I think these views are very important because it isn’t fair that men should think they have the power to harm a woman or their children. I think other people also believe this view is right and so is a good contribution to an understanding of the modern family life.
Because of the rise in feminist’s views in sociology there has been questioning of the idea of the family as a harmonious unit. This is because their view believes that family structures can lead to the oppression of women by either men and/or capitalism. This has also led to analysis of family units in terms of relationships involving unequal power struggles. Because of this, the vision of the family in a feminist’s perspective is a very different one to a functionalist, for example.
Feminism is a very contemporary way of thinking as it only started arising from the 60’s onwards and is based around a patriarchal society. The reasoning behind a feminist’s point of view is the evidence of women in family life. For example evidence of growing domestic violence, marital rape and other negative parts of the family life.
Feminists believe that patriarchy is the main cause for abuse of both women and children within the family. Eliot (1996) believes that this is based on two arguments, which are easily linked. Firstly, it is seen that all male domination in the end is supported by physical force and secondly, there is an assumption that male sexuality is both powerful and irresistible for example, men cannot control their actions. Feminists also suggest that this sense of masculinity puts woman at risk nearly all of the time of sexual harassment and also that children are also constantly at risk of sexual abuse unless men are given what they require.
Black feminists such as b. hooks (1982) believe that there is more to male domination than just domestic violence and marital rape. They argue that the universal feminist ideas of male oppression and violence don’t include racial oppression in society. They argue about abortion and contraception has very different views for black women in poor countries where they don’t have a choice and contraception is often imposed on them. They do not disagree that male oppression of women does not exist in within the black families but they also state that inequalities exist in more than one dimension that some radical feminists suggest.
There are, however some criticisms of the feminist perspective. They tend to only focus on the negative parts of the family, which is the total opposite of the functionalist approach. In recent years, because women have gained more choices, their family life has become more diverse. Feminists always assume that all families have a male who dominates the rest, which is not strictly true and can become quite prejudice against the male population as not every male is like that. New right claim feminists undermine traditional family values and because feminism has become a political agenda, feminists have over estimated of female inequality.
