Key Thinkers

Question 1

What were Charlotte Perkins Gillmans key ideas?

Answer 1

Sex and domestic economics are hand in hand – for women to
survive, they were reliant on their sexual assets to please their
husbands.

Societal pressure – young girls are forced to conform in society
and prepare for motherhood through playing with toys that are
marketed to them and wearing clothes that are designed for
them.

Gender roles created by society hamper the progress of women.
To achieve freedom women have to break out of these and
achieve economic parity with men.

Question 2

Key ideas of Simone de
Beauvoir

Answer 2

Sex versus gender – ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a
woman’.

‘Otherness’ – men are perceived as the ‘norm’ and women deviants from this norm.

Attacks the gender roles created by nurture onto women.
Rejects the feminine stereotypes associated where women have
to please men as another example of patriarchy.

Question 4

Key ideas of Kate Millett

Answer 4

Family – undoing the traditional family was the key to true sexual revolution.

Portrayal of women in art and literature – she showed how patriarchal culture had produced writers and literary works that were degrading to women.

Took a radical view of the traditional family and wished to see it
replaced.
Saw feminism being reinforced in all aspects of society which
included the arts and literature.

Question 5

Key ideas of Sheila
Rowbotham

Answer 5

Capitalism – capitalist economy oppressed women as they are
forced to sell their labour to survive and use their labour to support their husbands and children.
The family – not just an instrument for disciplining and subjecting women to capitalism but a place where men took refuge from alienation under a capitalist economy.

Capitalism is the major enemy of women and has to be removed.
It exploits women in two core ways:
● firstly, it uses them as a cheap source of labour.
● secondly, women have to take the brunt of family life as they
cushion men from its impact.

Question 6

Key ideas of bell hooks

Answer 6

Women of colour – she brought the cultural concerns of women of colour into the mainstream feminist movement.

Intersectionality – the mainstream feminist movement had
focused mostly on the plight of white, college-educated, middle/upper-class women who had no stake in the concerns of
women of colour.

Took the feminist cause to women of colour.
In widening the cause, she attempted to broaden the feminist
movement to women of different classes, religions and
ethnicities in society.