Liberal Feminism

Theoretical Perspectives: Liberal Feminism

Key Ideas:

• Focus on male / female relationships
  
• Social change = evolutionary.
  
• Laws needed / used to "redress" male / female power imbalance
  
• Equality of Opportunity for women (parity with men)
  
• Women not inferior to men (legal / political / economic and social equality)
  
• Main weapon = legal system (outlaw sex discrimination)
  
• Anti-discrimination legislation, equal pay, child-care facilities for working women (equal legal protection and social rights)
  
• Women's dual role (family and work)
  
• Patriarchal attitudes of society / men
  
• Successful (UK, USA) in terms of anti-discrimination, equal pay and maternity rights
  
  

Key Names: Toynbee (journalist), Shirley Williams (politician)

Key Criticisms: 

• Women - like working class men - are at a fundamental economic disadvantage
  
• Bourgeois / middle-class feminists
  
• Ignores study of social structural factors (e.g. class)
  
• Legal equality not same as status equality
  
• Legal changes mainly benefited middle class women
  
• Institutionalised sex inequality (part of fabric of Capitalist society)
  
  

Key Critics:

New Right (politicians, journalists: Melanie Phillips, Patricia Morgan), Marxist, Socialist and Radical Feminists