Vanessa de Vera

3NU01
Feminist Theory

Feminism
-Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
-The movement organized around this belief.
-an outgrowth of the general movement to empower women worldwide.
- Feminism can be defined as a recognition and critique of male supremacy combined with
efforts to change it.

Goals of feminism:
1. To demonstrate the importance of women
2. To reveal that historically women have been subordinate to men
3. To bring about gender equity.

FIRST WAVE FEMINISM
Mid 19
th
early 20
th
century.
Fight for social and political equality.
Struggle for womens suffrage (right to vote)
Key concerns included education, employment and marriage laws.
Successes higher education for women, married womens property rights and the
widening of access to professions such as medicine.

SECOND WAVE FEMINISM
Liberation movement of 1960s and 1970s.
Characterised by struggles for equal pay, equal rights at work and better
representation in public bodies such as Parliament.
Access to contraception.
Highly publicised activism.
Miss America 1968
Stereotype of humourless, dowdy, man-hating feminist.

THIRD WAVE FEMINISM
1980s and 1990s
Less emphasis on battles for equality
More emphasis on the positive nature of ambiguity and difference (not all women are
the same, it doesnt matter)
Spice girls and girl power






Types of Feminism:

Liberal Feminism
All people are created equal and should not be denied equality of opportunity because
of gender
Liberal Feminists focus their efforts on social change through the construction of
legislation and regulation of employment practices
Inequality stems from the denial of equal rights.
The primary obstacle to equality is sexism.

Marxist Feminism
Division of labor is related to gender role expectations.
Females give birth. Males left to support family
Bourgeoisie=Men
Proletariat=Women
Radical Feminism
Male power and privilege is the basis of social relations
Sexism is the ultimate tool used by men to keep women oppressed

Radical Feminism
Women are the first oppressed group
Women's oppression is the most widespread
Womens oppression is the deepest
Womens oppression causes the most suffering
Womens oppression provides a conceptual model for understanding all other forms
of oppression
Men control the norms of acceptable sexual behavior
Refusing to reproduce is the most effective way to escape the snares
Speak out against all social structures because they are created by men

Socialist Feminism
Views womens oppression as stemming from their work in the family and the
economy
Womens inferior position is the result of class-based capitalism
Socialist believe that history can be made in the private sphere (home) not just the
public sphere (work)
An increased emphasis on the private sphere and the role of women in the household
Equal opportunities for women in the public sphere

Postmodern Feminism
Attempts to criticize the dominant order.
All theory is socially constructed.
Rejects claim that only rational, abstract thought and scientific methodology can lead
to valid knowledge.
The basic idea is that looking to the past is no longer the way to go. We are a global
economic world highlighted by technology. Looking to the past no longer applies.

Dorothy E. Smith
Canadian sociologist, born in 1926 in England
Studied social health and survey methods, gender
Earned BA from London School of Economics
Earned PhD in sociology from University of California at Berkeley
Husband left her with two children
Worked at Berkeley (where most professors were male) and in England as a lecturer
Best known for pioneering feminist standpoint theory

Family:
North American family legally married couple sharing a household
Male earns the primary income and female cares for family and household
Ideals reinforced by Martha Stewart, Home and Gardens, etc.
Todays family presents many variations
Found that many women get caught up in the role that society expects of them

Schooling:
Found a lack of interest in issues concerning girls and women in schooling
Universities and colleges have incorporated successful programs, but public schools
have not
Would like to see a change to allow girls a larger say in school dynamics

Dorothy Smith: The Conceptual Practices of Power

All knowledge begins with concrete, sensory experience
Elite men get to pass beyond the local, and transcend their bodies, into the
conceptual order
Women and other dominated groups are confined to menial tasks, and remain fixed in
local, practical knowledge

CONCEPTS:

Situated knowledge & Standpoint theory
Current sociology creates abstractions which are useful for governing, but objectivity
is an illusion produced by the artificial separation of knowledge from realm of local
Instead, we need situated knowledge which starts and ends with local, practical
experience
Standpoint theory offers a way for women to produce knowledge rooted in
experience of everyday world
Abstractions must be rooted in situated knowledge practical and local to be
correctly informed
But, abstraction is still necessary because the local is shaped by conditions beyond
our comprehension and control

Standpoint Theory
Standpoint feminism emphasizes that feminist social science should be practiced
from the standpoint of women.
Therefore, women's experiences exist as the point of departure, instead of mens
experiences
Standpoint theory retains elements of Marxist historical materialism for its central
premise: knowledge develops in a complicated and contradictory way from lived
experiences and social historical context.

Bifurcated Consciousness
Conceptual distinction between the world as we experience it and the world as we
know it through the conceptual frameworks that science invents
Believes mainstream sociology has not touched on womens experiences
Bifurcated Consciousness
Suggested a reorganization that is a sociology for, rather than about, women
Leads to a bifurcated consciousness or an actual representation
States that a subjective reality is the only way to know human behavior
Interviewing, recollection of work experience, use of archives, observation, etc.

Institutional Ethnography
A method of elucidating and examining the relationship of everyday activities and
experiences and larger institutional imperatives.
It is in microlevel, everyday practices at the level of the individual that collective,
hierarchal patterns of social structure are experienced, shaped, and reaffirmed.

Patricia Hill Collins
BA from Brandeis, MA from Harvard, and PhD from Brandeis
Associate professor of sociology and African American studies at University of
Cincinnati
Outsider within one is part of a group but feels distant from that group
Began career as a schoolteacher concerned with critical theories of education and
knowledge production
Draws on Smiths standpoint theory, but highlights the unique experiences of Black
women in the US


Patricia Hill Collins: Black Feminist Epistemology

Critique of Smiths standpoint theory & Intersectionality
Cross-cutting forms of oppression We cannot understand the standpoint of a person
by looking at only one form of oppression (critique of Smiths standpoint theory)
Forms of oppression which structure society intersect to shape each other and to
shape experience
Eg- Gender hierarchies shape the nature of racial discrimination, and vice versa


CONCEPTS:

Feminist Theory and Methodology
Focus of sociological theory should be the outsider groups
Especially those that lack a voice
Promotes using subjective analysis of the concrete experiences
Agrees with Harding on white/male interest
Believes emotional concepts are important
Individuals have their own reality constructs that are linked to the groups to which
they belong

Black Feminism
Outside within status of black slaves
Black feminist though consists of ideas produced by black women clarifying
standpoint for and of black women
The Interlocking Nature of Oppression
Gender, race, and class are interconnected
Society has attempted to teach black women that racism, sexism, and poverty are
inevitable
Awareness will help black women unite their fight against oppression and
discrimination
Women are gaining more of a voice
Black women are still more accepted as authors in the classroom, than as teachers

Three key themes in black feminism:
The Meaning of Self-Definition and Self-Valuation
The Interlocking Nature of Oppression
The Importance of African-American Womens Culture


Judith Butler
Born on February 24, 1956
Received her BA from Bennington College(1978) and Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale
University (1984)
She is the Maxine Elliot professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature
departments at the University of California, Berkeley
American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of
feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics


Judith Butler: Gender Identification

Gender is a fiction. We are not really women and men we just perform it.
Sexual identity categories are also fictions. People dont fit into these categories,
discover themselves to be gay or lesbian. Rather,
Develops the idea that gender is performative; its what you do at particular times
rather than who you are.
Sex and gender are not natural but we must work hard to make them real.
We are gendered as either man or woman in the interests of the heterosexual
matrix which designates that grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies,
gender and desires are naturalised


Judith Butler: Gender trouble
Butler argued that feminism had made a mistake by trying to assert that women
were a group with common characteristics and interests
She argued that rather than opening up possibilities a person to form and choose their
own individual identity, feminism had closed the options down
The idea of identity as free-floating, connected to a performace is one key ideas in
Queer Theory.
Seen in this way, our identities do not express some authentic inner core self but are
the dramatic effect of our performances.


CONCEPTS:

Queer Theory
A field of gender studies that suggests ones gender and sexuality cant be defined or
categorized. The identity of a person consists of a wide variety of parts which makes
everyone individual rather than part of a group.
Revolves around sexual minorities within mass culture or media.
An intellectual extension of the Gay & Lesbian rights movement.

Performativity
The behaviour of individuals based on social norms.

Heterosexual Matrix
Describes a proper men and proper women