Feminist Theory 7 RATED A+

What is the context within which feminist theory developed? -The first wave of feminist theory developed in the 1840s, the second wave of feminist theory developed in the 1960s, and the third wave of feminist theory is developing right now What are some of the basic research questions of feminist theory? -How can we achieve equality for women? How are gender role expectations created, and how are they passed down, generation to generation? How might perceptions of gender lead to discrimination? Why is the concept of gender important in feminist theory? -Because the essential qualities of gender remain a point of theoretical debate within feminism, and these debates offer one way to distinguish among a few of the varieties of feminist theory. But generally, all feminist theorists can agree upon an understanding of gender as a social construc. Main goal of liberal feminists' political agenda -to gain equality with men on the basis of an essential human capacity for reasoned moral agency, that gender inequality is the result of a sexist patterning within the division of labor, and that the gender equality can be produced by transforming the division of labor through the reshaping of key institutions-law, work, family. education, and media. What is patriarchy? -The most basic stratification arrangements system of domination and subordination. Men learn how to hold other human beings in conctempt as well as how to control them. Patriarchy creates guilt and repression, S&M, and manipulation and deception, which all drive men and women to other forms of tyranny. It is the least noticed yet most significant structure of social inequality. Intersectionality theory -Recognizes the fundamental link between ideology and power that allows dominants to control subordinates by creating a politics where difference becomes a conceptual tool for justifying arrangements of oppression. There are varying degrees of oppression based on certain factors.