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The Feminist Theory

FEMINISM AND ITS CHALLENGES

TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIZING

Feminist theory is a generalized, wide-ranging system

of ideas about social life and human experience
developed from a woman-centered perspective.
Women-centered
The starting point of all its investigation is the situation (or
the situations) and experiences of women in society.
It seeks to describe the social world from the distinctive
vantage points of women.

Feminist sociologists seek to broaden and deepen

sociology by reworking disciplinary knowledge to
take account of discoveries being made by this
interdisciplinary community.

The Feminist Theory

Feminist sociologists seek to
broaden and deepen sociology
by reworking disciplinary
knowledge to take account of
discoveries being made by this
interdisciplinary community
(Ritzer, 2010).

Feminism and Its Challenges to

Sociological Theorizing

Accounted
for.

???

Feminism and Its Challenges to

Sociological Theorizing

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Theoretical Questions raised by Feminism

1. And what about the women?
2. Why is all this as it is?
3. How can we change and improve the social
world so as to make it a more just place for
all people?
4. And what about the differences among
women?

Theoretical Questions raised by Feminism

???

Critical Social Theory

Commitment to social transformation
in the interest of justice
Feminist theories that will improve the
daily lives of the people being studied.

Theoretical Questions raised by Feminism

???

???

Class, race, age, marital status, religion,

affectional preference, ethnicity, global
location

Theoretical Questions raised by Feminism

2. Why is all this as it is?

The concept of gender was
developed as an answer to this
question
Biological vs. Social
Gender as a social construction

3. How can we change and improve the

social world so as to make it a more just
place for all people?

4. And what about the differences

among women?

1. And what about the women?

Where are the women in any situation
being investigated?
Present or not present? Why?
How do they experience the situation?
What do they contribute to it?
What does it mean to them?

Theoretical Questions raised by Feminism

???

Theoretical Questions raised by Feminism

Revolutionary
knowledge is relativized
Feminism can help in discovering the
roles of women and of how far we
know about society

???

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Theoretical Questions raised by Feminism

Varieties of Contemporary Feminist Theory

Type

Revolutionary
knowledge is relativized
Feminism can help in discovering the
roles of women and of how far we
know about society

???

Theories

a. Gender
Difference

Cultural Feminism, Sexual

Difference, Institutional and
Interactional Sociological Theories

b.Gender
Inequality

Liberal Feminism

c. Gender
Oppression

Psychoanalytic Feminism, Radical

Feminism

d.Structural
Oppression

Socialist Feminism, Intersectionality

Theory

e.Interrogating
Post-Modernist Feminism
Gender

Feminism

Feminist theory deconstructed established

systems of knowledge by showing their
masculinist bias and the gender politics
framing and informing them.

Feminism and Its Challenges to

Sociological Theorizing

GENDER DIFFERENCE
-Womens location in, and experience of, most
situations is different from that of men in the
situation
1.
2.
3.
4.

Cultural Feminism
Sexual Difference
Institutional Sociological Theory
Interactional Sociological Theory

Gender Difference: Cultural Feminism

Unique among theories in that it is less focused

on explaining the origins of difference and
more on exploringand even celebrating
the social value of womens distinctive ways of
being, that is, of the ways in which women are
different from men.
extols the positive aspects of what is seen as
the female character or feminine
personality.

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Gender Difference: Cultural Feminism

society needed such womens virtues as

cooperation, caring, pacifism, and nonviolence
in the settlement of conflicts (Deegan and Hill,
1998; Donovan, 1985; Lengermann and
Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998)
Ethic of Care (female) vs. Ethic of Justice (male)

Gender Difference: Cultural Feminism

Cultural Feminism is appealing because it

suggests that womens ways of being and
knowing may be a healthier template for
producing a just society than those of an
androcentric culture.

Gender Difference: Sexual Difference

Premise:
Sexual difference is based in the different ways in
which women and men relate to a language
based in the symbolism and fantasies of male
power.

Gender Difference: Sexual Difference

Strategy:
These theorists seek womens emancipation,
both personal and collective, by tapping
alternative preverbal experience, particularly of
the mother as powerful, for a new symbolic
possibility in which to anchor womens language,
writing and semiotics.
Only by first overcoming this oppression by men, who
have attempted to make women a perpetual Other who
exists only to recognize a master, can women pursue their
own project of freedom.

Gender Difference: Sexual Difference

- Arose in France as a feminist response to ideas

in male-created (and male-centered)
philosophy, literature, and psychoanalysis
(Egeland, 2006).
- Difference is a process that masculine creates
and uses to constitute itself
- Woman as the Other, an objectified being
assigned with traits while the man is Agentic

Gender Difference: Institutional Sociological Theories

Premise:
Gender differences result from the different roles
that women and men come to play within various
institutional settings.
Sexual Division of Labor
-starts at home/in the family
-repeated experienced being carried over to
institutions
e.g., women are best employed in
caregiving jobs while men are in
managerial positions

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Gender Difference: Institutional Sociological Theories

Covers the analysis only of gender roles in

the society
Does not account for the persistence of
gender difference on the event that both
men and women occupy the same position
in society
Too static and deterministic

Gender Difference: Interactionist Sociological Theories

Doing Gender also includes doing

difference
acting to make distinctions, to distinguish
oneself as masculine not feminine or,
conversely, as feminine not masculine

Gender Difference: Interactionist Sociological Theories

Ethnomethodology is the basis for explaining

Gender
Accountability resolves how people know how to
behave

People do gender
Differentiated sex, sex category and gender
Sex biologically acquired
Sex Category interpretation of sex, male or female
Gender actions appropriate to the sex category
designation

GENDER INEQUALITY
-Womens location in most situations is
not only different from but also less
privileged than or unequal to that of men.
1. Liberal Feminism

Gender Difference: Interactionist Sociological Theories

Gender is constantly being produced by

people in interaction with each other as a
way of making sense of and letting the world
work.

Gender Inequality: Liberal Feminism

Burgeois Feminism 1
Daughter of liberalism
Rational Citizens
Sexual discrimination against women is
practiced because law allows it and custom
demands it
Sexual Division of Labor
Public Sphere : Men
Private Sphere : Women
1Albina

P. Fernandez. On Liberal Feminism. Published in CSWCD Bulletin

(1989), featured in the module on Feminist Theories by Pineda-Ofreneo, et. al.
(1997)

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Gender Inequality: Liberal Feminism

The Liberal Feminists Perspective
1. Accepted liberal beliefs and ideas intrinsic goodness
rationality, freedom from coercion and indoctrination
2. Realized that liberalism and the liberal state that It
created that promised equality made men not equal to
women
3. Realized that the liberal promise of the good life
excluded women for in a liberal state, women are
discriminated against, not only by custom, but by law
as well

Gender Inequality: Liberal Feminism

Vision:
The ideal gender arrangement would be one in
which each individual acting as a free and
responsible moral agent chooses the lifestyle
most suitable to her or him and has that
choice accepted and respected, be it for
housewife or househusband, unmarried
careerist or part of a dual-income family,
childless or with children, heterosexual or
homosexual (Ritzer, 2010).

Gender Inequality: Liberal Feminism

The Liberal Feminists Perspective:
4. Realized that in the liberal state, poverty is feminized
and that is oppresses the women most
5. Realized that liberal theory has many contradictions,
while the state is the only social institution that has
the capacity to close the gap between the rich and the
poor, and the gap between men and women, it cannot
be called upon to intervene in order to equalize
competition in the struggle for survival because it goes
against the liberal tenet of individual freedom and
autonomy.

Gender Inequality: Liberal Feminism

Premise:
(1) all human beings have certain essential
featurescapacities for reason, moral agency,
and self-actualization
(2) the exercise of these capacities can be secured
through legal recognition of universal rights,
(3) the inequalities between men and women
assigned by sex are social constructions
having no basis in nature, and
(4) social change for equality can be produced by
an organized appeal to a reasonable public and
the use of the state.

1Albina

Gender Inequality: Liberal Feminism

P. Fernandez. On Liberal Feminism. Published in CSWCD Bulletin

(1989), featured in

Gender Inequality: Liberal Feminism

Premise:

Strategies

Women are oppressed because they have not

been given the opportunity by their societies
to develop their rationality, on account of sex.

Gender equality can be produced by

transforming the division of labor through
the repatterning of key institutionslaw,
work, family, education, and media (Bem,
1993; Friedan, 1963; Lorber, 1994; Pateman,
1999; A. Rossi, 1964; Schaeffer, 2001)

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women

are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness the history of mankind is a history of
repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward
woman, having its direct object the establishment of an absolute
tyranny over her, to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid
world
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a liberal feminist

Enter into legislation - create laws that will

legalize sex education, birth control,
abortion (right to their own bodies)
Make options available for women

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Gender Oppression: Psychoanalytic Feminism

GENDER OPPRESSION:
-Women are oppressed, not just different from
or unequal to, but actively restrained,
subordinated, molded, and used and abused by
men.
1. Psychoanalytic Feminism
2. Radical Feminism

Gender Oppression: Psychoanalytic Feminism

Psychoanalytic feminism attempts to

explain patriarchy by reformulating the
theories of Freud and his intellectual heirs
Attempted to map and emphasize the
emotional dynamics of personality,
emotions often deeply buried in the
subconscious or unconscious areas of the
psyche

Gender Oppression: Psychoanalytic Feminism

Psychoanalytic theorists see patriarchy as a

system in which men subjugate women, a
universally pervasive system, durable over
time and space, and steadfastly maintained
in the face of occasional challenge.
Why do men like exert energy to dominate
women?

Why do men like exert energy to dominate

women?
Socioemotional environment affects a childs
development and maturity
Emotional carryover from early childhood
toward womenneed, love, hate,
possessivenessenergizes the mans quest for
a woman leads to DOMINANCE
Similarly, emotional carryover of women in a
culture that devalues her leads to
SUBORDINATION

Gender Oppression: Radical Feminism

Radical Feminism started the mid-1960s in

the United States
Liberal state bred and reinforced inequalities
based on class, race and gender
Overt sexism was present degrading
treatment experienced from male
companions were found to be unacceptable
There is a need to address domination of
men and subordination of women.

Gender Oppression: Radical Feminism

Different from liberal feminism

-Liberal Feminism does not bother to explain
why the State is in favor of men and not of
women
-admits that even if the State were to grant
equal rights to women, it would not follow
that women as class will be liberated (Albina
Fernandez, 1989)

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Gender Oppression: Radical Feminism

Different from Marxist feminism

-failed to explain the root cause of womens
oppression

Gender Oppression: Radical Feminism

Premises and Vision

1. Womens subordination is primary
2. Women as a group, as a sex class, were
the first to be dominated.
3. The basic way by which dominate women is
through their control of womens bodies
through compulsory heterosexuality
*Envisions a society where women are free
from the control of men and can express
themselves to the fullness of their being.

Gender Oppression: Radical Feminism

Posits the view that biology is destiny

-By anatomical fiat- the inescapable
construction of their genital organs the
human male was a natural predator and the
human female served as his natural prey
Susan Browniller
-Because of womans high sex drive, man has
been forced to tame and subordinate her
Mary Jane Sherfey
-Womb envy

Gender Oppression: Radical Feminism

Posits the view that biology is destiny

-By anatomical fiat- the inescapable
construction of their genital organs the
human male was a natural predator and the
human female served as his natural prey
Susan Browniller
-Because of womans high sex drive, man has
been forced to tame and subordinate her
Mary Jane Sherfey
-Womb envy

Gender Oppression: Radical Feminism

Solution/Strategies
1. To liberate women from forced
motherhood and sexual slavery, they
should turn to lesbianism
2. To liberate women from gender
oppression, the family must be abolished
for it is the very institution where men
show their worst as oppressors
3. To liberate women from patriarchal
ideology, women must create their own
ideology.

Gender Oppression: Radical Feminism

Solution/Strategies
4. To liberate themselves from oppressive
patriarchal structures like government,
church, school, capitalist corporations, etc.,
women must destroy hierarchies in their
own lives.
5. To liberate themselves from men, women
must take over technology.

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Structural Oppression: Socialist Feminism

STRUCTURAL OPPRESSION
-Womens experience of difference, inequality,
and oppression varies by their social location
within capitalism, patriarchy, and racism.
1. Marxist and Socialist Feminism
2. Intersectionality Theory

Structural Oppression: Marxist Feminism

Premise
Womans oppression is not universal nor
biologically-determined. It is a result of
historical processes.
Womens oppression is linked with the advent of
private property, the emergence of class society
and the creation of the state as a coercive
instrument of the ruling class to keep the
oppressed class in subjection.
Womens liberation can take place with he
abolition of private property and class society
through socialist and communist transformation

Structural Oppression: Marxist Feminism

Vision
To achieve equality of men and women
and also to remove all barriers that make
one human being dependent upon another,
which includes the dependence of one sex
upon the other (August Bebel, Woman and
Socialism)

Socialist Feminism is Gendered Marxism

combination of Marxism and Radical
feminism
adhere to the materialist conception of
history and the centrality of the mode of
production in the analysis of society

Structural Oppression: Socialist Feminism

Claims that gender is not a biological given

but a social construct whose specifics are
determined by material and historical
factors.
Accept that womens oppression has a
material base as well as an ideological and
cultural superstructure
Examining womens work is important in the
analysis of social relations and the
assessment of womens contributions to
society

Structural Oppression: Socialist Feminism

Ideas different from Marxist Feminism

1. Womens oppression is not rooted solely in
class oppression
2. Womens reproductive work within the
family forms part of the materials or
economic foundation of society
3. To end male dominance, it is necessary to
transform not only the mode of production,
but also the sphere of reproduction

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Structural Oppression: Socialist Feminism

Ideas different from Marxist Feminism

4. Gender oppression is also perpetuated by
processes of child-rearing and character
formation within the family which determin
the psychology or inner lives of women and
men
5. There are gender-specific forms of
oppression which Marxism tends to ignore
or gloss over because of its preoccupation
with class as the primar anlaytical category

Structural Oppression: Socialist Feminism

Strategies/Solutions
Only with the destruction of property rights
through class revolution will women attain
freedom of social, political, economic, and
personal action.
Socialist feminists program for change calls
for global solidarity among women to
combat the abuses capitalism works in their
lives, in the lives of their communities, and in
the environment.

Structural Oppression: Intersectionality Theory

Intersectionality theory centers on

understanding that women experience
oppression in varying configurations and in
varying degrees of intensity
Women are differentially oppressed by the
varied intersections of other arrangements
of social inequality.
Not only gender but also class, race, ethnicity,
status, age can become determinants of
oppression

Structural Oppression: Intersectionality Theory

dominants use differences among people to

justify oppressive practices
Dominants can be a man or a woman
Othering

Structural Oppression: Socialist Feminism

Structural Oppression: Intersectionality Theory

Strategies/Solutions
Mobilize people to use the state as a means
for the effective redistribution of societal
resources through the provision of an
extensive safety net of public services such
as publicly supported education, health care,
transportation, child care, and housing; a
progressive tax structure that reduces the
wide disparities of income between rich and
poor; and the guarantee of a living wage to
all members of the community.

Vision
To give voice to the group knowledges worked
out in specific life experiences created by
historical intersections of inequality and to
develop various feminist expressions of these
knowledgesfor example, black feminist
thought or chicana feminism

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Postmodernist Feminism

INTERROGATING GENDER
- What is really to be understood by the category
woman? How is it produced and maintained?
1. Postmodernist Feminism

Postmodernist Feminism

newest among the political philosophies

Completely radical in the way it views the
very nature of being human, of the way
power is exercised and the way it
approaches language
It is both a political theory and a meta-theory
- By meta theory it critiques all other theories
and previous western philosophy
- What political strategy can emerge from the fact
that various identities are constructed by
various discourses?

Postmodernist Feminism

Posits that Postmodernist theory begins

with the observation that people no longer
live under conditions of modernity but live
now in postmodernity.
Postmodernism questions the existence
both of reason as a universal, essential
quality of the human mind and of the
reasoning subject as a consistent, unified
configuration of consciousness.

A major substantive contribution of

postmodernist theory to general feminist
theory has been its questioning of the
primary category of feminist theory: woman
(or women).
Performativity - Gender arises as people
performs gender
gender is created as people imitate other
people trying to act in accord with culturally
given ideas about masculinity and femininity.

Postmodernist Feminism

Postmodernism exposes the main project of western

civilization to be the promotion of the white, male,
colonialist as the ideal human type. Postmodernism
also points out to us that this creation of what is the
ideal human type includes the imposition of
rationality, logic, and objectivity as part of what is
ideal. Lastly, postmodernism posits that this
construction of human type or subjectivity isa
function of language, text and discourse.

References
Pineda-Ofreneo R., Narciso-Apuan, V. and EstradaClaudio, S. 1997. WD 210: Feminist Theories and
Movements. UP Open University
Ritzer, G. 2010. Sociological Theory, 8th Edition. McGraw Hill Companies, Inc., New York, USA.

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