Lecture One: Introduction to
Gender and Feminist Thought
©2000
Gene H. Starbuck
Mesa State College
Gendered Options
Sex
 Biological distinction of being male or
female
 Gender
 Social distinctions of being masculine
or feminine
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The Race/Class/Gender Trilogy
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Major topic in sociology today
What do the three concepts have in
common?
 Ways of organizing power/ rewards/ DOL
relationships in society
 Hierarchical structures
How are they different?
Feminists “attached” gender to race and class
 Moral capital in social change movements
Gender as Social Class:
Problems in Conceptualization
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Women as proletariat in two gender/class
system?
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Same relationship to modes of production (Marx)?
Same probability of using goods and services
(Weber)?
Is there “class homogamy” in mate selection?
Is there “gender class class mobility?”
Through what mechanisms is cultural capital
passed on?
What are “Class-Irreducible Roles”
Gender as Race: Problems in
Conceptualization

Women as devalued race in racist system?
 Similarities: Biological component can
lead to social devaluation
 Problems:
 Is the “race” passed on through
biological reproduction?
 Is there “racial homogamy?”
Gender and Prestige
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Traditional models of occupational status had
difficulties with married women’s status.
Usually: Status-Borrowing Model
 Applies to homemaker, part-time employed
Alternative: Status-Maximization Strategy
Husband’s status dominates in U.S., Sweden,
Norway, Australia (Baxter, 1994)
John Money’s Four Gender
Gender-Role
Identity/Roles DistinctionsContinuum
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Sex-irreducible gender roles
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Secondary sex characteristics; balding, aggression?
Sex-adjunctive gender roles
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Men impregnate; women menstruate, gestate, and lactate.
Sex-derivative gender roles
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Nature
Urinary posture; big-game hunting, “mothering,”
Sex-arbitrary gender roles
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Little social impact of reversal
Flutes and trumpets
Math?
Nurture
Feminist Thought History
Greeks
 Lysistrata: Aristophanes--women end
Peloponesian war
 Medea: Euripides
 Abolitionist movement, mid 19th
century; suffrage until 1920
 The “Second Wave”
 late 1960s
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Types of Feminism (mostly from Tutle, Lisa
(1986) Encyclopedia of Feminism. New York: Facts on File.)
Dictionary Definition: “Belief in the
social, political, and economic equality
of the sexes”
 In social science, it means more than
that.
 Several branches of feminism, following
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Liberal Feminism
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18th century Liberal thought Mary Wollstonecraft A
Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women (1869).
1960s Kennedy--National Commision on the Status
of women--Eleanor Roosevelt
Civil Rights act of 1964--concerned with extending to
women the liberal values of liberty, equality and
justice through legal and social reforms.
 Legislative and political action-- action, lobbying,
courts--reformist and gradualist.
Radical Feminists
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Late 1960s New Left civil rights and anti-war protests.
Young, privileged white women in New York
(Columbia) etc. Group called “The Feminists”
Gender distinctions thought to be natural are actually
socially and politically constructed
Significant and radical change is needed in society
Radical Feminists (cont.)
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Kate Millett (a founder of NOW) Sexual Politics “The personal is
political”
MEN, not just the patriarchy, at fault because all men benefit from
women’s oppression.
 patriarchal assumptions permeate all social institutions--including
marriage, family, love, heterosexuality etc.
Loosely organized groups calling for complete restructuring of society:
 Betty Friedan (NOW); Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Susan
Steinmetz; Pam Allen and Shulamith Firestone--the famous “bra
burning” protest at Miss America Contest in Atlantic City, New
Jersey, on Sep 7, 1968.
Susan Brownmiller Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape
 “Rape is the act of terror by which all men control all women”
 Journalist/ Humanities like many others
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Socialist Feminism
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Combining radical feminism with Marxist
analysis-Overthrow both class and gender “capitalist
patriarchy”
Extend notions of modes of production
(Marxist economic determinism) to other
production--I. E. mothering
Solidarity of “the sisterhood” as a world-wide
“gender class”-- every issue is a women’s
issue
Other Feminist Schools
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Marxist-feminism focus on destruction of
capitalism as way to liberate women.
Lesbian feminism Lesbian-feminist politics is a
political critique of the institution and ideology of
heterosexuality as a cornerstone of male supremacy
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Rita Mae Brown, Charlotte Bunch, TiGrace Atkinson,
McKinnon, Andrea Dworkin--Amer. Hert. dict. & Violence
Against Women Act-- Adrienne Rich “Compulsory
Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1980)
Humanist feminism women’s oppression is the
inhibition and distortion of women’s human potential
by a society that allows the self-development of men.
Other Feminist Schools (cont.)
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Black feminism reaction by black women to
the middle-class, white dominance of the
feminist movement. bell hooks, Audre Lorde.
Eco-feminism combination of radical
feminism, the ecology movement, and
secular humanism.
Anarcha-feminism Emma Goldman--antihierarchal, anti-authoritarian-- rid the society
of dominance-submission of all kinds,
including sexism, race, classism, lookism,
ableism, etc.
Academic Feminism:
College
Women’s studies, gender studies, feminist
studies
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1. Gynocentric focus--antidote to perceived
dominance of androcentric, patriarchal
history. Women’s studies
2. Emphasis on oppression of women
3. Importance of praxis
4. Distrust of traditional model of objective
science.
5. Blurring of distinction between social
science and literature (social
constructionism, post-modernism)