{"id":38,"date":"2018-12-13T05:39:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T05:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/psp07.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=38"},"modified":"2018-12-13T05:46:37","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T05:46:37","slug":"approaches-to-the-study-of-political-theory-feminist-tradition","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/chapter\/approaches-to-the-study-of-political-theory-feminist-tradition\/","title":{"rendered":"Approaches to the Study of Political Theory \u2013 Feminist Tradition"},"content":{"raw":"<div><span style=\"float: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2DjCc8L4W-s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"epgp books\" width=\"75px\" height=\"75px;\" \/><\/a>\r\n<\/span><\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<strong>Module: Feminism<\/strong>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Political theory has been enriched with multiple approaches and traditions that tend to analyse and understand politics in different and often contradictory ways. This paper is a broad overview of feminist approaches\/traditions in political theory.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Jane Mansbridge and Susan Moller Okin (2007: 333) refer to feminism as a political stance and not a systematic theory, inextricably linked with political change. Another characteristic of feminist theory, they cite, is its experiential plurality. The challenge to public\/private dichotomy when feminism politicizes the personal, the standpoints of women belonging to different cultures, sexualities, etc makes feminist theory rich with diversity and plurality. Yet, like many feminist theorists, Mansbridge and Okin identify a larger overarching goal for feminist theory:<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Throughout its plurality, feminism has one obvious, simple and overarching goal \u2013 to end men\u2019s systematic domination of women. Feminist theory also has one overarching goal \u2013 to understand, explain and challenge that domination, in order to help end it 333).<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Feminism, therefore is enriched with different viewpoints, standpoints and epistemologies that also reflect multiplicity of feminist ontologies. It will be more judicious to use \u2018feminisms\u2019 in place of feminism in the current circumstances. An early classification of feminism was given by Alison Jaggar (1983)- liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, socialist feminism and radical feminism. While liberal feminism applies the liberal notions of equality, equal rights, liberty and the idea of a neutral state for the cause of women\u2019s liberation, Marxist feminists relied especially on classical Marxism\u2019s accusation of private property as the root cause of women\u2019s subordination, as reflected in Engels\u2019 <em>Origin of Family, State and Private Property<\/em>. Radical feminism often claims to be the \u2018unmodified\u2019 1 feminism not wedded to any other political ideology and that brings gender and patriarchy to the centre of its analysis. Radical feminism perceives patriarchy as a totality, permeating every institution and space, and as a universal category. Patriarchy here is a structure that renders women\u2019s agency meaningless. For example,<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n1 See MacKinnon (1987).\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">MacKinnon (1987) argues that women\u2019s engagement in heterosexual sex never manifests true consent or agency in patriarchy; therefore the right question to ask is not if women have the agency to have sex. On the contrary, women\u2019s right to refuse sex is the real mark of agency in the current patriarchal system founded on sexual subordination of women. Socialist feminists try to combine capitalism and patriarchy as the twin pillars of women\u2019s oppression. They thus engage with issues of production as well as reproduction.2 In course of time, we hear of different strands of feminism \u2013 psychoanalytic feminism, cultural feminism, ecofeminism, lesbian feminism, Islamic feminism, Third World feminism, relational feminism, etc. Hackett and Haslanger (2002) speak of three variants- sameness feminism, difference feminism and dominance feminism. Sameness feminism is based on articulation of women\u2019s rights and liberties based on a common or same humanity as men- which could lead to a negation of sexual difference; while difference feminism affirms biological and social differences of women (e.g connection\/care feminism). Ruddick\u2019s \u2018maternal peace\u20193 and Carol Gilligan\u2019s \u2018moral reasoning\u2019 and \u2018ethic of care\u2019 are examples. Dominance approach perceives sexual difference itself as an effect or product of dominance. It thus condemns the non-equivalence of differences attributed to men and women. As Kymlicka puts it, \u201cWhereas the difference approach says that sex inequality is only justified if there are real differences between men and women, the dominance approach says that sex differences (real or imagined) must never be used as a source of, or justification for, inequality and male domination (Kymlicka 2001: 383). Judith Squires (2000) makes a three-fold classification- feminisms which are based on equality, difference and displacement of differences. Dominance and displacement approaches therefore also call for a redefinition of male and female roles rather than mere equality of opportunity. Feminists like Elizabeth Gross (1986) therefore claim that feminist theory and politics is not about equality but of autonomy.<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">Another way of classifying feminism is by a timeline- \u2018first wave\u2019, \u2018second wave\u2019, \u2018third wave\u2019 and postfeminism (see Bryson 2003; Gamble 2001)4. Broadly, first wave feminism stood for<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">2 See Eisenstein (1989), Mitchell (1984).<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">3 Sara Ruddick argues that women\u2019s capacity to be mothers develops in them an instinct to be peaceful and <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">to pursue peace. Gilligan argues that women have a different moral reasoning than men that is based on care <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">and relational subjectivity unlike the male obsession with autonomy, rights and justice that separate human <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">beings from one another- women speak in a \u2018different voice\u2019 (Ruddick 1989; Gilligan 1982).<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">4 Most texts refer to first wave and second wave , while many also refer to postmodernism as a third wave <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">(Vincent 2009). Some others like Sarah Gamble (2001) use the concept of postfeminism to denote the <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">postmodern wave in feminism. This timeline also reflects only the dominant foci. For example, 1990s were <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">increasingly the period of\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">equality of rights for women and men; second wave represented the radical <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">feminist movement that essentialised a universal category of women and the victimhood of women. Janice <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">McLaughlin (2003: 1) underscores the feminist contribution to thought as such:<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">An important target in each wave was highlighting the inability of established social and political thought to respond to the oppression of women. Feminist thought has always sought to engage with and reinterpret the foundations of the theoretical frameworks it coexists with and at times draws from.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">A basic task of feminist approach to political theory is the attack on male-dominance and the \u2018maleness\u2019 of \u2018malestream\u2019 theories. Feminism attacks almost every political tradition especially liberalism and Marxism for the gender bias internal to these theories whose fundamental proposition is equality of all human beings. A dominant way in which this was pursued is by challenging the dichotomy between the public and private. Mainstream political theory including Rawls\u2019 theory of justice mainly addressed the status of individuals in the public realm, ignoring the power dynamics in the private (see Coole 1988; Okin 1981 ; Pateman 1980). Pateman, for example, throws light on how social contact theories including Rawls\u2019 is primarily a contract between men or male-headed families that are treated as \u2018natural\u2019 or biologically determined; the contract therefore does not include the sexual contract within families that is unequal. Okin similarly contends that Rawls\u2019 social contract behind the \u2018veil of ignorance\u2019 is \u2018genderless\u2019; but the rules of justice do not apply to the private realm, for the family\u2019s sentimental ties are deemed by mainstream theorists as incompatible with the traits of public life. Eva Kittay (1999) further points out how Rawls ignores the care functions performed by women in family. Thus while early liberals like Mill explicitly denied application of justice to sexual division of labour in the family, contemporary liberals like Rawls implicitly assume the naturalness of this division of labour. Liberalism by and large neglected family and accepted the division of public and private spheres; equality is mainly a matter for liberals and to a large extent for liberal feminism in the feminist postmodernism but we also see the works of liberal feminists like Anne Phillips, Nussbaum, Okin and others who question the traditional liberal terrain but yet retain liberalism as a potent weapon for gender justice. Vincent (2009: 175) contends that these liberal feminists are more Rawls- inspired than influenced by natural rights or liberal utiliatarianism.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">public domain5 (see Kymlicka 2001). Family and the private therefore becomes an important axis of sexual inequality, prompting Pateman to argue that feminism is all about the private \/public binary (see Kymlicka 2001: 387).6 The same subversive role of feminist theory can be seen in postmodern feminism and other representatives of the \u2018third wave\u2019 like black feminism. For example, Luce Irigaray responds to \u2018logocentrism\u2019 by also exposing the \u2018phallocentrism\u2019-male closure in language (see Vincent 2009: 179). Irigaray\u2019s <\/span><em style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">la parler femme<\/em><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\"> (women\u2019s speech) and Cixous\u2019 <\/span><em style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">ecriture feminine<\/em><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\"> (women\u2019s writing) are examples of feminist subversion to problematise linguistic patriarchy (ibid: 180).<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">This demonstrates the difficulty in systematizing feminism into one approach or epistemology. As Kymlicka (2001: 377) notes, the issue of diversity is multiplied in the case of feminism since almost every other theory is represented within feminism. Feminism as also interacted with different historical traditions and as interacted and overlapped with different ideologies (Vincent 2009: 172). Also feminism lacks definitional consensus ranging from the focus on improving women\u2019s position to sexual justice to removal of systemic discrimination to postmodernists who problematise the idea of a definition (see Vincent 2009).<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">Notwithstanding the wide diversities and contradictions within feminism, feminist political theory raises three central questions: \u201c\u2018How did male domination arise?\u2019, \u2018Why was it so widely accepted?\u2019 and \u2018What are its consequences?\u201d (Mansbridge and Okin 2007: 334-5). In doing so, feminist political theory is subversive in nature. From the early feminists who tried to distinguish biological sex from a socially and culturally constructed category of gender, to feminist postmodernists who complicate the sex\/gender distinction with the argument that \u2018perhaps sex was always gender\u20197, from radical feminists who believe in the universal victimhood of women<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">5 Jaggar (1989) argues that the liberal principle of the private as a sphere of autonomy and privacy, to be <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">protected from state intervention often makes it difficult for liberalism feminism to make a case for state <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">intervention in the private to challenge inequalities in terms of reproductive relations, sexual choice, <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">domestic work, etc.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">6 Pateman (1987) contends that public\/private is not the only distinction in liberalism. Other distinctions <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">include state\/society, social\/political ; freedom\/coercion; economy\/politics, etc. What is common to all of <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">them is that they are dichotomies \u201cwithin the world of men\u201d. Women in these distinctions belong to neither <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">side, for their \u2018natural\u2019 place is the home or family (Pateman, in Kymlicka 2001: 107).<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">7 Butler (1989, 1999) argues that even sex is socially constructed. It is constructed on the basis of the \u2018idea\u2019 of <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">a male and female body that are requisites for heteronormativity in the \u2018heterosexual matrix\u2019. Foucault\u2019s <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">discussion of the determination of the sex of Herculine Barbine depending on sexual orientations is another <\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">example of attributing sex to bodies.<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">to black feminists and Islamic feminists who bring forth the notion of \u2018interlocking\u2019 and multiple oppressions, feminism destabilizes accepted categories in political theory including rationality, agency, and human subjectivity.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<table>\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>you can view video on Approaches to the Study of Political Theory \u2013 Feminist Tradition<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2DjCc8L4W-s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-120\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" \/><\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>","rendered":"<div><span style=\"float: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2DjCc8L4W-s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"epgp books\" width=\"75px\" height=\"75px;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Module: Feminism<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Political theory has been enriched with multiple approaches and traditions that tend to analyse and understand politics in different and often contradictory ways. This paper is a broad overview of feminist approaches\/traditions in political theory.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Jane Mansbridge and Susan Moller Okin (2007: 333) refer to feminism as a political stance and not a systematic theory, inextricably linked with political change. Another characteristic of feminist theory, they cite, is its experiential plurality. The challenge to public\/private dichotomy when feminism politicizes the personal, the standpoints of women belonging to different cultures, sexualities, etc makes feminist theory rich with diversity and plurality. Yet, like many feminist theorists, Mansbridge and Okin identify a larger overarching goal for feminist theory:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Throughout its plurality, feminism has one obvious, simple and overarching goal \u2013 to end men\u2019s systematic domination of women. Feminist theory also has one overarching goal \u2013 to understand, explain and challenge that domination, in order to help end it 333).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Feminism, therefore is enriched with different viewpoints, standpoints and epistemologies that also reflect multiplicity of feminist ontologies. It will be more judicious to use \u2018feminisms\u2019 in place of feminism in the current circumstances. An early classification of feminism was given by Alison Jaggar (1983)- liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, socialist feminism and radical feminism. While liberal feminism applies the liberal notions of equality, equal rights, liberty and the idea of a neutral state for the cause of women\u2019s liberation, Marxist feminists relied especially on classical Marxism\u2019s accusation of private property as the root cause of women\u2019s subordination, as reflected in Engels\u2019 <em>Origin of Family, State and Private Property<\/em>. Radical feminism often claims to be the \u2018unmodified\u2019 1 feminism not wedded to any other political ideology and that brings gender and patriarchy to the centre of its analysis. Radical feminism perceives patriarchy as a totality, permeating every institution and space, and as a universal category. Patriarchy here is a structure that renders women\u2019s agency meaningless. For example,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>1 See MacKinnon (1987).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">MacKinnon (1987) argues that women\u2019s engagement in heterosexual sex never manifests true consent or agency in patriarchy; therefore the right question to ask is not if women have the agency to have sex. On the contrary, women\u2019s right to refuse sex is the real mark of agency in the current patriarchal system founded on sexual subordination of women. Socialist feminists try to combine capitalism and patriarchy as the twin pillars of women\u2019s oppression. They thus engage with issues of production as well as reproduction.2 In course of time, we hear of different strands of feminism \u2013 psychoanalytic feminism, cultural feminism, ecofeminism, lesbian feminism, Islamic feminism, Third World feminism, relational feminism, etc. Hackett and Haslanger (2002) speak of three variants- sameness feminism, difference feminism and dominance feminism. Sameness feminism is based on articulation of women\u2019s rights and liberties based on a common or same humanity as men- which could lead to a negation of sexual difference; while difference feminism affirms biological and social differences of women (e.g connection\/care feminism). Ruddick\u2019s \u2018maternal peace\u20193 and Carol Gilligan\u2019s \u2018moral reasoning\u2019 and \u2018ethic of care\u2019 are examples. Dominance approach perceives sexual difference itself as an effect or product of dominance. It thus condemns the non-equivalence of differences attributed to men and women. As Kymlicka puts it, \u201cWhereas the difference approach says that sex inequality is only justified if there are real differences between men and women, the dominance approach says that sex differences (real or imagined) must never be used as a source of, or justification for, inequality and male domination (Kymlicka 2001: 383). Judith Squires (2000) makes a three-fold classification- feminisms which are based on equality, difference and displacement of differences. Dominance and displacement approaches therefore also call for a redefinition of male and female roles rather than mere equality of opportunity. Feminists like Elizabeth Gross (1986) therefore claim that feminist theory and politics is not about equality but of autonomy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">Another way of classifying feminism is by a timeline- \u2018first wave\u2019, \u2018second wave\u2019, \u2018third wave\u2019 and postfeminism (see Bryson 2003; Gamble 2001)4. Broadly, first wave feminism stood for<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">2 See Eisenstein (1989), Mitchell (1984).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">3 Sara Ruddick argues that women\u2019s capacity to be mothers develops in them an instinct to be peaceful and <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">to pursue peace. Gilligan argues that women have a different moral reasoning than men that is based on care <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">and relational subjectivity unlike the male obsession with autonomy, rights and justice that separate human <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">beings from one another- women speak in a \u2018different voice\u2019 (Ruddick 1989; Gilligan 1982).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">4 Most texts refer to first wave and second wave , while many also refer to postmodernism as a third wave <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">(Vincent 2009). Some others like Sarah Gamble (2001) use the concept of postfeminism to denote the <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">postmodern wave in feminism. This timeline also reflects only the dominant foci. For example, 1990s were <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">increasingly the period of\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">equality of rights for women and men; second wave represented the radical <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">feminist movement that essentialised a universal category of women and the victimhood of women. Janice <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">McLaughlin (2003: 1) underscores the feminist contribution to thought as such:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">An important target in each wave was highlighting the inability of established social and political thought to respond to the oppression of women. Feminist thought has always sought to engage with and reinterpret the foundations of the theoretical frameworks it coexists with and at times draws from.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">A basic task of feminist approach to political theory is the attack on male-dominance and the \u2018maleness\u2019 of \u2018malestream\u2019 theories. Feminism attacks almost every political tradition especially liberalism and Marxism for the gender bias internal to these theories whose fundamental proposition is equality of all human beings. A dominant way in which this was pursued is by challenging the dichotomy between the public and private. Mainstream political theory including Rawls\u2019 theory of justice mainly addressed the status of individuals in the public realm, ignoring the power dynamics in the private (see Coole 1988; Okin 1981 ; Pateman 1980). Pateman, for example, throws light on how social contact theories including Rawls\u2019 is primarily a contract between men or male-headed families that are treated as \u2018natural\u2019 or biologically determined; the contract therefore does not include the sexual contract within families that is unequal. Okin similarly contends that Rawls\u2019 social contract behind the \u2018veil of ignorance\u2019 is \u2018genderless\u2019; but the rules of justice do not apply to the private realm, for the family\u2019s sentimental ties are deemed by mainstream theorists as incompatible with the traits of public life. Eva Kittay (1999) further points out how Rawls ignores the care functions performed by women in family. Thus while early liberals like Mill explicitly denied application of justice to sexual division of labour in the family, contemporary liberals like Rawls implicitly assume the naturalness of this division of labour. Liberalism by and large neglected family and accepted the division of public and private spheres; equality is mainly a matter for liberals and to a large extent for liberal feminism in the feminist postmodernism but we also see the works of liberal feminists like Anne Phillips, Nussbaum, Okin and others who question the traditional liberal terrain but yet retain liberalism as a potent weapon for gender justice. Vincent (2009: 175) contends that these liberal feminists are more Rawls- inspired than influenced by natural rights or liberal utiliatarianism.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">public domain5 (see Kymlicka 2001). Family and the private therefore becomes an important axis of sexual inequality, prompting Pateman to argue that feminism is all about the private \/public binary (see Kymlicka 2001: 387).6 The same subversive role of feminist theory can be seen in postmodern feminism and other representatives of the \u2018third wave\u2019 like black feminism. For example, Luce Irigaray responds to \u2018logocentrism\u2019 by also exposing the \u2018phallocentrism\u2019-male closure in language (see Vincent 2009: 179). Irigaray\u2019s <\/span><em style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">la parler femme<\/em><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\"> (women\u2019s speech) and Cixous\u2019 <\/span><em style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">ecriture feminine<\/em><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\"> (women\u2019s writing) are examples of feminist subversion to problematise linguistic patriarchy (ibid: 180).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">This demonstrates the difficulty in systematizing feminism into one approach or epistemology. As Kymlicka (2001: 377) notes, the issue of diversity is multiplied in the case of feminism since almost every other theory is represented within feminism. Feminism as also interacted with different historical traditions and as interacted and overlapped with different ideologies (Vincent 2009: 172). Also feminism lacks definitional consensus ranging from the focus on improving women\u2019s position to sexual justice to removal of systemic discrimination to postmodernists who problematise the idea of a definition (see Vincent 2009).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">Notwithstanding the wide diversities and contradictions within feminism, feminist political theory raises three central questions: \u201c\u2018How did male domination arise?\u2019, \u2018Why was it so widely accepted?\u2019 and \u2018What are its consequences?\u201d (Mansbridge and Okin 2007: 334-5). In doing so, feminist political theory is subversive in nature. From the early feminists who tried to distinguish biological sex from a socially and culturally constructed category of gender, to feminist postmodernists who complicate the sex\/gender distinction with the argument that \u2018perhaps sex was always gender\u20197, from radical feminists who believe in the universal victimhood of women<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">5 Jaggar (1989) argues that the liberal principle of the private as a sphere of autonomy and privacy, to be <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">protected from state intervention often makes it difficult for liberalism feminism to make a case for state <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">intervention in the private to challenge inequalities in terms of reproductive relations, sexual choice, <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">domestic work, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">6 Pateman (1987) contends that public\/private is not the only distinction in liberalism. Other distinctions <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">include state\/society, social\/political ; freedom\/coercion; economy\/politics, etc. What is common to all of <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">them is that they are dichotomies \u201cwithin the world of men\u201d. Women in these distinctions belong to neither <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">side, for their \u2018natural\u2019 place is the home or family (Pateman, in Kymlicka 2001: 107).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">7 Butler (1989, 1999) argues that even sex is socially constructed. It is constructed on the basis of the \u2018idea\u2019 of <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">a male and female body that are requisites for heteronormativity in the \u2018heterosexual matrix\u2019. Foucault\u2019s <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">discussion of the determination of the sex of Herculine Barbine depending on sexual orientations is another <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">example of attributing sex to bodies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">to black feminists and Islamic feminists who bring forth the notion of \u2018interlocking\u2019 and multiple oppressions, feminism destabilizes accepted categories in political theory including rationality, agency, and human subjectivity.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>you can view video on Approaches to the Study of Political Theory \u2013 Feminist Tradition<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2DjCc8L4W-s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-120\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"menu_order":5,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["lakshmi-radhakrishnan"],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[58],"license":[],"class_list":["post-38","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-lakshmi-radhakrishnan"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/38\/revisions\/43"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/38\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/psp07\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}