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Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or Philosophy discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's Gender role, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis,Chodorow, Nancy J., Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (Yale University Press: 1989, 1991) political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Feminist theory often focuses on analyzing gender inequality. Themes often explored in feminist theory include discrimination, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, patriarchy,Gilligan, Carol, 'In a Different Voice: Women's Conceptions of Self and Morality' in Harvard Educational Review (1977)Lerman, Hannah, Feminist Ethics in Psychotherapy (Springer Publishing Company, 1990) stereotyping, art historyPollock, Griselda. Looking Back to the Future: Essays on Art, Life and Death. G&B Arts. 2001. and contemporary art,de Zegher, Catherine. Inside the Visible. Massachusetts: MIT Press 1996Carol Armstrong and de Zegher, Catherine. Women Artists at the Millennium. Massachusetts: October Books / MIT Press 2006. and aesthetics.Arnold, Dana and Iverson, Margaret (Eds.). Art and Thought. Blackwell. 2003. Florence, Penny and Foster, Nicola. Differential Aesthetics. Ashgate. 2000.
In 1851, Sojourner Truth addressed women's rights issues through her publication, "Ain't I a Woman". Sojourner Truth addressed the issue of women having limited rights due to men's flawed perception of women. Truth argued that if a woman of color can perform tasks that were supposedly limited to men, then any woman of any color could perform those same tasks.Truth, Sojourner. "Ain't I a Woman". Feminist Theory: A Reader. 2nd Ed. Edited by Kolmar, Wendy and Bartowski, Frances. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 79. After her arrest for illegally voting, Susan B. Anthony gave a speech within court in which she addressed the issues of language within the constitution documented in her publication, "Speech after Arrest for Illegal voting" in 1872. Anthony questioned the authoritative principles of the constitution and its male-gendered language. She raised the question of why women are accountable to be punished under law but they cannot use the law for their own protection (women could not vote, own property, nor maintain custody of themselves in marriage). She also critiqued the constitution for its male-gendered language and questioned why women should have to abide by laws that do not specify women.Anthony, Susan B. "Speech After Arrest for Illegal Voting". Feminist Theory: A Reader. 2nd Ed. Edited by Kolmar, Wendy and Bartowski, Frances. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 91-95.
Nancy Cott makes a distinction between modern feminism and its antecedents, particularly the Suffragette. In the United States she places the turning point in the decades before and after women obtained the vote in 1920 (1910–1930). She argues that the prior woman movement was primarily about woman as a universalism entity, whereas over this 20-year period it transformed itself into one primarily concerned with social differentiation, attentive to individuality and diversity. New issues dealt more with woman's condition as a social construct, gender identity, and relationships within and between genders. Politically, this represented a shift from an ideological alignment comfortable with the right, to one more radically associated with the left.Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987
Susan Kingsley Kent says that Freudian patriarchy was responsible for the diminished profile of feminism in the inter-war years,Kent, Susan Kingsley. Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain. Princeton, N.J. 1993 others such as Juliet Mitchell consider this to be overly simplistic since Freudian theory is not wholly incompatible with feminism.Mitchell, Juliet. Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing, and Women. New York 1975 Some feminist scholarship shifted away from the need to establish the origins of family, and towards analyzing the process of patriarchy.Stocking, George W. Jr. After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888–1951. Madison, Wisconsin 1995 In the immediate postwar period, Simone de Beauvoir stood in opposition to an image of "the woman in the home". De Beauvoir provided an existentialist dimension to feminism with the publication of Le Deuxième Sexe ( The Second Sex) in 1949. As the title implies, the starting point is the implicit inferiority of women, and the first question de Beauvoir asks is "what is a woman"?Moi, Toril. What is a Woman? And Other Essays. Oxford 2000 A woman she realizes is always perceived of as the "other", "she is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her". In this book and her essay, "Woman: Myth & Reality", de Beauvoir anticipates Betty Friedan in seeking to demythologize the male concept of woman. "A myth invented by men to confine women to their oppressed state. For women, it is not a question of asserting themselves as women, but of becoming full-scale human beings." "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman", or as Toril Moi puts it "a woman defines herself through the way she lives her embodied situation in the world, or in other words, through the way in which she makes something of what the world makes of her". Therefore, the woman must regain subject, to escape her defined role as "other", as a Cartesian point of departure.Bergoffen, Debra B. The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities. SUNY 1996 In her examination of myth, she appears as one who does not accept any special privileges for women. Ironically, feminist philosophers have had to extract de Beauvoir herself from out of the shadow of Jean-Paul Sartre to fully appreciate her.Sullivan, Shannon. The work of Simone de Beauvoir: Introduction Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2000 14(2):v While more philosopher and novelist than activist, she did sign one of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes manifestos.
The resurgence of feminist activism in the late 1960s was accompanied by an emerging literature of concerns for the earth and spirituality, and environmentalism. This, in turn, created an atmosphere conducive to reigniting the study of and debate on matricentricity, as a rejection of determinism, such as Adrienne RichRich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution New York 1976 and Marilyn FrenchFrench, Marilyn. Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals. New York 1985 while for socialist feminists like Evelyn Reed,Reed, Evelyn. Woman's Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family. New York, 1975 patriarchy held the properties of capitalism. Feminist psychologists, such as Jean Baker Miller, sought to bring a feminist analysis to previous psychological theories, proving that "there was nothing wrong with women, but rather with the way modern culture viewed them". Jean Baker Miller
Elaine Showalter describes the development of feminist theory as having a number of phases. The first she calls "feminist critique" – where the feminist reader examines the ideologies behind literary phenomena. The second Showalter calls Gynocriticism – where the "woman is producer of textual meaning" including "the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career and literary history". The last phase she calls "gender theory" – where the "ideological inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system" are explored".Showalter, Elaine. 'Toward a Feminist Poetics: Women's Writing and Writing About Women' in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory (Random House, 1988), This model has been criticized by Toril Moi who sees it as an essentialism and determinism model for female subjectivity. She also criticized it for not taking account of the situation for women outside the west.Moi, Toril, Sexual/Textual Politics (Routledge, 2002), From the 1970s onwards, psychoanalytical ideas that have been arising in the field of French feminism have gained a decisive influence on feminist theory. Feminist psychoanalysis deconstructed the phallic hypotheses regarding the Unconscious. Julia Kristeva, Bracha Ettinger and Luce Irigaray developed specific notions concerning unconscious sexual difference, the feminine, and motherhood, with wide implications for film and literature analysis.Zajko, Vanda and Leonard, Miriam (eds.), Laughing with Medusa (Oxford, 2006)
In the 1990s and the first decades of the 21st century, intersectionality played a major role in feminist theory, leading to the development of transfeminism and queer feminism and the consolidation of Black feminism, anti-racism and postcolonial feminisms, among others.
The rise of the fourth wave in the 2010s led to new discussions on sexual violence, sexual consent and body positivity, as well as a deepening of intersectional perspectives.
The notion of the body (but not the mind) being associated with women has served as a justification to deem women as property, objects, and exchangeable commodities (among men). For example, women's bodies have been objectified throughout history through the changing ideologies of fashion, diet, exercise programs, cosmetic surgery, childbearing, etc. This contrasts to men's role as a moral agent, responsible for working or fighting in bloody wars. The race and class of a woman can determine whether her body will be treated as decoration and protected, which is associated with middle or upper-class women's bodies. On the other hand, the other body is recognized for its use in labor and exploitation which is generally associated with women's bodies in the working-class or with women of color. Second-wave feminist activism has argued for reproductive rights and choice. The women's health movement and lesbian feminism are also associated with this Bodies debate.
It is central to feminism that women are systematically subordinated, and bad faith exists when women surrender their agency to this subordination (for example, acceptance of religious beliefs that a man is the dominant party in a marriage by the will of God). Simone de Beauvoir labels such women "mutilated" and "immanent". The Look as Bad Faith, Debra B. Bergoffen, Philosophy Today 36, 3 (1992), 221-227"It argues, with Simone de Beauvoir, that patriarchal marriage is both a perversion of the meaning of the couple and an institution in transition" , Marriage, Autonomy, and the Feminine Protest, Hypatia, Volume 14, Number 4, Fall 1999, pp. 18-35, [3] "mutilated... immanent...", The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, H.M. Parshley (Trans), Vintage Press, 1952"… women are systematically subordinated… de Beauvoir labels women "mutilated" and "immanent"… women succumb to 'bad faith' and surrender their agency…", Feminist Perspectives on the Self, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
One major psychological theory, relational-cultural theory, is based on the work of Jean Baker Miller, whose book Toward a New Psychology of Women proposes that "growth-fostering relationships are a central human necessity and that disconnections are the source of psychological problems". Inspired by Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, and other feminist classics from the 1960s, relational-cultural theory proposes that "isolation is one of the most damaging human experiences and is best treated by reconnecting with other people", and that a therapist should "foster an atmosphere of empathy and acceptance for the patient, even at the cost of the therapist's neutrality". The theory is based on clinical observations and sought to prove that "there was nothing wrong with women, but rather with the way modern culture viewed them".
In the most general terms, feminist literary criticism before the 1970s was concerned with the politics of women's authorship and the representation of women's condition within literature. Since the arrival of more complex conceptions of gender and subjectivity, feminist literary criticism has taken a variety of new routes. It has considered gender in the terms of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan psychoanalysis, as part of the deconstruction of existing power relations.
From feminists' perspectives, sexology, which is the study of human sexuality and sexual relationship, relates to the intersectionality of gender, race and sexuality. Men have dominant power and control over women in the relationship, and women are expected to hide their true feeling about sexual behaviors. Women of color face even more sexual violence in the society. Some countries in Africa and Asia even practice female genital cutting, controlling women's sexual desire and limiting their sexual behavior. Moreover, Bunch, the women's and human rights activist, states that society used to see lesbianism as a threat to male supremacy and to the political relationships between men and women.Bunch, Charlotte. Lesbians in Revolt. 1972. Therefore, in the past, people viewed being a lesbian as a sin and made it death penalty. Even today, many people still discriminate homosexuals. Many lesbians hide their sexuality and face even more sexual oppression.
Feminist perspectives entered international relations in the late 1980s, at about the same time as the end of the Cold War. This time was not a coincidence because the last forty years the conflict between US and USSR had been the dominant agenda of international politics. After the Cold War, there was continuing relative peace between the main powers. Soon, many new issues appeared on international relation's agenda. More attention was also paid to social movements. Indeed, in those times feminist approaches also used to depict the world politics. Feminists started to emphasize that while women have always been players in international system, their participation has frequently been associated with non-governmental settings such as social movements. However, they could also participate in inter-state decision-making process as men did. Until more recently, the role of women in international politics has been confined to being the wives of diplomats, nannies who go abroad to find work and support their family, or sex workers trafficked across international boundaries. Women's contributions has not been seen in the areas where hard power plays significant role such as military. Nowadays, women are gaining momentum in the sphere of international relations in areas of government, diplomacy, academia, etc.. Despite barriers to more senior roles, women currently hold 11.1 percent of the seats in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and 10.8 percent in the House. In the U.S. Department of State, women make up 29 percent of the chiefs of mission, and 29 percent of senior foreign positions at USAID. In contrast, women are profoundly impacted by decisions the statepersons make.
One prominent issue that feminist economists investigate is how the gross domestic product (GDP) does not adequately measure unpaid labor predominantly performed by women, such as housework, childcare, and eldercare.Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader, By Barbara A. Crow, Housework: Slavery or a Labor of Love, p 530, NYU Press 2000Waring, Marilyn, If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics ,San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. Feminist economists have also challenged and exposed the rhetorical approach of mainstream economics.Nelson, Julie A., " Gender, Metaphor, and the Definition of Economics ," Economics and Philosophy 8(1), 1992; McCloskey, D. N. "Some Consequences of a Conjective Economics" in Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics, ed. J.A. Nelson and M.A. Ferber, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. See also McCloskey critique. They have made critiques of many basic assumptions of mainstream economics, including the Homo economicus model.Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson, Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson, Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Economic Man, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. In the Houseworker's Handbook Betsy Warrior presents a cogent argument that the reproduction and domestic labor of women form the foundation of economic survival; although, unremunerated and not included in the GDP. According to Warrior:
Economics, as it's presented today, lacks any basis in reality as it leaves out the very foundation of economic life. That foundation is built on women's labor; first her reproductive labor which produces every new laborer (and the first commodity, which is mother's milk and which nurtures every new "consumer/laborer"); secondly, women's labor composed of cleaning, cooking, negotiating social stability and nurturing, which prepares for market and maintains each laborer. This constitutes women's continuing industry enabling laborers to occupy every position in the work force. Without this fundamental labor and commodity there would be no economic activity.Warrior also notes that the unacknowledged income of men from illegal activities like arms, drugs and human trafficking, political graft, religious emoluments and various other undisclosed activities provide a rich revenue stream to men, which further invalidates GDP figures. Even in underground economies where women predominate numerically, like trafficking in humans, prostitution and domestic servitude, only a tiny fraction of the pimp's revenue filters down to the women and children he deploys. Usually the amount spent on them is merely for the maintenance of their lives and, in the case of those prostituted, some money may be spent on clothing and such accouterments as will make them more salable to the pimp's clients. For instance, focusing on just the U.S., according to a government sponsored report by the Urban Institute in 2014, "A street prostitute in Dallas may make as little as $5 per sex act. But pimps can take in $33,000 a week in Atlanta, where the sex business brings in an estimated $290 million per year."
Proponents of this theory have been instrumental in creating alternative models, such as the capability approach and incorporating gender into the analysis of economic data to affect policy. Marilyn Power suggests that feminist economic methodology can be broken down into five categories.Power, Marilyn. "Social Provisioning as a Starting Point for Feminist Economics" Feminist Economics. Volume 10, Number 3. Routledge, November 2004.
Feminist legal theory stems from the inadequacy of the current structure to account for discrimination women face, especially discrimination based on multiple, intersecting identities. Kimberlé Crenshaw's work is central to feminist legal theory, particularly her article Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics. DeGraffenreid v. General Motors is an example of such a case. In this instance, the court ruled the plaintiffs, five Black women including Emma DeGraffenreid, who were employees of General Motors, were not eligible to file a complaint on the grounds they, as black women, were not "a special class to be protected from discrimination".
The ruling in DeGraffenreid against the plaintiff revealed the courts inability to understand intersectionality's role in discrimination. Moore v. Hughes Helicopters, Inc. is another ruling, which serves to reify the persistent discrediting of intersectionality as a factor in discrimination. In the case of Moore, the plaintiff brought forth statistical evidence revealing a disparity in promotions to upper-level and supervisory jobs between men and women and, to a lesser extent, between Black and white men. Ultimately, the court denied the plaintiff the ability to represent all Blacks and all females. The decision dwindled the pool of statistical information the plaintiff could pull from and limited the evidence only to that of Black women, which is a ruling in direct contradiction to DeGraffenreid. Further, because the plaintiff originally claimed discrimination as a Black female rather than, more generally, as a female the court stated it had concerns whether the plaintiff could "adequately represent white female employees". Payne v. Travenol serves as yet another example of the courts inconsistency when dealing with issues revolving around intersections of race and sex. The plaintiffs in Payne, two Black females, filed suit against Travenol on behalf of both Black men and women on the grounds the pharmaceutical plant practiced racial discrimination. The court ruled the plaintiffs could not adequately represent Black males; however, they did allow the admittance of statistical evidence, which was inclusive of all Black employees. Despite the more favorable outcome after it was found there was extensive racial discrimination, the courts decided the benefits of the ruling – back pay and constructive seniority – would not be extended to Black males employed by the company. Moore contends Black women cannot adequately represent white women on issues of sex discrimination, Payne suggests Black women cannot adequately represent Black men on issues of race discrimination, and DeGraffenreid argues Black women are not a special class to be protected. The rulings, when connected, display a deep-rooted problem in regards to addressing discrimination within the legal system. These cases, although they are outdated are used by feminists as evidence of their ideas and principles.
Feminist communication theory also encompasses access to the public sphere, whose voices are heard in that sphere, and the ways in which the field of communication studies has limited what is regarded as essential to public discourse. The recognition of a full history of women orators overlooked and disregarded by the field has effectively become an undertaking of recovery, as it establishes and honors the existence of women in history and lauds the communication by these historically significant contributors. This recovery effort, begun by Andrea Lunsford, Professor of English studies and Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University and followed by other feminist communication theorists also names women such as Aspasia, Diotima, and Christine de Pisan, who were likely influential in rhetorical and communication traditions in classical and medieval times, but who have been negated as serious contributors to the traditions.
Feminist communication theorists are also concerned with a recovery effort in attempting to explain the methods used by those with power to prohibit women like Maria W. Stewart, Sarah Moore Grimké, and Angelina Grimké, and more recently, Ella Baker and Anita Hill, from achieving a voice in political discourse and consequently being driven from the public sphere. Theorists in this vein are also interested in the unique and significant techniques of communication employed by these women and others like them to surmount some of the oppression they experienced.
Feminist theorist also evaluate communication expectations for students and women in the work place, in particular how the performance of feminine versus masculine styles of communicating are constructed. Judith Butler, who coined the term "gender performativity" further suggests that, "theories of communication must explain the ways individuals negotiate, resist, and transcend their identities in a highly gendered society". This focus also includes the ways women are constrained or "disciplined" in the discipline of communication in itself, in terms of biases in research styles and the "silencing" of feminist scholarship and theory.
Who is responsible for deciding what is considered important public discourse is also put into question by feminist theorists in communication scholarship. This lens of feminist communication theory is labeled as revalorist theory which honors the historical perspective of women in communication in an attempt to recover voices that have been historically neglected. There have been many attempts to explain the lack of representative voices in the public sphere for women including, the notion that, "the public sphere is built on Essentialism principles that prevent women from being seen as legitimate communicators in that sphere", and theories of subalternity", which, "under extreme conditions of oppression...prevent those in positions of power from even hearing their communicative attempts".
Men and women will construct different types of structures about the self, and, consequently, their thought processes may diverge in content and form. This division depends on the self-concept, which is an "important regulator of thoughts, feelings and actions" that "governs one's perception of reality".Markus, Hazel, Oyserman, Daphna. Gender and Thought: The Role of Self Concept. Gender and Thought: Psychological Perspectives, 1989, pp. 100-127
With that being said, the self-concept has a significant effect on how men and women represent reality in different ways.
Recently, "technical communicators' terms such as 'visual rhetoric,' 'visual language,' and 'document design' indicate a new awareness of the importance of visual design".
Deborah S. Bosley explores this new concept of the "feminist theory of design" by conducting a study on a collection of undergraduate males and females who were asked to illustrate a visual, on paper, given to them in a text. Based on this study, she creates a "feminist theory of design" and connects it to technical communicators.
In the results of the study, males used more angular illustrations, such as squares, rectangles and arrows, which are interpreted as a "direction" moving away from or a moving toward, thus suggesting more aggressive positions than rounded shapes, showing masculinity.
Females, on the other hand, used more curved visuals, such as circles, rounded containers and bending pipes. Bosley takes into account that feminist theory offers insight into the relationship between females and circles or rounded objects. According to Bosley, studies of women and leadership indicate a preference for nonhierarchical work patterns (preferring a communication "web" rather than a communication "ladder"). Bosley explains that circles and other rounded shapes, which women chose to draw, are nonhierarchical and often used to represent inclusive, communal relationships, confirming her results that women's visual designs do have an effect on their means of communications.
Based on these conclusions, this "feminist theory of design" can go on to say that gender does play a role in how humans represent reality.
As Potter articulates this theory, Black feminist criminology describes experiences of Black women as victims of crimes. Other scholars, such as Patrina Duhaney and Geniece Crawford Mondé, have explored Black feminist criminology in relation to current and formerly incarcerated Black women.
For years, Black women were historically overlooked and disregarded in the study of crime and criminology; however, with a new focus on Black feminism that sparked in the 1980s, Black feminists began to contextualize their unique experiences and examine why the general status of Black women in the criminal justice system was lacking in female specific approaches.
Potter explains that because Black women usually have "limited access to adequate education and employment as consequences of racism, sexism, and classism", they are often disadvantaged. This disadvantage materializes into "poor responses by social service professionals and crime-processing agents to Black women's interpersonal victimization".Most crime studies focused on White males/females and Black males. Any results or conclusions targeted to Black males were usually assumed to be the same situation for Black females. This was very problematic since Black males and Black females differ in what they experience. For instance, economic deprivation, status equality between the sexes, distinctive socialization patterns, racism, and sexism should all be taken into account between Black males and Black females. The two will experience all of these factors differently; therefore, it was crucial to resolve this dilemma.
Black feminist criminology is proposed as the solution to this problem. It takes four factors into account:
These four factors, Potter argues, helps Black feminist criminology describe the differences between Black women's and Black men's experiences within the criminal justice system. Still, Potter urges caution, noting that, just because this theory aims to help understand and explain Black women's experiences with the criminal justice system, one cannot generalize so much that nuances in experiences are ignored. Potter writes that Black women's "individual circumstances must always be considered in conjunction with the shared experiences of these women."
Some key issues feminist technoscience studies address include:
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