Exploring Gender Key Examples

Simone de Beauvoir

Critiqued women's historic oppression and advocated for women's equality beyond just legal rights, focusing on existential freedom and social structures (e.g., vouched for abortion rights and rights to contraception)

Sukriti Wahi

Intersectional feminism is essential for true equality, addressing overlapping oppressions (race, class, sexuality, ability) that compound discrimination beyond gender alone.

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Single-axis frameworks (white women for sexism; Black men for racism) erase Black women's compounded discrimination; rooted in Black feminism/CRT as provisional tool to analyze interlocking power structures and build solidarity

Barbara Smith

Influenced by Black Marxism, critiques white feminism as racist & Civil Rights as sexist/homophobic; recognizes simultaneity of interlocking oppressions (race/sexuality/class), requiring destruction of capitalism, imperialism, & patriarchy for all liberation.

Spelman

Critiques gender realism with the particularity argument, claiming it wrongly separates gender from race, class, ethnicity, and nationality. If gender were truly separable, all women would experience womanhood identically, which does not hold true given diverse realities

MacKinnon

Defined masculinity as sexual dominance while femininity as sexual submissiveness. Argued that genders are “created through the eroticization of dominance and submission.

Lauren Berland and Michael Warners

A powerful social structure assuming universal heterosexuality, extending beyond mere ideology, prejudice, or anti-gay phobia. It permeates everyday social arrangements, making straightness the unquestioned norm.

Edward Said

Depicts 'Orient' as sexual escape from white male self/Western morality; interrogates Orient/Occident divide, critiques erasure of the Other from modernity's history, challenges modernity, reveals West's neutralization/justification of domination/exploitation.

Reina Lewis and Sara Mills

Femininity/female stereotyping entangled with anti-colonial nationalism (women signify pre-colonial tradition/untouched domestic space); assesses gendered dimensions of colonialism.

Mohanty

Western feminism homogenizes "Third World Woman" as victimized/ignorant/tradition-bound (vs. Western women as modern/educated); challenges coherent "women" category, critiques appropriation of colonized women, calls for coalitions across class/race/nation.

Rajan

Postcolonial Indian female subjectivity shaped by colonial/anti-colonial forces tied to nation-state; seeks alternative subjectivities, displacing sati debates (choice vs. force) to focus on embodied subjects of pain/choice to live.

McCormack

Non-Romani "gypsylorists" dominate Romani representation; 10-12M Romani voices silenced in academia/policy; battered Romani women excluded from feminist/Romani discourses; white European feminism ignores anti-Romani racism, isolating Romani feminists.

bell hooks

White women didn't treat Black women as equals; Black voices only heard when echoing dominant discourse; paternalistic/patronizing attitudes objectified Black women as unequal/inferior.

Quijano

Latin American conquest created Eurocentric world order; modernity inseparable from colonial domination; Colonialism = direct European political/social/cultural control; Coloniality = enduring power patterns (culture/labor/knowledge) persisting beyond formal colonies.

Govender

Masculinity as changing social construct from historical/cultural influences; Hegemonic = legitimizes men's dominance/subordination of women/other men; Complicit = benefits from patriarchy without strong dominance; Consequences: emotional/physical damage, lack of intimacy/trust, violence, risk-taking, heteronormativity.

Paternotte & Kuhar

European campaigns against "gender ideology" (LGBT rights, reproductive rights, sex ed, abortion, same-sex marriage/adoption); organized by transnational CITIZENGO as "grassroots" defending life/family/freedom; self-victimizes as rational voice against "radical lobbies".

Butler

Anti-gender movements weaponize "gender ideology" as fabricated threat to attack feminism, trans rights, and sexual freedom; rooted in fascist tactics that scapegoat marginalized groups during crises, demanding collective defense of gender/sexuality plurality against authoritarian control.

Diane Elson

Argued that we should: Reduce carework, Redistribute between partners/household members, and Recognise payments for care

Lynn Cooke

Human capital model ignores social context (family/culture/policy) shaping gender/class differences in education, employment, wages; male breadwinner policies reinforced women's unpaid work/men's paid work; post-industrial markets shift unpaid labor to low-wage women/immigrants without gender equality.

Esping-Anderson

Welfare states analyzed via state-market relations (who provides welfare?), stratification (income inequality effects), de-commodification (independence from labor market dependency).

Orloff

Analyzes welfare states through state-market-family relations (women's family roles), stratification (welfare's gendered stratifying effects), and challenges de-commodification by highlighting women’s unpaid work—questioning how de-commodification applies when women were never fully commodified in labor markets.