Gender Essay

For al to the highest degree of its archives, western policy-making speculation has ignored women. Women hand over seldom appeargond in its crumples of who should swallow power, when it fin in ally decided to nonice women it usually def turn backed their exclusion from existence affairs and their confinement to the radix plainly r atomic number 18ly have women been seen as political animals worthy of serious consideration. The inequalities that exist between men and women ar seen as of little practical importance and theoretical interest.Feminist political possibleness however, sees womens situation as central to political analysis, its foc delectations on why in most societies men appear to have much power and privilege than women and how can this be changed. The term womens liberationist came into use during the 1880s, indicating support for womens equal legal, sparing, accessible and political rectifys with men. (Bryson, 2003) Feminism reflects the vary needs and perceptions of women in antithetic societies and situations. Feminists argue that all women have the right to pedagogics, employment, political participation and full-of-the-moon legal equality.Although wetly opposed in the past, they are largely accepted in the west today. However, women alleviate ride out disadvantaged despite gaining legal rights. (Bryson, 2003) All libber do not think a uniform. Depending on succession, culture and country womens rightist driving around the domain of a function have sometimes had different causes and goals. The labels help mark the range of different show upes, perspectives and examples a variety have used to shape both their explanations for womens oppression and their proposed solutions for its elimination.The three groups of feminist theories I will sample to analyse in hallow to assess their contri justions against what is lastn almost Caribbean women and their realities in this leaven are Liberal, Radical and Black femi nist perspectives. One thing we know about Caribbean women is that they have al ways worked. Womens position in the Caribbean has been characterised by a dual work position, they engage in both sign and extra mob work, in roll to provide for their families. Evidence has sh give, that aft(prenominal) slavery the tradition of fe potent labour beard.Joycelin Massiah kingdoms that black women had no option but to work, because the idea of man as the breadwinner was unrealistic and unattainable. Women were forced to concern the major responsibility of their households because a large number of men had emigrated. Erna Brodber examined the role of women in some Caribbean countries. She states that despite the frequent image of charwomanhoodhood which distressed on the abstention from physiologic work for elite woman, Caribbean women continued to seek work outside the household and support themselves.Brodber also states that images of whitened women show them as delicate and unassuming, the black woman is portrayed as hardworking to the point of being comical. (Massiah, 1986) Work outside the household however did not free Caribbean women from their household responsibilities these women still had to image their husbands were still taken care of. Men in the Caribbean societies felt that because of economical circumstances, fe staminates should be employed outside the space and should contribute to the expenses.They also believe that domesticated duties should still remain the womans responsibility, even if she is employed. In the public domain, women defer widely to male authority and decision making, but in the domestic domain, she figures power. (Massiah, 1986) Radical feminism claimed to go to the roots of womens oppression, and it title itself as a hypothesis of, by and for women as such, it was based intemperately in womens own experiences and perceptions.Secondly, it saw the oppression of women as the most fundamental and universal form of domination, and its aim was to understand and develop strategies for the end of that oppression. Thirdly, women as a group had interests opposed to those of men these interests united them in a common sisterhood that transcended the division of class and head for the hills, and meant that women should struggle in concert to achieve their own liberation. (Bryson, 2003) Radical feminism names all women as part of an suppress group, stressing that no woman can walk set down the street or even live in her home safely without fear of violation from men.French feminist Christine Delphy points out that like all oppressed people, m whatsoever women do not like to accept that they are part of an oppressed group, developing various forms of denial in order to avoid identification. To the radical feminists, patriarchy is the oppressing structure of male domination. Radical feminism makes male control visible as it is exercised in every acquaintance domain of womens lives, both public a nd underground. It stresses that emancipation or equality on male terms is not enough.A total revolution of the social structures and the elimination of the processes of patriarchy are essential. (Rowland & Klein, 1991) Patriarchy is the domination of men everyplace women. Kate moveets early work (1971) is a good example of the approach that sex is a status category with political implications. Patriarchy, dominates over class, religion, laundry and culture. Patriarchy is a system of structures and institutions created by men in order to obligate and recreate male power and womanish subordination.Institutional structures like the law, religion, the family, have ideologies which perpetuate the naturally inferior position of women socialisation processes to visualise that women and men develop behaviour and belief systems appropriate to the powerful or powerless group to which they belong. These structures are dominated by men who ensure that they maintain these positions. With in the confidential domain of the family, men have organize a system whereby womans reproductive capacity leaves her under fire(predicate) and powerless, domestically exploited, and en bunkerped in economic dependence. (Rowland & Klein, 1991)The family is maintained through the notion of amatory love between men and women, when in fact marriage contracts traditionally have an economic base. Womens labour within the family, which has been un nonrecreational and unacknowledged, is outlined as labour of love. Women by nature are utter to be passive, submissive and willing to be led. Processes like socialisation of children pull ahead this situation to continue. Patriarchy has a material base in 2 senses. First, the economic systems are structured so that women have difficulty getting nonrecreational labour in society which values only paid labour and in which money is the currency of power.Women without economic independence cannot sustain themselves without a breadwinner. They cannot leave a brutal husband, cannot withdraw intimate, emotional and strong-arm servicing from men, they cannot have equal say in decisions affecting their own lives. Radical feminists have therefore stressed the necessity for women to exercise economic power in their own lives. The second material base is the womans body. Women in marriage are seen to be owned by their husbands and cannot bring a courteous case of rape.Womens bodies are advertise and pornography alike objectified and defined as some other and available for male use. Rowland & Klein, 1991) Radical feminists sees the oppression of women as universal, crossing race and cultural boundaries, as well as those of class and other structures like age and physical ability. One of the basic tenets of radical feminism is that any woman in the knowledge domain has more than in common with any other woman regardless of class, race, age, ethnicity, nationality, than any woman has with any man. In Sisterhood is orbicular ( 1984) Robin Morgan draws together contributions from feminists in seventy countries, the majority of which are trey world countries.She begins with a quote about the ball-shaped position of women in the report to the UN Commission on the states of women. While women represent half the global population and one third of the labour force, they receive one tenth part of the world income and own less than one percentage of the worlds property. They are also responsible for two thirds of all working hours. In the developing world women are responsible for more than fifty percent of all food production. In the industrial nations women are still paid only half to three quarters of mens wages. to the highest degree of the world are starving are women and children.Women in all countries wear off the double burden of unpaid housework in association with any paid work they do. Radical feminists thus hold that women are oppressed primarily and in the first suit as women. But because of r eleases in their lives created by, for example culture and class, women experience oppression differently. (Rowland & Klein, 1991) Black feminist theorising has do critical contributions to feminist epistemology. The possible action comprises of a body of work by black feminist intellectuals reacting to the failure of existing feminist explanatory framework to adequately comprehend the realities of black women.Feminists like Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, Patricia Bell, Patricia Hill Collins as well as many others interrogated existing feminist theories and found them lacking, as they fully ignored or denied black womens specific experiences. For instance Sojourner Truths powerful statement on racial inequalities own(prenominal)t I A Woman was a 19th snow deconstruction of the notion of a global, common womanhood and an insistence on inserting black womanhood in the concept of what it meant to be a woman.In her speech Truth argued that white women were placed on a stem and gave t hem certain privileges (mostly that of not working), this attitude was not extended to black women. speaking of the U. S. A in the 1970s Audre Lorde stated, by and large, within the womens movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as woman and ignore differences of race, internal preference, class and age. (Barriteau, 2006) The work of black feminists reveals hierarchies of power within categories of race, class, gender, patriarchal congenators, sexuality and sexual orientation.Black feminism demonstrates that white or other feminist theorising refuses or fails to recognise race as a social relation of domination within feminism and society. Radical, socialist and liberal feminist had examined other oppressive social relations but none had made race central to their analysis, black feminist theory exposes racism. They focus on difference in order to understand hassles of oppression. Audre Lorde points out that white radical feminist Mary Daly images white women as Goddesses, with African women entering her analysis only as victims and preyers upon each other.Here Lorde exposes a key agony that is similar to how early development discourses constructed women in the Caribbean. Women in the south, whether Caribbean, or African were seen as helpless victims in need of international development intervention. (Barriteau, 2006) This theory holds that the constructed invisibility if black womens lives must be challenged. For example, much of the account statement of the West Indies was based on the activities of black men. Black feminist thinkers punctuate the importance of using lived experiences as a criterion for generating knowledge.Deborah Kings concept of multiple jeopardy or multiple consciousness shifted the plan of womens oppression as confined within ethnic and racial boundaries. She was concerned with the invisibility of black women. She noted that class inequality deepen the problem of racism and sexism for black women and felt that class constituted a third jeopardy. She therefore defined multiple jeopardy as, a way to understand the ways in which various forms of oppression interact in ways that negatively affect the lives of black women.Much of feminist theory represents white ethnocentric feminist theorising and is therefore inadequate in not addressing the concerns of other women, especially black women. (Barriteau, 2006) Unlike radical feminism, black feminism goes on to demonstrate how racist relations follow black women into the private realm. Experiences of relations of oppression within households differ for black or nonage women in a racist state. Central to black feminist theorising is the knowledge that patriarchal relations structure womens lives very differently to their male peers.The rule of the father enforces mens power in the family and society. In the Caribbean, men have assumed the role of patriarchs. Black feminist theory reveals that there are other dimensions to black womens experience s of the home that are not captured by other feminist theories, especially for those black women who for centuries have been obliged to work outside the home, whether in fields, factories or the homes of others. Many of these women preferably of longing to be liberated from the home, they yearn for the opportunity to go home or stay at home.Hazel Carby noted that ideologies of black female domesticity and motherhood have been constructed through black womens employment in chattel positions as domestic workers and surrogate mothers to white families rather than in relation to their own families. (Barriteau, 2006) In terms of sexuality, black women have been sterile as having wild and uncontrollable sexual urges. Black women were presented as each whorish or unsexed they were either nanny or jezebel. Evelyn Hammond has argued that black womens sexuality is constructed in opposition to that of white women.In the struggle for sexual liberation, many white women demanded reproductive technologies in order to say yes to sex, darn black women wanted autonomy and freedom from a racist and busybodied state in order to say no. (Barriteau, 2006) Criticisms of black feminist theory are that sometimes there is the impression that all oppressions are equal, and it has been reassessmentd for assuming that black women have a superior standpoint in the world. There is also a sense in which persons of African pipeline are privileged in black feminist thought. (Bryson, 2003) The final theory I will analyse is the liberal feminist theory.Liberalism is based on the principle of individual liberty, in which every person should be allowed to exercise freedom of choice. Each individual should be given equal opportunities and civil rights, but that was conceived of as a privilege that should extend to European men. When it comes to state interventions in the private sphere, liberals agree that the less we see of Big comrade in our homes the better. (Tong, 2009) Liberal feminist Mary Wollstonecraft has been very influential in her writing, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She wrote at a time when the economic and social position of European women was in decline.These women were left at home with little productive work to do, and they were married to relatively wealthy original men. These women had no incentive to work outside the home or, if they had several servants internal it. (Tong, 2009) Middle class ladies were, in Wollstonecrafts estimation, kept women who sacrificed health, liberty and virtue for whatever prestige, pleasure and power their husbands could provide. She denied that women are, by nature, more pleasure pursuance and pleasure giving than men. She reasoned that if men were confined to the same cages that trap women, men would develop the same flawed characters.She stated that women lacked the power of reason because they were encouraged to indulge themselves and please others. She believed that women should have the same access to education as men. She believed that women should experience full personhood. Other liberalists John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill believed women needed suffrage in order to become mens equals. They claimed the vote gave people the power to express their own political views but also change those systems, structures, and attitudes that contribute to their own and others oppression. (Tong, 2009)Betty Friedan in the Feminist Mystique, studies the lives of white place class housewives living in the suburbs. She described the dissatisfaction of these women as the problem with no name. She claimed that these women led unfulfilling lives in their traditional roles as mother and wives. She argued that a more meaningful course for these women was to have the opportunity of full time work in the public sphere. She believed that the absence from the home would make children and husbands more self sufficient. She felt that by limiting women to being wives and mothers was limiting their full human development.She also believed that women would always have to work harder than men. (Bryson, 2003) The main critique of liberal feminism is that of racism and classism, they focused primarily on white, middle class women. They also privileged so called male values. They also continue to distinguish between the private and public lives of people without understanding that the private and public sphere often intersect. In conclusion, feminist epistemology has transformed the world for many Caribbean women, as it questions womens lived experiences and their roles in identity formation.Caribbean women in their roles have mostly preached a strong work ethic and promoted a strong social identity. The Caribbean has a legacy of race and colonial legacies, therefore the experiences and history of Caribbean women has been different. Unlike some the white middle class women in European societies that the liberal feminist talk about, Caribbean women have always had to work and ofte n they have been the principal breadwinners in their households. But because of all the earlier groups of feminist theories about women, it paved a way for the new knowledge about Caribbean women and their realities.