The main approaches to the study of feminism

Introduction

Feminism is at once a political creed that demands equal rights between the sexes and a body of theory in which several approaches differ on why women are subordinated and how to end it.

Approaches to the study of feminism

Feminism is the political commitment to equal rights for women and men; feminists differ on what is wrong and how to put it right. Feminist political theory widens the boundaries of what counts as political by bringing women's concerns into it. The approaches grew in three waves: the first sought political and legal rights, the second carried the struggle into women's private lives, and the third offered a critique of the earlier trends. Below, the approaches are grouped by where each finds the root of women's subordination: in personal and legal relations, in women's nature, in identity and language, and in the economy.

1. Radical feminism: personal life reflects the power structures of patriarchy, so the personal is political (a slogan coined by Carol Hanisch); it stressed the material basis of patriarchy and treated gender as a socially contrived category to be done away with. Oppression can occur between individuals, but a man is an oppressor only when he justifies his supremacy by having been born male; its demands included legal abortion and equal sharing of child care and housework.
2. Liberal feminism (Mary Wollstonecraft, J. S. Mill): equal access to education, so that women become as independent as men, and equal economic opportunities, political rights and civil liberties, with the state as an ally of women's liberation. It is criticised for over-emphasising the need for women to become like men. NCERT's account of the nineteenth-century women's struggle for the vote, degrees and work fits this strand.
3. Cultural feminism: women's nature is caring and egalitarian, women's biology is a strength, and gender distinctions should be preserved; it places the blame for oppression on the maleness of men rather than on the power relations of patriarchy.
4. Ecological feminism (Vandana Shiva among others): the oppression of women and the domination of nature are linked and reinforce each other, and patriarchy works through hierarchical pairs such as culture over nature and male over female.
5. Postmodern feminism (Judith Butler): language constructs gender, gender is performative, and "woman" is not a stand-alone category; women do not all share the same experience of oppression.
6. Black feminism (Alice Walker's womanist): black women were left out by both the women's and the black liberation movements, so it addresses how class, race and gender intersect in their oppression.
7. Marxist feminism (drawing on Marx and Engels; Iris Marion Young, Alison Jaggar): women's oppression is grounded in class exploitation and in the way labour is reproduced at home and at work; Engels showed how women's labour of bearing and rearing children is taken for granted within the family, and called for revolution against the capitalist order. It is criticised for neglecting race and ethnicity and for hiding women wage labourers within the general category of wage labour. It links with the Marxist view that private ownership of resources is the root of entrenched inequality.
8. Socialist feminism: capitalism is the primary cause of women's oppression and patriarchy the secondary one; oppression results from several forces together (class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and gender), and women's unpaid emotional labour is ignored.

Common ground. All treat gender inequality as unnatural and changeable, and hold that the public/private distinction which confines women to domestic matters should go.

Patriarchy

What strikes the observer first is a division of labour: women are expected to look after the private, domestic side of life and men the work of the public world. Yet most women also work outside the home, so they carry a double burden, and they are still given little or no voice in the decisions taken in public. Feminists name the system behind this patriarchy: a social, economic and cultural order that values men above women and gives men power over them. Its defence is the claim that the two sexes differ by nature and that the difference warrants their unequal positions. Feminists reply that most of the inequality between women and men is made by society rather than by nature, and can therefore be changed.

Forms. It works through law and custom, which for long kept women out of many professions and activities. It works through the family, where much of what women do goes unrecognised: the emotional and practical labour of raising children, nursing the sick and making the home liveable for those who work outside it. A household where the men are served first at every meal and the women eat what is left shows the same ranking in daily life. It follows women into paid work, where socialist feminists point to lower wages than men's and to sexual harassment. Second-wave writers such as Germaine Greer and Kate Millett widened the analysis to the sexual, psychological and personal side of women's oppression. Feminist strands explain it differently: ecofeminists see it in hierarchical pairs such as culture over nature and male over female; Marxist feminists, following Engels, ground women's oppression in class exploitation and in the family, where patriarchal forces make it appear natural; and socialist feminists, for whom capitalism is the first cause and patriarchy the second, see women's oppression as the joint product of gender together with class, race, ethnicity and sexuality.

Ending it. Feminists argue that the public/private distinction and all forms of gender inequality can and should be eliminated. The routes they have pressed include equal political and legal rights, notably the vote; equal access to education and economic opportunity; and an equal sharing of child care and household work.

Conclusion

The approaches (radical, liberal, cultural, ecological, postmodern, black, Marxist and socialist) emphasise different causes, but all see gender inequality as socially produced and changeable and extend politics to the family and personal life.