lecture 10 - feminism

• feminists share a common concern with women’s unequal position in society, calling into question power relations between women and men traditionally defended as ‘natural’ • feminist approaches (like Marxist approaches) are explicitly political/normative in that they seek not only to recognize and understand gender power relations, but also to change them

feminists often argue that gender is socially constructed + focus on peoples understanding of society, of the role of women and men !feminism can also be combined with other approaches, e.g. behavioural feminism (normative motivation for research + positivist epistemology + methods)

• Olympe de Gouges: 18t century france writer, human rights not only for men (French revo. rights for hommes) • Mary Wollstonecraft: philosophical text (clearly, women are inferior: they behave inferior, but this is how they have been taught -> to see if they are equal, we have to teach them differently) = !!!!! constructivist idea (way before constructivism) *this is a strategy: she already believes they are equal, but this way she can prove it influential in the start of first wave feminism

19th - early 20th century focus on equal legal and constitutional rights = public sphere these issues remained important after this period, e.g. Switzerland 1971 - still gap in men and women actually representing in politics: being elected

more attention to workplace and family equality, domestic violence and reproductive rights = questions the distinction between public and private • e.g. abortion, rape culture these concerns still exist + are still protested for

kiesrecht

they don’t replace each other, they are stacked kind of

critical of ‘liberal feminism’ (isolates gender equality for overall equality): women should break the glass ceiling + not questioning the structures that might have led to it (e.g. capitalism) - only focused on leveling up white women draws attention to intersectionality, generally sex-positive sex-positive: acceptance of sexual freedom, women should be freed from sexual constrains also interest in binary distinction between men and women (be some is considered as 4th wave): sex and gender can’t be understood in binary terms anymore

we shouldn’t only look at gender for inequality, it intersects with other fights: disabled, appearence, age, etc. we can’t isolate one criteria

• historically excluded (e.g. to vote, be elected) • now still hugely underrepresented • women make up 30% of the discipline of political science

idea that women are less rational than men, that they act on hysteria rather than rationality • can be found in political right and left, they are infused in our day-to-day life

• fudging the footnotes: usually male texts become dominant, while these texts aren’t necessarily the first articles about a certain • assuming male dominance • accepting masculinity at the political ideal • explaining political behaviour through unexamined stereotypes of the roles of women • excluding what women have traditionally done from the definition and scope of politics (arena view of politics: women excluded from the political agenda)

3d/4th wave of feminism femininity and masculinity are socially constructed, perhaps gender and sex are as well question the binary of gender: the idea that human bodies are constructed as male and female gender constructed -> we can also theorize gendered institutions (constructed as male and female, they aren’t actually male or female) !sex and gender can be constructed in different ways