âFeminism has revolutionised sociology by placing women at the centre of its analysis of society. However, while all feminists share this starting point, there are now many different âfeminismsâ within sociology.â
Assess the contribution of feminist theorists and researchers to an understanding of society today.Â
(33 marks)
You'd just really need to work through each of the feminisms within Sociology, comparing, contrasting and evaluating between them. You don't need to really relate it to the quote that's provided it's just there like an Item to help stimulate your thoughts!
It's probably best to go liberal feminism-Idea of piecemeal reforms, changes in socialisation and culture, gender inequality comes from socialisation and outdated ideas, functionalist critique (of Parson's roles) etc. Then evaluate this by saying it's useful due to the changes in the law such as outlawing of marital rape, criticise with the radical approach about how it overestimates change-not all laws have benefited women, the glass ceiling of employment etc.
Then move onto radical, discuss the notion of patriarchy, men are the enemy, all men benefit from exploitation, the person is political, concepts of separatisim, consciousness raising, political lesbianism. You can link consciousness raising into their advocation of unstructured/group interviews and briefly do a discussion on them (you need to put both methods and theory in ANY 33 mark question to get into a decent band). After you've discussed the methods, then criticise radical feminism. Argue that it's concepts are illogical-heterosexuality cannot just dissapear, patriarchy is a self-defeating concept, doesn't account for lesbian domestic violence. You could counter with Goffman's Dramaturgical Model-the theory seems to assume women are stuck and cannot make active choice but all humans including women actively shape who they want to be. End criticisms with Marxist feminism-it isn't patriarchy but capitalism that oppresses.
Link this into Marxist feminsm, discuss the idea of women fulfilling the needs of capitalism. So reserve army of labour, soaking frustrations of alienation, socialising children, low pay. Also talk about Barret's ideology of familisim and how capitalism makes women go into oppressive structures. Evaluate with the criticism that it cannot explain why oppression exists in non-capitalist societies, argue that as radical feminism can explain this with patriarchy it may make it a better theory. But counter this by stating that Marxist feminism doesn't try to explain the position of women in non-capitalist societies.Â
Expand from this into dual-systems feminism, the combination of patriarchy and capitalism and how these ideas reinforce each other. Criticise this by stating that patriarchy is not a system but a term for a loose collection of concepts relating to female-orientated violence.Â
Criticise further with the problem of essentialism-other feminisms see women as sharing the same essence whereas difference feminism shows that oppression works differently, such as black women finding support in the family not subordination. Link this further into the idea of Butler's poststructural feminism, we need to see the different discourses of the world and how they oppress women. So for example, what does a discourse of the media in the west do to women, and a discourse of fundamentalist religion in the developing world do to women? The focus is on difference, not sharing the same.
Criticise this with the fact that it means change is impossible as women are no longer seen as being able to work together-they are all to different and end on the idea of women not being equal yet but progress has been made due to feminism, but conflict within the perspective means it's a flawed theory.
Hope this helpedÂ