Exam Notes: Feminism and Post-Feminism

Feminism has traditionally focused on conflict within institutions such as the family and, in particular, on how women are exploited – particularly through “traditional gender roles” enforced and reinforced for the benefit of men. The family, therefore, is seen as oppressive of women, imprisoning them in a narrow range of service roles and responsibilities, such as domestic labour and child care. The links between the family and the economy are generally indirect; female family roles and responsibilities allow men to exercise economic power through “free” family services paid for by women’s domestic labour.

Marxist feminists, for example, emphasise the relationship between female exploitation through the notion of a dual burden;women are doubly-exploited in the public sphere(workplace) as paid employees whose labour contributes to ruling class profits and in the private sphere(the home) as unpaid workers whose labour primarily benefits men. Along these lines Duncombe and Marsden(1993) argue women now perform a triple shift, the third element being the emotion work of investing time and effort in the psychological wellbeing of family members. Female investment in their children and partner’s “emotional well-being” not only benefits men within the home but also contributes to wider economic stability.

Feminists, therefore, point to the idea women increasingly suffer from dual forms of exploitation:patriarchalas domestic labourers and capitalist as paid employees. Bruegal(1979), for example, argues women are a reserve army of labour- called into the workforce at various times when there is a shortage of (male) labour and forced back into the family when there is a surplus. One aspect of this “reserve status” is that women are generally seen to be a marginalised workforce – forced into low pay, low status, employment on the basis of sexual discrimination. Finally, feminists also point to how women’s family lives are oppressive in terms of the “housewife role”; even though many women happily perform this role the willingness to identify domestic labour with femininity is seen as a result of both socialisation and patriarchal ideologies.

Feminism and the State

Feminist sociology has traditionally focused on the family group as patriarchal and oppressive, imprisoning women in a narrow range of service roles and responsibilities, such as domestic labour and child care. While different feminisms take different positions on the particular relationship between the state and the family, liberal feminism has traditionally looked to the state and legal agencies as a way of redressing gender imbalances in family life through social policies aimed at dismantling barriers to female emancipation – from equality in political representation, through equal pay and anti-discrimination polices, to protection against domestic violence. Similarly, the legal system has been seen as both a source of protection for women and as a way of enforcing equal gender rights.

More specifically, liberal feminists have looked to the state in terms of polices that recognise female dual roles – as both family carers and paid employees. These include the development of nursery schooling / child-care facilities that allow women to work and have family responsibilities, plus a range of polices aimed specifically at the family group, from family planning – things like free contraception, abortion (legalised through the 1967 Abortion Act) and fertility treatments – to pregnancy and childbirth; employed mothers have the right to maternity leave and pay while fathers have the right to up to two weeks paternity leave. Child Benefit paid directly to women raising children under 16 has also been seen as a positive aspect of the state role.

We can conclude this section by noting what Finchsuggests is a general problem with managerial approaches, namely “Governments are always in danger of presuming a standard model of family life for which they can legislate, by making the assumption that most families do in fact operate in particular ways”. While social policies affecting the family are always created and enacted within the context of certain ideological beliefs, many social policies focus less on trying to impose a particular family form “from above” and more on trying to create the conditions under which, as Finch suggests, there is a “flexibility in family life” that ensures “people have maximum opportunity to work out their own relationships to suit the circumstances of their own lives”. While this view has a certain validity, it tends to ignore the idea not all sections of a population are treated equally. Some, particularly the poor and the powerless, are subject to greater levels of government regulation and intervention in family life than others.

The relationship between the family and the state in contemporary democratic societies is, therefore, a complex one; it is played-out against ideological beliefs relating to the desirability of particular family forms coupled with a general disinclination to intervene directly in the “private life” of the family except in “exceptional circumstances”, such as domestic violence and child abuse. However, while its clear governments are powerful players in the relationship between the state and the family, we shouldn’t assume this is simply a one-way process; we must also recognise the family is a fluid and dynamic institution – an idea explored in the next section.

Feminism and Conjugal Roles

Liberal feminism

This type of feminism is focused around equality of opportunity: gender relationships, roles and responsibilities should be equitable, with men and women being free to choose both their roles and how these are played-out in a work / family context.

Liberal feminists have traditionally looked towards governments (in the form of social policies aimed at dismantling barriers to female emancipation – from equality in political representation, through equal pay and anti-discrimination polices, to protection against domestic violence) and the legal system to enforce “equal gender rights”.

Liberal feminists have, therefore, fought for polices designed to recognise female dual roles – as both carers within the family and paid employees. These include:

• working women and the development of nursery schooling / child-care facilities that allow women to work and have family responsibilities.

• maternity and paternity leave: In 2007, New Labour introduced the right of up to two weeks of paternity leave for fathers while, in 2007, maternity leave was extended to a maximum of 52 weeks and consolidated the right for employed women to resume their former job. From April 2026 the UK government introduced a range of “Day One” rights for prospective parents (i.e. these rights are now automatically applied, with no qualifying period). These included stronger protections around dismissal during pregnancy and maternity leave, paternity leave as a right and an increase in statutory family‑leave pay (including maternity‑related pay.

• the right to abortion “on demand”.

• affirmative action designed to allow more women to break through the “glass ceiling” in the workplace.

This form of feminism promotes “practical and realistic” ways of creating a gender balance within the family – one that recognises some women want to focus on family and child-rearing responsibilities, some prefer to focus on a career and others want (or need) to combine family and work responsibilities.

Evaluation

Liberal feminists reject both Marxist feminist claims that family life is simply a reflection of wider economic inequalities and radical feminist notions of patriarchy as an inevitable by-product of male-female relationships.

Although women have achieved major political and legal changes over the past 100 years, stubborn forms of patriarchal domination, such as status inequality, are proving more-resistant to change (despite equal pay legislation, for example, women are still paid on average 20% less than men).

Despite changes over the past 50 years, men still perform less domestic labour than women, even in situations where both partners work. Despite changes, the private sphere of the family remains wrapped in cultural notions of femininity and the female role.

The liberal feminist notion of “equality of opportunity” is based on the idea men and women can, given a legal playing field, compete equally in both the private and public domains. Other forms of feminism argue male cultural and social capital (from ingrained patriarchal ideas about “male and female capabilities” to the fact that men still, by-and-large, have greater access to important economic and cultural resources) gives them an advantage in both the home and the workplace.

Marxist feminism

Marxist feminism, for example, applies Marxist ideas about economic equalities to an explanation of gender inequalities in conjugal roles in Capitalist societies. Women, for example, have a service role within the family that effectively confers the status of “unpaid servants” – a role sometimes performed willingly and sometimes unwillingly because their partner is unable or unwilling to take it on. With more women now entering paid work this involves a double shift; women aredoubly-exploited, in the public sphere as paid employees and in the private sphere as unpaid workers whose labour primarily benefits men. Duncombe and Marsden (1993) have additionally argued women perform a triple shift; through their emotion work they invest time and effort in the psychological wellbeing of family members.

Marxist feminists, therefore, argue women increasingly suffer from dual forms of economic exploitation: patriarchal, as unpaid domestic labourers whose work benefits men and capitalist as paid employees whose labour creates profits for a ruling class. In this respect Capitalism is the “real cause of female oppression” because this economic system involves relations of domination, subordination and oppression; female exploitation inside and outside the family will continue for as long as Capitalism exists. For Marxist feminists, therefore, gender is a “secondary” form of exploitation, one that will disappear once primary, economic, forms of exploitation are resolved.

Evaluation

Both Liberal and Radical feminists argue gender is not simply a “secondary” form of exploitation, but one experienced by all women, regardless of class. Marxist Feminism, therefore, pays too little attention to the particular forms of sexist exploitation suffered by women “simply because they are women”.

In addition, Liberal Feminists argue “real female lives” can be improved on a daily basis through legal and social changes. Marxist Feminism simply promises “freedom tomorrow” once Capitalism has somehow been replaced. There is also the argument that over the past 100 years women’s lives have seen radical changes and substantial improvements. It’s difficult to see how or why, according to Marxist Feminists, these could have occurred; if “male interests” are served by the exploitation of women it’s difficult to see how or why this exploitation should have eased or, in many cases, ceased.

Radical feminism

Radical feminism sees patriarchy as the primary source of male domination within the family, a problem that can be resolved in a range of ways. Firestone (1970) argues biology – the fact women experience pregnancy and hence a dependency on men that creates “a culture of sex discrimination” – is the essential gender difference from which all cultural differences flow. If technology can liberate women from biological dependency, by enabling children to be born outside the womb, this eliminates an essential gender difference and removes male powers of discrimination.

A second argument sees women as a sex class that should exploit the “values of femininity” that derive from female psychology; things like a sense of community, family, empathy, sharing and so forth that make them different to men, whose sex class interests are built around patriarchal values of aggressiveness, selfishness and greed. Women should “embrace the power” reproduction gives because, for Stanworth (1987) it is “the foundation of women’s identity”. She argues women must reject the technologies embraced by writers like Firestone as being a further source of male power and domination – this time over the ability to do the one thing (reproduce) that marks women apart.

Frieden (1963) and Millett (1969) see the patriarchal structures and practices of the family itself as the source of female oppression. Friedan, for example, argues “A housewife is a parasite” because she is forced to depend on men for her social existence. The solution to gender inequality is either the abandonment of the patriarchal family or the development of matriarchal family structures and conjugal roles that exclude men through, for example, lesbian relationships.

Evaluation

Butler (1990) rejects the “essentialism” she sees as underpinning radical arguments – the idea that men and women have essentially different bio-psychological natures – that tend towards accepting a relatively fixed view of male-female behaviour. Given the high levels of historical and cultural diversity in gender roles and relationships it seems difficult to sustain the idea “men are men, women are women” and there is no way to change their essential natures.

If “our natures” (men as “aggressive and competitive”, women as “compassionate and nurturing”) cannot be changed it’s difficult to see how the gender relationships on which they are built can change. Biology, in this respect, comes close to meaning destiny…

Butler (1990) also argues women are not a sex class. Female histories and experiences are too diverse and fragmented to be seen in these terms.

Motherhood is a condition is increasingly rejected by a range of women so it becomes difficult to see how and why they would see their identity in these terms. The question, therefore, is whether women who cannot or do not want to reproduce would be considered “real women”?

Post-feminism

Post feminism is a contemporary approach that rejects the “feminist myths” perpetuated by the liberal, Marxist and radical feminism that developed in the 1960’s. Butler(1990), for example, argues men and women do not have fundamentally different natures. High levels of historical and cultural diversity in conjugal roles and relationships makes it impossible to sustain the idea “men are men, women are women” with no way to change their essential natures; female histories and experiences are too diverse and fragmented to talk about all women having common interests as a sex class.

For post-feminism, alternative feminist perspectives ignore or downplay the idea of women making choices – to be “mothers” or childless career women for example. Butler rejects the radical idea “biology is destiny” – men and women do not have “essential natures” (the former as “aggressive and competitive”, the latter as “compassionate and nurturing”). Rather, the key to changing conjugal roles is understanding how gender is performed; the rigid separation between “home” and “work” that developed in modern, industrial, societies is no-longer sustainable in post-modern, post-industrial, societies – just as women move freely into and out of the public domain, so men take the reverse route. Contemporary families, therefore, develop around a gender understandingwhereby conjugal roles form around a range of rational choices about “who does what and when”, with males and females performing different, complimentary and interchangeable conjugal roles; sometimes women look after the children, sometimes men, for example. Specific family roles are no-longer the preserve of one gender.

Changing conjugal roles are based on notions of wider social change, both economic – the development of “female friendly” service industries to replace the male-dominated patriarchal practices of manufacturing industries for example – and cultural; Marxist and radical feminists have ignored important changes in male and female family lives, roles and relationships over the past 50 years. Where motherhood is a condition increasingly rejected by many women it becomes difficult to see how and why they would see their identity in these terms. Women can construct their personal identities in a range of ways, one of which involves “reclaiming femininity from men”; they can be both “feminine”, in terms of seeking and gaining pleasure from the care of others and “careerist” in the sense of wanting economic independence and security. Post-feminists, therefore, argue we should see conjugal roles in the light of how different men and women construct and negotiate their lifestyles and identities. Unlike other feminisms this approach suggests we should neither underestimate female choices, to want a close involvement in the nurture and care of their children, for example, nor disrespect women for making such choices.

Evaluation

Real choice for women may be limited by male power. While women have greater choices now, only a (wealthy) minority actually enjoy the luxury of “unlimited choice”. Choice, in this respect, is still tied to economic power controlled mainly by men.

Changes in family roles and relationships have been the result of relatively simple political and legal adjustments rather than a radical reappraisal of “gender as a concept”. These changes have arrived through women collectively (rather than individually) organising and fighting for change. If women cease to see their lives in collective terms they risk losing the rights gained over the past few decades.