Feminism

• Charlotte Perkins Gilman believed that marriage had to be modernized to meet new realities and that housekeeping, cooking and childcare should be done by the professionals, not biological parents.
• Gilman believed that the biological differences between men and women were irrelevant and that women and men shared a common humanity.
• Gilman argued "there is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex."
• Gilman believed that society had a male-centred culture for oppressing women and the culture needed to be removed as it was no longer necessary for evolution preservation.
• Simone de Beauvoir believed in existentialism and that "existence precedes essence" and "one is not born but becomes a woman."
• Beauvoir believed that men's domination of economic life restricted women.
• Beauvoir wrote in 'The Second Sex' that the roles that women play have been pre-determined by men and women's freedom to direct their own life is removed at birth.
• Gilman argued that the nature of economic activity had changed so men no longer needed to be the dominant sex whilst women did the housework. Women were naturally equal to men so should play an economic role.
• Gilman believed that the way women should be liberated from male domination in the economic sphere lay in equality of opportunity to work and that girls are made from an early age, through 'socialisation' to take on the role of motherhood - their confinement to homes is cultural not biological.
• Gilman wrote in 'Women and Economics' that the labour of women in the house enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could.
• Gilman campaigned for the abolition of the nuclear family and replaced by communal living where childcare is done by women and men.
• Beauvoir believed the solution to the plight of women was twofold and involved the state and the individual. The state must provide women with equality of opportunity equal to men and legislate to protect and liberate women. Women must also seek freedom from the nuclear family.
• Kate Millet wrote in 'Sexual Politics' that women needed to find sexual liberation and that heterosexual relationships are political as they are men exercising power over women.
• Millet wrote in 'Sexual Politics' that the tasks of low grade service and cheap factory labour are so unremunerative that it fails to threaten patriarchy financially or psychologically.
• Millet believed that the revolutionary and complete destruction of the nuclear family was the utopian goal of feminism.
• Millet believed the state was the root of patriarchy and maintained it as it reflects and reinforces male interests and fails to protect women from discrimination and gender-based violence.
• Radical feminists disagree with socialist and intersectional feminists that the domination of women is the oldest and worst kind of oppression.
• Millet viewed the family not as an apolitical social unit but a political system for penetrating male dominance into the private sphere, hence the personal is political. It was a patriarchal unit that represented a patriarchal society.
• Millet argued that the patriarchy's way of penetrating the private sphere was with the family unit, hence why it needed to be abolished to bring true freedom for women. It promoted the idea that women should be subordinate to men in all aspects of their lives and take care of the housework and they should be sexually available to their husbands.
• Rather than seeing patriarchy as the distinct form of oppression that primarily shaped society, Sheila Rowbotham saw capitalism as key and gender inequality linked to capitalism.
• Socialist feminists like Rowbotham believed there needed to be a revolution within the revolution as the patriarchy was so powerful it would survive the revolution against capitalism.
• Millett wrote "patriarchy, reformed or unreformed is patriarchy still."
• Millett wrote in Sexual Politics that "the family is the patriarchy's chief institution."
• Rowbotham wrote in Hidden From History that ignoring the role of housewives and the oppression of women in the private sphere downplays the political importance of women within society.
• Rowbotham described women as a "reserve army of labour."
• Gilman described society as "sick" because it forced women into the role of mothers and disallowed them to pursue a public sphere career.
• Beauvoir criticised the "double burden" of domestic responsibilities and low-paid work that many working-class women face.
• Beauvoir didn't believe that the family was inherently patriarchal but women should only enter into marriage if they choose it.
• Millett described the patriarchal society created by men as "alien" to women and that women are relegated to "subjects" living under the rule of men.
• bell hooks wrote in Ain't I a Woman? that there is no "universal experience" to being a woman and that different women will face different types of oppression in society.
• hooks believed that women needed to "unlearn self-hatred" and "no longer see ourselves and our bodies as properties of men."
• hooks believed human nature was that women had multiple identities and therefore experience multiple forms of oppression.
• Rowbotham argues that the institution of marriage and domestic work is necessary to maintain capitalist production.
• Rowbotham argues that cultural conditioning keeps women in a state of feudal ownership and oppresses them.
• Rowbotham discusses the revolution within the revolution in Women, Resistance and Revolution.