kate millet

• personal is political Kate Millett, identified the family as a key area of women’s oppression. They see the family as fulfilling several roles to keep women and girls ‘in their place’.

  • It socialises girls and boys to accept their different, hierarchic roles: daughters to show dependence, obedience, conformity and domesticity; boys to be dominant, competitive and self-reliant.

  • It socialises women into accepting the role of housewife as a woman’s only and most fulfilling role.
• • A patriarchal society was based on a strict hierarchy and male dominance, with sexual oppression passing from one generation to the next.
  • Men ruled women within the family, through property ownership and male inheritance and in government, by excluding women or determining the rules of power.
• • She proposed a sexual revolution to remove the patriarchal system e.g. rejecting romantic love and calling for an end to monogamous marriage and the traditional family.