Feminism

Feminism

The belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes

Why do we still need it?

• BBC News - Pay gap between men and women failed to improve

• The Guardian - Fewer than 1 in 60 rape cases lead to charges in England

Triple Shift

Women do the emotional, paid and domestic work in the home

Sandwich generation

Due to an ageing population, women are expected to look after their own children and parents

Ann Oakley

• Cereal packet family - the image of a normal family that was portrayed in ads at the time of writing - critically examines this idea

• Conventional family is a form is a form of social control - people expected to live in these families, controlling them by making it harder to live an alternate life

Radical feminists

Delphy and Lenoard (1992):

• Family is an economic system that oppresses women

• Family members do not work for themselves, but for the head of the household

Greer (2000)

• There are non-economic aspects to the exploitation of women

• Being a wife is the most important female role

• Married men score higher on psychological well-being tests compared to women, single women tend to be more content than married women

• Families are less stable now - high levels of divorce, women are now rejecting the patricharchal institution of marriage

Is it equal?

• Time budget studies: Women do twice as much domestic work as men

• Women are still expected to care for children

• Provide ‘their emotional and sexual well-being’ for their husbands

• Provide ‘trouble free sex’ for men

• Control their own emotions so they can provide emotional care for husbands

• Husbands get more leisure time

Marxist Feminism

• Society controlled by the ‘bourgeoisie’ - predominantly men

• Women distract men from the exploitation from work by ensuring they are the ‘king of the castle’

• Raise children into the ruling class ideology

• Margaret Benston (1972) - wives produce cheap labour for employees, childcare they do is unpaid

• Fran Ansley (1972) - Women suffer from men who are unhappy with work - women are ‘takers of shit’, absorbing the anger of the husbands and cause capitalism to be ignored ( the true cause for frustration)

Liberal Feminism

Jennifer Somerville (2000):

• Women are still disadvantaged in families, but progress has been made

• Women have more choice and freedom over marriage and divorce

• Greater equality within marriage - sharing of domestic and childcare duties

• Equality with equal pay

• Reject the idea that biological differences make women less capable than men and that men are less caring than women