Feminisms

Question 1

First wave of feminism (1700s to the 1960s)

Answer 1

Characterized by expanding women’s education and civil rights as well as including women in formal politics and the public sphere;

Question 2

Second wave of feminism (1960-1980)

Answer 2

The era of formalizing equality rights for women through the law and public policy and increased attention to differences among women.
Legal, employment and reproductive rights.

Question 3

Third wave of feminism (1990 until now)

Answer 3

Diverse, antifoundationalist, pro-sex, celebratory of everyday action over theory, and amorphous and unregulated.
LGBTQ+

Question 4

Public-private divide

Answer 4

The public–private divide have illuminated the patriarchal framework that generates and assigns traditional gender roles and in doing so have expanded an understanding of the political beyond the traditional focus on the state and government and centered the idea that “the personal is political

Question 5

Consequence of linking theory and practice

Answer 5

It links theory and practice and, in doing so, highlights the significance of personal narratives, lived experience, subjectivity, and political praxis.

Question 6

Three debates have characterized Western feminist political theories and practices

Answer 6

• Equality as difference or sameness—where are the women?
• Differences among women—which women?
• The relationship between sex and gender—what work does the category of woman do in feminist thought and in broader sociopolitical life?

Question 7

Equality as difference or sameness—where are the women?

What did early feminists focussed on?

Answer 7

Exclusion of women of the public realm. It focused on the criticism of canonical text (religious books).

Question 8

What is liberal feminism

Answer 8

The start of liberal feminism, looked to integrate women into existing frameworks on the premise that men and women should be treated equally.

Challenged the public-private divide to argue that issues such as accessible and universal childcare were matter for the state rather than just concerns about private–domestic life. (Ethics of care)

• Women should decide their future.
• Better employment, pay, political representation and childcare.
• Better legal & economic support and conditions.

Question 9

Socialism (basis, how generate change?, capitalism, relationship with liberalism, and class and gender)

Answer 9

Basis:Autonomous individual and attitudes

How generate change? Peaceful and piecemeal change and are more willing to make changes within the existing system

Capitalism: Critical, creates exploitation and economic dependence of women.

Relationship with liberalism: Critical, too easily co-opted by the “malestream” and overly focused on equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome.

Class and gender are dependent of each other

Question 10

Marxism (basis, how generate change?, capitalism, relationship with liberalism, and class and gender)

Answer 10

Basis: Class divisions and social structures

How generate change? Revolutionary Transformation

Capitalism: Critical, creates exploitation and economic dependence of women.

Relationship with liberalism: Critical, too easily co-opted by the “malestream” and overly focused on equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome.

Class and gender: Class and gender are dependent of each other

Question 11

Radical feminism thought of women and men (different or the same?)

Answer 11

Women and men are different and there is no need for them to be the same.

Known as “antimale”, because of their belief that there should be two separate social contracts.

Eliminating the idea of men and the need of men for women at all.

Question 12

Radical feminism… positive aspect

Answer 12

Raised awareness of reproductive freedom, violence against women, pornography, sexual harassment, homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality, the rights of sex trade workers, and rape.

Question 13

Radical feminism analysis of patriarchy

Answer 13

Developed theories that expanded meanings of politics to include personal and sexual relationships and demonstrated that the study of patriarchy was intrinsically linked to power.

Question 14

Early radical feminists, important writers

Answer 14

Shulamith Firestone

Question 15

Early radical feminism

(relation between sex and patriarchy)

Answer 15

Female dependence on men arose because of patriarchy and oppression of the female body.

Psychosexual in that women are falsely made to believe that sex with men is compulsory and pleasurable.

Question 16

Male feminism or pro-feminism

Difference between radical feminism

Main focus

Answer 16

Is radical, however, it differs from the school of radical feminism in that it is not premised on eliminating the sex distinction.

Focusses in challenging antifeminist men’s rights movements blame women for divorce and custody laws that supposedly favour women.

Because gender roles are learned they can be relearned differently, and as such feminism can serve men’s interests

Question 17

Male feminism (negative aspects)

Answer 17

Men cannot understand the problems/pain of women because they have not lived that.

Question 18

Ecofeminism

Connection between male dominance and environment

Answer 18

Different strands of ecofeminism maintain that a strong parallel exists between men’s dominance over women and the violation of nature by men and masculinist attitudes and methods that construct women as passive and economic development above nature.

Question 19

Ecofeminism

Relationship between eco liberation

Answer 19

Women liberalization depends on ecological liberation.

Question 20

Ecofeminism

Negative aspect

Answer 20

Underemphasizing class and races.

Question 21

Ecofeminism

What is a policy they support?

Answer 21

Strong support to quotas.

Question 22

“Which Women?” Differences among Women

Answer 22

Being women in different contexts mean different things.

Intersecting differences, or intersectionality volume—have become increasingly significant to feminism because they challenge the idea of a universal notion of sisterhood and women’s experiences.
It is different to be a women in a lot of different contexts

Question 23

“Which Women?” Differences among Women

When did it became important?

Answer 23

Important issue in the third wave, because of the perceived dominance of western women in the first and second waves.

Question 24

“Which Women?” Differences among Women

Post Colonial feminism

Answer 24

Centers the intersections of race, class, and gender discourses.

Warns against universalizing women’s experiences because this decontextualizes the specific historical and local ways reproduction, the sexual division of labor, families, marriage, and households are arranged.

Question 25

Examples of post colonial feminism

Answer 25

India: critique of leaving a side the consideration of caste and class.
Black feminists in USA: value of examining patriarchal white supremacist capitalism.
Chicana feminism: value of examining patriarchal white supremacist capitalism.
Indigenous feminists: patriarchy cannot be eliminated without addressing colonialism.
Antiracist feminism: challenged the sexist Eurocentric and Islamophobic representation of the veil.
Critical feminist disability: disability is a socially fabricated idea rather than a biomedical condition that demarcates disability in terms of otherness.

Question 26

Sex and Gender Debates: What Is Woman?

What does it critic

Answer 26

Relationship between sex and gender
Critics the normalized binary structure of the biological representations.

Question 27

Post structural feminism (Butler)

Answer 27

Challenges the assumption that sex is natural rather than also constructed through language.

Identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes and as such need to be persistently troubled and subject to reinterpretation.

Question 28

Queer theory (1990s) starts from what theory

Answer 28

post structural feminism (butler)

Question 29

Queer theory (1990s) focus, and historical importance?

Answer 29

Sexual orientations and identities are shaped by social forces.

Grew after homophobic responses to AIDS.

Question 30

Transfeminism

Answer 30

Loss of family, housing and employment discrimination, social stigma, and high rates of violence and also confronting transphobia within some feminist circles.

Question 31

East Asian feminists

Answer 31

East Asian feminists have pointed out that meanings of sex, gender, and sexuality vary according to language and cultural specificity.

Question 32

Is the Subject of Woman Dead in Feminism? Is Feminism Dead without the Subject of Woman?

Name a woman that has been essential for this line of thought

Answer 32

Syla Benhabib then questions if it is the death of the subject of feminism.

Question 33

What is the debate in the question of:

Is the Subject of Woman Dead in Feminism? Is Feminism Dead without the Subject of Woman?

Answer 33

Essentialism (assume too much) vs anti-essentialism (do not assume enough)

There was a response to this debate through intersectionality.

Question 34

Intersectionality

Answer 34

“the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation—economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential—intersect in historically specific contexts”

Question 35

Different ways of answering:

Is the Subject of Woman Dead in Feminism? Is Feminism Dead without the Subject of Woman?

Answer 35

1. Intersectionality
2. Other have answered this question by stating that gender is a analytic category rather than a natural identity.
   People should not use categories however it is understandable that it is used to protect one self.
3. Some believe that there should be pragmatic category in order for there to be a social movement.
   Social collective whose members are unified passively by objects around them (e.g., rules about the body, menstruation, pregnancy, sexual desire, language, clothes, division of labor).
4. Michael Ferguson
   Rejects identity-as-object (choose what society has said we are or continue looking forever).

Question 36

Definition of feminism

Answer 36

man or a woman that recognizes a problem of gender and wants to change it.

Question 37

Analysis of culture and gender in “We all should be feminists”

Answer 37

Gender inequality is embedded in culture, however, culture changes and it does not mean no respecting the culture if one tries to change it.

Question 38

Common in the different types of feminist movements

Answer 38

1. They look for social justice, and focusses on the importance of power in all aspects of life (included the intimate sphere).
2. Sex and gender as something that is not identical
3. Challenge a culture-nurture divide
4. Politics is not only what government does, it is also in a personal level.
   - Everything you do personally is political
   - Everything that happens to us is political.
   - Doing something is a manifestation of political action and not doing too.
5. Links between theory and practice
6. Diversity and openness, arguably some of them will be more open than others.
7. Critique dominant masculinities that are presented as common sense.

Question 39

Feminist methodologies

Answer 39

1. Positivist Methodologist (focused in numbers)
   Statistics, static categories, surveys.
2. Interpretivist (gender is dynamic, they change, hence you need to be flexible with categorization)
   - Understand and interpret what people are doing.
   - Interview, ethnography and so on.

Question 40

Equality as difference or sameness (define both and give examples)

Answer 40

• Sameness: women and men should be treated the same.
  Example: Job Applicants, Pay Equity, Legal rights: divorce, suffrage
• Difference: women and men should be treated differently.
  Examples: Only women give birth to childhood, Women more time-paternity/maternity leave, Unequal support provisions in order to equalize opportunities or outcomes.

Question 41

Differences among women: what should be emphasized: homogeneity or heterogeneity among women?

Answer 41

Heterogeneity
No universal women.
Incredible diversity among women.

Homogeneity
Emphasizing similarity has its advantage
Create a unified movement.
United we stand divided we fall.

Maybe there should be a balance: understand the differences but be united in the end goal.

Question 42

Feminism Institutionalism

Answer 42

Institutions structures the rule of the game.

• Gendered by masculinist ideologies.
• Formal and informal institutions
• There is a lock in and path dependency consequence (constitutions)
• Old ideas are still important today because they are locked into the institutions.
• Permissive stages, allow a gradual change framework.

Question 43

Gendering Public Policy

Is it gender neutral?

What are the two policy sub-systems?

Answer 43

What barriers are there to improving outcomes
Public policy is portrait as gender neutral, however they are all gender.
Policy sub-system vary by issue.
Body Politics I: Reproductive Rights (Positional issue)
Body Politics II: Violence Against women (balance issue)
They agree it’s bad but they disagree in the solutions.
Migrant Women: Double Disadvantage