In the eighteenth century, Wollstonecraft (1978) argued that women’s opportunities should be determined upon their abilities and skills, not by their gender. She believed simply that ‘since women have equal reasoning powers to men, they should be granted equal rights with men’ (cited in Williams, 1994: 44). Those following in the footsteps of Wollstonecraft view the welfare state as a violation of their natural rights and have fought for the state to protect civil liberties and adopted a laissez faire approach to the free-market.
Welfare feminists influenced by writers such as Mill (1954) on the other hand, concentrate on economic justice and suggest redistribution of benefits and opportunities. This is in the belief that it is a social responsibility to provide equal opportunities and so reject laissez faire liberalism (Tong, 1997). This denotes that a just and natural equality will emerge if individuals are left to their own devices. Instead they argue that the state can minimise the role of biology in women’s lives in the belief that women as reproducers may have limited access to the market, but with state intervention rights to contraception, abortion, maternity leave and provision of day care facilities, means women can be free to compete with their skills and abilities. They have called for government intervention in legal services, school loans, low cost housing and aid to families with dependant children, to balance equalities within the market.
The issue of public citizenship and the attainment of equality with men is central to Liberal feminism in the belief that in their nature, women are the same as men and can do as men do if provided with equal access to opportunities. Thus, they argue that in society women, as individuals are free from their oppressive roles. Their basic conception locates human uniqueness as their capacity to rationalise, defining reasoning as their ability to moralise and prudentalise, thus essentially classing individual autonomy and self-fulfilment of prime importance in a just society. Liberal feminists have fought for equality for women, including most famously, the right to vote, freedom of speech, the removal of legal disabilities of married women, and equal rights to education and employment, the prime example being the 1976 Sex Discrimination Act, and contemporary organisations such as the Equal Opportunities Commission (ECO), are also heavily influenced Liberal Feminist thought.
There are many critiques of liberal feminism such as Wendell (1987), who believes that Liberal Feminism has largely outgrown its political base. Wendell argues that contemporary Liberal feminist thought contains a strand of socialist feminism. She acknowledges that,
Liberal feminism is not committed to socialism […] Liberal feminists usually are, however committed to major re-organisation and considerable redistribution of wealth, since one of the major modern political goals most closely associated with liberal feminism is equality of opportunity, which would undoubtedly require and lead to both (Wendell, 1987: 66).
Elshtain (1982) points out that Liberal feminist’s emphasis on the priority of the individual over the community actually prevents people from coming together because, ‘there is no way to create real communities out of aggregate or freely choosing adults’ (Elshtain, 1982: 442). She links her argument with their view on male values and describes in detail their main three flaws of which she is highly critical. Firstly, Elshtain disputes their claim that women can become like men. Secondly, that most women want to become like men, and thirdly that women should want to ascribe to male values.
On the first count of her argument, in favour of radical feminist arguments, she accuses them of being ‘excessive environmentalists’ (Elshtain, 1981: 252), i.e. people who believe their identities are the nearly exclusive product of socialisation, in their refusal to accept that some gender differences are biologically determined and are attributable to nature not nurture. Elshtain suggests that women can not be like men unless they commit themselves to a form of social engineering, which she argues is paradoxically incompatible with liberal ideologies of personal autonomy and individual freedom.
Secondly she believes that women value their ‘roles’ of mother or wife do not wish to transcend to a more meaningful identity and furthermore do not view them as mere roles. She goes on to dismiss the claim that women who wish to be either of these is a victim of patriarchal false consciousness, pointing out that feminism has arisen out of a society governed by such a force.
Lastly, Elshtain believes that women do not wish to adopt male values, and in fact believes males should ascribe to female values, because women have the ability to create and sustain community through involvement with friends and family. Thus, articles for women about dressing for success, not crying in public, avoiding intimate friendships and being assertive serve only to erode what may be best about a woman’s character. Elshtain also suggests that the spheres of the ‘evil’ public world and ‘good’ private world have to be coexistent with one another.
Jagger (1983) also criticises Liberal feminists for being too eager to adopt male values. She disputes their emphasis on individualism and the ideology that the state can remain neutral. Jagger accuses them of being ‘normative duellists’ in their conception of the self as a rational autonomous agent. Jagger stated that ‘functions and activities of the mind are somehow better than those of the body’ (Jagger, 1983: 28). She believed that even though women are closer to nature and tend to value the body, the male view, that gives little time and consideration to the body due to their undemanding reproductive and domestic roles, had become dominant for all Liberals whether they be male or female, feminist or non feminist.
This view is problematic as it leads to political solipsism, the belief that the autonomous person is isolated, with needs and interests separate from or in opposition to those of every other individual, and political scepticism, where the belief that questions of political philosophy, such as ‘what are the means to attain well being and fulfilment?’ have no common answer. As a result this places extreme emphasis on individual liberty and the requirement of a neutral state. Jagger envisages that the liberal view of a neutral state is hypothetically - a traffic cop who does not pass judgement on driver’s destinations but argues ‘there are reasons for traffic cops, not only to keep traffic moving but also to block off certain roads’ (Jagger, 1983: 27-50)
Radical feminism, unlike liberal and other groups of feminism, does not drawn from previous bodies of mainstream thought. It rejects the Liberalist framework and criticises the Liberal approach to welfare. Instead of portraying woman in a negative light by fighting for the right for women to be assimilated into arenas of male activity they offer a challenge to their view of the public sphere. They assign a positive value to womanhood and see a woman’s biology as the potential source of liberating power for women (cited in O’Brien, 1981). Radical feminists contend that liberal feminists do not appreciate the structural basis to women’s inequalities i.e. their biological differences and concentrate on changing ideas and attitudes at the cost of ignoring deeper roots to women’s inequalities. Radical feminists talk in depth about men’s domination and the gender system and although they do not advocate equality with men, unlike the Liberal feminists they propose various ways of escaping the sexual domination of men through various forms of separatism, from replacing male culture with female culture, transforming heterosexuality, to rejecting heterosexuality.
In a social order dominated by men, Radical feminists such as Firestone (1970) believe that women’s oppression as a class, comes through patriarchy, and their sex is achieved through men’s physical power over women. Millet (1970) argues the male and female relationship is the foundation of all power relationships. Men seek to subordinate women sexually as part of their attempt to be dominant therefore biology plays a key role and suggests their power in society depends on women producing and raising children. Millet believes that men dominate all areas of the state and exercise their power over women through the institutions of the welfare state (cited in Tong, 1997: 95). Radical feminist’s see oppression as being potentially lifted by freedom of choice for women as reproducers, not to be forced by a male dominated medical profession into limited opportunities of reproductive treatment such as contraception, sterilisation, abortion, amniocentesis or repro-aiding technologies like artificial insemination or vitro fertilisation, identified by Gena Corea (1984) (ibid, 1997: 3)
Radical Feminists such as Dwarkin (1983) (ibid, 1997: 116-117), and MacKinnon (1983), claim women become treated as second-class citizens through ‘sexually explicit’ pornography. MacKinnon (1983) highlighted the reasoning behind the banning of child pornography and insisted that this should also persuade us to ban adult porn, which subordinates women through their portrayal as sexual objects, things or commodities. She stresses the simple but important point in answer to the main debate put forward by society, i.e. that men are also demeaned and degraded, sexually harassed or raped through use of pornography, ‘that far fewer men than women are harmed in these ways’ (ibid, 1997: 120).
Radical feminist’s have contributed a detailed understanding of the ways in which men have forced women into oppressive roles and sexual behaviour as their campaigns have revolved around issues of male violence, pornography, rape and battered women and have been responsible for the emergence of refuges and crisis centres for women including Well Women’s clinics, whereby women can gain information and knowledge to assist them in protecting their own welfare. Essentially their aim is to question the concept of natural order and overcome the negative effects that a woman’s biology has throughout her life.
Radical feminists themselves however, have been heavily criticised for their claims that women and men are biologically determined, and focused on women’s ‘goodness’ in opposition to men’s ‘evilness’, as a factor involved in the subordination of women. Jagger (1983) and Segal (1987), argue that radical feminists ignore the way in which male power is socially constructed and changes across cultures. Jagger criticised them for their deterministic view of human nature, arguing that humans are not a fixed given but are interplay between the environment and biology, capable of changing across space and time. They have also been criticised for reproducing gender stereotypes and ignoring other social divisions such as class and race.
Jagger also contends radical feminists proposals for social changes, i.e. woman spaces. She commented ‘even though woman culture is an incredibly supportive environment for women’, Jagger did not believe that ‘it is either the only or necessarily the best means to women’s liberty’ (Jagger, 1983: 286). Jagger suggested that they overestimated the powers of woman culture and questioned whether such women driven institutions would have the ability to stand up against capitalism and would possibly be economically weak, thus unlikely to pose a serious threat to the social system. She goes on to express her concern that ‘Woman culture cannot liberate all women unless it is expansive enough to include those women who believe that at least for them, racism or classism are more oppressive than sexism’ (Tong, 1997: 130).
Cocks (1984) was disturbed by the theories of radical feminism and described it as a counter culture, defining itself in opposition to male culture, hence encouraging deviation from its ‘norms’ and glorifying women’s ‘otherness’. She protested that the separation of reasoning and emotions could be more enslaving than liberating ad that they are not always exclusive, for example women’s ‘intuition’ is a combination of careful attention and reasonable predictions and men’s ‘objectivity’ is of impersonal feelings and impersonal logic. Therefore, she predicts that by embracing nurturing women their emotions could lead ‘radical feminists to retreat even further into a private garden of womanly delights, where manly concerns are not permitted to intrude’ (Cocks, 1997: 133).
Overall, liberal and radical feminist critiques of the welfare state have made a vital contribution to improving the unequal treatment received by women. In highlighting that the state was far from neutral and often had sexist assumptions which sought to control and dominate women’s lives, their campaigns have led to awareness of these issues and influenced many polices. Legislative measures have tried to redress the balance of inequalities, for example the right to vote, equal education, and equal employment, abortion reform, gay rights and the Sex Discrimination Act.
However both liberal and radical critiques of the Welfare State and women’s subordination are diverse and complex and it could be argued that critic’s such as Elshtain and Jagger who accuse liberal feminists of being eager to adopt male values have misunderstood. Liberal feminist’s believe male values are due to socialisation and do not advocate this ideology. They suggest that women require equal rights and opportunities to male professions to decrease men’s power over women. In opposition to the liberal feminist’s view radical feminist’s believe that the state can not be neutral as it is used by men, who they propose are biologically determined, to subordinate women through their reproductive roles and have argued for separation of male and female values and glorification of women’s character. But this has been contended, also by Jagger, in the belief that it too could have detrimental effects for women and their welfare by not only perpetuating women’s subordination but lead to deterioration of their character.
Although women are biologically reproducers and possess different hormones it must be argued that men and women are intrinsically born with the same natural abilities. All women are not ‘good’, the same as all men are not ‘evil’. Liberal feminists maintain that everyone begins as a ‘blank slate’ therefore women’s sublimation in society is ascribed to a process of socialisation. One must therefore agree with Jagger and Segal in that Radical feminist’s ignore the way in which male power is socially constructed and changes across cultures, also noting Jaggers emphasis that separation from men is not necessarily what all women picture in their emancipatory visions of equality.
Liberal feminists have been extremely influential by attacking the political foundations upon which society are based. By securing women’s right to vote the problem of patriarchy has been unbalanced and the benefits continue to be reaped, more women in parliament although constrained by a patriarchal domination, the better women stand to benefit from those who have also experienced the subordination of women. Improved policies in equal education has gone a long way to the improved status of women today but unfortunately has not succeeded in cutting across class differences. Radical feminists should bear in mind that without the influence of the liberal feminist’s, women would not have the opportunity to be, in theory, legally equal to men.
In conclusion, although Radical Feminism has made a vital contribution to the improvement to women’s welfare by assigning a positive value to women’s biology, their claims are however unsupported, and their approach has not, like liberal feminism, attempted to attack the root of the cause. Therefore, their critique of the liberal approach is undeserved and unjust.
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