Interactionism:

Interactionists believe that individuals create their social world through interacting
with others. During the process of interaction, individuals consciously relate to each
other through the use of symbols (particularly language). This ongoing process of
interaction means that individuals are constantly adjusting to each other as they keep
interpreting and reinterpreting each other’s actions.

Individuals play an important role in the way a society functions. This is so because
we are always rationalising our thoughts and actions and in the process we keep
coming up with new ideas and new ways of doing things, which are used to influence
behaviours in our environment. Society also constraints people's behaviours through a
system of rules and regulations that have been put in place. Hence, there is constant
interplay between individuals’ ideas and society’s institutions, with the latter having a
controlling influence on our lives.

Interactionists do not attempt to come up with a theory of how social order is achieved
in society.

Weaknesses of interactionism

They focus their research on small-scale situations but generally neglect to address
issue of the wider society

They ignore the important role that institutions play in shaping human behaviour,
while structural sociologists claim that economic, political, and other institutions
largely determine how we behave in society

They give us the impression that once we define a situation as real it is likely to
become real in its consequences. This has been criticised on the grounds that if a
person is living in poverty, regardless of how he perceives himself, it would not
change his deprived situation.

Feminism:

Reasons for growth of feminism

1. In the First World War, women manned the factories, ran the economies and
took care of their families while the men were away fighting. This gave women
a new sense of independence and confidence in their own abilities, something
 they were not willing to surrender when the war ended and the men came back
home.
2. The expansion of the education system in the immediate post-war years gave
women access to secondary and later tertiary education. This provided women
with the skills and qualifications to have careers and work outside the home.
3. By the 1960s, there were greater job opportunities available as countries
rebuilt their economies in the aftermath of the Second World War. The
introduction of technology into the workplace and new modes of
manufacturing opened up a large range of employment options for women.
This meant that women could now become economically independent and were
in a position to take charge of their lives without depending on men.
4. Women realised that, although they were contributing to the development of
their societies, they were denied many opportunities to access power in public
enterprises such as the government, the military and the workplace. Also, they
recognised that in many areas of social life they were faced with acts of
discrimination as males still believed that they should dominate the lives of
women.
5. The catalyst that served to mobilise women into action was the social and
political upheavals of the 1970s in the USA, which started as the anti-Vietnam
War protests but later expanded to raise issues such as women's rights, the
rights of young people and the civil rights movement. The feminist movement
emerged out of these developments and over the years has continued to fight
for the rights of women.
6. At an academic level, many sociologists identified with the feminist movement
and over the years have focused on women's issues in order to better
understand the relationship between women's experiences and the social
institutions they inhabit.

Some key features of feminism

A feminist sociologist is any sociologist who takes a pro-woman attitude to the study
of social issues. They generally employ a structural-analysis approach to the study of
women's issues in society. This involves observing social events, discovering their
patterns and formulating concepts and theories, so that over time things will change,
new observation techniques will be employed and revision of existing theories will
become necessary.

Feminist sociologists believe that the study of women requires them to use more than
a sociological perspective, hence an interdisciplinary approach has become important
in understanding situation of women in society. In the context of feminism, this
approach allows researchers to gor a good idea of women's experiences and provides
them with a large body of information that the can use to formulate their theories
while providing an opportunity for the social transformation of women's lives on the
basis of women's experiences.

Types of feminism

1. Liberal feminists believe that it is not necessary to completely restructure

society, only to alter it enough that women can be incorporated into meaningful
and equitable roles. They call for changes in socialisation patterns and
revamping of the legal system to bring an end to discrimination against women
in society.
2. Next there are socialist, or Marxist, feminist sociologists, who blame capitalism
for women't inferior position in society. They argue that women are made to
believe that their place is in the home, where they provide unpaid labour by
caning out household tanka for their families, which allows capitalists to pay
low wages to their husbands. Women also function as a reserve labour force as
they are called upon to work only if needed. Marxist feminists believe that
women’s liberation is tied to the destruction of capitalism.
3. A third grouping of feminists is radical feminists. They argue that women's
inferior position in society has to do with sexism brought on by living in a
patriarchal society and that, hence, women's oppression stems from male
domination. To this end they believe in the need to establish women-centred
institutions where women rely on other women and not on men. An extreme
form of radical feminism calls for an end to heterosexual relationships and
accepts lesbianism as a viable alternative.
4. The fourth group is multicultural feminism, which links gender to class, race
and issues of colonisation and exploitation of women. This form of feminism
has become popular among women of colour and those who live in developing
countries as they believe that their experiences are different from those
discussed by white feminists, who are unfamiliar with issues like racism and
other problems associated with a past history of colonialism.

Criticisms of feminisms

● Liberal feminists have been accused of not explaining the emergence of gender
inequally or addressing the effects of race and class stratification in women's
lives.
● Marxist feminists blame women's oppression on capitalism but they fail to
explain the subordination of women in men capresson on camid even in
 socialist societtes; non-capitalist men also continue to place women in
subservient roles in society.
● Liberal, Marxist and radical feminists have all been accused of being
ethnocentric as they see things from their own historical and cultural point of
view and in the process treat the experiences of white women in the West as
universal for all women. Multicultural feminists argue that many women in
developing countries, having experienced slavery and colonialism, share
different experiences. Hence, issues of historical and cultural diversity need to
be addressed in order to truly find solutions to women's problems.