Feminism has never received a good press. Even in the left press feminism has been one ot the poor relations' along with the other struggles against specific oppression - racism, heterosexism and ableism.
Some on the left have even espoused the notion that all these oppression will just 'disappear when the revolution comes. So what is feminism really about?
Since the Sixties and the rise of the women's movement, feminism has developed broadly speaking into three main areas - socialist feminism, radical feminism and bourgeois feminism. This is a very loose and inaccurate portrait - be cause in reality there are more varieties of feminism than there are left sects in Britain! But it will do for the moment.
What these three strands have in common is an understanding that women suffer discrimination. And that is almost where the similarity ends!
Bourgeois feminism Bourgeois feminism, the most common, really stops at that point. Generally bourgeois feminists don't attempt to analyse why women suffer discrimination or think that any systematic oppression exists.
However the most important error they make is to believe agenda that the solution to this discrimination is to be found within capitalism. Anti-discrimination legislation, quotas in labour movement bodies and a few good female role models are all that is necessary for the bourgeois feminist.
This is why many bourgeois feminist particularly in Europe and America have recently been embarking on a discussion as to whether or not women are still discriminated against.
Within this framework, there is very little room for a conception of patriarchy - the idea that the oppression of women predates class society. Bourgeois feminism fails to place women's oppression in à historical context and therefore loses in large part the importance that women's oppression has in the development of capitalist society.
Radical feminism
Radical feminism takes a rather different standpoint. Radical feminism analyses the whole of society through the prism of patriarchy, which overwhelms any other factor (such as class) in determining why things happen and who benefits from them.
Many radical feminists also have a view of men which broadly speaking reckons that they are bevond help and there is no point in attempting to change the whole of society to end the oppression of women.
This leads to almost the mirror of bourgeois feminist ideas - a belief that not only can the solution to women's oppression not be found ünder capitalism, but it can't be found in any society in which men and women tender Socialist feminism is perhaps the least widely known of the varieties but provides the best understanding of reality. Put simply, socialist feminism states that bourgeois society is one of patriarchal capitalism and that the struggle for women's liberation is inextricably intertwined with the struggle for socialism. Socialist construction One of the major differences socialist feminism has with radical feminism is the concept of social construction. Much radical feminist ideology is based on the idea of men's inherent violent and selfish natures and women's inherent kindness and generosity. Socialist feminism is founded on the basis that these traits are not inborn but culturally conditioned by the society wě live in.
Socialist feminists, along with bourgeois and radical feminists, argue in favour of women's caucuses and womenonly spaces. But the motivation is different for all three types.
Bourgeois feminists argue for these things as an end in themselves; radical feminists want them as places they can remove themselves from the mixed society they see as hopeless.
1L Support Socialist feminists recognise these spaces as methods of encouraging women to gain the confidence and support they need to fight for liberation and as places to further develop the understanding of women's oppression without the constant pressure they are under in mixed groups.
Socialist feminism is a way of combining the reality of women's oppression with the reality of the class nature of society. In essence it is an extension of the marxist analysis - which was correct as far as it went but was incomplete be cause, for the most part, it missed this element of the nature of capitalism and pre-capitalist societies.
Ine struggle for women's liberation and the struggle for are inextricably linked. It is impossible to achieve true equality for women without the destruction of capitalism and socialism - a society of real equality - cannot be acheived without the victory of thestruggle against women's oppression.