1. Feminism Perspective

2. What is feminism? No one all encompassing definition
Gender seen as a crucial determining factor in our social experience
Women and men were seen as fundamentally different and these ‘natural differences could not be altered’.

3. What is feminism?
Feminism may be seen as the greatest social force in the 20th Century, but it can be traced back to earlier times.
Common for feminism to be divided into 3 waves
Seen as encompassing different periods of time, seeking different agendas and utilizing different strategies (Calaghan and Lazard (2011p 87)

4. 1st Wave, Term coined retrospectively after
2nd Wave was in common usage
Activity at beginning of 19th Century and into 1st few decades of 20th Century. Existed across Europe, North America, Australia, NZ, India, China Iran and many more.
In Western societies focused on suffrage, women’s rights to own property and have control over their children

5. 2nd Wave Activities beginning in the 1906s – 1980s
Focus - economic equality & to equality of treatment in the workplace and society
Some major campaigns – equal pay, equal opportunities in work and education, legal abortion and later against male violence

6. 3rd Wave
1990s post structuralist ideas – such as sex and gender, transgender politics and antiracist
Celebrates women’s abilities, allows women to seek to be feminine if they chose to express themselves politically, culturally, sexually, diversity.

7. 3rd Wave
Criticism – absence of single cause however the other waves were not unicausal
Feminism for those who have grown up with feminism, who may not realise the benefits they enjoy from the struggles of earlier waves.

8. 5 Strands of feminism Liberal feminism Radical feminism
Marxist/socialist feminism
Black feminism
Postmodern feminism
Not all feminists fit into one category
Each strand outlines key tendencies but there are many perspectives

9. Postmodernism
A body of thought that suggests that it is misleading to make universal claims about the world. Or to try to find one truth or explanation about complex social relations.

10. Feminism
You Tube
Feminism 1
Feminism 2

11. Liberal feminism
Argue that the treatment of women in society violates justice, rationality, citizenship, human rights, equality, and democracy
Much of the discrimination is informal and based on custom, sexist assumptions and prejudices – product of gender conditioning

12. Liberal feminism
Advocate political action and reform – formal legislative changes and educational strategies to challenge stereotypes and prejudices
Need for economic changes to bring about equality – child care costs and refuges for those who experience domestic violence
Need for positive role models ?
Influence of celebrity culture?

13. Liberal feminism Criticisms theory ethnocentric
no real change to the large majority of women despite some reform
Changes to women but on male terms
Margaret Thatcher adopted a traditional masculine style?
Glass ceiling
Systemic nature of oppression in society not acknowledged show only a partial picture ??

14. Radical feminism Associated with women’s liberation movement 1960s
Argued the gender equality is a form of social inequality
Millett (19700 cited in Callaghan and Lazard 2011)argued that society is patriarchal

15. Patriarchal
The rule of men over women and of older men over younger men
Concept provides an insight into many aspects of women’s lives

16. Radical feminism Criticisms
Some argue that identifying men as oppressors and women as exploited is misguided
Others argue that putting women as a universal group masks women’s varied and complex social reality

17. Marxist feminism
Marxist theory has a strong emphasis on economic determinants of social relationships and the links of social class to inequality
Oppression of women linked to capitalist order
Feminist theory - challenges the invisibility of gender in sociological theory

18. Marxist feminism Criticism
No account of female oppression before capitalism
In class struggles women often found
themselves in a secondary role, with little change in relations between male and female

19. Socialist feminism Argue
women’s oppression product of economic needs of capitalism and patriarchal gender theory which existed before capitalism
Family – household system controls women’s access to paid employment
Cost of childcare?

20. Black feminism
Ethnocentric key issues focus on white feminism