lecture-notes-2-re-feminist-legal-theory.pdf

Women have always been underestimated and blatantly ignored by Western political theory as it was much easier to doubt women's capabilities in general instead of actually acknowledging them. Women were always confined to household activities and excluded from such public affairs, especially serious involvements in political issues. This was seen as a huge and major problem that caused feminism to be resuscitated. Feminism is an intricate set of political ideologies adopted by the women's movement to improve women's equality at once abolishing any form of social oppression and sexist theory. One of the dominant contemporary sociological theories is the feminist theory which evaluates the status of women and men in society and using the knowledge for the betterment of women's lives. Feminist theorists also question the differences between women, including how different aspects such as age, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and nationality intersect with gender. Feminist theory is most concerned of providing women the well deserved opportunity to voice out and highlighting women's countless various contributions to society. All of the feminist perspectives argue that women's oppression in society is getting uncontrollable and disorderly, however; the differences in their clarifying of the

2005

Bloomsbury Companion to Political Philosophy, 2015

2011

2011

In this chapter, we will examine the sociological and feminist foundations of feminist sociological theory. Feminists argue that that without gender as a central analytic category, social life-work, family, the economy, politics, education, religion-cannot be adequately studied.We will consider the way that sociology has been centered on the male, informed by male perspectives, and dominated by men until relatively recently. We will then take a brief glimpse at the feminist movements in Europe and North America and the way they may have affected the development of feminist sociological theory. At this point we will summarize European and English language feminist sociological theory in the early "Second Wave," briefly examining how feminist sociologists go about studying social life, and how they explain gendered inequality. Finally, we will pay attention to the changing field of feminist sociological theory, with the contributions and transformations brought by postmodernism, the study of masculinities and sexuality, and transnational feminist scholars.

2017

The reality of gender inequality is undeniable; it is what we observe each day. The fact is that gender inequality is made manifest in our society in different forms. It is generally believed that the female folk are at the receiving end in matters of gender inequality. This understanding has given rise to some feminist and allied movements that are focused on the liberation of the female folk from the clutches of the male-dominated world. However, some fundamental questions trouble the mind of the researcher in this regard: Is the problem of gender inequality caused only by men? Are the female folk involved in sustaining gender inequality? What role does the female folk play that sustains gender inequality? Consequently, employing the method of philosophical analysis, this study observed that despite the existence of feminist and allied movements as we have them today; the fight against gender inequality is still not a successful one. The paper argues that there are certain roles b...

Hitotsubashi journal of social studies, 1994

In order to examine feminist critiques of and contributions to sociology it is first necessary to say something about feminism in Britain. Although there existed women's groups and organizat.ions who were concerned with women's equality throughout this century, from the end of the 1920s, after the Suffragette movement, there was no coherent feminist movement in Britain. This was to change in the late sixties with the emergence of the women's liberation movement. This was a new style of feminism, which went much further and asked for far more than had feminists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Prior to 1970, feminists in Britain had campaigned for a better deal for mothers, to help make work within the home less tiring and stressful for women. Very few feminists earlier this century ever questioned that childcare and housework were women responsibility. They challenged the social conditions in which women had and looked after children, and did the work within the home-seeking protection for motherhood. For example, feminists wanted governments to provide better housing and nursery schools to relieve the stress and strain on tired mothers. They also demanded greater respect for mothers and wider social recognition of the value of women's domestic role in the care of the home and the family. This has since been termed welfare feminism . In the late 1960s/early 1970s feminists began to challenge these assumptions, claiming that it was precisely women's traditional role in the home as wives and mothers that was the key to understanding women's unequal position in society. Feminists in the early seventies were very critical of the traditional family structure, in which the respons ibility for housework and childcare is assumed to be the woman's. It was argued, and still is by most feminists, that gender equality is dependent on women being able to participate on equal terms with men in paid employment outside the home. For this ever to become a reality women frst had to be relieved of their traditional responsibilities for looking after children and the home (and men). The campaigns of the women's liberation movement reflected this. The first four demands agreed upon at the first women's liberation conference in Britain, in Oxford in HITOTSUBASHI JOURNAL OF SOCIAL STUDIES [ Jul y 1970, were free 24 hour nursery provision, equal pay, improved education for women and free contraception and abortion on demand. In the years since then the assumptions and principles of contemporary western feminism have changed dramatically. Feminism in Britain in the nineties is very different from feminism in Britain in the early seventies. What it means to say you are a feminist ha also changed, it is much less specific than it once was as the feminist movement has become diffuse and fragmented. For example, in the 1970s feminism assumed that it was possible to identify a cause of women's oppression. There was disagreement among feminists as to what exactly this cause might be, maybe the answer could be found by analysing women's position in the sphere of work, the family, motherhood, economic structures, male control over women's sexuality and reproduction, and so on. However, the question What causes v,'omen oppression was seen as fundamental. Much early feminist work emphasised ways in which women in all cultures had less power than men, and looked for evidence of this in continuities in women's position throughout history as well as in cross-cultural analysis. (A good example of this was the political concept of Sisterhood.) In the past decade there has been a shift away from trying to find a general explanation of women's oppression, which presumes a commonality between women and their interests. This overlaps with the debate about similarities/differences between women. Some of the early feminist works have been criticised for the ways in which theories were based on a particu]ar view of 'woman.' In particular they have been challenged for failing to pay sufficient attention to differences between women, especially along the lines of race, class and sexuality. Feminist theories have been criticised for focusing on white, middle class.