppressed irrespective of historical, national, cultural,
class, racial or ethnic differences
• The oppression stems out of how the system creates men and women
differently by assigning them different gender roles from the time of
birth
Radical Feminism
• Women’s Liberation Movement
• Emerged during the second wave as a demand from the new left and
civil rights political groups
• Radical Feminism insists that sex/gender system is the fundamental
cause of women’s oppression claiming that the personal is political
and announcing universal sisterhood
• Essentially it calls for radical reordering of the society where male
supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic context
Radical Feminism
• Challenging patriarchy in social norms and institutions through political
process by
• Challenging traditional roles
• Opposing sexual objectification
• Raising awareness about violence against women
• Root cause of oppression is patriarchal gender relations ensuring dominance
of one gender over another rather than legal system or class conflicts
• Radical feminism is radical because it is woman centered, envisioning a new
social order where women are not subordinated to men
• They oppose the reform oriented approach of liberal feminists arguing that
all institutions (educational, political, social) are products of patriarchy –
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”
Radical Feminism
• Another objective of radical feminism has been to break traditional
gender roles
• Prostitution – Not a conscious and calculated choice of women due to reasons
like coercion, human trafficking, drug addiction, past trauma
• Radicals see it as a form of male domination, reinforcing patriarchy as a form
of slavery
• Pornography – Involves physical, psychological, economic coercion of women
• Radical lesbian feminism – Act of resistance against political institution of
heterosexuality
Radical Feminists and their types
Key difference is the perspective on the reproductive/maternal role of women
• Radical Libertarian Feminism (RLF) • Radical Cultural Feminism (RCF)
• Reproduction is a hindrance for women, thus • Reproduction is the only trump card that women
advocating for artificial means of reproduction to have to gain power
save time • They reject androgyny and deem it better to be
feminine than masculine
• Strong supporters of abortion, contraceptives
• In essence they want women to take ownership of
• Long for androgyny – mix of male/female their qualities and characteristics that are usually
characteristics stereotyped to belong to the weak gender
• Shulamith Firestone’s “Dialectic of Sex” demanded (emotions)
a biological revolution like Marx’s economic • Oppression not through reproductive capability but
revolution for proletariat by seizing the means of due to men’s jealousy of women’s reproductive
reproduction to eliminate the sexual class system abilities because mother hood is power within the
home
• She said this would end the ’tyranny of
reproduction’ and women would be emancipated
• Women are not born with inherent desire to
reproduce but are taught so socially
• The less women are involved in reproduction, the
more time they will have for productive processes
Difference b/w Liberal and Radical
Feminism
• Liberals want equality for both men
and women
• Want to reform existing systems
• Women to become a part of
institutions like men
• Only focus is the public arena,
accept it as it is and want to bring
women to the same stature as men
as their ultimate goal
• They want to improve laws in favor
of women
• Radicals focus only on women’s position
in society
• Want to finish the patriarchal system
• Apprehensive about the effects of such
inclusion as they believe it would not
change much
• Want to change both the public and the
private sphere
• Bringing women to the same level as
men in public is just the first step.
• Radicals want to change attitudes as well
as laws
Marxist Feminism
Marxism
Marxism
• Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1868) by Marx and
Engels
• Economic substructure determines the nature of all other institutions
and social relationships in society
• Emergence of capitalism produces economic inequality where
proletariat is exploited by the bourgeoisie
• Viewed history of all existing societies as one of class struggle
• For Marx, Capitalism breeds its own destruction by giving birth to a
proletarian revolution and finally a new world order of socialism
Marxist Feminism
• Background:
• ‘The Communist Manifesto’ by Karl Marx laid grounds for discourse on
capitalism and oppression
• ‘The origin of family, private property and state’ by Friedrich Engels 1818
argued shift in society from feudalism to private property led to effects on
women
• Women subordination occurs due to social relations not biological dispositions. Men
require women’s labor and sexual faculties in order to exercise power and control over
them
Marxist Feminism
• Argues capitalism is the root cause of women’s oppression and
discrimination of women in domestic life and employment is because of
capitalist ideologies
• Sexist oppression is a form of class oppression
• They also argue that patriarchy is a by product of the class system inculcated
by capitalism, industrialization and possession of private property
• “Sexism has its roots in the private property system”
• Women’s role in private sphere helps capitalism by:
• Providing unpaid domestic or reproductive labour as well as care services for the
working class of capitalistic society
• Reproducing and socializing the next generation of workers/proletariat
• Consumption of goods and services produced by the capitalist producers
Marxist Feminism
• Margaret Benston’s The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation 1969
differentiates b/w work inside (Production for use) and work outside the house
(Production for exchange)
• Housewives labor in relative isolation so they cannot politically organize
• They are expected to be master of all non specialized domestic labor but expert at none
• No economic independence for women
• Unequal playing field for women employed outside of home having double responsibility
of housework plus employment
• She describes “unpaid domestic labour as primarily serving the capitalist class” instead of
saying serving all men. She asserts women are used as a reserve class of workforce in
times of war, labour shortages or to keep wages low
• Women are infact working indirectly either for their husband’s employers or for the
capitalists in general by raising the next generations of workers
Marxist Feminism
• Major critique facing Marxist Feminists is that Marx was pretty comfortable
with the idea of women being limited to the domestic sphere and providing
care
• He saw the paid labor of women and children as a threat to the working class
of men as that way capitalists could drive the wages even lower than they
were before
• However Marxist feminists think that men and women were economic equals
in the hunter-gatherer stage of history but women subordination started only
after the emergence of private property for agriculture and then for industries.
It was made worse later by inheritance laws in favor of men only increasing the
gap and also affecting women’s education, income level and occupational skills
Socialist Feminism
Socialist Feminism
• Term first used in 1970s pamphlet called “Socialist Feminism: A
Strategy for the Women’s Movement”
• Primary assertion is that patriarchy and capitalism combine to create
an overarching system of oppression, contrary to Radical and Marxist
feminism. Men in public realm and women limited to the private
sphere has aided the capitalist ideologies
• Women are treated as a reserve workforce for capitalists and at the
same time they are also involved in house chores relieving men from
all sorts of domestic or child raising burdens only to concentrate on
their jobs
Socialist Feminism
• Heidi Hartmann’s theory of Capitalist-Patriarchy:
• She wrote “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a
more Progressive Union”
• She describes Marxist Feminism as an unhappy marriage because in a bid to
denote Marxism as the key to women oppression, Marxist Feminists (MF)
forgot about effects of gender
• Assertion is that capitalists aren’t the only beneficiaries of women
subordination; in fact all men are
• Her theory stresses on studying both the spheres of production as well as
reproduction
• Hartmann believes the gender blindness of MF also lead to the ignorance of
‘social reproduction of labor’ (intergenerational reproduction of labor power
and daily reproduction of labor)
Socialist Feminism
• Socialist feminists are also concerned with reproductive issues as well as with issues
of gender violence and for this purpose aim to transform social and economic
institutions i.e. family and capitalism
• They also realize that multitude of social relations like traditional family
arrangements like women being primary caretakers and economically dependent on
men leads to the occurrence of these issues
• They believe this is possible by putting an end to sexual division of labor in the public
and private realm. Public realm also includes the division of jobs based on gender,
saving pink collar jobs for women and also ending the victimization of women
through the ‘glass ceiling’ that does not allow them to grow in higher paying jobs
• “Unlike radical feminism, socialist feminists refuse to treat economic oppression as
secondary; unlike Marxist feminists they refuse to treat sexist oppression as
secondary” – Maggie Hume
Difference between Socialist and Marxist
Feminism
• Marxists ignore the realm of sex and look at relations b/w men and women
as the same as b/w an employer and employee, however for Socialists,
exploited workers do not suffer in the same way as oppressed wives do
• Socialists believe that even if capitalism is ended from society, women
oppression would still persist because of the presence of patriarchy
• Socialist feminism is a confluence of Marxist and Radical feminism; a dual
systems theory arguing that sexism and capitalism are mutually supportive
• According to Alison Jaggar, socialist feminists aim to abolish social relations
that constitute humans not only as workers and capitalists but also as men
and women
Psychoanalytical Feminism
Psychoanalytical Feminism
• Psychoanalytic feminism is a theory of oppression which asserts that men have an
inherent psychological need to subjugate women
• It seeks to gain insight into how our psychic lives develop in order to better understand
and change women’s oppression by the existence of patriarchy
• Social change or cure can be developed by discovering the source of domination in
men’s psyche and subordination in women’s which is based in an individual’s
unconscious
• Psychoanalytic feminism asserts that through use of psychoanalytic techniques aimed
at understanding gender construction, it is possible to alter socialization patterns at
early stages of childhood
• Thus basic focus is on childhood development
• This type of feminism is based on Sigmund Freud and Lacan’s theories of
psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytical Feminism
• Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, claimed that ‘anatomy is destiny’ i.e. biology determines which
gender a child identifies with and thus how will they child’s psyche develop
• Psychoanalysis, a theory of personality, stresses influence of unconscious mental processes, importance
of sexual instincts and enduring effects of early childhood experiences on personality
• To Freud, the unconscious part of personality has a much greater impact on our behaviors than the
conscious parts
• Oedipus and Electra Complex in the Phallic stage are the main tenets of Freud’s theory leading to
personality development in males and females
• Freud gives a foundational framework of gender construction on societal, familial and individual levels
• Micro level
• Childhood learning and formation
• Relationships with parents
• Early sexuality traits
• Establishment of masculinity and femininity
• Macro level
• Examination of masculinity and femininity
• Emergence of adult sexuality
• Continual reinforcement of patriarchy
Psychoanalytical Feminism
• Women’s role as mother is a central tenet in Psychoanalytic Feminism.
Mothering is seen as continual production and reproduction of the status
quo and therefore a place where social change can occur
• Gender roles depend on household practices of parents and how children
are socialized on conscious and subconscious levels, therefore
Psychoanalytic feminists believe that if men take a more active role in child
rearing, a transformation would occur in our understandings of
masculinity and femininity
• Nancy Chodorow in ‘The Reproduction of Mothering’ believes mothers’
domination in child rearing leads to problems in emotional makeup of a
child and argues for fathers to contribute more in childcare
Psychoanalytical Feminism
• Critique against the theory
• Simone De Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millet have asserted that Freud’s
psychoanalysis legitimates women’s social subordination as Freud believes
that woman is just a morally, intellectually and physically castrated version of
men
• Ernest Jones termed Freud’s theory as ‘phallocentric’ – signifying male
domination
• Juliet Mitchell however asserts that Freud was not arguing for a patriarchal
society, instead he was explaining why society is the way it is
• Solutions primarily concentrate on parenting
• Theories interpret feminine experience largely in relation to masculinity
Postmodern Feminism
Postmodern Feminism
• Influenced by Postmodernism as a theory, with the main idea that there is no
single, objective reality. It rejects the claim that one theory can explain the
position of women in society
• It encourages the acceptance of many different view points as equally valid
• Recognition of Difference: First theory to recognize the differences among
women, challenging the idea that there is a unitary basis of identity and
experience shared by all women. Thus there cannot be one solution to the
problems of women who differ on the basis of race, class, nationality, sexual
orientation
• It does not negate the idea that women of the same race, class or nationality
may have similar experiences and may warrant similar steps as solutions to
their problems
Postmodern Feminism
• Deconstruction: Sought to deconstruct male language and masculine view of
world based on language due to the belief that gender is constructed through
language
• Helene Cixous, Jacques Derrida observe the presence of male thought in
language whereby everything is divided in binary distinctions. Here men has cast
men as normal and women as the deviation from normal. Thus female is always
‘The Other’.
• E.g. men being active, strong, positive, assertive and women being passive,
weak, negative and manipulative
• Postmodernists oppose any essentialism i.e. the connection of biological
differences b/w sexes as explanation of wider manifestations of sexual difference
Postmodern Feminism
• Queer theory also emerged as an extension of the postmodernist thought process,
taking in to account all marginalized sexual identities and acknowledging them as
legitimate alternatives to traditional sexual identities
• Its essentially rejecting sexuality as stable rather fluid and heterosexuality as the
norm
• Postmodern feminism does not really answer any of the questions feminism is
trying to address, rather it is a new perspective of addressing these questions
• They do not suggest any solutions because they believe that there is no one single,
universal solution to the issues and experiences of women who are different from
each other in several aspects and solutions have to be context specific
• This is also a critique of Postmodernists that they themselves do not give any
solutions and dismiss the solutions given by all other feminist theories as well
Men’s Feminism
Men’s Feminism
• Men have been largely omitted from feminism. The negative effect
gender role stereotypes have on men is typically subsidiary to the main
focus of feminist legal literature, which has concentrated on
documenting the patterns of subordination of women and on questions
of feminist ideology
• Feminist legal theory needs to turn its attention to issues of relational
justice: avoiding gender role stereotyping in both directions.
• Over the course of the development of feminism, men have been treated
as objects of analysis, as oppressors, or have simply been omitted
• Mostly this was understandable as feminist theory had to carve out its
own space.
Men’s Feminism
• Gender role stereotypes operate to the detriment of men.
Maleness/Masculinity has been constructed in a number of ways
• Laws preventing male plaintiffs from suing for same-sex sexual
harassment, and the lack of interest in male rape and spousal battery of
men contribute to a climate in which men are taught to suffer in silence
• In the areas of parental leave and child custody, men are socially and
legally excluded from caring and nurturing roles.
• Men and women can reconstruct a social world in which traditional
gender roles diminish in importance. The point here is that for feminist
objectives to succeed, they must become more all-encompassing