Feminism

• Factors related to inequality

  • Class
  • Gender
• Feminists have peers
• Feminists have heritage
• Feminists have family
• Feminists have members
• Feminists have views
• Feminists have equality
• Feminists have inequality
• Liberal feminism


  Concerned with campaigning against sex discrimination and for equal rights and opportunities for women (e.g. equal pay and an end to discrimination in employment)
• Liberal feminists

  • Argue that women's oppression is being gradually overcome through changing people's attitudes and through changes in the law such as the Sex Discrimination Act (1975), which outlaws discrimination in employment
  • Believe we are moving towards greater equality, but that full equality will depend on further reforms and changes in the attitudes and socialisation patterns of both sexes
• Liberal feminists' view on the family

  Similar to 'march of progress' theorists - although they do not believe full gender equality has yet been achieved in the family, they argue that there has been gradual progress
• Examples of progress in the family

  • Men doing more domestic labour
  • Parents socialising sons and daughters more equally and having similar aspirations for them
• Other feminists criticise liberal feminists for failing to challenge the underlying causes of women's oppression and for believing that changes in the law or in people's attitudes will be enough to bring equality
• Marxist and radical feminists have different views from liberal feminists
• Marxist feminists - women's oppression serves capitalism

  • women absorb anger - Ansley - women are takers of shit from men
  • women reproduce the labour force through childbirth
  • women are a reserve army of cheap labour
• Radical feminism


  Argues that all societies have been founded on patriarchy - rule by men
• Radical feminists


  • The key division in society is between men and women
  • Men are the enemy: they are the source of women's oppression and exploitation
• Family and marriage

  Key institutions in patriarchal society<|>Men benefit from women's unpaid domestic labour and from their sexual services, and they dominate women through domestic and sexual violence or the threat of it
• Overturning the patriarchal system

  1. Abolish the family, which is seen as the root of women's oppression

  2. Achieve this through separatism - women must organise themselves to live independently of men
• Political lesbianism


  The idea that heterosexual relationships are inevitably oppressive because they involve 'sleeping with the enemy'
• Matrilocal households

  An alternative to the heterosexual family
• For liberal feminists

  Radical feminists fail to recognise that women's position has improved considerably
• Heterosexual attraction makes it unlikely that separatism would work
• Family friendly policies


  Such as more flexible working, to promote greater equality between partners
• Difference feminism

  Argues that we cannot generalise about women's experiences, as lesbian and heterosexual women, White and Black women, middle-class and working-class women have very different experiences of the family
• White feminists' negative view of the family neglects Black women's experience of the family as a source of support and resistance against racism
• Other feminists argue that difference feminism neglects the fact that all women share many of the same experiences, such as risk of domestic violence and sexual assault, low pay