Valerie Bryson- Feminist Political Theory : An Introduction

For Circulation Amongst First Semester Pol. Science (Hons)

Students at Hindu College, University of Delhi. October 2018

Introduction

For most of its history, western political theory has ignored women. We
seldom appear in its analyses of who has or should have power; when it
has deigned to notice us it has usually defended our exclusion from public
affairs and our confinement to the home; only rarely have we been seen as
political animals worthy of serious consideration. Even today, this exclu-
sion of half the human race is frequently either perpetuated or dismissed
as a trivial oversight, while the inequalities that may exist between men
and women are seen as of little practical importance or theoretical interest.
Most feminist political theory, in contrast, sees women and their situation
as central to political analysis; it asks why it is that in virtually all known
societies men appear to have more power and privilege than women, and
how this can be changed. It is therefore engaged theory, which seeks to
understand society in order to challenge and change it; its goal is not
abstract knowledge, but knowledge that can be used to guide and inform
feminist political practice.
The term ‘feminist’ first came into use in English during the 1880s, indi-
cating support for women’s equal legal and political rights with men. Its
meaning has since evolved and is still hotly debated: in this book I will use
it in the most broad and general terms to refer to any theory or theorist that
sees the relationship between the sexes as one of inequality, subordination
or oppression, that sees this as a problem of political power rather than
a fact of nature, and that sees this problem as important for political theory
and practice. I will also provisionally use it to include those contemporary
writers who are concerned with exploring the meanings attached to
‘woman’ and the ways in which these are constructed, but who deny that
Copyright © 2003. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved.

we can talk about ‘women’ or ‘men’ as stable political identities.

The following chapters explore something of the history of feminist
political theory from medieval times to the present day. They do not claim
to be comprehensive, partly because there is not the space to include
everything and partly because the rich heritage of feminist thought is still
being rediscovered. It is also important to remember that our view of the
past and our interest in it are inevitably filtered by our concerns in the
present, and that these help determine which tiny fractions of what has
gone before are recalled and presented as history. The ideas of the writers
discussed in this book are therefore just some of those that have come
down to us over time, and some of those that are alive today. This second
edition differs from the first in that it gives more space to black feminists,
whose early voices are now being re-claimed, and whose insights are
1

Bryson, Valerie. Feminist Political Theory : An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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 2 Feminist Political Theory

becoming increasingly important to feminist thought as a whole.

Incorporating recent developments in feminist thought has also meant
re-thinking many sections; in particular, discussion of postmodernism
cannot be consigned neatly to a final chapter, but casts a backward
shadow over the entire book.
Today, any attempt to construct a ‘grand narrative’ is widely seen as
both misguided and old-fashioned, and it has anyway long been clear that
feminist ideas cannot be seen in terms of straightforward linear develop-
ment and cumulative progress. Women writers have often had to struggle
particularly hard to be heard and, with no equivalent to the white,
middle-class, male ‘canon’, their ideas have often been written out of his-
tory. This means that new generations of feminists have frequently had to
start almost from scratch; it also means that although some early writings
can appear naive and simplistic, they can at times seem strikingly ‘out of
time’ and relevant to our lives today. They are also frequently written with
a passion and wit that sparkle across the centuries and that reflect their
basis in women’s lived experience: here Mary Wollstonecraft’s difficulty in
organising her personal life, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s impatience with
domesticity or Simone de Beauvoir’s rejection of ‘respectability’ are not
simply interesting biographical facts, but may affect both their theories
and our perception of them.
The development of feminist thought has not only been uneven, it has
also always involved deep theoretical disagreements. These partly reflect
the varied needs and perceptions of women in different societies and
situations, but also stem from feminism’s roots in competing ideological
traditions. Although it has become conventional to classify different types
of feminism according to their supposed theoretical starting-points, it is
also now widely agreed that such attempts to impose order on the rich
complexity of feminist thought obscure its fluid, fragmentary and inter-
connected nature. Nevertheless, it seems that we have to start somewhere
Copyright © 2003. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved.

and, if classification is handled with care and its limitations acknowl-

edged, it can provide a convenient starting-point into the maze of feminist
ideas. The following chapters are therefore based on the provisional iden-
tification of a number of broad strands of feminist thought. It must,
however, always be remembered that ‘reality’ cannot be fully represented
in this way, and that general patterns are frequently disrupted as ideas
pop up in unexpected places and even individual writers often seem to
hold contradictory sets of belief at the same time.
Bearing these reservations in mind, we can see that while the earliest
expressions of feminist consciousness generally drew on religious tradi-
tions to assert women’s worth, secular liberal ideas about equal rights
were increasingly available from the seventeenth century, and were used
by feminists to argue that women have a right to education, employment,

Bryson, Valerie. Feminist Political Theory : An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bham/detail.action?docID=3027540.
Created from bham on 2018-10-12 23:02:55.
 Introduction 3

political participation and full legal equality. Such claims for equal rights
within existing society at first sight seem straightforward. Although
strongly opposed in the past, they are largely accepted in the west today,
where they act as a kind of ‘default setting’ for public debate on gender
issues. However, women remain disadvantaged despite gaining legal
rights and, as we shall see, the logic of their situation has often pushed
‘liberal feminist’ arguments in much more radical directions.
Since at least the early nineteenth century, some feminists have argued
that their goal should not be equal rights within an unequal class society,
but that true equality for women requires some kind of socialist society
based on co-operation and collectivism rather than competition and indi-
vidualism. A number have further claimed that the ideas of Karl Marx pro-
vide the key to understanding and ending women’s oppression and
exploitation. Today, although socialism is much less fashionable than in the
recent past, the belief that feminist goals cannot be separated from wider
socio-economic change remains an important part of feminist thought.
Whilst some feminists have demanded to be included in ‘malestream’
ideologies, many have also long argued that women are in important
respects both different from and superior to men, and that the problem
they face is not discrimination or capitalism but male power. From the late
1960s, these ideas were developed into what came to be known as ‘radical
feminism’. This claimed to be based in women’s own experiences and
needs, and it used the concept of patriarchy to argue that men’s power is
not confined to the public worlds of economic and political activity, but
that it characterises all relationships between the sexes, including the most
intimate, and that it is sustained by the whole of our culture. From this
perspective, the family is a key site of patriarchal power, which is also
maintained through the control of women’s sexuality. The insistence that
‘the personal is political’ involved a major challenge to the assumptions of
political theory and has contributed to a general reassessment within fem-
Copyright © 2003. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved.

inist thought of the nature of power and politics.

Some of the less cautious exponents of the new radical feminist
approach argued that women’s experiences cross the boundaries of
nation, class, ethnicity and time, uniting them in a common sisterhood.
Like much white feminism, this analysis largely ignored or marginalised
the experiences of black women. As we shall see, black women themselves
have long attempted to address the specificity of their own situation, and
in recent years black feminism has emerged as a distinct theoretical
approach that seeks to explore the complex ways in which gender, class
and ‘race’1 interact. Much as feminism as a whole challenges ‘malestream’
thought, black feminism has revealed the limitations of many supposedly
universal feminist concepts. It shows that ‘race’ is not just an issue for
black people, but one which affects us all.

Bryson, Valerie. Feminist Political Theory : An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bham/detail.action?docID=3027540.
Created from bham on 2018-10-12 23:02:55.
 4 Feminist Political Theory

Black feminism’s analysis of differences amongst women is taken to an

extreme by feminists drawing on a recent and influential strand in philos-
ophy known as postmodernism. This approach provides a profound chal-
lenge to ‘common sense’ assumptions about the nature of knowledge and
the world around us, arguing that ‘reality’ is created by language and cul-
ture rather than simply existing and waiting to be understood. From this
perspective, the meaning of being a woman (or a man) is never fixed, and
there are no objectively correct answers to political questions. This means
that we cannot talk about ‘women’ or ‘men’ as stable political identities,
let alone claim that women deserve equal opportunities, suffer from patri-
archal oppression or will only be free in a socialist society. We can,
however, analyse and challenge the ways in which gender identities are
constructed. The influence of these ideas on contemporary feminist
thought has been profound, and extends well beyond those who would
accept a ‘postmodernist’ label. It has however been fiercely resisted as an
elitist, de-politicising and inherently conservative theory that delegit-
imises any attempt to challenge the status quo; as such, many critics
would say that ‘postmodern feminism’ is a contradiction in terms.

As in the past, feminism today is a site of fierce controversies rather than

a body of received truths. Theoretical disagreements are not simply of
academic interest, but have implications for feminist political practice.
Underlying theoretical perspectives will, for example, influence whether
feminists focus their energies on conventional politics, trade unions,
anti-racist movements, self-help groups or the deconstruction of literary
texts and whether they work with men or in separatist women-only
organisations. In this context of on-going debate, earlier writings are not
simply ‘dead theories’, for the issues they engage with are still often unre-
solved; this means that they are not only fascinating in their own right but
relevant to contemporary politics.
Copyright © 2003. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved.

Today, western feminism as a whole is often on the defensive, and the

stress on complexity and fragmentation which has come to dominate
some sections of feminist thought can seem almost overwhelming,
making it almost impossible to say anything about anything in a world of
fluctuating meanings and precariously shifting identities. Nevertheless,
feminism continues to generate exciting ideas, spilling over the boundaries
of conventional political debate, challenging its assumptions and forcing
new issues onto the agenda. This means that feminist political theory
cannot be conveniently ‘ghetto-ised’, for the issues it raises are of vital
importance to any understanding of political power; any political theory
that ignores it is inevitably partial and impoverished.

Bryson, Valerie. Feminist Political Theory : An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bham/detail.action?docID=3027540.
Created from bham on 2018-10-12 23:02:55.