Feminism
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As Simone de Beauvoir pointed out, ‘Women are made, they are not born’. In denying that there is a necessary or logical link between sex and gender, feminists therefore emphasize that gender differences are socially, or even politically, constructed. PERSPECTIVES ON . . . GENDER LIBERALS have traditionally regarded differences between women and men as being of entirely private or personal significance. In public and political life, all people are considered as individuals, gender being as irrelevant as ethnicity or social class. In this sense, individualism is ‘gender-blind’. CONSERVATIVES have traditionally emphasized the social and political significance of gender divisions, arguing that they imply that the sexual division of labour between women and men is natural and inevitable. Gender is thus one of the factors that gives society its organic and hierarchical character. SOCIALISTS, like liberals, have rarely treated gender as a politically significant category. When gender divisions are significant it is usually because they reflect and are sustained by deeper economic and class inequalities. FASCISTS view gender as a fundamental division within humankind. Men naturally monopolize leadership and decision-making, while women are suited to an entirely domestic, supportive and subordinate role. FEMINISTS usually see gender as a cultural or political distinction, in contrast to biological and ineradicable sexual differences. Gender divisions are therefore a manifestation of male power. Difference feminists may nevertheless believe that gender differences reflect a psycho- biological gulf between female and male attributes and sensibilities. FUNDAMENTALISTS have an ultra-conservative view of gender roles, typically characterized by male ‘guardianship’ over the family, the observation by women of a strict dress code, and restrictions on women’s access to aspects of public life.
KEY FIGURE
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (1906–86) A French novelist, playwright and social critic, de Beauvoir’s work reopened the issue of gender politics and foreshadowed the ideas of later radical feminists. In The Second Sex (1949), she developed a complex critique of patriarchal culture, in which the masculine is represented as the positive or the norm, while the feminine is portrayed as the ‘other’ – fundamentally limiting women’s freedom and denying them their full humanity. De Beauvoir placed her faith in rationality and critical analysis as the means of exposing this process.
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Most feminists believe that human nature is characterized by androgyny . All human beings, regardless of sex, possess the genetic inheritance of a mother and a father, and therefore embody a blend of both female and male attributes or traits. Such a view accepts that sex differences are biological facts of life but insists that they have no necessary social, political or economic implications. Women and men should thus not be judged by
Androgyny: The possession of both male and female characteristics; used to imply that human beings are sexless ‘persons’ in the sense that sex is irrelevant to their social role or political status.
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