5.3 Feminism key thinkers

Question 1

5

Which branch does each feminist key thinker belong to?

Answer 1

• Charlotte Perkins Gilman - influential to radical and socialist
• Simone de Beauvoir - socialist
• Kate Millett - radical
• Sheila Rowbotham - socialist
• bell hooks - postmodern

Question 2

3

Describe Gilman’s sex and domestic economics

Answer 2

• Sex and capitalist economy interlinked
• Women reliant on sexual assets to gratify their husbands - in turn would support them financially
• Viewed marriage (‘the bargain for life’) as comparable to prostitution (‘the transient trade’)

Question 3

5

Describe Gilman’s societal pressure

Answer 3

• Societal norms mean that women have been histroically assigned inferior domestic roles
• Gender roles such as motherhood socially constructed from young age
• Gender-targeted clothes and toys marketed to women create stereotypes - Gilman argued children should play with gender-neutral toys
• Wished to reverse false consciousness so women no longer saw themselves as naturally frailer and weaker than men
• Though believed that collectivism and cooperation were female values - later co-opted by socialist feminists

Question 4

3

Describe Gilman’s views on capitalism

Answer 4

• Capitalism’s exploitative qualities reinforced patriarchy
• Socialism would gradually succeed (reformist socialist feminism)
• Would allow male-female co-existence in egalitarian society and economy

Question 5

4

Describe Gilman’s views on social darwinism

Answer 5

• Darwinist theory that biological fittest would succeed no longer had relevance due to modern economy
• Biological differences no longer had relevance
• Equally rational
• Modern economic activity could faciliitate gender equality

Question 6

1

Describe Gilman’s views on female autonomy

Answer 6

• Women have lack of autonomy which hinders mental and emotional wellbeing

linked to liberal feminism

Question 7

5

Describe Gilman’s proposed solutions

Answer 7

• Sought economic independence for women
• Expansion of paid employment to women
• Advocated approximate sharing of domestic housework, centralised nurseries, community kitchens
• abolition of nuclear family, freeing women for role in wider society
• Would grant women freedom and autonomy

Question 8

6

List key quotes from Gilman

Answer 8

• there is no female mind’
• ‘sex slavery’ - economic dependence on men
• ‘the bargain for life’ and ‘the transient trade’
• child rearing and domestic work amounts to ‘domestic slavery’
• domestic labour enabled men to ‘produce more wealth than it otherwise could’
• ‘a house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband’

Question 9

4

Describe de Beauvoir’s sex versus gender

Answer 9

• Feminity an artifical societal construct
• Biological differences used by male-dominated state and society to predetermine gender roles that limit autonomy of women
• Existence as human beings ‘infinitely more important’ than biological differences
• Humans are organically genderless (androgynous), but altered by society

Question 10

4

Describe de Beauvoir’s otherness

Answer 10

• Male domination means that men are ‘first sex’/’norm’, whereas women are ‘second sex’/’‘other’
• ‘Otherness’ imposed by men on women
• women viewed as imperfect men
• only viewed as ‘other’ because they are oppressed by men

Question 11

3

Describe de Beauvoir’s views on marriage

Answer 11

• marriage defines women
• women are taught to idolise men and marry one as their ultimate goal
• agreed with Gilman that women should not enter institution of marriage as saw it as prison

Question 12

2

How do Gilman and de Beauvoir differ on sexual liberation

Answer 12

• Gilman more critical of prostitution
• de Beauvoir was pro-sex work, seeing it as form of empowerment

Question 13

2

Decribe de Beauvoir’s views on patriarchy

Answer 13

• created by men
• should be abolished

Question 14

2

Describe de Beauvoir’s criticism of women’s role in upholding gender stereotypes

Answer 14

• Women often berated themselves for not living up to incompatible myths of feminity
• Women should value their freedom (‘rapport a soi’) by asking themselves what they wanted from life

Question 15

2

Describe de Beauvoir’s views on capitalism

Answer 15

• consumptive materialism (society addicted to purchasing consumer goods) inherent within capitalism
• further weakens women’s position within society

Question 16

4

List key quotes from de Beauvoir on ‘otherness’

Answer 16

• otherness’ and ‘norm’
• ‘first sex’ and ‘second sex’
• society ‘codified by man’
• ‘society… decrees that woman is inferior’

Question 17

2

List key quotes from de Beauvoir (excluding ‘otherness’)

Answer 17

• ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’
• ‘rapport a soi’

Question 18

5

Describe Millett’s family

Answer 18

• Saw nuclear family unit as foundation of patriarchal thought, so should be dismantled
• Favoured communal living and childrearing, lesbian relationships
• family merely a social construct
• Family socialised young into recognising masculine authority and feminine marginalisation in society (agree with Gilman on socialisation of young, but disagree on cause)
• Marriage saw women lose identity by taking women’s surname and offering domestic/sexual service for financial support

Question 19

3

Describe Millett’s portrayal of women in art and literature

Answer 19

• Gender roles and expectations stereotyped in art and literature
• Women portrayed as possessions to be fought over
• Millett’s analysis involved deconstructing work of influential male writers who she branded misogynist and phallocentric

phallocentric - privileging of masculinity

Question 20

4

Describe Millett’s views on the patriarchy

Answer 20

• Political and cultural phenomenon, not economic
• Affects both public and private sphere
• Reinforced heterosexualism as superior to bisexual/same-sex relationships
• patriarchy grants men ownership over wife and children, entrenching sexism and male superiority

Question 21

2

Describe Millett’s views on sexual liberation

Answer 21

• Needed to achieve wider societal liberation
• Women need to accept that lesbianism leads to personal freedom

Question 22

3

Describe Millett’s views on revolution

Answer 22

• Argued for change in social consciousness via revolution in head
• whereby patriarchy eliminated from people’s minds
• would enable gender equality in home, workplace and culture

Question 23

4

List Millett’s key quotes

Answer 23

• Women are ‘victims of patriarchy’
• Complete destruction of nuclear family the ‘revolutionary or utopian’ goal of feminism
• Women do not recognise the ‘totality of their conditioning’
• Sexual revolution begins ‘emancipation of women’

Question 24

7

Describe Rowbotham’s capitalism

Answer 24

• Capitalism the root of inequality
• Forces women into family roles and to sell labour to survive
• Makes them economically denpedent on marriage
• Low paid work of women compounded by unpaid domestic work
• Women historically oppressed due to alienation from capitalism
• Aimed to mitigate the economic impacts of patriarchal oppression before she tackled their cause, not vice versa
• WC women worked ‘like cattle’ at home and in workplace where they were paid less and had no childcare provisions in factories

Question 25

3

Outline Rowbotham’s proposals to mitigate the female oppression of capitalism

Answer 25

• Advocated free childcare
• economic equity - allocation of equal resources
• Argued that giving women equal employment rights would not improve the unregulated and unpaid aspect of their labour

Question 26

3

Describe Rowbotham’s family

Answer 26

• family performs dual function to oppress women:
  
  • to subject and discipline women to demands of capitalism
  • to offer place of refuge for men from the alienation of capitalism

Question 27

3

Describe Rowbotham’s views on patriarchy

Answer 27

• Development of intersection theory - saw wc women as doubly oppressed
• Feminism should seek to amend women’s internal lives, as well as external ones
• Non-violent revolution needed to abolish interlinked patriarchy and capitalism

Question 28

4

Describe Rowbotham’s views on male complicity with the patriarchy

Answer 28

• Men cannot fully understand nature of female oppression
• Sexism entrenched among both left and right wing men
• Women often relegated to traditional roles once revolution over
• ‘revolution within a revolution’ needed

Question 29

4

List key quotes from Rowbotham

Answer 29

• ‘Men will often admit that other women are oppressed, but not you’
• WC women work ‘like cattle’
• ‘revolution within a revolution’
• Large scale mobilisation needed to create ‘political force’ and ‘move towards the possibility of a truly democratic society’

Question 30

5

Describe hooks’ women of colour

Answer 30

• Broadened feminist debate, criticising second-wave for conceptualising feminism from white, college-educated, middle-upper class perspective
• Minority groups such as WOC previously excluded from earlier feminism
• Women of colour have different concerns
• WOC suffer greater oppression as suppressed for multiple characteristics
• black men wanted racial equality but also to assume their ‘proper place as patriarch in the home’

Question 31

3

Describe hooks’ intersectionality

Answer 31

• Challenged assumption that gender was most important factor in determining a woman’s life experiences
• Overlapping spheres means greater complexity in patriarchy and oppression
• mutliple identities of women meant that singular notion of ‘sisterhood’ gives way to more communal ‘solidarity’

Question 32

3

Describe hooks views on the patriarchy

Answer 32

• Women ‘socalised… by patriarchal thinking to see ourselves as inferior to men’
• women need to ‘unlearn self-hatred’
• media teaches some women to hate themselves by under representing WOC and non-white MC-UC women

Question 33

2

List key quotes from hooks on intersectionality

Answer 33

• ‘appropriation of feminist ideology by elitist, racist white women’
• must take responsibility for ‘eliminating all the forces that divide women’

Question 34

5

List key quotes from hooks

Answer 34

• ‘proper place as patriarch in the home’
• ‘sisterhood’ and patriarchy’
• Women ‘socalised… by patriarchal thinking to see ourselves as inferior to men’
• ‘unlearn self-hatred’
• media has ‘power over us, and we have no power over them’