Feminism strands

Question 1

What is liberal feminism

Answer 1

-Taking liberal values of individualism and foundational equality and applying them to women

Question 2

What do liberal feminists want? (4)

Answer 2

• Legal equality
• political equality
• Equality of opportunity
• equal redistribution of rights and entitlements

Question 3

How do liberal feminists believe gender imbalance can be solved? (2)

Answer 3

Reformist- believe it can be overturned primarily through democratic pressure.

-Over time society will accept women and gender stereotypes will disappear

Question 4

What ideas do liberal feminists reject (3)

Answer 4

• doesn’t challenge the private, domestic sphere
• Don’t believe in a fundamental restructuring of society
• Rejects the idea of patriarchy being pervasive and the systematic oppression of women, instead highlights discrimination

Question 5

What do socialist feminism believe

Answer 5

Gender inequality stems from capitalism, women are oppressed primarily by capitalism

Question 6

How do women serve the needs of capitalism (3)

Answer 6

• In capitalism workers needed to be supported and looked after by unpaid helpers
• women are confined to the domestic, private sphere and socialise children into becoming workers (reproducing the labour force)
• Women act as a reserve army of labour
• Accumulation of private property/ inheritance, meant that assuring paternity of their heirs was vital to men. Therefore, women required to be virgins and monogamous

Question 7

How do socialists believe women can be free of domesticity

Answer 7

-Communal basis of living, whereby childcare would not be the concern of individual mothers

Question 8

How do socialists believe will solve female oppression

Answer 8

through a revolution based on socialist values will bring about women’s liberation

Question 9

What do modern socialist feminists believe (2)

Answer 9

Patriarchy and capitalism as interlocking systems of oppression
-family is an independent source of female oppression

Question 10

What do modern socialists believe are the 4 ways women are oppressed?

Answer 10

• Reproduction
• Sexuality
• Socialisation of children
• Production

Question 11

What do radical feminists believe?

Answer 11

There need to be radical changes to society- a sexual revolution to fundamentally change the structure and nature of society

Question 12

What unites radical feminists?

Answer 12

• Belief that society is purely patriarchal
• ‘Personal is the political’, focus on different areas of the personal to show how patriarchy pervades every aspect of life

Question 13

How do radicals see family as patriarchal

Answer 13

-Women treated as property of their husbands

Question 14

Ways patriarchy is pervasive in art

Answer 14

• Women portrayed almost universally in a degrading and patronising manner
• men are dominant and women are compliant

Question 15

Patriarchy in sexual relations

Answer 15

• Women socialised into believing sexual activity is merely to procreate
• Women passive ‘accepters’ of sexual activity