Feminists theory

Waves of feminists theory and classical roots

What are the waves?

• The waves in feminist theory are the various iterations of its activism and theoretical developpement.

What are the 4 waves of feminist theory?

• The first wave of feminism activism is centered around women’s struggle to vote and their desire to participate in the political process.
• The second wave of feminism activism is centered around the translation of women’s political rights into economic and social equality with men.
• The third wave of feminism use intersectionality to express the critique of all types of women about race and class priviledge.
• The fourth wave of feminism seeks to challenge gender as a defining concept in people's lives.

With whom may classical roots of feminism theory be associated with?

• Classical roots of feminism theory can be asociated with Harriet Martineau and Alexandra Kollontai.

Who is Harriet Martineau?

• Harriet Martineau was a British social theorist and sometimes considered the first sociologists.
• She claimed that when it came to the treatment of women, Americans had fallen below the practices of certain parts of the old world.
• She claimed that women were to devote themselves to marriage and religion as passive reproducers of society. She claimed that women’s occupations were in the hime and in domestic services.
• Martineau’s work attempts to challgence dualism(mind/body, health/illness)
• Martineau actually defined sociooigy before comte and Durkheim.

Who is Annandale?

• Annaandale wrote about Martineau. Annandale claimed that a gender/health framework may exist in Martineau’s work.
• Annandale puts an emphasis on the social as a way to reject biological determnnism and thus exclude the body.
• Annadale argued that health was essential for the first wave of feminism.

Who is Alexandra Kollontai?

• Alexandra Kollontai identified existing social relations and class relations as the determinant of various aspects of life in society. Including the subordination and oppression of women.
• Kollontai argued that capitalism is contributing to the liberation of women. But she wondered if women could be fully free under capitalism(having to sell their labor,etc).
• She also divided women into two groups. Those closer to the bourgroise class and those closer to the proletariat. Both are of the same gender but not the same due to their class.
• Kollontai believed that underlying structures had to be addressed for there to be a true emancipation of women.

Contemporary approaches of feminists theory

What is gender difference?

• The gender difference can be traced to either:
  • Biology
  • The existential need of human beings to produce an “other”
  • The different cultures men and women create
  • The roles social insitututions have for men and women
  • And the differences born out of interaction.
• All feminist theories have to confornt the essentialist argument that states men and women have fundamental differences that are immutable.

What are the General Feminist Theories of Difference?

• The General Feminist Theories of Difference are cultural feminism, ethic of care and rights and existantial(phenomenological) feminism.
  • Cultural feminism is the feminsit theory that explores and celebrates the social value of women’s distinctive ways of being.
  • Ethic of care is invoked by women, while ethic of rights is the standard used by men.
  • Existential feminism is a feminsit theory of difference that sees people as being born into a world shaped by a culture that reflects only the male experience while ignoring and marginalixing the female experiences

What is gender inequality?

• Gender euquality is the feminist theory that argues that women placement in most situation is less privileged than that of men.
• A theory of gender inequality is liberal feminism.
  • Liberal feminism argues that women may claim equality with men based on the essential human capacity for reasoning and morals.
  • Liberal feminist also argues that gender inequality is the result of sexist division of labor and that equality can be produced by transforming the division of labor.

What is Radical Feminsim?

• Radical feminism is a social organization and gendre oppression theory that argues that women everywhere are oppressed by violence and the threat of violence.

What are structural oppresion theories?

• Structural oppression theories are theories that recognize that oppression occurs when some groups of people above benefit from controlling other groups below them.
• Structural oppression theories focus on the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, racism and heterosexism.
• An example of a structural oppression theory is socialist feminism.
  • Socialist feminist is an effort to develop a unified theory that focuses on the role of capitalism and patriarchy in creating a large-scale structure that oppresses women.

What is Dorothy Smith’s feminist model of production?

• Dorothy Smith’s feminist model of production explores the relations of ruling.
  • Relations of ruling are the complexe social activities that attempt to control human social production.
• Dorothy smith also focuses on Bifurcated conscouousnnes.
  • Bifurcated consciousness is a type of consciousness of women that reflects the division of their everyday life into two realities. The reality of their life and the reality of social typifications.

What is Raewyn Connell’s Hegemonic Masculinity?

• Raewyn’s Connell’s Hegemonic Masculinity is when social groups create an ideal type of masculinity and equate it with leadership.
• The Hegemonic male is a symbol of the culture. While women get positions based on their femininity.

What are some critics of Hegemonic Masculinity?

• It dosent focus on the core project of feminism which is the liberation of women.
• It dosent explain male dominance.
• Lacks some degree of explanation.

What is intersectionality?

• Intersectionality is the study of how the different social identities of a person are affected by various systems of oppression sometimes all at the same time.

What are theories of intersectionality?

• Theories of intersectionality understand certain arrangements as hierarchical structures based in unfair power relations.
• Theories of intersectionality put an emphasis ont the link between ideology and power.
• A word seen in theories of intersectionality is the word “othering”
  • Othering us the act of defining a group membre as unnacptble in other words as an “other”.
• Theories of intersectionality have developed a critique of earlier feminists writings centred around including more categories.
• The theories of intersectionality have had 3 significant impacts on sociology.
  • First It is not almost impossible to write about gender without talking about the dimensions of privilege and oppression
  • Second, the idea multiple masculinites has replaced the idea of masculinity
  • Theories of intersectionality are now the central model of the study of gender at the global level.

What is the Matrix of Domination?

• The matrix of domination was developed by Patricia Hill Collins and it argues that the intersections of social inequalities alters the experience of being a woman. So basically, some things affect a women’s experience more than others.

Black Feminist Thought

What is Epistemology?

• Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. Especially in regards to its methods, validity and scope.
• Epistemology is the study of what separates justified belief from just opinion.

What are the three dimensions of oppression?

• The three dimensions of oppression are economic oppression, political oppressions and ideological oppression.

What is the relation between Black Feminist Theory and Critical Social Theory?

• The relation between black feminist theory and critical social theory is that black women have produced social thought designed to combat oppression.
• The political, economic and ideological oppression of black women supressed the intelectual production of black feminist thinkers.

What is the group membership in feminist theory?

• The assumptions on which group memberships all ignore Black women’s realities.
• It argues that whiteness was used as the base for feminist thought and that malessness was used as the base for black social and political thought.

What are the three objectives of black feminsit thought?

• The three objectives of black feminist thought are:
  • To summarize core themes in black feminist thought
  • Using the race, class and gender studies prardigm
  • Developping an epistemological framework to assess assumptions.

Emergent Strategie of Adrienne Maree Brown

What is Emergent Strategie?

• Emergent strategie is how a person intentionally changes in ways that grows their capacity to embody the liberated world they long for.
• It depends on adaptation with intention and imagination.Emergent strategie is to imagine a change and then implement it.
• Some principles of emerging strategy are:
  • Fractal
  • Adaptive
  • Interdependance
  • Non-linear and iterative
  • Resilicence and transformative
  • Creating more possibilities