Feminist ideology emerged as a result of profound social and economic changes that have taken place in society since in the last century. Feminism emerged with the struggle to obtain rights as women were disadvantaged and stigmatised in relation to men. Broadly speaking, feminists drew inspiration from ‘shared experiences which they deemed oppressive in a bid to combat what they called ‘Patriarchy’. Women, since ideology and identity politics developed have been broadly characterised as being oppressed under Patriarchy by men who are said to be the more dominant gender. It has also been argued however that women’s oppression has come as a result of biological differences. Theorists of this school of thought have argued that things such as hormonal differences make women more emotional which inevitably leads to them becoming the weaker sex. These claims however have been refuted and theorists have sought to focus on a common epistemology to highlights women’s oppression. There are conflicting strands of feminism today but in their early days feminists rallied around a similar struggle. When the so-called second-wave feminism

Butler in her writings looks with condescension upon feminism. She believes that feminists rather than doing good for women, actually serve to reinforce and reproduce the very system of power that oppresses women. Butler argued that feminism had made a mistake by trying to assert that 'women' were a group with common characteristics and interests. That approach, Butler alleged, performed 'an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations' which reinforces a view of gender relations in which human beings are divided into two clear-cut groups, women and men. Butler and other post modernists have tried to dispel universal grand narratives that categorise people. “The current construction of femininity is so deeply imbricated with the oppression of women that such attempts will always end up reinforcing the very discourse they seek to undermine”. (Butler, Gender Trouble, 1999) As a solution, Butler believes that instead of categorising people into certain identities we should advocate as much diversity in terms of sex-gender-desire as a challenge to the binary system of gender. There are many feminists however would disagree with the analysis and writings of Butler and those alike.

Kate Millet argues, “Individual heterosexual relationships were at the core of the reproduction of the system of male power, whereby every avenue of power within the society …is in male hands.” (Millet, Sexual Politics 1970). Feminists however as their theory has developed have encountered many problems in finding a specific identity to unite around. For example, they could be lesbian, disabled, black, of a different religion or indeed economically poor. All these struggles are an example of struggles within one identity group (women) who wish to end oppression and subjugation but have other identities in addition to just being a ‘woman’. However there are other questions that arise from categorising someone into a common identity, with the best example being the simple question of what is identity? Use of the controversial term “identity” raises a host of philosophical questions. As a result of post modern theorists such as Foucault and Butler feminist claims made about the oppression of women founded in a notion of shared experience and identity are now invariably gree

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