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Unit 2 Politics- Feminism
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What are the core ideas and principles? - -Most of these core ideas and principles are associated with the second wave radical feminism. -Radical feminism introduced new ideas and concepts for discussing and challenging the role of women in society. -Although there has been discussion before it...

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  • February 6, 2024
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  • 2023/2024
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Unit 2 Politics- Feminism
What are the core ideas and principles? - ✔✔✔-Most of these core ideas and principles are associated
with the second wave radical feminism.

-Radical feminism introduced new ideas and concepts for discussing and challenging the role of women
in society.

-Although there has been discussion before it has mostly been arranged around the language of
liberalism or socialism.



5 Key ideas - ✔✔✔-Sex and gender.

-Patriarchy.

-The personal is political.

-Equality and difference feminism.

-Intersectionality.



Sex and Gender - ✔✔✔-A key focus has been on why society generally ascribes the domestic and child-
rearing roles to women.

-Many feminist argue that this is because of the blurring of the terms sex and gender.

-Sex refers to the biological differences between men and women- their body shape, reproductive
organs etc.

-Gender is the innate characteristics of women e.g.; women are sensitive and emotional whilst men are
logical and confident.

-Feminists argue that whilst the differences in sex are clear the differences in gender fully down to
society.

-In different cultures peoples sex is the same but the gendered roles can be very different as can ideas
about masculinity and femininity suggesting they come from society.

-The language and ascribes roles around the ideas women encourage women to be subordinate to men.

-Terms masculine and feminine are used to describe an 'ideal' gender type for men and women to aspire
to. This is a ley way in which society seeks to keep women in a subordinate position.

,-It is then no surprise hat the key characteristics for women to aspire to are to be calm and passive,
compassionate and thoughtful, poised and elegant.

-Virginia Woolf- A Room of One's Own (1929)- 'she was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely
charming She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life.'



Patriarchy - ✔✔✔-This term is used to describe a society that is dominated by men and run in their
interests.

-Most definitions see it as a systematic oppression of women by men suggesting it is pervasive
throughout society.

-In Theorising Patriarchy (1990) Sylvia Walby identified the patriarchy's pervasive and systematic nature
as a "system of interrelated social structures which allow men to exploit women".



Six structures of Patriarchy- Sylvia Walby - ✔✔✔-State.

-Household.

-Violence.

-Paid Work.

-Sexuality.

-Culture.



State - ✔✔✔-Women have less representation or roles in position of power.

-When they are able to access these roles they often reject them due to anti-family working hours or
sexist working places.



Household - ✔✔✔-Women have been conditioned to believe that domesticity is destiny, and have
been discouraged from pursuing occupations that take them out of the home.

-Many feminists agree with Kate Millet's view that 'the family is patriarchy's chief institution'.

, Violence - ✔✔✔-Domestic abuse has only recently been taken seriously in society; in the past, it was
not unheard of for police to consider it a private family matter and not for them to 'interfere'.

-According to statistics, two women are killed every week in England and Wales by a current or former
partner (ONS), one in four women in England and Wales will experience domestic violence in their
lifetimes and 8% of women will suffer domestic violence in any given year.



Paid work - ✔✔✔-When women were allowed to take up jobs, they were pushed towards lower-paid
or part-time roles, or jobs that put them in an assistant position to men- nurses to support doctors,
secretaries to support bosses- or ones that focused their attention on nurturing children, such as in the
education sector.



Sexuality - ✔✔✔-As Germain Greer argued in The Female Eunuch (1970), society forces women to
repress their natural sexual desires and consider them dirty and 'unladylike'.

-Women spend years feeling deviant and abnormal for having normal sexual feelings, then try
desperately to curb and repress their sexual desires.

-At the same time society allows and encourages men to explore the full extent of their sexuality, as a
symbol of masculine virility.



Culture - ✔✔✔-Society has sought to reinforce its message to women through culture.

-Adverts in the 1950s emphasised the view that a woman's primary role was to be a good wife to her
husband by excelling in all things domestic.

-Increasingly, unreasonable expectations of the way 'normal' women should look were imposed through
media usage of size-0 models on catwalks and in advertising, as well as the proliferation of 'lad culture'
magazine.

-Naomi wolf- 'a culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty; it is an
obsession about female obedience'.

-So patriarchal culture uses the media to tell women subtly but powerfully what is expected of them and
make them feel inadequate or abnormal when they are unable to meet these expectations.



The personal is political - ✔✔✔-Feminists distinguish between the public sphere (society) and the
private sphere (family).

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