Introducing Feminist Theory

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Introducing Feminist Theory

• ERSH 7400
• Kathy Roulston
• The University of Georgia

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Focus

• Re-visionizing the man-made world (Crotty)
• Critique of patriarchy
• Struggle for equity and liberation for women
• Freeing of human possibilities by struggling
  against culturally imposed stereotypes,
  lifestyles, roles, responsibilities
• Politics directed at changing existing relations
  between men and women in society (Weedon, 1987)

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Assumptions

• Sense of oppression in a man made world
• Inequality oppression
• Perceived need for radical change in culture
  society
• Theorize the act of knowing differently from men
• Characterizes world it experiences as patriarchal
  and the culture as masculinist
• Men can never fully understand feminism

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Strands of feminist thought

• Liberal feminism
• - Begun in the 19th century suffrage movement
• - Reformist Gender justice
• - Oppression of women is the same paradigm as any
  oppression
• Argues that women and men should be given the
  same educational opportunities and civil rights
  (the rules of the game should be fair) (Tong,
  1998, p.2)
• Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique

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Welfare liberalism

• Calls for social justice/state intervention in
  the cause of equity
• Focus on economic justice rather than civil
  liberties
• Call for government interventions (such as legal
  services, school loans, food stamps, low cost
  housing, medical assistance etc.)

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Classical liberalism

• State to protect rights provide equal
  opportunity/ little interference
• The ideal state protects civil liberties
  (property rights, voting rights, freedom of
  speech, freedom of religion etc.)
• Does not interfere with the free market
• Provides equal opportunity for all to accumulate
  wealth

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Marxist feminism

• Revolutionary
• Capitalism oppresses women
• Tends to identify classism rather than sexism as
  the ultimate cause of oppression
• Draws on theories of Marx, Engels
• Focus on work-related concerns (e.g.
  Trivialization of womens domestic work low paid
  womens work)

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Socialist feminism

• Marxism inadequate to explain womens oppression
• The fundamental cause of womens oppression is
  not classism or sexism, but an interplay between
  capitalism and patriarchy

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Radical feminism

• Patriarchal system is characterized by power,
  dominance, hierarchy, and competition
• Change of legal structures is not enough social
  cultural institutions must also be addressed
  (family, church, academy)
• Separatism promotion of womenculture
• Radical libertarian and radical-cultural
  perspectives
• Alison Jaggar, Paula Rothenberg, Kate Millet,
  Shulamith Firestone, Mary Daly

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• Psychoanalytic feminism
• Oppression embedded in female psyche
• Argues that we work towards a more androgynous
  society in which the full human person is blend
  of positive feminine and positive masculine
  traits
• There are as many human selves as there are
  individual people (Tong, 1998, p.140)
• Nancy Chodorow

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• Existential feminism
• Man as self women as other, men oppress women in
  order to be dominant
• Simone de Beauvoir
• What can women do?
• Go to work
• Become intellectuals
• Work toward a socialist transformation of
  society
• Refuse to internalize otherness

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• Postmodern
• Deconstructs language to investigate what gets
  excluded in the text
• Views feminist thought with suspicion
• Invites women to become the kind of feminist
  they want to be no single formula
• Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva
• Draws an French theorists Derrida Lacan

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• Multicultural and global feminism
• Roots of fragmented self are in culture, race,
  ethnicity
• Women experience oppression differently (e.g.
  First and third Worlds)
• e.g. focus on black women oppression (Hooks,
  Patricia Hill Collins)

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Methodologies

• Multiplicity of research methods
• Action research
• Feminist standpoint research
• Phenemenological
• Critical

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Methods

• Methods are channels instruments of womens
  historical mission to free themselves from
  bandage
• e.g. feminist interviews

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Critiques

• Many conflicting views
• Male research/contributions frowned on in some
  quarters
• To categorize or not that is the question