Key Feminist Thinkers

Question 1

What are Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas on human nature? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 1

de Beauvoir believed that women are not naturally caring and nurturing (a gender attribute), instead that this attribute is socialised into women through schooling and parents. Women’s roles and characteristics are determined by men, removing their individual freedoms.

Question 2

What are Simone de Beauvoir’s views on the state? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 2

de Beauvoir believes that the state should provide freedoms for women throughout provision of education, childcare, abolition services and contraception, as well as that economic liberties should be extended to women.

Question 3

What are Simone de Beauvoir’s beliefs on society? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 3

de Beauvoir believed women should liberate themselves from existing social structures, such as the nuclear family and marriage, given that these social structures acted to oppress and restrain women.

Question 4

What were de Beauvoir’s views on the economy? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 4

de Beauvoir believed that economic freedoms could liberate and free women if they were not to be subjected to male controls.

Question 5

What were bell hooks’ beliefs on human nature? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 5

bell hooks believed that human nature is composed of many different identities, with this being the basis of the belief in intersectionality. Believed that women have been socialised into self-hatred by competing for male attention with others.

Question 6

What are bell hooks’ views on the state? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 6

bell hooks believed that the state was dominated by white males, therefore meaning it reflects the ideas of the patriarchy and reinforces their dominant position within society.

Question 7

What are bell hooks’ views on society? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 7

bell hooks believed that full equality was needed in society to eradicate oppression of women, given that if only gender equality were achieved, some women would still be oppressed based on their other identities. Feminism must observe and understand the difficulties facing women from different identities rather than just middle class women.

Question 8

What are bell hooks’ beliefs on the economy? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 8

hooks thought that women in poverty (reinforced by patriarchal economic methods) would have different grievances to middle class women, and as such these issues should be understood by the entire feminist movement.

Question 9

What did Sheila Rowbotham believe about human nature? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 9

Rowbotham thought that men do not understand how their own actions are complicit in the oppression of the women around them. The oppression of women is understood in theory, yet not in practice.

Question 10

What did Rowbotham believe about society? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 10

Rowbotham believed that the oppression of women must be understood in more narrow terms than just capitalism, with wider culture and domestic oppression occurring alongside economic oppression.

Question 11

What did Rowbotham believe about the economy? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 11

Rowbotham thought that capitalism provides the perfect conditions for the exploitation of women, with socialist revolutions resulting in the most minimal levels of female oppression. Complete equality, including economic, is needed to liberate women from their inferior position as a cheap labour force. Must be provided equal opportunities to men.

Question 12

What did Perkins Gilman believe about human nature? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 12

Perkins Gilman thought that the doctrine of ‘survival of the fittest’ had been exploited by men to suppress women. Biological differences had resulted in male dominance previously, and that these should become irrelevant.

Question 13

What did Perkins Gilman believe about the role of modern economics in altering human nature? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 13

Perkins Gilman believed that modern economics could be used as a force through which traditional human nature of male superiority could crumble if equal opportunity were afforded to women.

Question 14

What did Perkins Gilman believe were issues within society? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 14

Perkins Gilman believed that women and girls are socialised from an early age in domestic and educational settings to accept domestic ‘traditional’ roles and prevent their advancement into wider society.

Question 15

What solutions did Perkins Gilman see to the issues around society? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 15

Perkins Gilman believed that due to the home working and child caring roles of women being tantamount to slavery, society should ultimately be led by communal living arrangements, destroying the nuclear family.

Question 16

What did Perkins Gilman believe about the economy? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 16

Perkins Gilman thought that only through a full and active role in economic lifestyles could women be truly liberated from the patriarchy. Women had previously been used as unpaid domestic labour to allow men to maximise their own wealth creation, and therefore were economically exploited by the patriarchy.

Question 17

What did Kate Millet believe about human nature? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 17

Millet believed that the natural oppression of women by men could be avoided by women engaging in lesbian relationships, hence removing the role of men in their lives.

Question 18

What did Kate Millet believe about the state? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 18

Millet believed the state to be an agent of the patriarchy, with it creating many more problems than it does solutions.

Question 19

What did Kate Millet believe about society? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 19

Millet thought that patriarchy was constructed upon 2 branches, heterosexual superiority and sexism. For women to achieve societal liberation, they must combine this with sexual liberation. All heterosexual relationships are political as they involve men exercising power over women.

Question 20

What did Kate Millet believe about the economy? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 20

Millet recognised the plight of working class women in particular in her feminism, with Millet aware that women have been exploited and used as a labour force over time.

Question 21

What is de Beauvoir’s idea of ‘Otherness’? What quote links to this? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 21

‘Otherness’ refers to the idea that men have characterised women as being different from men, yet in a way defined by men rather than women. Women exist outside of traditional society due to its patriarchal nature. de Beauvoir famously declared that ‘women are made, not born’.

Question 22

What is existentialism, as pioneered by de Beauvoir? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 22

Existentialism is the idea that the freedoms of the individual should be set against the constrictions imposed on certain groups by society.

Question 23

How did de Beauvoir assert that women must liberate themselves, as well as allow the state to liberate them? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 23

de Beauvoir believed that on top of any efforts to mitigate and abolish the patriarchy through state provisions, women must sexually liberate themselves and achieve freedom from the constrictions of the nuclear family.

Question 24

Explain the part of hooks’ beliefs that focus on the relationship between men and women - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 24

hooks believed that men must recognise the fact that their actions sustain the patriarchy, and that women must liberate themselves from being restricted by the patriarchy which is generated by sexual culture. Women must ‘unlearn self hatred, which is instilled in them by men.

Question 25

What does Rowbotham see as a crucial problem in the continued oppression of women by men? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 25

Rowbotham believed that male failure to understand their own personal roles in perpetrating the patriarchy to the women around them was a major issue with continuing female oppression in society.

Question 26

What does the phrase ‘the personal is political’ mean? Which feminist is this phrase attributed to? - Key Feminist Thinkers

Answer 26

‘The personal is political’ means that any personal relationships between men and women are ultimately underpinned by political stances and beliefs due to the existence of the patriarchy in these relationships. This phrase is largely associated with Hansich.