Understanding the

gendered world
Variations of feminism
Liberal Feminism
• Liberal feminism – is branch of feminism that argues that
gender equality can be achieved without challenging men as a
group or changing basic economic and political arrangements
such as capitalism.
• Equality is primarily a matter of gaining equal rights and equal
access to higher statuses.
• Liberal feminism has also been referred to as reformist feminism
• Looks at working towards conceptualising equality within the world
as it exists now.
• Engaged in the process of defining equality
• Enabling women to get the top- through the removal of visible barriers
( the focus should be on effort and ability)
• In this theory social structure remains the same (unlike RF & MF)
In Liberal Feminism :
• Liberation (equality) of women means freedom of choice
• Liberation (equality) means public conceptualisations of women as
reasonable and as rational as men
• Agree with capitalism by asserting that at the root of the issue it is not
capitalism that causes the barriers resulting in gender inequality
• Believe that capitalism can be a useful tool for creating equality if used correctly.
• Liberal feminists do not see prevailing conceptualisations of men and
women as problematic.
 Liberal feminists engage in the following
strategies for equalising chances:
• Change discriminatory legislation (laws)
• Is against patriarchy
• Develop and provide programmes to develop women to enable them to interact in
the public sphere on the same level as men.
• Try to organise support for private women’s roles i.e. home makers, so that more
women are able to enter the job market.
• Try to free men and women - women from the isolation of the private sphere and
men from being the sole provider.
• Generates empirical studies (scientific research) on gender relations and tries to document the
lives of women.
• Researches against discrimination
• Asks that women are also included as research subjects in the generation of knowledge
• Looks at how women have been excluded from research, from powerful positions and
decisions etc.
• Has historically argued equal rights for women (e.g. suffragettes who fought for women’s
rights to vote).
• Has argued for the state and legal system to provide equality between the sexes (males and
females)
• Has historically argued for laws protecting women
• Has historically argued for laws not to favour men
• Believe there is a need to prove that women have the same potential as men
• Recognise that while men are judged on merit, women are judged on the
basis of how “womanly’ they are.
• Liberal feminists believe that gender roles are not innate (not born with
them), but are a result of socialisation (they are taught)
• The problems for the liberal feminists are the constraints within society-
barriers protecting the status quo, which enables discrimination on the
basis of sex/gender.
Discrimination may be:
• Formal –laws
• Informal – social norms
• Liberal feminists try to have these constraints removed
• Liberal feminists want to see rights extended to women in the workplace and
the family.
• Work for a woman’s right to choice
 Criticism:
• Liberal feminism does not analyse women’s subordination into
overarching structures.
• Looks at subordination in terms of many small injustices. A
more micro-approach or cosmetic approach. Does not see the
subjugation of women as entrenched at the root of the
existing social structure. (looks at the surface failing to delve
deeper into the issue of inequality between men and women).
• Looks at patriarchy but not really in-depth
Limitations of the liberal feminist perspective:
• The unwillingness to engage with the underlying root of patriarchy at a deeper level-
beneath inequality is what causes inequality- thus some regard liberal feminists as
trying to heal a wound without diagnosing the cause (finding the cause)
• Liberal feminists do not challenge the concepts/tools used in a male centric world
• They do not challenge the gendered lens used to view the world, success or value etc.
• They try to make women successful/ have a choice in a reality constructed by men for men
 Additional Reading
Introduction to Liberal feminism
• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-liberal/#LibFem
Materialist feminism
Often conflated with Marxist feminism
• Materialist feminism emerged in the late 1970’s – it is associated with key
thinkers such as Rosemary Hennesy, Stevi Jackson and Christine Delphy.
• Materialist feminism focuses on both patriarchy and capitalism
• Women are an oppressed and exploited group
• Women need to form their own class that is in conflict with men.
• Class through sexual inequality is fundamental so women’s
oppression cannot be regarded as secondary oppression.
• Women producing class – women’s labour power is expropriated by their
husbands.
• Women sell/give their labour to husbands
• Family is the site for women’s oppression
• Husbands and workers sell their labour – thus men and women share common
interest in that oppression ( experience exploitation in different sites).
Two modes of production :
• Industrial and domestic modes of production - The first mode allows
for capitalist exploitation while the second allows for familial and patriarchal
exploitation.
• The Mode of production in the domestic sphere is patriarchy while
the site of this oppression is the household.
• Giving birth and motherhood is not biological/ natural, but socially
constructed and form forced production.
• Women are socialised to give birth
• Patriarchal structures are fundamental to social organisation and are the main
axis of differentiation.
• Wives are of the class of their husbands and are all exploited by their
husbands
• Society has become over-gendered ( sharply divided) into two genders
 Criticism
• Inappropriate (?) use of class
• Too many differences between women to group them
• Complex concern with the mode of production in one theory (industrial and
domestic forms of production)
• Not all women are housewives
• Too economistic
Black feminism and Intersectionality
Ain’t i a woman?
 Black women and feminism
• bell hooks (pen name) and Kimberle Crenshaw are two of many individuals
who contributed to black feminism.
• Their main focus is on the interconnectivity of race, capitalism (class), gender, and
other systems of oppression (systems of stratification/social divisions)
• Black feminism highlights the marginalisation of black women in feminism
or feminist theories. As a result they overlook:
• The overall devaluation of black womanhood
• The sexual exploitation of black females
• Black feminists identify the lack of importance given to race and ethnicity
(race and racism)
• Ideas of “superiority” and “inferiority” transmitted through socialisation and
racialisation.
• Universal feminist theories do not account for racism (Western/Eurocentric)
• Thus imperialism (or ethnocentrism) is inherent in white middle class feminist theories
• Some white feminists have contributed to the oppression of women
 Intersectionality
• Intersectionality – a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw - refers to how different
social identities intersect with a person’s gender e.g. class, race, sexuality, disabilities, age,
religion….etc.
• Race, class and gender are not separate systems of oppression but mutually construct one
another to produce unique perspectives and experiences.
• Black women’s ‘triple oppression’ in apartheid South Africa, black women were oppressed in
terms of their gender, race and class.
• How sex, gender and sexuality intersect or overlap with other aspects of an individuals
social identities such as race, class, disabilities etc. will influence their social positioning
in society and have material consequences.
• Intersectionality is a theory focused on power relations, social inequalities
and injustices.
• Intersectionality has been criticised for fragmenting any coherent theory.
Collins (2015), however, argues that intersectionality captures the complexity
of the world and human experience (instead of universalising human
experience).