Several Types of Feminism

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Before talking about feminism, we must talk about the word patriarchy which refers to any form of social power given disproportionately to men.

The word patriarchy literally means the rule of the Male or Father. The structure of the patriarchy is always considered the power status of male, authority, control of the male and oppression, domination of the man, suppression, humiliation, sub-ordination and subjugation of the women.

Patriarchy originated from Greek word, pater (genitive from patris, showing the root pater-meaning father and arche- meaning rule), is the anthropological term used to define the sociological condition where male members of a society tend to predominates in positions of power, the more likely it is that a male will hold that position. The term patriarchy is also used in systems of ranking male leadership in certain hierarchical churches and Russian orthodox churches. Finally, the term patriarchy is used pejoratively to describe a seemingly immobile and sclerotic political order.

Exploitation which originates from Patriarchy Understanding power relationship between men and women, women and women, men and men, control of the head of the family on the rest of the members.

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To understand how the patriarchy concept works we have to examine two interacting dimensions of social system. The formation of gendered identities and the reproduction of gendered social structure. The first is about socialization- how individuals are taught culturally appropriate attitudes and behaviors. Families, schools, religious institutions and media are important sources of this socialization. The second dimension is about systemic or structural control: how practices and institutions keep gender hierarchy in place by generating conformity and compliance. Moral and intellectual control is affected through privileging certain belief system (e.g.

Myth, religion and even science). More direct social control is affected through job markets, laws, governance and physical coercion.

From birth on, the way we are treated depends on our gender assignment, and we learn in multiple ways how to adopt gender –appropriate behaviors. There are few occasions or interactions where our patriarchy is truly irrelevant; our names; clothes; games; rewards and punishments; the attention we get, the subjects we study; the knowledge claims we make, the jobs we work at, and the power we have are all profoundly shaped by gender expectations. As individuals, we differ considerably in the extent to which we conform to cultural expectations.. But none of us escape gender socialization or the systemic efforts of gender inequality. Most significant it is not only females but males as well who suffer from the rigid gender roles.

Patriarchy Stereotypes And Dichotomies Stereotypes are pictures in our heads that filter how we ‘see’. They are composite images that attributes-often incorrectly and always too generally- certain characteristics to whole groups of people. Thus groups are seen as other want or expect to see them, not necessarily as they are.

The over simplification in stereotypes encourages us to ignore complexity and contradictions that might prompt us to challenge the status quo. The use of stereotypes suggests that particular behaviors are timeless and inevitable. Generally, dominant patriarchy stereotypes depict men/ masculinity as “strong, independent, worldly, aggressive, ambitious, logical and rough” and women /femininity as the opposite: “weak, dependent, passive, naïve, not ambitious, illogical and gentle”. This exemplifies the binary nature of models of gender, constructing man/ masculinity and woman/ femininity as two poles of dichotomy- oppositions- that define each other. Through this either or lens women are not simply different from men: “women” is defined by what is “ not man” and characteristics of femininity are those that are inappropriate to or contradict masculinity. gender stereotypes interact with western patterns of thinking to institutionalize a critical and typically conservative pattern in how we think about, act upon, and therefore shape reality. In Cynthia Epstein’s word, “ no aspect of social life- whether the gathering of crops, the ritual of religion, 2/13

the formal dinner party or the organization of government- is free from the dichotomous thinking that casts the world in categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’.

An interaction of gender stereotypes, dichotomies, hierarchies, and masculinism/ androcentrism powerfully filters our understanding of social reality. Because we rarely question the dualism of male- female, we fail to see how the male –dominated hierarchy of masculine- feminine is socially constructed rather than natural recognizing the power of these filtering devices is an important first step towards analyzing their effects accurately and improving our knowledge of the world we both produce and produced by.

Domestic violence is a hidden problem, but it can easily define the power relationship between men and women. The term domestic violence include psychological or mental violence; which can consist of repeated verbal abuse; harassment; confinement and deprivation of physical, financial and personal resources. The forms of violation may vary from one society and culture to another. It is difficult to estimate the actual incidence of violence in the household. Families, communities deny the problem, fearing that an admission of its existence is an assault on the integrity of the family.

Victims are often reluctant to report that they have been violated; they may fail to report abuse because they feel ashamed of being assaulted by their husbands; they may be afraid; they may have a sense of family loyalty.

Violence within a household does not remain untouched by political ideologies of violence and valour or cultural dimensions of caste. Histories of rajput celebrations of violence against the self, for example, enter the household not only through men’s violence against women, but women’s violence against themselves through their understandings of sati (self – immolation), which is not a historical issue alone, but a contemporary “real choice” for women (sangari and vaid 1981, sunder ranjan 1993). Equally caste is critically in the way it generates violence between women and men as well as men.(Anandi and Jeyaranjan 2002). Social and cultural contexts make the question of men’s role in violence a problematic issue, and one that need to be located through a series of subjective, agentic position’s, as perpetrators, victims, witnesses, and narrators of violence.

Domestic violence is also hazardous for family members or others who seek to intervene, who may be hurt or killed by the abusive man. Children in families where the wife is abused run the risk of being injured or killed by the abuser if they become involved in an accident of violence, either by chance or in an attempt to protect their mother. A research study suggests that observing parental conflict and violence during childhood is ‘significantly predictive of serious adult personal crimes like assault, attempted rape, attempted murder, kidnapping and murder. The origins of violence are located in the social structure and the complex set of values traditions, customs, habits and beliefs, which relate to gender inequality.

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The victim of the violence is most frequently the woman and the perpetrator the man and the structures of society act to confirm this inequality.

Violence against women is an outcome of the belief, fostered in most cultures, that men are superior and that the women with whom they live are their possessions to be treated, as the men consider appropriate.

The dominant gender ideology fuses gender stereotypes with masculinist beliefs about families, sexuality, divisions of labor, and constructions of power and authority. The belief that men are by nature aggressive and sexually demanding and women are naturally passive and sexually submissive encourages other beliefs (man can’t help it, women actually want it) that legitimate systemic sexual abuse. Ti “excuses” the pattern of male rape behavior and controls the behavior of girls and women, who attempt to avoid or diminish the effects of this violence. Although some males are targets of assault because of their cultural choices, class, or ethnicity, all females are threatened and therefore socially controlled by virtue of simply being female in a masculinist world.

At the same time that “women are mothers by nature” and that “a women’s place is in the home” legitimate society’s holding women disproportionately responsible for child care, maintenance of family relations, and household tasks while denying that is socially necessary work. Gender ideology may promote women as physically strong and capable of backbreaking work (e.g. slave women, frontier women), as competent to do men’s work (e.g.

Rosie the Riveter in world war II), as dexterous and immune to boredom (e.g. electronic assembly industries), or as full-time housewives and devoted mothers (e.g. post-war demands that women vacate jobs in favor of returning soldiers and repopulate the nation). Ideologies are reconfigured to suit the changing interests of those in power, not those whose lives are most controlled by them.

Ideologies often couched in terms of biological determinism, positing narrow genetics or biological causes for complex social behaviors. In the real world, human behavior is always mediated by culture-by systems of meaning and the values they incorporate. The role that biology actually plays varies dramatically and can never be determined without reference to cultural context. Ideological beliefs may exaggerate the role of biological factors or posit biological factors where none need be involved.

Ideologies are most effective when most taken for granted. They resist correction and critique by making the status quo appear natural, “the way thing are”, not the result of human intervention and practice. Like stereotypes, ideologies depoliticize what are in fact differences in power that serve some more than others. Religion, myths, educational system, advertising and the media are involved in reproducing stereotypes.

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Ideologies that make the world we live in seen inevitable and, for some, even desirable. The point is not that that world is as bad as it could be that ideologies prevent us from seeing the world as it really is.

Our final point is that much of our behavior unintentionally reproduces status quo inequalities. We cannot simply locate an enemy to blame for institutional discrimination and its many consequences. Although there are no doubt individuals who activity pursue discriminatory policies and the perpetuation of injustice, few of us would identify with such a characterization. Most of us believe in the possibilities of a better world and variously engage in working towards it. But stereotypes and ideologies play a particular role in shaping our expectations and behaviors. We begin to be socialized into these beliefs systems early in life, as well before we have the capacity to reflect critically on their implication for our own or other’s lives. Because ideologies are supported and sustained by those with power in our societies, there are powerful incentives for subscribing to these belief systems-and negative consequences of not doing so, unless something or someone prompts us to “see things differently”, these beliefs system become unconscious assumptions.

They serve to reinforce the statuesque and blunt criticism of it. As such, they involve all of us in the often-unintentional reproduction of social hierarchies that are not in fact inevitable but transformable. If we are to change the world, we have to change structures as well as how we think about them. Understanding the role of stereotypes and ideologies is crucial for both.

We need to address a dimension of relationships that patriarchy structure often hides or mutes and look more closely at the every day practices of men. There is a need to explore men’s perceptions of supportive practices.

Perhaps we need to ask whether men already have notions of supportive practice “for” the family.

The term feminism explains political, cultural, and economic movements that intend to authorize equal rights and legal guardians for women. In the course of time, feminist activists have campaigned for affairs such as women’s legal rights, especially in regard to contracts, property, and voting; body integrity and autonomy; abortion and reproductive rights, including contraception and prenatal care; protection from domestic violence, sexual harassment, and rape; workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; and against all forms of discrimination women encounter.

Theoretical Approaches To Understand feminism

Liberal Feminist Radical Feminist

Socialist Feminist 5/13

Liberal Feminist Liberal feminism advocates equal rights for women .It was the first of the feminism to develop, growing out of liberalism which originated in the eighteenth century. Liberal feminist, who are most active in equal rights movements; seek to eliminate these discrimination by eliminating the emphasis on gender difference and replacing it with an emphasis on sameness. They argue that women are equal to men because they are essentially the same as men in regard to capacities for aggression, ambition, strength and rationality.

Liberal feminist such as Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) in her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Betty Friedman in her book, Feminine Mystique (1963) have tended to understand female subordination in terms of the unequal distribution of rights and opportunities in society. The ‘equal –right feminism’ is essentially reformist.

It is more concerned with the reform of the public sphere that is with enhancing the legal and political status of women and improving their educational and career prospects, then with recording ‘private’ or domestic life. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first great philosopher of liberal feminism arguing that equality of rights and opportunities should be extended to women in all areas of life.

Although the first liberal philosophers were men, writing for and about men and often assuming that women were irrational creatures and that their irrationality was less than human, it was inevitable that educated women would be inspired by this philosophy and recognize its relevance to their own lives. Liberal feminists desire to free women from the oppressive, patriarchal gender roles. They stress that patriarchy defines lives by placing them in “women acceptable roles” that are in line with feminine ideals.

Classical liberal feminist want to overcome these obstacles by erasing gender discriminatory laws and policies from the books, enabling women to compete equally with men. Welfare liberals, on the other hand, want society to believe that women should be eliminating socio economic and legal barriers.

Unfortunately, liberal feminism has been able to concentrate only on the legislation aspect in the fight against patriarchy. Critics argue that even within its own terms liberal feminism has failed. They argue that women have manifestly failed to gain real equality with men in the worlds of work and politics, for the publicity received by a few token women conceals the overwhelming predominance of men in positions of power and authority .

Despite their effort, women do not earn much and the goal of full legal equality has not been met yet. Objections to liberal feminism from other feminists are that it is basically reformist in nature are that it ignores the realities of class and social oppression as well as the deeply entrenched nature of patriarchy and it accepts male values rather than challenging them from women centered perspective.

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Radical Feminists Radical feminist approach gender inequality quite differently from liberal feminist. Rather than insisting that women are the same as men because they share masculine capabilities, radical feminists celebrate feminine traits and argue that men should adopt them. In fact radical feminist see masculinity, with its emphasis on aggression and violence directed by men against women and men, as the problem, not the solution for liberating women and other subordinated groups.

Thus, a strategy of some radical feminists, often referred to as cultural feminist, is to revalue previously denigrated aspect of femininity, making them the norm to which all people should aspire in pursuit of a better world.

Radical feminist is an approach to feminist thinking and action, which maintains that the sex/ gender is the fundamental/ root cause of women’s oppression (radical means of the roots). Radical in radical feminism is used as an adjective, meaning the root; radical feminists seek the root cause of women oppression. These concepts were first developed in the late sixties as a significant part of the second wave feminism 1967, the first radical women’s groups were formed in America the influenced by Maoist ideas current, in left wing circles.

They came forward to express and share personal experience so as to bring out their political implications and to develop a political strategy for change. This approach is famous as ‘consciousness raising’. However, originally, it was a self –consciously political strategy, based on the premise that women’s problems were shared and they could only be ended by collective political action. As new groups spread rapidly, the key message was that, ‘personal is political’.

To radical feminists, women’s oppression is the most fundamental form of oppression. It is the model for all other kinds of oppression. The attitudes of men must be changed and a state of equality made manifest in the power dynamic between men and women. Radical feminist theory provides the basis for a women-centered understanding of the world. Radical feminist theory tries to explore domination both at public and private sphere. It seeks to analyze how it is maintained in order that it may be successfully challenged.

Socialist Feminists Combing the insights of radical feminism with Marxist analysis, Socialist feminism is committed to the abolition of both class and gender. It aims to overthrow the current social order to end all forms of exploitation, and create a society in which maleness and femaleness are socially irrelevant.

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Socialist feminists like to challenge the ideologies of capitalism and patriarchy. Much like the views of radical feminist believe that although class, race, ethnicity and region divide women, they all experience the same oppression simply for being women. Socialist feminist believe that the way to end this oppression is to put an end to class and gender.

Women must work side-by-side men in the political sphere. There must see each other as equals in all sphere of life.

Socialist feminist encourage us to “think” rather than embrace, gender dichotomies. In the process, work and welfare are redefined by expanding the idea of work and exonerating the notion of welfare. The latter would no longer be a system of meager handouts but a societal priority to increase all people’s productivity in equitable, healthful, mutually respectful and life-affirming ways.

Thus, socialist feminists are interested in undermining the power-over system of capitalist patriarchy through empowerment. However, they believe this can be accomplished best by a societal and global redistribution of power, as opposed to placing their hopes in the empowering capacity of feminine traits. As a result, socialist feminist are most active in socialist revolutions and women’s economic movement s, on welfare, women in development, and women in the ‘global factory’.

Through this socialist feminist, like radical feminist, have also criticized state militaries. However, socialist, socialist feminists, tend to emphasize that the military-industrial complex impoverishes women by extracting resources from state and global economies that should go to meet basic needs. Women entering the military in greater numbers will not change this imbalance of resources between military and the civilian economy.

The central theme of socialist feminism is that patriarchy can only be understood in the light of social and economic factors. The classic statement of this argument was developed in Friedrich Engel’s, ‘the origins of the family, private property and the state (1884). Engels (1820-95). The life long friend and collaborator of Karl Marx suggested that the position of women in society had fundamentally changed with the development of capitalism and the institution of private property.

In pre-capitalist societies, family life had been communistic and ‘mother right’- the inheritance of property and social position thorough the female line- was widely observed. Capitalism, however, being based upon the ownership of private property by men, had overthrown ‘mother right’ and brought about what Engel called ‘the world historical defeat of the female sex’. Like many subsequent socialist feminists, Engel believed the ‘female oppression operated through the institution of the family. The first class oppression that appears in history’. Engel argued ‘coincides with the

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development of the antagonism between men and women in monogamous marriage, the first class oppression coincides with that of female sex by the male.

Engel believed that class exploitation is a deeper and more significant process than sexual oppression. Women are oppressed not by men, but by the institution of private property by capitalism. It also suggests that women’s emancipation will be a by-product of a social revolution in which capitalism is over thrown and replaced by socialism. Women seeking liberation should therefore recognize that the ‘class war’. Hence feminist should devote their energies to the labour movement rather than support a separate and divisive women’s movement.

However, modern socialist feminists have found it increasingly difficult to accept the primacy of class politics over sexual politics. For them, sexual oppression is every bit as important as class exploitation.

Now with the change of time we have Post Modern Feminists which are discussed below:Post Modern Feminists

Cultural Feminists Eco Feminists Black Feminists Lesbian Feminists Cultural Feminists Cultural feminists seek to remove the negative connotations from such feminine traits as passivity, nurturance, emotionalism, and dependence and to redefine them more positively. Women’s purported passivitydestructive if it keeps from acting politically against their oppression- is positive to the degree that it promoted a desire for accommodation and thus a nonviolent resolution of conflicts. Similarly, women’s supposed proclivity to nurture- problematic when it comes to tying women exclusively to reproductive labor- is positive as an ethic of care that extends to children, the poor and victimized, and the planet as a whole. Indeed, radical feminist generally argue that the near worship of masculine rationality has promoted an instrumentalism that threatens the very life of the planet and its inhabitants.

Cultural feminists women’s greater tendency towards emotion and intuition offset this rationalistic calculus that has no feeling for life and, thus, no concern for the destructiveness of instrumentalism.

Eco Feminism 9/13

Some feminists have been concerned to connect their ideas with an environmentist outlook, developing the perspective of eco-feminism. These thinkers, and associated activists groupings, argue that the domination of nature is the product of the same masculine drives that result also in the subordination of women. The presentation of nature as embodying feminine traits that require male guidance is certainly a familiar element within contemporary culture. Some economic feminists embrace the notion of women as being, who, for biological reasons, are closer to the rhythms and ways of the natural world, and celebrate the ideal of the earth mother. (Warren 1994; collard and contrucci, 1988). Within academic feminism, eco-feminism has led to the reconfiguration of the concept of patriarchal control, so that it incorporates too the impulse to exploit the natural environment.

Eco-feminism is a relatively unusual position within the women’s movement, it does draw attention to several intellectual and political overlaps between feminism and ecologism. Both remain suspicious about the processes and institutions of the conventional political world, and the social movement’s, which have given rise to these ideologies, have developed an ethos of grass roots, peaceful and spontaneous protest. On the other hand, some feminists believe that eco-feminism is problematic because they suspect that the ideal of the earth mother is a variant of patriarchal views of women.

The idea that feminism offers a distinctive and valuable approach to green issues has grown to such a point that ecofeminsim has developed into one of the major philosophical schools of environmentalists thought. Its basic theme is that ecological destruction has its origins in patriarchy: nature is under threat not from human kind but from men and the institutions of male power. Perhaps the newest form of women’s political action is in the area of saving the environment, from the tree-hugging Chipko movement in India to the tree-planting greenbelt movement in Kenya and the nature worshiping eco feminist movement in North America, women are join the move to stop the rape of mother earth. For third world rural women saving the environment is crucial to their economic survival. As the primary food, fuel, and water gatherers, these women have particularly strong interest in reversing deforestation, desertification, and water pollution.

Black Feminism The black feminist movement grew out of, and in response to, the black liberation movement and the women’s movement. In an effort to meet the needs of black women who felt they were being racially oppressed in the women’s and sexually oppressed in the black liberation movement, the black feminist movement was formed. All too often, ‘black’ was equated with black men and ‘women’ was equated with white women. As a result, black women were an invisible group whose existence and needs were 10/13

ignored. The purpose of the movement was to develop theory which could adequately address the way race, gender, and class were interconnected in their lives and to take action to stop racist, sexist, and classist discrimination. Black women who participated in the black liberation movement and the women’s movement were often discriminated against sexually and racially. Although neither all the black men nor all the white women in their respective movements were sexist and racist, enough of those with powerful influence were able to make the lives of the black women in these groups almost unbearable. This section investigates the treatment of black women in these two movements and aims to show how, due to the inability of black men and white women to acknowledge and denounce their oppression of black women, the movement were unable to meet the needs of black women and prompted the formation of the black feminist movement, which though it had been gathering momentum for sometime, marks its “birth” with the 1973 founding of the national black feminist organization in New York.

Lesbianism It is incorrect to assume that lesbianism was identified solely with radical feminism, since many contemporary feminists have endorsed it as an option even if they themselves choose to be heterosexual. For example, at its 1971 national conference the national organization for women formally acknowledged “the oppression of lesbians as a legitimate concern of feminism”still by the mid 1970s radical feminists had come to view Lesbianism as a political statement against the oppression by men of women in general, and of alternative-life style women in particular.

Charlotte Bunch commented on the political aspects of Lesbianism/ feminism in The Furies, a network paper started in 1972 by a Lesbian collective as follows: “the Lesbian has recognized that giving support and love to men over women perpetuates the system that oppresses her…… women identified Lesbianism is, then, more than a sexual preference, it is a political choice . The new group drew national attention by taking the position that lesbianism was the purest expression of feminism. The group articulated its ideology in “ the woman identified woman”, now one of the definitive position papers on contemporary lesbianism feminism. In it radical lesbians stated: “As the source of self-hate and the lack of real self are rooted in our male-given identity, we must create a new sense of self … it is the primacy of women relating to women, of women creating a new consciousness of and with each other which is at the heart of women’s liberation”.

Lesbians themselves spearheaded drives to create alternative living patterns to “help us learn about ourselves and about better ways of living”.

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Elements of separatism and communalism, including work collectives, seemed to coalesce around many of the characteristic features of radical feminism: female autonomy and self sufficiency, freedom from patriarchy dominance, various anti male perspectives, lesbian unity, consciousnessraising tactics and the notion of women as an oppressed class. Inherent in these theories was the belief that association with men of any plane corrupts women; to wit women must define their identity as human beings through contact with others of their sex only. Consequently, liberation could be achieved solely within unorthodox living and working arrangements.

Feminist past is divided into three waves:The first wave, occurring in the 19th and early 20th century, was primarily concerned with women’s right to vote. The second wave, at its height in the 1960s and 1970s, refers to the women’s liberation movement for equal legal and social rights. The third wave, beginning in the 1990s, refers to a continuation of, and a reaction to, secondwave feminism.

First-wave feminism promoted equal contract and property rights for women, opposing ownership of married women by their husbands. By the late 19th century, feminist activism was primarily focused on the right to vote. American first-wave feminism ended with passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1919, granting women voting rights.

Second-wave feminism of the 1960s-1980s focused on affairs of equality and discrimination. The second-wave slogan, “The Personal is Political,” identified women’s cultural and political inequalities as inextricably linked and encouraged women to understand how their personal lives reflected sexist power structures. Betty Friedan was a key player in second-wave feminism. In 1963, her book The Feminine Mystiquecriticized the idea that women could find fulfillment only through childrearing and homemaking. According to Friedan’s New York Times obituary, her book “ignited the contemporary women’s movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world” and “is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.” Friedan hypothesizes that women are victims of false beliefs requiring them to find identity in their lives through husbands and children. This causes women to lose their own identities in that of their family.

Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, responding to anticipated collapse of the second wave and to the reaction against second-wave initiatives. This ideology seeks to challenge the definitions of femininity that grew out of the ideas of the secondwave, arguing that the second-wave over-emphasized experiences of upper middle-class white women. The third-wave sees women’s lives 12/13

as intersectional, demonstrating how race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, and nationality are all significant factors when discussing feminism. It examines affairs related to women’s lives on an international basis.

Also in this new era of working women we’ve got a new wave of feminism in which the primary issues women fight for today are fueled by the previous battles of the women before them –shattering glass ceilings, reproductive rights, as well as new issues brought into the spotlight, such as campus rape, workplace discrimination and sexual harassment.

Empowered by the constant connectivity of the Internet and the strength of the #MeToo movement, a new wave of feminists are speaking out in record numbers against discrimination. A new era for feminism has begun, full of passion, social-influencing power, and demanding change.

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