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Volume 28, Number 4, April 2019

Political ideas

Feminism: the role of patriarchy in

economic inequality
How do different feminist approaches view the relationship between patriarchy and the
economic oppression of women?

Feminists tend to agree that women do not have equal economic status to men. This refers to issues
such as the gender pay gap, the low pay and status of certain jobs and male ownership of property.
Most feminists argue that women’s inequality in the economy is due to patriarchy, rather than
biological differences between men and women that might make men more effective economically.
However, there are also considerable areas of disagreement within feminism. Socialist feminists link
patriarchy to the capitalist economic system. In contrast, liberal feminists focus on patriarchy more
generally in the public world, and include economics in this. Radical feminists see patriarchy as a
much broader cultural force, rooted in the dynamics of the nuclear family structure.

Key issues
 How does the economic system oppress women?

 Does the economic system have a major role in oppressing women and should it therefore be
a key focus for the feminist movement?

 What are the connections between patriarchy and capitalism?

 Would alternative systems to capitalism help women to be more equal?

Liberal feminism
Liberal feminists believe in core liberal values such as individualism and self-help. Logically, liberal
feminists will therefore be supporters of free-market capitalism. If women are given equal rights and
opportunities to enter the public sphere on the same terms as men, they should be able to operate as
free agents and compete with men. This should be a matter of choice. If women choose to remain in
the private sphere as wives and mothers, this is no one’s business but their own. The role of the state
is to allow all individuals, on a gender-blind basis, to operate freely within the free market and to
succeed and fail on the basis of effort, talent and hard work.

Liberal feminists focus on improving the position of women in the public sphere and call for reforms to
support women in their struggle for equality of opportunity. They do see the economic system as
significant, and examine issues relating to pay and employment that result from the imposition of
patriarchy. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) argued that women must be able to enter the
workplace to find equality and also explored how women’s unpaid domestic labour (she compared
women to horses) allowed men to produce and keep wealth for themselves. She argued that as the
workplace had changed due to technological advances, the biological differences between men and

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women had become irrelevant and there was no reason why women couldn’t do the same jobs as
men.

Liberal feminists believe that if women receive equal pay to men and break through the glass ceiling,
then this equality will trickle into the private sphere as they will be financially independent and will
demand men play an equal role at home.

Socialist feminism
Socialist feminists have examined how capitalism and patriarchy are interlinked systems of
oppression. For socialist feminists, the economy is at the heart of patriarchy and the oppression of
women. Patriarchy was a vital addition to capitalism, assisting the creation of profit. By keeping
women in the home, patriarchy provided a ‘two for the price of one’ system where by employing a
male worker, the capitalist also gained the essential and unpaid supporting work of his wife. She
provided home comforts, raised children and was an emotional (and even physical) punch bag. This
ensured that the male working-class breadwinner worked hard and didn’t complain, as he could not
risk losing his job.

Socialist feminists have also examined how society considers work outside the home to be important,
whereas the unpaid labour carried out in the house, usually by women, is considered to have less
value, and to be something women do easily and ‘naturally’. They have argued that home-based work
is still work, involving mental and physical skill, and is of huge economic value. Sheila Rowbotham
(1943–) argues that women, alongside working-class men, need to organise to defeat capitalism. She
believes that the abolition of capitalism would go some way towards helping women become equal.
However, she is clear that patriarchy has equally strong cultural roots and that changes in the
economic system are not going to be enough. Even socialist feminists do not think that patriarchy is
purely economically based.

Radical feminism
Radical feminists see patriarchy as systematic, institutionalised and pervasive in all areas of life, but
rooted in the nuclear family structure and the private sphere. Although women are clearly unequal in
the public world of work, this is simply a by-product of patriarchy. Key thinker Kate Millett (1934–2017)
argued that men oppress women in all circumstances. Through their slogan ‘the personal is the
political’, radical feminists examined the role of social institutions such as marriage in oppressing
women. Therefore, for radical feminists, patriarchy is part of all cultural, social and political systems,
and not just economically based.

Radical feminists do not agree that improving women’s economic position will lead to equality. The
USSR, for example, under a command economy was still very much a patriarchal society. Instead,
there needs to be a social revolution in the private sphere with women perhaps choosing to live
without men altogether. For radical feminists, patriarchy is part of every aspect of society, not just
economics, and society therefore requires radical change, not simple reforms.

Black and intersectional feminism

Black feminists have criticised liberal feminism for focusing on white, middle-class Western women
who are able to use their privileged position in society and take full advantage of their new rights in the
economic world. They have argued that interlinked layers of oppression affect different women in

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different ways — class and ethnicity, for example, are just as oppressive as gender for many non-
white and working-class women. As a result, BAME women suffer from poverty due to racism, not just
due to gender.

Feminist economics
Feminist economists have examined the systematic undervaluing of so called ‘women’s work’ e.g.
childcare, house work and the caring professions, and how this has been ignored by male economists.
Marilyn Waring, in If Women Counted (1988), argued that the system of measuring GDP excluded
women and undervalued their contributions. Feminist economists have also examined how policies
introduced to ‘help’ developing world countries have benefited men much more than women and were
based on incorrect assumptions, such as the belief that women were home-based and did not work.

Conclusion
All feminists agree that there is an economic aspect to patriarchy and that women are discriminated
against in the economic world. However, for socialist feminists the economic system of capitalism is a
central cause of patriarchy. In contrast, for liberals, patriarchy is rooted in the cultural, social and
political structures of the public world, and for radicals patriarchy is rooted in the private sphere of
interpersonal relationships between men and women and is therefore difficult to remove.

Questions
Edexcel-style essay question: To what extent do feminists agree that patriarchy is rooted in the
economic system? You should use key thinkers you have studied to support your answer. (24
marks)

AQA-style essay question: ‘Patriarchy is the product of capitalism’. Analyse and evaluate this
statement with reference to the thinkers you have studied.

Jessica Hardy is a politics teacher and examiner and online editor of

POLITICS REVIEW

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