Feminism

• Liberal feminists


  Concerned with achieving gender equality and making sure everyone in society has the same rights. Believe this can be done through gradual reforms in society.
• Liberal feminists' approach


  • Laws & policies - women can achieve gender equality this way, such as securing equal opportunities through sex discrimination policies
  • Cultural change - traditional prejudices and stereotypes of gender differences are the barrier to equality, but once this is changed there will be equal opportunities
• Sex


  What you're biologically born as
• Gender


  Culturally constructed differences in society/what you identify as
• Gender differences vary cross-culturally, which means the roles women are expected to fulfil can vary (such as Saudi Arabia women not allowed to drive in the past)
• Liberal feminism


  An optimistic theory that believes we are coming closer and closer to gender equality through changes in socialisation & culture, and political action to introduce anti-discriminatory laws/policies
• Patriarchy


  Male domination that exists in all societies, with the origin being women's biological capacity to have and care for children, as this role makes them dependent on men
• Radical feminists' view


  Men are women's main enemy, and all men oppress all women through their benefit from patriarchy
• Radical feminists' approach


  • Separatism - women live separate from men to be independent and free from patriarchy
  • Consciousness raising - women come together in groups to share their experiences and cause collective action against oppression
  • Political lesbianism - heterosexual relationships are inevitably oppressive, making lesbianism the only non-oppressive relationship type
• The personal is political

  Radical feminists believe patriarchal oppression is direct and personal, as it happens in the public sphere of work/poses AND the private sphere of the family
• Sexuality


  Mainstream society sees this as a natural biological urge, but radical feminists argue that it's patriarchally constructed to satisfy men
• Marxist feminists' view


  Women's subordination is rooted in capitalism, and women will only be free when capitalism is overthrown
• Functions women's subordination serves for capitalism


  • Women are cheap/exploitable labour
  • Women are the reserve army of labour
  • Women reproduce the labour force
  • Women absorb anger
• Dual-systems feminism


  Combines features of radical feminism and Marxist feminism, seeing capitalism and patriarchy as one intertwined system
• Difference feminists


  Don't see women as one homogenous group, arguing that middle class and working class women, black and white women, lesbian and heterosexual women all have different experiences of patriarchy, capitalism, racism, homophobia, etc.
• Poststructuralism


  Concerned with discourses and power/knowledge, where discourses enable users to define others in a certain way, putting power over them
• Essentialism


  The idea that women are all essentially the same and share the same experiences of oppression
• The Enlightenment project


  Poststructuralists see this as a discourse because of its talk about humanity, reason and progress, which legitimised White, Western, middle class domination of feminism and claiming to represent universal womanhood
• Butler rejects essentialism because there's no fixed essence of womanhood, this identity changes cross-culturally, cross-temporally and through different discourses