Introducing Feminist Theory

1. Introducing Feminist Theory ERSH 7400 Kathy Roulston The University of Georgia

2. 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)

3. 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 Assumptions

4. 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 Strands of feminist thought

5. 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.) Welfare liberalism

6. 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 Classical liberalism

7. 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 women’s domestic work; low paid women’s work) Marxist feminism

8. Marxism inadequate to explain women’s oppression The fundamental cause of women’s oppression is not classism or sexism, but an interplay between capitalism and patriarchy Socialist feminism

9. 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 Radical feminism:

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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)

14. Multiplicity of research methods Action research Feminist standpoint research Phenemenological Critical Methodologies

15. Methods are channels & instruments of women’s historical mission to free themselves from bandage e.g. “feminist” interviews Methods

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