SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER

B.A. PART- III

SOCIOLOGY (H).

© Dr. Ramjit Kumar

Feminist Theoretical Perspectives
 Humanism
 Not differences but sameness
 Men and women as rational agents are same, but
women are denied important places in histories,
construction of histories, knowledge production,
rights and representation
 Women assert that they are capable in every
aspects of life.
 Humanist idea of equality, liberty, commonness,
egalitarianism, rights and responsibilities .
 Gynocentric
• Emphasizes differences as part of their Being
• Add to political agenda
• Differences are rather complimentary
• Valuing differences is important to dismantle
gender hierarchy
• Underline the point that women are better in
many respects like caring, abstract values, and
moral ethical constitution; also have close
connection to emotional disposition.
 Postmodern
• Less celebratory on the issues of sexual
differences in comparison to
gynocentric.
• They seek to enunciate differences
between men and women are used to
maintain gender hierarchy.
 Critical Feminist
• Men and women are not necessarily the same in an
ontological sense.

• They do not experience the same biological reality and

social reality but they are allies and engaged in many
political battles for the same issues.

• In this sense, men and women political positioning are same

on many issues like racism, casteism, and capitalism.
 Feminist Concerns
Key Feminist Concerns Commitment to Social Feminists question the family Feminist Sociology History
Change
 Social  Feminists are  Feminist theories  First Wave-
Construction of committed to gender question the family Suffragettes –
Gender equality and social  Capitalism and Maternal
 Social Change change. patriarchy thrive upon
 Family  It is an analysis of traditional family (father  Second Wave-Civil
 Social theory women’s subordination as provider, mother as Rights late 60’s and
 Social Justice for the purpose of homemaker)… beyond-has various
figuring out how to  Nuclear family fits branches.
change it. industrial
society…invisible labor  Third Wave-1990’s-
in the home. more inclusive
 The personal is political.

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 LIBERAL FEMINISM
• Commitment to humanism, emancipation and creation of just
society; Boys and girls are differently socialized in society and
different social expectations they face in society
• Problems: Unequal standing because of artificial barriers
imposed upon women;
• Demands: Mere legal sanction of equality is not an adequate
measure.
• Solutions: Systematic and structural reforms are needed to
remove the invisible structural barriers, social and cultural
constraints.
 Criticisms of Liberal Feminism

• Uncritical acceptance of male values as

human values.
– No place of gender specific humanism or
differences in lived experiences.
– Does not challenge methodology used by male
researchers .
– Argues for incorporation of women in research
but leaves intact the foundation of existing
theoretical perspectives.
 MARXIST FEMINISM
• Also known as Materialist Feminism (1960s – 1970). Primacy on structural aspects of
social organization.
• Main agenda
– Unpaid labor within domestic sphere
– Sexual division of labor within family etc.
– Women‘s unpaid labor within family benefit capitalism and reaches to capitalists directly; Women play
important part in social reproduction of next generation of workers that eventually go for industries,
consume goods and services and produce surplus value.
• The defining feature of the contemporary society is capitalism not patriarchy.
• Subjugation of women is inextricably linked too the capitalist social order.
• Hence, the need to be give primacy to class-struggle rather than struggle between
sexes.
• Class struggle precedes the struggle to dismantle patriarchy.
 Criticisms of Marxist Feminism
• Gender blind approach
• No mention of everyday experiences of women, and their
relationship with men
• No mention of location of women in postcolonial societies
• Marx assumed a naturalistic approach to family. However,
Engels has taken a nuanced approach.
• In his analysis to family Engels(1972/84) argued that
capitalist society has yielded birth to nuclear family
because men wanted to pass on their property to next
generation.
 Radical Feminism
• Also known as Gynocentrism, i.e., the idea that feminine nature has been
distorted throughout history that need to be liberated.
• Offers challenge to liberal and humanist ways of understanding feminism
and emphasizes on women‘s rights rather than gender equality.
• Uses the term patriarchy in a broad way to convey the message that the
current system is a system of male domination or a society whose values
are based on uncensored and uncoerced male supremacy.
• The concept of sisterhood is popularized to covey the message that all
women irrespective of their caste, creed, and religion share the common
experiences.
 Radical Feminism
• The family is seen as the main site where contestation happen; this is the key
instrument of oppression that works for women subjugation and silence by
internalizing male patriarchal values and hegemony.
• Reject the androgyny premise that women‘s contributions to flourishing of society
is more valuable than men and the view that women‘s asymmetrical representation
in public sphere, market and employment sector has anything to do with their
biology of being feminine.
• claim is, ―women‘s culture, knowledge, and lived experience- all have been
denied by men. In fact, science has been used as a mere instrument to legitimize
and perpetuate male ideology and define women as an inferior sex.
• Extend the political analysis to every sphere of life and society, like personal
relationship, child rearing, housework and marriage etc.
 Dual System Theory
• Since1980s, this theory started to resonate people at large. This is
the result of the debate between radical and Marxist feminism.
• The articulation of this theory is the result of attempt to marry
Marxist class analysis with a feminist theory, so that, a new theory
can take account of relationships of women to social system as
well as economic system.
• In other words, a need of the new theory is felt that take accounts
of patriarchy as well as market.
 Dual System Theory
• Patriarchy predates capitalism but it takes new forms within distinct
forms within distinct stages of capitalism.
• With Industrialization men tend to go out to work and women are
gradually excluded from much paid work (Engels, 1972). The separation
of home from public followed by industrialization.
• Just like domestic labor benefit both male and capitalist, exclusion from
patriarchy benefit both.
• Traditional Marxism ignores women‘s labor within market and women‘s
capacity to reproduce labor power and making the available to gender
specific workforce.
• Undeniably, in the late stages of capitalism, capitalistic logics have
worked to loosen patriarchal value system and control society. In this way,
a mutual antagonism can be observed between patriarchy and
capitalism.
 Dual System Theory
• Dual systems theory suggests that gender division arises out of the
combination of two systems of inequality- Capitalism and Patriarchy.
• In this model, men organise to monopolise the best jobs in the labour
market. However, if gender affects processes of supply and demand, this
also means that gender enters into the construction of labor market
positions.
• Gender does not just affect labor supply it is also embedded in the social
organisation of jobs. The problem is that it is not just women‘s and men‘s
unequal situation in the family which affects their labor-market location,
but also, conversely, their unequal labour market situation which affects
their location within the family.

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 POSTCOLONIAL FEMINISM
• Critical of lack of centrality given to
issues of ethnic differences, racial
inequalities, colonialism impacts of third
world countries and racism in feminist
theory and research practices.
 Postmodern Feminism
• Postmodern feminism has mobilized the
postmodern critique of the authority and
status of science, truth, histories, power,
knowledge, and subjectivity; developed
new ways of understanding sexual
differences.
 Postmodern Feminism
• Postmodernism is the rejection of the notion of a foundational
truth in favor of an emphasis on truth as constructed, partial and
contingent.
• Postmodernism challenges any theory or account of society as
structured that works as determining principle as meta narrative.
• The idea is that rather than there is a singular structural
explanation, multiple determinants, diversity, plurality, and
indeterminacy exist at the same point of time. So, there is shifting,
fluid, and fragmented nature of reality and meanings rather than
stability.

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 Postmodern Feminism
• Rather than seeking to overcome women‘s Otherness in the way Simone
de Beauvoir urged women to New French Feminists tend to celebrate
women‘s marginalization from the malestream, arguing marginalization
enables women to challenge and undermine phallocentrism through the
use of irony and parody (Butler, 1998).
• French feminists tend to reject Simone de Beauvoir‘s claim that women
should try to overcome their femininity, arguing instead that we can not
reject what it means to be woman because within the context of
patriarchal discourse and power/knowledge understood in their own
terms.
• In other words, we can never know what it means to be a women within a
patriarchal society because all knowledge produced within such a
paradigm of knowledge production, produced by both male and female
is coming from narration of patriarchal value system.
 Postmodern Feminism
• Claims to know truth is not neutral but
gender specific reflection of power;
reject the claim of knowledge based on
universal truth or universal meaning;
argue that knowledge is always
contingent and contextual, and is shaped
by subjective interests.
 Feminist Critical Theory
 Failure of feminism lies failure to critically engage with modernism, so the answer lies in
engagement with it not rejection of modernism.
 Feminism need to develop a theoretical framework that recognizes the plurality of
women’s experiences and perspectives, while also emphasizing the importance of a
commitment to solidarity and to understanding experiences.
 Feminist critical theorists are critical of the postmodernist demand for abandonment of
the search for the any certain stable foundation for knowledge. It is possible to retain an
emancipatory aspiration of modernism while rejecting totalizing ideas.
 Postmodernist feminists claim that Enlightenment values privileges Western men.
 For Feminist critical theorists the roles of culture in maintaining the culture of silence is
important. This is why sites/tools/machineries/ideologies of culture (school, media,
politics, etc.) are important part of analysis to understand unequal relationships,
understanding of power structure in contemporary society.

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 Gender Inequality
 In the nineteenth century, gender inequality was seen in terms of
women‘s physical embodiment. Women‘s bodies were seen too weak and
vulnerable. Women‘s lives were used to express through their connection
to child-bearing and the household.
 These views, commonplace in the nineteenth century, accepted the ‗fact‘
of women‘s physical and mental inferiority and justified their exclusion
from citizenship rights and public life.
 Such Naturalistic assumptions also used to argue about explaining
differences in aptitudes and intelligence.
 ‗Common-sense‘ explanations of gender have been challenged by
contemporary sociological approaches to gender which stresses that the
social construction of gender and challenges its ‗natural‘ basis.

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 Gender Inequality
• The consequence of the impact of gender stratification on social
arrangements is men and women typically spend much of their
lives in different sorts of work and leisure environments, in
settings that pushes skewed lifestyle tastes and interests at the
same point of time also reproduce gender divisions.
 Social relationships are strongly patterned by gender. This
resulted in gendered differential association in networks,
information and opportunities.
 The marked feature of almost all social settings is the asymmetry
of women‘s and men‘s relations. This leads to considerable
separation in women‘s and men‘s lives.
 Gender Inequality
 The different activities of women and men means that women and men
take different routes and they also develop different social interests and
capacities.
 It is argued women choose to concentrate on family-building, a situation
of gender difference but not gender inequality. In employment, for
example, it is argued that women‘s over-representation in lower-skilled,
lower-paid employment is because women concentrate on their familial
role and intermittent employment careers.
 The persistence of gender differentials, despite the formal freedom of
women, has often been taken as a sign of the different choices that
women and men take with respect to parenting and family life.

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 Gender Inequality
• Critics reject the voluntarism of this position, pointing out that the
choices that men and women make always occur within a
constraining environment, which already contains structured
assumptions that the activities of women will be different to those of
men.
• This channels women and men in different directions. If women
choose to spend more time in part-time employment, this should be
understood in terms of the obligations on their time and child-care
costs.
• The gendered assumptions behind the structuring of working
arrangements constrain the choices of parents, so that women‘s and
men‘s preferences reflect, rather than create, the gendered division of
labor.

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 Gender Relations
• Gender relations have been based on the asymmetrical and unequal
interdependence of women and men.
• These relations are based and organized on the implicit assumption
of their connection within family relations. For example, girls and
boys have different patterns of play and women and men figure
differently in cultural representations of various kinds, from television
dramas to the lyrics of rap songs.

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 Gender Relations
• Because of this there has been an increasing retreat from structural
accounts of gender divisions, with analysts moving instead to explore
more fluid relations of gender ‗difference‘ increasingly de-coupled
from material social relations. This cultural turn has been matched by
an emphasis on the increasing role of choice and reflexivity in social
life, with the suggestion that women and men are ‗disembedded‘ from
gender constraints.
• However, women‘s apparent autonomy from men, and from structural
constraints, is more apparent than real.
• Dramatic shifts have occurred, but they can only be understood in
terms of the patterning of women‘s and men‘s practical engagements
with the world in material social locations.

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 Gender and Class
• Such gendered work cultures reflect and enhance segregation, helping to preserve
conventional views of masculine and feminine behavior both inside and outside work. They
―domesticise‖/―masculinise‖ capitalist work conditions.
• The asymmetry of men‘s and women‘s relations to the labor market means class experiences
are ‗gendered‘, and gendered experiences are also ‗classed‘.
• The acknowledgement of the significance of gender means that classes are not only divided
by gender, but they are ―gendered‖ in the sense that gender is integral to processes of class
formation, action and identification.
• Because women and men have a different pattern of relations to employment, they also often
work in settings dominated by one gender, with a marked ‗gendering‘ in workplace cultures:
segregated workgroups of women and men develop their own highly specific and mutually
excluding cultures.
• Men‘s cultures also emphasise exaggerated versions of masculinity. Studies have shown that
even friendship patterns and group relations still emphasise gender boundaries.

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 Feminist Theory of Stratification
 Gender stratification occurs when gender differences give men greater privilege and
power over women, transgender and gender-non-conforming people. Feminist theory
uses the conflict approach to examine the reinforcement of gender roles and
inequalities, highlighting the role of patriarchy in maintaining the oppression of women.
Feminism focuses on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power that organizes society
into a complex of relationships based on the assertion of male supremacy.
 Intersectionality suggests that various forms of oppression– such as racism, classism, and
sexism — are interrelated to form a system of oppression in which various forms of
discrimination intersect. The theory was first highlighted by Kimberlé Krenshaw.
 Intersectionality suggests that various biological, social, and cultural categories–
including gender, race, class, and ethnicity — interact and contribute towards systematic
social inequality. Therefore, various forms of oppression do not act independently but are
interrelated.
 Mary Ann Weathers drew attention to the ways in which white women face a different
form of discrimination than working class women of color, who additionally must fight
racism and class oppression.

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 Intersectionality
 The feminist perspective of gender stratification more recently
takes into account intersectionality. This was first highlighted
by feminist-sociologist Kimberlé Crenshaw.
 Intersectionality suggests that various biological, social and
cultural categories, including gender, race, class and ethnicity,
interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality.
 Therefore, various forms of oppression, such as racism or
sexism, do not act independently of one another; instead these
forms of oppression are interrelated, forming a system of
oppression that reflects the “intersection” of multiple forms of
discrimination.
 In light of this theory, the oppression and marginalization of
women is thus shaped not only by gender, but by other factors
such as race and class.

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  Intersectionality is an analytical
INTERSECTIONAL framework for understanding how
FEMINISM aspects of a person's social and political
identities combine to create different
modes of discrimination and privilege.
Examples of these aspects are gender,
caste, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion,
disability, physical appearance, and
height.

 Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American law

professor who coined the term in 1989
explained Intersectional feminism as, ―a
prism for seeing the way in which
various forms of inequality often
operate together and exacerbate each
other.

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