Feminism: Ignoring the Issue of Class and Race - Essay Example

work] Feminism: Ignoring the Issues and Race Some radical feminist argue that all women are a and that the appropriation of their labour within marriage constitutes the oppression common to all women (Delphy 1884:71) Accordingly, differences in standards of living between women whose husbands are in different economic classes are less important than this women-are-a-class relationship (Dobrowolsky 2001). The argument goes that there are practical political reasons for considering women as a group. In its focus on gender however, Feminism is said to wrongly ignore the issues of class and race. The need to explore. This women-as-a-class issue has been confronted by Sue Lees (1986). According to her, there is a need to explore the complex and often contradictory way in which race, class and sex are interrelated (Dobrowolsky 2001). Meanwhile, Rich (1986) wrote that maintaining a focus on gender issues divide an individual's struggle so that at one moment she fights against gender discrimination, casting aside her race and sexuality, while at another moment she may be challenging sexual discrimination, but ignoring issues of class or age. To Rich - There should be no hierarchy of oppression, no saying that gender discrimination supersedes racial or sexual discrimination. All people are entitled to equality as a basic personal freedom. It is unfair to say that a woman who has white skin and lives in poverty with her children is more or less oppressed than a man with brown skin, a wheelchair and a same sex partner. Both experience prejudice and privilege and both have valid concerns in need of voice and action. For Angela Davis in Women, Race, and Class (1983), in both the first wave of feminism and the second wave of feminism in the 1960, the fight for African American rights took precedence over the rights of women. The difference is that while during the first wave of feminism, black women were ignored by the suffragettes, during the second wave of feminism, black women were faced with the choice of going forward in a women's movement that, once again, didn't really include them, or supporting the rights of African Americans as a race (Davis 1983). Most texts identify the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 as the end of first wave feminism or the beginning of the second wave (Halbert 1997). In contrast, Davis (1983) marks the second wave of feminism as having started in the 1960-70's. In general, these are the reasons why in its focus on gender, Feminism is deemed to ignore the issues of class and race. They are not concentrated on the needs of the black women, however, but to women in general. 1) Theories didn't consider differing realities. In the 1970s feminist theory was criticized for ignoring racism and treating gender as a universal and a historical category that encompassed the experiences of all women (Dobrowolsky 2001). Feminist slogans of the 1970s that identified all men as 'the enemy' and all women as suffering 'common oppression' were initially adopted by women from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. However, after the initial enthusiasm for articulating the common experiences of gender, some feminists began to critically examine these slogans and their assumption that gender represents the primary source of women's oppression. This re-examination spawned a vigorous and far-ranging critique of feminist theories (Agnew 1996). Decades later, in the 1980s and 1990s, feminist theorists grappled with the fall out of having conceptualized women as a group. As they drew attention to inequalities or differences between men and women, those among women tended to be disregarded (Collins 1990; Spellman 1988; Mohanty 1991). For example, the invocation of "woman" often universalized women and failed to consider that the realities of a white, Western, English-speaking, able-bodied, middle-class woman were far removed from those of many other women (Dobrowolsky 2001). 2) Women are not of a collective identity. In the field of writing, and necessarily thinking, the argument is that "women are often best represented by other women, as they have an understanding of what equality means for them that is not available to men" (Williams 1998). Not all women, however, think of themselves as part of a collective identity, nor do they have similar interests. The political experiences and expressions of Deborah Grey and Rosemary Brown, for example, display dramatically the disparate political priorities espoused by political women (Dobrowolsky 2001). 3) Oppression is by race, class, gender. It is problematic actually to be treating women as a group and classify the oppression by gender alone since oppression is by race, class, gender (Dobrowolsky 2001). For example, women from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean experience one kind of oppression because of their gender (shared with white women), another because of their race (shared with men from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean), and a third because of their class (shared with working-class women and men). This suggests that race, class, and gender oppressions are experienced in discrete segments and can be isolated from one another. As mentioned by Dobrowolsky (2001), women from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean used historical data to demonstrate that class and race were as powerful as gender in oppressing and exploiting women. Women from these places experienced the three oppressions together 4) White feminists admit earlier ethnocentric bias. Are white women racists Davis (1983) questioned their commitment to black emancipation and portrayed them as such. Accordingly, the role of the family in oppressing women was probably the concept first identified by feminists from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean as one that excluded their experiences. On differing perspectives, white feminists had identified the patriarchal family as the locus of women's subordination and inequality. In contrast, women from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean argued that the family also served as an emotional buffer and created solidarity between men and women. This contradiction was initially ignored by white, middle-class feminists, who criticized the family on behalf of all women. Later on, however, white feminists admitted that they had shown ethnocentric bias in describing the experiences of their own class and race as the norm while disregarding the experiences of other women (Collins 1990; Spellman 1988). 5) Feminism has evolved. Of late, no longer is feminism exclusively about the issues of white, middle class women of privilege and of "unexamined racist attitudes" (Rich 1986: 136-137). History reflects that Feminism has ballooned to include experiences of discrimination in regards to race, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and ability and has fueled the debate regarding the social construction of both gender and sex (Davis 1983). Feminism is both a way of thinking about the world and a way of acting in it (Sapiro 1994: 444). Feminism is too narrow a term to encompass all these issues, according to Anderson (2004). Further, when a theorist or researcher is identified as an "ist," it creates in-group and out-group status so that no longer is individual behaviour being assessed but whether an individual is "one of us or one of them" When this happens the focus is no longer on issues of oppression and dominance but merely on race and class. (Anderson 2004). According to Sandra Bem (1993), people of different sexes should no longer be culturally identified with different clothes, different social roles, different personalities, or different sexual and affectional partners any more than people with different-colored eyes or different-sized feet are now. Works Cited Agnew, Vijay. 1996. Resisting Discrimination: Women from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean and the Women's Movement in Canada. Reprinted with permission. Accessed 29 July 2007 Anderson, Lauren. "Why I'm a Feminist." Canadian Woman Studies. No. 4/1, Vol. 20/21: 32-34. Bem, Sandra Lipsitz. "Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality." The Lenses of Gender. Yale University Press, 1993. 176-196 Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1990. Davis, Angela Y. 1983. Women, Race, & Class. 1st Vintage Books Ed edition. ISBN-10: 0394713516. ISBN-13: 978-0394713519 Delphy, Christine. 1984. Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women's Oppression. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Dobrowolsky, Alexandra. "Intersecting identities and inclusive institutions: Women and a future transformative politics". Journal of Canadian Studies. Winter 2001. Halbert, Debora. "Review for H-Teachpol of Jean V. Matthews." Women's Struggle for Equality: The First Phase, 1828-1876. American Ways Series. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997. x + 212 pp. ISBN 1-56663-145-9. ISBN 1-56663-146-7. Hooks, Bell. Feminist Theory from Margin to Centre. Boston: South End, 1984. Lees, Sue. "Sex, Race and Culture: Feminism and the Limits of Cultural Pluralism." Feminist Review, No. 22 (Spring, 1986), pp. 92-102. Doi: 10.2307/1394941. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses." Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Chandra T. Mohanty, Anne Russo and Lourdes Torres (Eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. 51-80. Nakano Glenn, Evelyn. The Social Construction and Institutionalization of Gender and Race: An Integrative Framework. Revisioning Gender. Eds. Myra Marx Ferree, Judith Lorber and Beth Hess. London: Sage, 1999. 3-43. Rich, Adrienne. "Resisting Amnesia: History and Personal Life" Bread Blood and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1970-1985. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986: 136-155. Sapiro, Virginia. 1994. "Feminism and the Future." Women in American Society: an Introduction to Women's Studies. Mayfield. 443-447; 471-484 Spellman, Elizabeth. Inessential Woman. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. Williams, Melissa. Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Read More