Write a brief account of the main features of liberal femini
“Feminism is exhibited by a spirit of unrest among a comparatively small number of dissatisfied women. They preach the gospel of unholy discontent. They are born agitators, and "dearly love a fight." They prefer war to peace; turmoil to tranquility; contention to concord; pride to humility; sophistry to truth; agnosticism to belief, and prefer to assert their own wills, "live their own lives" as against the precepts of all conventional morality, being moral anarchists.” Benjamin V. Hubbard’s view on feminism is certainly an extreme one. He angrily portrays feminists as ‘agitators’ and suggests that their views have no foundation because of their angry unrealistic viewpoints on society. How extreme is this view? Is there any truth in it or is it biased, sexist and unfair? With a brief account of liberal feminism, socialist feminism and Marxist feminism it will become apparent whether feminism has a place in todays society and whether or not it is severely outdated and irrelevant to the times.Liberal feminism is the longest standing type of feminism and it’s political and social foundings create the basis to many other types of feminism. The first full statement of liberal feminism was stated by Mary Wollstonecraft in
Social feminists also believe in epistemology. This is the fact that all knowledge represents the interest and values of specific social groups. Another important type of feminism is socialist feminism. Socialist feminism draws upon socialist views and these views are often very political. Similarly to Marxist capitalism, social feminists have a dislike of the capitalist regime. They believe that women are second class citizens in patriarchal capitalism, and that capitalism exploits working people as well as women. The exploitation they speak of has a lot to do with the labour market, with regard to woman workers. Sheila Rowbotham argues that women with low paying jobs and least secure jobs can gain real economic independence only in a fully transformed economy. Her argument focuses strongly on the need for a new economy whereby women are given the same job opportunities as men, even saying that women should have more of the economic responsibility. Indeed, social feminists believe that there needs to be a transformation of soicial experience. This is because they believe that the roots of women’s oppression lie in the total economic system of capitalism. Here is another difference between Marxist feminism in that social feminists refuse to treat economic oppression as secondary, whereas Marxist feminists believe more in a class struggled inhibiting gender. To sum up, Liberal feminism argues for individual fulfilment free from the strictures of highly defined sex roles. Their ideals and policies are certainly one of the most realistic brands of feminism and of a structured nature. This makes liberal feminism part of the mainstream of feminist political and social theory.
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Approximate Word count = 1675
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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