Gender Themes in Sociological Theory

The different types of feminism (and of course, these do often intersect)

Liberal feminism

• It is many small things that disadvantage women (inequalities in education, the workplace, and so on)
• fighting for a 'level playing field'
• (Professor criticises for not dealing with the actual problem, i.e. the system, but just consequences of the system and trying to change those, she uses the example of trying to trying to make an unfair game more fair, but without trying to change the rules of the game (or could this analogy be from a citation?))

Black feminism

• bel hooks
• feminism too white and middle class
• intersectionality

Dual-systems approach

• Capitalism and Patriarchy
• together they work together to oppress women
• especially through expectation that women both work outside the home (paid work) and in the home (unpaid work), whilst men are only expected to do paid work
• patriarchy leads to unequal division in work, whilst patriarchy refuses to credit housework as real work that creates economic value, thus favouring men and leading to the subjugation of women (and of course, this leads neatly into Marxist feminism)

Marxist feminism

• women's work in the household (and this is still a very female thing) is seen as belonging to the private sphere
• but we don't get rewarded for it
• capitailism ignores our central role in keeping the economy going and generating value
• we also determine what is sold and not sold, as women…