A Level Revision Notes: Feminism - All Key Thinkers & Tensions Between Them

Key Thinker 1: Simone de Beauvoir:

Known as the first existential feminist.
Externalism set the freedom of the individual against the constrictions placed on him/her by the moral and religious world by opposing them their own will upon life.
Also developed the idea of women as Other. The idea was that men had characterised women as different, but different in a way of men’s choosing not the choice of women themselves
She rejected the notion that girls are born without any nurturing instinct rather, she asserts that they learn it from their parents and from their schooling. Their freedom to choose their own way of life is removed almost from birth. The position they play in society has been determined by men.
Her solution to the plight of women was for women to be granted as the opportunity to make as many choices as men and to be able to escape marriage. They must seek sexual liberation and freedom from the nuclear family
“One is not born but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilisation that produces this creature.”

Key Thinker 2: bell hooks:

A radical black American feminist, best known for her work in intersectionality.
She says that society is completely disfigured by inequality in general. Diverse groups, not just women suffer from inequality.
She thinks that for women to have equality, all of society must have equality.
hook criticises many feminists for not recognising this reality. They concentrate too much on women. She thinks that for black women to achieve equality, black people must gain equality first. This is true of many groups such as gay men.
Men have a valid role to play because they can enter the struggle against inequality of all groups.
hooks thought that women had been taught by the patriarchy to hate themselves. “…patriarchal thinking to see ourselves as always and only in competition with one another in patriarchal approval”
Two elements hooks had: A more equal society so the disadvantages women face can be reduced and eliminated & men must understand the patriarchy that they are imposing whilst women must break free of the preconceptions about themselves.
She belongs mainly to the contemporary branch of the movement known as post-modern feminism as she is attempting to break the movement free of its traditional perspective and to accept modern realities.

Key Thinker 3: Sheila Rowbotham:

A leading English socialist feminist, who thought that Marxists took a narrow view of the oppression of women by confining themselves to analysing the role of women in industrial capitalism.
She wrote one of the best-known statements in feminist literature when she said: “Men will often admit other women are oppressed but not you” – this implied that men cannot really understand the nature of oppression they are imposing on women.
Rowbotham sees the best hope for women lies in a socialist future; under capitalism, there is little hope that women will ever be able to escape from patriarchal society. She points out that the greatest advances for women have taken place after socialist revolutions. The capitalist society in the 1980s appeared to offer widening opportunities for women but it did not offer ultimate liberation and little progress was made. Women remained a cheap source of labour.
She is a Marxist and critic of Marxism. The inferior position of women is seen by Marxists as economically determined with which she agrees but she adds that this is too narrow. Women are oppressed in the home and the wider culture. She thinks women must be freed from oppression from within the home too.
She thinks that it is much of a task for men to end the oppression than for women. Women cannot do It in their home, they need men to become willing to relinquish their dominant position by seeing patriarchy for what it is really for.

Key Thinker 4: Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

Expressed her vision of early feminism in both fictional works and scholarly writings.
Gilman set up an attack on those who suggested that Darwin’s theories could be used to justify male domination of society
Survival of the fittest suggested that it was biologically inevitable that men should be the dominant sex because they were more suited to be competitive in nature and being stronger. Gilman argued that this was not the case because of the nature of economic activity had changed so much.
She thought that there were no reason women could not play an equal part in society, she asserted that women had the equal brain power to men and this justified their equality in modern society.
Women could be liberated is a lay inequality of opportunity and therefore a full place in the world of employment. She understood that girls are socialised from an early age at home or at school to take on the role of motherhood and homemaking rather than thinking of a wider range and career in the economic world outside the home. Their homes in the home are culturally determined – not biologically.
She wrote “the labour of women in the house certainly enables men to produce more wealth than they could otherwise, and in this way, women are economic factors in society. But so are horses”
She was concerned that child-rearing and housework amounted to domestic slavery. She campaigned for the destruction of the traditional nuclear family and its replacement by forms of communal living whereby child rearing and housework would be shared both among women and men thus freeing women for a wider role in society.

Key Thinker 5: Kate Millett:

An American radical feminist. She was first active in the National Organisation for Women but she quickly moved towards a more radical form of politics.
She sees the dominance of men in terms of both sexism – an entrenched belief in male superiority and heterosexualism – the idea that heterosexual relationships are superior to gay relationships.
Her main contention in Sexual Politics was that it is necessary for women to find sexual liberation first if they are to achieve liberation in general life. Heterosexual relationships are political in a patriarchal society because they involve men exercising power over women.
She also analysed women’s place in society. She thought that when one group oppresses another, the result is political in nature and the solution must be the liberation of the oppressed group.
Some of her ideas chime with ideas of socialist ideas with working-class women “the toil of working-class women is more readily accepted as “need”, if not always by the working class itself. It serves the purpose of making cheap labour in factory and low-grade service… It fails to threaten patriarchy financially or psychologically.”
She also implied in the above quotations that Millett criticised parts of the feminist movement for being concerned largely with problems relating to middle-class women.

Summary Of Key Thinkers:
	Human Nature:	The State:	Society:	The Economy:
Simone De Beauvoir:	Gender differences are created by men in society. They are not natural	The state reinforces a culture that prevents women from expressing their true freedom and identity	De Beauvoir’s existentialism dominated her feminism. Social constraints prevent individuals, not just women from attaining self-realisation and true freedom	Men’s domination of economic life restricts the life choices open to women
bell hooks:	Women, in common with men, have multiple identities and therefore experience multiple forms of oppression	The state is dominated by white males and therefore reflects and reinforces their dominant position in society	Society is full of complex relationships between different minorities. To resolve social conflict, love between different minority cultures must be established	Women living in poverty have problems that middle-class women do not face. The liberation of the poor is an economic as well as a social issue
Sheila Rowbotham:	Women’s consciousness of the world is created by men	The state is the servant of capitalism	The nature of society is economically determined. Society reflects the dominant position of both capitalists and men in general	Rowbotham has a Marxist perspective. Women are a low-paid reverse army of labour
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:	The biological differences between men and women are irrelevant. Women can compete equally with men.	Gilman had no especially distinctive views on the state.	Society has always assigned inferior roles to women. In modern society, this no longer has any justification	The domestic servitude of women allowed men to dominate the outside economic world.
Kate Millett:	Women are all capable of freeing themselves from male oppression by engaging in lesbian relationships	The state is merely the agent of patriarchy. It is part of the problem but not the solution	Modern society is completely characterised by patriarchy, which is all pervasive and infests both the private and public sphere.	Millett is a quasi-socialist but this is not fundamental to her feminism.