Transcript Feminist Political Theory

Feminism
Feminism
• Concerned with the emancipation of women as
human beings
• Goals are to eliminate barriers that prevented
women from achieving development as individuals
• Assumptions:
– Men and Women are equal.
– Women’s roles are socially driven and therefore
changeable.
– Women are identifiable as a social group and may thus
act to change their status.
Feminists
• Those who identify themselves as feminists
and those who advocate women’s rights.
• Someone who supports political, economic
and social equality for women.
• Believe that the unequal and inferior social
status of women is unjust and needs to be
changed.
Feminists and Issue Definition
• What are women’s interests?
• What constituted women’s liberation?
• Answering these questions is problematic
and difficult
The Conservative View
• The differential treatment of women as a
group is NOT unjust.
• Because women are inherently different
from men.
• Some individual women will suffer but this
is not part of systematic social oppression of
women
Differences in Women’s Roles
• Female role is not inferior to the male role.
– “complementary but equal”
• Women are inherently better adapted than
men to the traditional female sex role.
– Nurturing, patient, giving, supportive, etc.
– Inherent inequality between the sexes.
• All feminists reject the first and most
feminists reject the second.
Conservative Views
• Men and women SHOULD fulfill different
social functions.
• These differences SHOULD be enforced by
law where opinion and custom are
insufficient.
• Such action is justified by the INNATE
differences between men and women.
Thus…
• All sexual conservatives presuppose:
– That men and women are inherently unequal in
abilities
– That the alleged difference in ability implies a
difference in social function
– That one of the main tasks of the state is to
ensure that the individual perform his or her
proper social function.
Justice?
• Social differentiation between the sexes is
not unjust since justice not only allows but
requires us to treat unequals unequally.
Various Feminist Approaches
• All feminists are not the same
• Varieties of feminist thought exist
• Types include:
– reformist feminists, radical, socialist, radical
revolutionary, cultural feminists, lesbian
separatists, traditional liberal and modern
liberal feminists, marxist feminists
Traditional Liberal Feminists
• Individual women should be able to
determine their social role with as much
freedom as do men.
• Traditional liberal feminists are willing to
wait for social change.
• Modern liberal feminists advocate the use
of law to advance the status of women more
quickly.
Liberals: Traditional vs Modern
• Laws shouldn’t
discriminate
• Equality means each
individual should have
equal opportunity to seek
whatever social position
that individual wishes
• Freedom is the absence of
legal constraints to hinder
women in this purpose
• The law should be used to
make discrimination
illegal
• Can temporarily
discriminate in favor of
women to redress past
inequalities
• Maternity leaves should
be considered a social
service like military leave
(reservists) women should
not lose jobs.
Marxist and Radical Feminism
• Source of women’s
oppression is the family
because within this social
structure women provide
free labor.
• Class based society
burdens women more than
men because women are
of lower class and will
therefore command the
lowest wage.
• Rejects the liberal view
that women’s oppression
stems from the lack of
political/civil rights.
• Rejects the Marxist view
that women are oppressed
because they live in a
class society.
• Advocates the
transformation of society
from patriarchy, racism
and capitalism.
Determinants of Feminist
Attitudes
• Individual level characteristics such as:
–
–
–
–
Education
Marital status
Employment
Religion
• Men and Women in the US and Western Europe are
more likely to endorse feminist goals or show high
levels of feminist consciousness if they are highly
educated, have little religious involvement and live
in families where women work in the paid labor
force
Determinants of Feminist
Attitudes
• What about aggregate level attitudes?
• Structural features of Western societies and labor
markets.
• National level information sometimes hides what’s
going on within each nation (variance is lost).
• In principle cross-national variation in support of
feminism can be explained by the effects of
several aspects of social structure and culture.
Determinants of Feminist Attitudes
Two additional approaches:
• Social Context – are individuals influenced
by their environment and is this effect a
simple linear relationship between social
context and attitudes?
• Status Discontent – do individuals react
against the social context especially when
the context is viewed as hostile to their own
status?
Social Context
• Religiosity of a region (higher) appears to have
little effect on feminist attitudes.
• Educational level (higher) of a region appears to
positively impact feminist attitudes.
• Women’s employment (high) appears to have a
negative effect on feminist attitudes.
• Regional divorce rate (high) appears to have a
negative effect on feminist attitudes.
Status Discontent: Workforce
• Women’s overall participation in the labor force
has no effect on those women IN the labor force.
The negative effect emerges for women OUT side
of the labor force.
• Domestic women become increasingly
conservative as more of their female neighbors
become economically active. Men with stay at
home wives show similar attitudes.
Status Discontent: Education
• Women with low levels of education living in
areas where female educational levels are high
exhibit high levels of support for feminist attitudes
(the same effect exists for men).
• This is a different effect from workforce.
• The effect of context decreases as women become
more educated…and their individual level support
for feminism decreases!
Questions
• Why is the effect of higher education so strong
and positive?
– Could this be because women with higher education
represent an attainable goal? (successful role models)
• Why has women’s entry into the paid labor force
not resulted in uniformly pro-feminist attitudes?
– Economic competition? Equal access to higher
education poses no immediate economic threat to men
and wives of male bread winners. Women pressing for
equal pay cut into the available pie of money. This
constitutes a material threat.