FEMINISM

Q1. Examine various strands of feminism.

Q2. The feminist perspective is critical of mainstream political theory. Discuss.
Q3. “ Personal is political”. In the light of this , discuss feminist political theory.

(NOTE - THE part in purple is supposed to be written selectively)

THE parts in purple are criticism points of respective concepts of feminism)

INTRODUCTION
Women all over the world face inequality, subordination, and secondary status
compared to men. This subjugation very often results in the oppression, marginalization and
exploitation of women that are characteristic features of patriarchal societies. Feminists believe
patriarchy to be the prime cause of misery of women’s lives. Consequently, they have
challenged this unjust and exploitative system.

Feminism is a movement as well as an ideology that represents efforts to achieve the

objective of equality, dignity, rights, emancipation and empowerment of women by
adopting various creative ways and means. However, feminism cannot be seen as a neatly
packed coherent philosophy as it has many streams representing different approaches,
orientations and aims.

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

1. Although the term ‘feminism’ may be of recent origin, feminist views have been
expressed in many different cultures and can be traced back as far as the ancient
civilizations of Greece and China.
2. Nevertheless, it was not until the nineteenth century that an organized women’s
movement developed. The first text of modern feminism is usually taken to be Mary
Wollstonecraf’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written against the backdrop
of the French Revolution.
3. First-wave feminism (liberal feminism) - By the mid-nineteenth century, the
women’s movement had acquired a central focus: the campaign for female suffrage, the
right to vote. It was characterized by the demand that women should enjoy the same
legal and political rights as men.
 4. Feminism’s ‘first-wave’ ended with the achievement of female suffrage, introduced
first in New Zealand in 1893, US in 1920 and UK in 1918. Many activists naively
believed that in winning suffrage rights, women had achieved full emancipation.
5. Second-wave feminism, as emerged in the 1960s, acknowledged that the
achievement of political and legal rights had not solved the ‘women’s question’. Indeed,
feminist ideas and arguments became increasingly radical, and at times
revolutionary.
6. This pushed back the borders of what had previously been considered to be ‘political’ by
focusing attention on the personal, psychological and sexual aspects of female
oppression.
7. Feminism has succeeded in establishing gender and gender perspectives as
important themes in a range of academic disciplines, and in raising consciousness
about gender issues in public life in general.
8. Three processes have influenced these developments -
● Deradicalization - A retreat from the sometimes uncompromising positions that
characterized feminism in the early 1970s. This led to the growing popularity of
‘postfeminism’, suggesting that as feminist objectives have been largely achieved, the
women’s movement has moved ‘beyond feminism’.
● Fragmentation - Feminist thinking has gone through a process of radical
diversification, making it difficult, and perhaps impossible, any longer to identify
‘common ground’ within feminism.
● Intersectionality - The tendency for women to have multiple social identities. In
their identity, race, social class, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality and sexual orientation
can overlap or ‘intersect’ with gender.

CORE THEMES
1. Redefining the “POLITICAL”
● Politics has usually been understood as an activity that takes place within a ‘public
sphere’ of government institutions, political parties, pressure groups and public debate.
● Modern feminists, on the other hand, insist politics exists whenever and wherever
social conflict is found. Kate Millett, for example, defined politics as
‘power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is
controlled by another’.
● Traditionally, the public sphere of life, encompassing politics, work, art and literature,
has been the preserve of men, while women have been confined to an essentially private
existence,centred on the family and domestic responsibilities.
● Feminists have sought to challenge the divide between ‘public man’ and ‘private
woman’

● Radical feminists have been the keenest opponents of the idea that politics stops at
the front door, proclaiming instead that ‘the personal is the political’. Female
oppression is thus thought to operate in all walks of life, and in many respects originates
in the family itself.
● For some feminists, breaking down the public/private divide implies transferring the
responsibilities of private life to the state or other public bodies. For example, the burden
of child-rearing on women could be relieved by more generous welfare support for
families or the provision of nursery schools or crèches at work.
● Socialist feminists have also viewed the private sphere as political, in that they have
linked women’s roles within the conventional family to the maintenance of the capitalist
economic system.
● Liberal feminists warn against the dangers of politicising the private sphere,
which, according to liberal theory, is a realm of personal choice and individual freedom.

2. Sex & Gender

● Feminists typically challenge the notion of ‘ biology is destiny’ by drawing a sharp
distinction between sex and gender.
● ‘Sex’ refers to biological differences between females and males that are natural
and therefore unalterable. ‘Gender’, on the other hand, is a cultural term; it refers to
the different roles that society ascribes to women and men.
● All human beings, regardless of sex, possess the genetic inheritance of a mother and a
father, and therefore embody a blend of both female and male attributes or traits,
embedded in the concept of androgyny..
● Establishing a concept of gender that is divorced from biological sex had crucial
significance for feminist theory. It highlights the possibility of social change – socially
constructed identities can be reconstructed or even demolished - and draws attention to
the processes through which women are ‘engendered’ and therefore oppressed.
● Difference feminists and essentialists among others have attacked the sex / gender
distinction.
3. PATRIARCHY
● Patriarchy literally means rule by the father; often used more generally to describe the
dominance of men and subordination of women in society at large
● Feminists use the concept of ‘patriarchy’ to describe the power relationship between
women and men. Feminists believe that the dominance of the father within the family
symbolises male supremacy in all other institutions.
● The concept of patriarchy is, nevertheless, broad. Feminists may believe that men have
dominated women in all societies, but accept that the forms and degree of oppression
have varied considerably in different cultures and at different times.
● Liberal feminists use it primarily to draw attention to the unequal distribution of rights
and entitlements in society at large.
● Socialist feminists believe that patriarchy operates in tandem with capitalism, gender
subordination and class inequality being interlinked systems of oppression.
● Radical feminists see it as a systematic, institutionalised and pervasive form of male
power that is rooted in the family.

4. Equality and difference

● Traditionally, women have demanded equality with men, even to the extent that
feminism is often characterised as a movement for the achievement of sexual equality.
However, feminists have embraced contrasting notions of equality and some have
entirely rejected equality in favour of the idea of difference.
● Equality thus means equal access to the public realm.
● Socialist feminists, in contrast, argue that equal rights may be meaningless unless
women also enjoy social equality.
● Radical feminists, for their part, are primarily concerned about equality in family and
personal life. Equality must therefore operate, for example, in terms of child care and
other domestic responsibilities, the control of one’s own body, and sexual expression and
fulfilment.
 ● Difference feminists regard the very notion of equality as either misguided or simply
undesirable. Difference feminists are thus often said to subscribe to a ‘pro-woman’
position, which accepts that sex differences have political and social importance.
● Women should recognize and celebrate the distinctive characteristics of the female sex;
they should seek liberation through difference, as developed and fulfilled women,
not as sexless ‘persons’.

THE DIFFERENT STRANDS

1. Liberal feminism
● Liberal feminism refers to a form of feminism that is grounded in the belief that sexual
differences are irrelevant to personal worth , and calls for equal rights for women and
men in the public sphere.
● The major feminist associated with this theory include Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, John Stuart Mill and others.
● Wollstonecraft argued that women should be entitled to the same rights and privileges
as men on the grounds that they are ‘human beings’. She claimed that the ‘distinction of
sex’ would become unimportant in political and social life if women gained access to
education and were regarded as rational creatures in their own right.
● JS Mill, along with Helen Taylor , proposed that society should be organised
according to the principle of ‘reason’, and that ‘accidents of birth’ such as sex should be
irrelevant.
● Betty Friedan criticised the ‘ feminist mystique’ that women seek fulfilment in
domestic life and feminine behaviour and highlighted what she called as
‘ the problem with no name’ where she talked about the despair and unhappiness
that women experienced because they are unable to fully access the political life.
● The philosophical basis of liberal feminism lies in the principle of individualism which
implies that individuals are entitled to equal treatment regardless of their gender, race,
colour, creed or religion.
● However , the critiques of liberal feminism argue that this sameness approach denies the
very particularities of male female difference. First while taking men as standard it
undermines the idea of femaleness. Secondly in the process of treating females and
 male as equals it fails to accept that women and men are actually different and so
their problems.

2. Socialist Feminism - 20th century

● Socialist feminism focuses upon the interconnection between capitalism and
patriarchy as both the capitalist system of production and an institutionalised system
of patriarchy is collectively responsible for the women’s condition.
● They argue that the relationship between the sexes is rooted in the social and
economic structure itself.
● Some of the main socialist feminist are Barbara Ehrenreich, Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Johanna Brenner etc.
● The central theme of socialist feminism is that patriarchy can only be understood
in the light of social and economic factors. Under this Engels argued that in
pre-capitalist societies, family life had been communistic, and ‘mother right' was widely
observed. However, Capitalism being based on patriarchy had overthrown ‘mother right’
and brought about what Engels called ‘the world historical defeat of the female sex’.
● Most socialist feminists agree that the confinement of women to a domestic sphere of
housework and motherhood serves the economic interests of capitalism.
● Many of them subscribe to a form of neo-Marxism which accepts the interplay of
economic, social, political and cultural forces in society and therefore, they refuse to
analyse the position of women in simple economic terms and have, instead, given
attention to the cultural and ideological roots of patriarchy.
● Although , it did not repeat the mistake of liberals to consider men and women as equal
entities but they were also criticised on certain terms. Alexandra Kollontai criticised the
feminists for neglecting the poor working class women at the expense of upper-class
bourgeois women who were still oppressing the poor working women.

3. Radical Feminism
● The central feature of radical feminism is the belief that sexual oppression is the
most fundamental feature of society and that other forms of injustice – class
exploitation, racial hatred and so on – are merely secondary.
● Janice Raymond, Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Germaine Greer, John
Stoltenberg, Monique Wittig, Mary Daly and Robin Morgan are some important radical
feminists.
● In Sexual Politics (1970), Millett argued that the different roles of women and men have
their origin in a process of ‘conditioning’: from an early age boys and girls are
encouraged to conform to very specific gender identities. This process takes place largely
within the family - ‘ patriarchy’s chief institution’. It requires a sexual revolution in which
domestic structures are overthrown and replaced.
● The acceptance of deep and possibly unalterable differences between women and men
leads some radical feminists to retreat from what they see as the corrupting and
aggressive male world of political activism into an apolitical, woman-centred culture and
lifestyle.
● For example, Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will (1975) emphasized that men
dominate women through a process of physical and sexual abuse.
● However, the issues of separatism and lesbianism have deeply divided the women’s
movement, the majority of radical feminists remaining faithful to the goal of
constructing a non-sexist society, in which women and men live in harmony with one
another.

4. Third wave feminism

● The term ‘third-wave feminism’ was increasingly adopted from the 1990s onwards.
● The unifying theme of third wave feminism was a more radical engagement with
the politics of difference, especially going beyond those strands within radical
feminism that emphasise that women are different from men by showing a greater
concern with differences between women.
● Kimberle Crenshaw talked about ‘intersectionality’ which says that women do not
just have a straightforward gender-based identity but rather one in which, for instance,
race, social class, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation can overlap, or ‘intersect’,
with gender.
● Black feminism challenges the tendency within conventional forms of feminism to
ignore racial differences and to suggest that women endure a common oppression by
virtue of their gender.It portrays sexism and racism as linked systems of oppression.
● Third-wave feminism also reflects the influence of poststructuralism ( mainly inspired by
the French philosopher Michel Foucault ). From the poststructural perspective, even the
idea of ‘woman’ may be nothing more than a fiction, as supposedly indisputable
biological differences between women and men are, in significant ways, shaped by
gendered discourses (not all women are capable of bearing children, for example).
5. Trans theory
● Trans theory has only been recognized as a specific area of politico-cultural debate since
the 1990s.
● Trans theorists reject the binary conception of gender, in which society allocates
its members to one of two sets of identities, usually linked to biological or anatomical
differences.
● This non-binary perspective argues that gender is not something that is determined at
birth or ascribed to individuals by society; instead, it is a matter of self-identity.
● While early encounters between feminism and the emergent trans movement were often
marked by hostility, over time there has been a greater willingness among feminists to
take on board issues raised by trans activists.It also demonstrates a growing awareness
of the parallels and overlaps that exist between sexism and transphobia.
● However, some feminists viewed the idea of trans-feminism as deeply problematic. This
reflects the difficulty of reconciling feminism’s stress on the distinctions between sex and
gender, and between biology and culture, with a rejection of gender binaries of all kinds.

Queer Theory
● The term ‘queer theory’ was coined in 1990 by the Italian-American feminist theorist
Teresa de Lauretis. . The link between ‘queer’ and ‘theory’ was largely forged by the
application of poststructuralism to the analysis of sexuality.
● Michel Foucault presented this as sexuality is a discursive social production rather
than an essential and biologically rooted part of a human.Therefore, sexuality is not a
natural, fixed, core identity, but something that is fluid, plural and continually negotiated.
● Queer theory has been said to go beyond gender, sexual identity being prioritised over
gender identity.
● The defining feature of queer theory is robust opposition to heteronormativity.
Heteronormativity establishes heterosexuality as the baseline for humankind, a position
sustained by cultural belief, religion and institutional arrangements, linked, among other
things, to marriage, taxation and adoption rights.
● This resistance is well explained by Judith Butler with reference to the concept of
‘gender performativity’.To say that gender is performative is to say that how we
understand gender, and how we position ourselves as gendered or sexual beings in
relation to other, is a product of repeated words and actions.
● A final aspect of queer theory is a general tendency to adopt an intersectional approach
to analysis that refuses to view sexuality in isolation from other social structures, with a
particular emphasis being placed on the interplay between sexuality and race.

FUTURE OF FEMINISM
● Rather than being dead feminism is alive and vibrant and shows every sign
of continuing to be so. Feminism is no longer only (or mainly) an outsider protest
movement.
● The ideological orientation of feminism has been revised and
broadened. Whereas feminism once focused on role of women by reducing
gender inequality, it has come to address the issue of gender relations in general,
reflecting on both how they are shaped and how they can be transformed.
● Feminism, nevertheless, is confronted by a number of enduring challenges. One
of the most significant of these challenges is that feminism’s successes
threaten to weaken the women’s movement, undermining its unity and
sense of purpose.
● The achievement of votes for women, accomplished in many Western states in
the early twentieth century, was thus followed by decades of decline, during
which the women’s movement often barely functioned.
● A further challenge is that the survival of the forces of anti-feminism seems
to suggest that feminism will always exist within a contested political
environment. Tis was evident in the 1980s in a conservative backlash against
feminism, which has been revived in the early decades of the twenty-first century,
in association with the rise of right-wing populism