FEMINISM

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 403.

Feminism is a political movement and *ideology that aims to advance the social role of women. Feminists have highlighted what they see as the political relationship between the sexes: the supremacy of men and the subjection of women in most, if not all, societies. Feminist ideology is therefore characterised by two basic beliefs. First, women and men are treated differently because of their sex; and second, this unequal treatment can and should be overturned. Although most feminists therefore embrace the goal of sexual *equality, it is misleading to define feminism in terms of this goal as some feminists distinguish between liberation and equality, arguing that the latter implies that women should be ‘like men'. The central concept in feminist analysis is *patriarchy, which draws attention to the totality of oppression and exploitation to which women are subject. This, in turn, highlights the political importance of *gender, understood to refer to socially imposed rather than biological differences between women and men. Most feminists view gender as a political construct, usually based upon stereotypes of ‘feminine' and ‘masculine' behaviour and social roles.

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Feminist theory and practice is highly diverse, however. Distinctive liberal, socialist/Marxist and radical forms of feminism are conventionally identified. Liberal feminism reflects a commitment to *individualism and formal equality, and is characterised by the quest for equal *rights and opportunities in ‘public' and political life. Socialist feminism, largely derived from *Marxism, highlights links between female subordination and the capitalist mode of production, drawing attention to the economic significance of women being confined to the family or domestic life. Radical feminism goes beyond the perspectives of established political traditions in portraying gender divisions as the most fundamental and politically significant cleavages in society, and in calling for the radical, even revolutionary, restructuring of personal, domestic and family life. Radical feminists proclaim that ‘the personal is the political'. However, the breakdown of feminism into three traditions – liberal, socialist and radical – has become increasingly redundant since the 1970s as feminism has become yet more sophisticated and diverse. Amongst its more recent forms have been black feminism, psychoanalytic feminism, eco-feminism and postmodern feminism.

Significance

The so-called ‘first wave' of feminism was closely associated with the women's suffrage movement, which emerged in the 1840s and 1850s. The achievement of female suffrage in most Western countries in the early twentieth century meant that the campaign for legal and civil rights assumed a lower profile and deprived the women's movement of a unifying focus. The ‘second wave' of feminism arose during the 1960s and expressed, in addition to the established concern with equal rights, the more radical and revolutionary demands of the growing Women's Liberation Movement. Since the early 1970s, feminism has undergone a process of de-radicalisation, leading some to proclaim the emergence of post-feminism. This was undoubtedly linked to a growing backlash against feminism, associated with the rise of the *New Right, but it also reflected the emergence of more individualised and conventionalised forms of feminism, characterised by an unwillingness any longer to view women as ‘victims'.

The major strength of feminist ideology is that it has exposed and challenged the gender biases that pervade society and which have been ignored by conventional political thought. As such, feminism has gained growing respectability as a distinctive school of political thought. It has shed new light upon established concepts such as *power, domination and equality, but also introduced a new sensitivity and language into *politics related to ideas such as connection, voice and difference. Feminism has nevertheless been criticised on the grounds that its internal divisions are now so sharp that feminist theory has lost all coherence and unity. Postmodern feminists, for example, even question whether ‘woman' is a meaningful category. Others suggest that feminism has become disengaged from a society that is increasingly post-feminist, in that, largely thanks to the women's movement, the domestic, professional and public roles of women, at least in developed societies, have undergone a major transformation.