Feminism: A Comprehensive Analysis - PDF

9 FEMINISM SUSAN HEKMAN Contemporary feminism began in the late eighteenth century as a social movement to achieve political equality for women. Since its inception it has passed through a number of different stages. In the ninet...

9 FEMINISM SUSAN HEKMAN Contemporary feminism began in the late eighteenth century as a social movement to achieve political equality for women. Since its inception it has passed through a number of different stages. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries liberal feminism and socialist feminism allied feminism with the dominant political theories of the day. Beginning in the 1960s, however, feminists developed approaches that did not depend on male-dened theories. Radical feminism, psychoanalytic feminism, the feminisms of women of colour, and postmodern feminism are attempts to develop analyses of women’s role in society from a woman’s perspective. These approaches analyse how gender is constructed and maintained as one of the central meaning structures of society. Feminism today provides a comprehensive analysis of the social meaning of gender that forms a fundamental aspect of contemporary critical theory. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Western Europe was engaged in an effort to enfranchise people previously excluded from political participation. The vehicle that political activists employed to achieve this goal was the political theory of liberalism. Liberalism involves the belief that government is formed by rational, autonomous individuals for the purpose of serving these individuals’ interests. Liberals argued that all citizens should participate equally in government and that all should be treated equally under the law. Some women of the era embraced these liberal theories. Beginning in 1798 with the publication of English writer Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, women argued that the movement towards a more egalitarian society should include an equal place for women. English philosopher John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, published in 1869, made this case as well. To these authors and the women and men who agreed with them it seemed obvious, rst, that women should be enfranchised and, second, that giving women the vote would be all that was required to secure their equality in society. In the rst decades of the twentieth century women were granted the franchise in most nations in Western Europe and North America. As far as liberal theory was concerned, this should have solved the problem of women’s inequality: women were now equal citizens. But the status of women in Western nations was little changed by their enfranchisement. Most women continued to occupy an inferior status politi- cally, legally, economically and socially. Consequently, in the 1960s women began to push for more extensive changes in society. They organized to remove laws that discriminated against women and challenged barriers to certain kinds of employment. Liberal feminists such as Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique (1963), argued that women should seek full political and legal equality and that this would remove 96  FE MI NI SM their inferior status in society. Underlying the approach of liberal feminism is the assumption that the inferiority of women is solely a function of their political and legal status. Liberalism rests on the presupposition that equal participation and equality before the law are sufcient to secure freedom. Once this equality has been achieved, freedom should be the inevitable result. Liberal feminists thus had no way of explaining or rectifying the continued inequality of women under the conditions of political equality. Another feminist movement arose on the basis of the political theory that opposed liberalism: Marxism. While liberalism locates power in the government, Marxism locates it in the economy. For Karl Marx, power resides with those who control the means of economic production; consequently changing the locus of that power will change the structure of society. What this means for women was developed by Marx’s collaborator Friedrich Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1845). Engels argued that the domination of women by men arose with the advent of private property in human society. He concluded that the overthrow of private property, and specically capitalism, will result in the liberation of women. It follows that women, like the proletariat, should work for the overthrow of capitalism. In the twentieth century a number of feminists used Marx’s theories to formulate a Marxist/socialist feminism. Juliet Mitchell developed ‘dual-systems theory’: the position that women are oppressed not only by capitalism, as Engels had argued, but by patriarchy as well. Dual-systems theorists concluded that the liberation of women requires the dismantling of both of these structures. Nancy Hartsock took Marx’s concept of the proletarian standpoint and used it to develop what she called the ‘feminist standpoint’. Hartsock asserted that women’s oppression gives them a unique and truer view of the realities of society. Like Mitchell, she argues that women must attack both patriarchy and capitalism to achieve liberation. Marxist/socialist feminism goes beyond liberal feminism in exploring the societal rather than the strictly political and legal roots of women’s subordination. By arguing that it is the structure of patriarchy that oppresses women it expands the understanding of the causes of women’s oppression. But, like liberal feminism, Marxist/socialist feminism is still limited to an examination of the objective structures of society. It was only with the advent of the next stage of feminism that feminist thought developed as a critical theory of society. Radical, psychoanalytic and postmodern feminism explore, although in different ways, how women become ‘women’ in our society. They look beyond the economic, legal and political structures of society to analyse how the meaning of gender is created and perpetuated in all aspects of society. Simone de Beauvoir began her classic analysis of women, The Second Sex (1988), with a statement that sets the tone for contemporary feminism: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (295). Beginning in the late 1970s feminists looked beyond the economic, political and legal structures of society to the deeper levels of meaning production to explain and rectify the inferior status of women. A central element of this movement was the effort to analyse women’s role in reproduction. Radical feminists turned their attention to the practices surrounding mothering, sexu- ality and the denition of gender roles. What these feminists argued is that it is 97  SUSAN HE KMAN women’s role in these processes that both denes and perpetuates their subordination to men. A signicant element of the argument of radical feminists is their assertion that it is not the biological fact that women have children that is the cause of women’s subordination but, rather, the cultural construction of mothering and sexuality that denes women’s status. Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex (1970) was one of the rst clear state- ments of the radical feminist position. Firestone argued that it is the fact that women bear children and are responsible for raising them that keeps women in a subordinate position. It follows that even if legal, economic and political barriers to women’s equality are removed, women’s status will not change. Women will still be mothers, and hence subordinate. Firestone’s argument with regard to the organization of reproduction was persuasive to many women; the logic of her argument was compelling. The solution that she proposed, however, was not. Firestone argued that only if women abandoned the role of mothering altogether could true emancipation be achieved. She thus advocated a form of articial reproduction – test-tube babies – that many feminists found bizarre and unacceptable. While other radical feminists rejected Firestone’s conclusions, they continued to explore questions of reproduction and sexuality. In an almost complete reversal of Firestone’s position, many radical feminists asserted that, far from abandoning moth- erhood, women should embrace it as a positive good. Essential to such an afrmation is taking control of the process of reproduction away from the powers of patriarchy. The theme of Mary O’Brien’s The Politics of Reproduction (1981) is that men control women’s reproductive process through medical, social and cultural structures. O’Brien argues that women should reclaim this control and positively afrm the role of mothering. Adrienne Rich offers a compatible argument. Rich emphasizes the positive role of mothering and identies it as the distinctive contribution of women. These and other radical feminists argue that mothering is a uniquely feminine activity that women should afrm rather than deny. What we need to do, they argue, is to redene mothering as a positive, life-afrming activity rather than the source of women’s oppression. At the root of these and other arguments offered by radical feminists is the thesis that it is the cultural creation of the concept ‘woman’, not biological or structural forces, that denes her subordination. Although they assert that the central aspect of this denition is sexual, they also assert that it extends into every aspect of social life. Radical feminists developed a wide-ranging body of literature that explores these myriad aspects. Kate Millett argues that literature is suffused with sexual meanings that demean women. Mary Daly takes on the institution of Christianity, arguing that the patriarchal structure of the church has been a major factor in women’s oppression. Marilyn Frye looks at everyday events such as men opening doors for women and analyses the signicance of these events for the ongoing subordination of women. One of the most controversial aspects of radical feminism is its stance on pornog- raphy. The now infamous work of legal theorist and activist Catharine MacKinnon on the subject of pornography has become synonymous with radical feminism itself. MacKinnon argued, along with other radical feminists, that if women’s subordination is 98  FE MI NI SM a result of how the identity ‘woman’ is constructed in our society, then we must expose the roots of that construction. The root that MacKinnon identied is pornography. In our society, MacKinnon asserted, sex is what women are for. And the sexual function of all women is most clearly evident in the practice of pornography. Pornography reveals the essence of the construction of ‘woman’: that the purpose of women’s existence is to satisfy the sexual desires of men. Thus, she concluded, if women want to overthrow patriarchy that effort must begin with the eradication of pornography. MacKinnon’s attack on pornography was controversial even among radical femi- nists. Many did not agree with her thesis that pornography is the essential element of women’s subordination. Others argued that her position entails a stance that is anti-sex and pointed out that some women enjoy pornography. In the 1990s, a ‘pro- sex’ movement developed as a counter to MacKinnon’s position. Some feminists also objected to MacKinnon’s efforts to outlaw pornography through legal strategies, arguing that pornography is protected speech under the First Amendment. In the American context an attack on First Amendment freedoms is regarded as a serious issue. The public character of these strategies brought the ideas of radical feminists to the attention of a broader public, frequently with negative results. Radical feminism represents an important juncture in the history of feminist thought. Liberal and Marxist/socialist feminism focused on the objective structures of society, law, politics and economics as the cause of women’s oppression. Radical feminism shifted the focus to the production of meaning. They argued that women’s oppression is rooted not in objective structures, which can be changed and had been by the 1970s, but in how ‘woman’ is constructed in our society. The cause of women’s subordination is not the political/economic/legal structures or even biology, but the meaning conferred on the identity ‘woman’ in all aspects of cultural life. Radical feminists turned the lens of feminism beyond politics and economics to the processes by which cultural life is structured and perpetuated. Radical feminism represents another change as well: a shift in feminist thought from equality to difference. Liberal and Marxist/socialist feminisms are about equality: bringing women up to the standard set by men. Critics of these approaches point out that this privileges men. It forces women to conform to the standard set by men; equality is dened in terms of women being equal to men. Radical feminism, in contrast, emphasizes difference. Women are different from men, they claim, not in a negative but in a positive sense. Radical feminists want to positively afrm women’s difference and, most importantly, to remove women’s subordination without erasing their difference. The shift from equality to difference led a number of feminists in the 1970s to turn to psychology to explore this difference. Since the work of nineteenth-century psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the question of how women differ from men had been cast in psychological terms. Freud’s account of the psychological differences between men and women, however, was not one feminists could accept. For Freud, woman’s psyche was a problem. He dened women as unable to successfully resolve the Oedipus complex, a failure that created difculties for their mature sexuality. He concluded that this problem accounts for the psychological dilemmas many women 99  SUSAN HE KMAN encounter. As feminists began to explore the differences between men and women from a psychological perspective, however, they developed a very different under- standing of the origin of these differences. In the late 1970s two feminist theorists, Dorothy Dinnerstein and Nancy Chodorow, argued that women differ from men in our society not because their psyches are innately different but because they are raised by their mothers to conform to a specic image of ‘woman’ that pervades society. In order to make this argument Dinnerstein and Chodorow employed a theory developed by child psychologists, object relations theory. They asserted that mothers raise boys and girls according to very different patterns. Mothers treat boys as little men: they keep them at a distance, they encourage them to go out and play competi- tively, they discourage expressions of emotion. Girls are treated in exactly opposite ways: they are kept in the house, discouraged from engaging in competitive play, taught how to ‘mother’ dolls and to deal with emotional relationships. The result is that when these boys and girls become men and women they have very different psychological make-ups. Men are good at competition and autonomy and bad at relationships and emotion. Women excel in relationships and emotions and are bad at competition and autonomy. Chodorow goes on to argue that it might be possible to move beyond these differ- ences. She asserts that since the difference between men and women is caused by the parenting style of mothers, that difference can be erased by a practice she calls ‘dual parenting’. Dual parenting entails, rst, that both parents are equally involved in raising their children and, second, that boys and girls are not treated according to different gender patterns. Thus both girls and boys learn both autonomy and relat- edness; these qualities are not associated with one gender or another. The result, Chodorow hopes, will be a world in which an individual’s characteristics are not gender-dened: that is, a world beyond gender. In 1982 a moral psychologist from Harvard, Carol Gilligan, published an analysis of women’s processes of moral decision-making, In a Different Voice. Gilligan’s book had a profound effect on the feminist movement. In a strict sense it is an empirical study of the processes by which women arrive at moral decisions. The broader implication of Gilligan’s thesis, however, extends far beyond the empirical and accounts for the pervasive inuence of her book. Like many radical and psycho- logical feminists Gilligan emphasized women’s difference from men. Exploring this difference from the perspective of moral reasoning, Gilligan came to the conclusion that women typically approach moral decisions from a relational and contextual perspective, while men abstract from the concrete situation and appeal to universal principles. The (male) psychologists who studied moral development classied women’s moral process as decient, men’s as the model and norm. Gilligan’s thesis was that women’s style of moral reasoning, although different from that of men, is not decient but equally valid as a moral practice. Much of the inuence of Gilligan’s analysis in In a Different Voice is due to her ability to speak to the experiences of women. Gilligan’s descriptions of women’s moral decisions resonated with women; women saw themselves in the situations Gilligan described. But the most signicant aspect of Gilligan’s analysis is that she 100  FE MI NI SM validated those experiences. She argued that women’s relational approach to moral decision-making was not inferior or inadequate but, rather, a legitimate approach to moral situations. It is this aspect of Gilligan’s argument that moves her discussion beyond the empirical realm. The ‘difference’ in women that Gilligan valorizes, their relational, contextual nature, is precisely the difference that has been identied as the source of women’s inferiority since Plato. By valorizing this difference, and arguing that women are different but equal, Gilligan is in effect challenging nothing less than one of the founding assumptions of the Western tradition. Object relations theory is not the only psychological theory employed by femi- nists. Some feminists argued that Freud’s theory can be useful to women despite its masculinist bias. Others looked to the work of other psychologists such as Jacques Lacan to formulate a feminist approach. Despite these differences, however, two themes dominate psychoanalytic feminist approaches. First, most psychoanalytic feminists replace biological and essentialist explanations of sexual difference with social and cultural explanations. For most psychoanalytic feminists women are, in de Beauvoir’s sense, made rather than born. Psychoanalytic feminists argue that the psyche is a social product, a result of formative inuences early in childhood rather than the expression of an innate nature. Thus, as with radical feminists, the focus is shifted from nature and biology to nurture and culture. For psychoanalytic feminism women’s ‘difference’ is a social product. Second, psychoanalytic feminists emphasize difference rather than equality. With the exception of the argument for dual parenting these theorists are not inter- ested in exploring how men and women can become equal. Rather, they are inter- ested in exploring how the differences that characterize the sexes have been formed and the implications of those differences. One of the results of this focus is that in psychoanalytic as well as radical feminism differences between women tend to be obscured. In both of these feminist approaches ‘woman’ becomes a monolithic category; the emphasis is on the difference between men and women, not the differences between women. As the feminist movement gained momentum in the 1970s and 1980s women of colour who participated in the movement began to protest against the dominance of white, middle-class women. In both theory and practice, the ‘woman’ of the women’s movement was a white middle-class woman; other women were dened as ‘different’. Women of colour resisted this dominance in a number of ways. One means of resistance was political. Women of colour began to split off from the established feminist organizations and form organizations to meet their specic needs. Thus African-American women, Chicanas, Asian-American women and others formed political organizations around their specic ethnicities. Women of colour also argued that they needed a theory that speaks directly to their situations and that the theories of white middle-class women are not applicable to those situations. In an inuential book published in 1988, Inessential Woman, Elizabeth Spelman argued that the use of the concept ‘woman’ is the ‘Trojan Horse’ of feminist theory. She asserted that using the concept ‘woman’ necessarily privi- leges a certain denition of woman, in this case white heterosexual middle-class 101  SUSAN HE KMAN women, and denes all other women as different and hence decient. As a counter Spelman advocated a feminist theory and practice that eschew general categories and acknowledged the differences between women. The feminist community has heeded Spelman’s advice. Since the 1980s differ- ences between women, particularly differences of race, ethnicity and sexual orien- tation, have been at the forefront of feminist theory and practice. Women of colour, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered women have formed feminist organizations to promote their interests. Women from each of these groups have also developed theories specic to their situation or, in some cases, rejected theory altogether, arguing that it is a product of Western patriarchal thought that has no relevance for them. Some feminists have regarded the movement towards an emphasis on differences with apprehension, fearful that it fragments the feminist community. Most feminists, however, agree with Spelman that we must recognize and accommodate diversity. The controversy is primarily over how to practise that recognition. Another aspect of the emphasis on differences comes into play as well. Acknowledging differences between women is a direct corollary of the basic insight of the contemporary feminist movement: identity categories are socially constructed. Radical and psychoanalytic feminists argued that the category ‘woman’ is socially constructed and that resistance to that identity involved a fundamental change in society. Feminists are now arguing that other categories are socially constructed as well. Race, ethnicity and sexual orientation are identity categories to which individuals are assigned and which carry specic meanings. In order to challenge those meanings we must explore these differences along with the difference of gender. The theme of differences was also at the forefront of another major inuence on the feminist movement in the 1980s and 1990s: postmodernism. The postmodern movement is a wide-ranging phenomenon that has affected almost all areas of academic life. It has also reached into the realms of art, architecture and literature. The aspect of postmodernism that has had the most effect on feminism has its roots in the work of a number of French thinkers in the late twentieth century. The psycho- analytic theories of Jacques Lacan and the philosophical approaches of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, among others, have been embraced by a signicant number of feminists. Postmodern feminism has had a major impact on the direction of contemporary feminist thought. The root of postmodern thinking, as the name indicates, is a rejection of modernism, a tradition of philosophical thought with its roots in the seventeenth century. Modernism presupposes a rational, autonomous subject who attempts to nd universal, absolute truth. Postmoderns declare this attempt to be at best futile, and at worst dangerous. They claim that absolute truth does not exist and that the subjects who pursue this truth are neither rational nor autonomous. Against this, postmoderns claim that everything is continually in ux. Truth is a metaphor; its denition changes with styles of discourse. Individual identity is a ction; it is created by the discourses that structure society. One of the key aspects of postmodern thought is the claim that modernist thought is dualistic: it divides the world according to entities and their opposites. These 102  FE MI NI SM opposites are always hierarchical and, most signicantly, also gendered. For the modernist the privileged side of the opposites that comprise the world is gendered masculine; the feminine is always the disprivileged ‘other’. The masculine is the standard; entities dened as feminine are inferior. It is this element of postmodern thought that constitutes its appeal for many feminists. Postmodernism makes it possible to identify the source of women’s subordination in the basis of Western modernist thought itself. From a postmodern perspective the answer to the question of why women have been and continue to be subordinated is that they are always dened as ‘other’, the opposite and inferior to the masculine standard. The postmodern feminists who rst developed these ideas were a group of French writers, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. The ‘French feminism’ that these writers developed began to move feminism in a postmodern direction. Although the work of these writers is far from identical, all focus on the major theme of postmodern thought: the rejection of modernist dualisms. Irigaray argues that the modernist dualisms that dene women as ‘other’ create a trap for women. The only solution, she argues, is to embrace a pluralistic epistemology that dees dualisms. She advocates developing a feminine writing (écriture féminine) that opens up what the postmoderns call phallocratic writing: the masculinist, dualistic discourse that characterizes modernism. Kristeva approaches the issue of modernist dualities from the perspective of the psychoanalytic work of Lacan. Lacan’s thesis is that in phal- locentric language woman is not just the ‘other’, she is a lack; she is quite literally not present in discourse. Kristeva uses this theory to argue that woman’s position outside of discourse provides her with the radical potential to disrupt and transform discourse. Thus, like Irigaray, she advocates a distinctively feminine writing. Cixous’ discussion of feminine writing leads her in another direction. She denes what she calls a ‘feminine imaginary’ that can escape the dualism of the masculine subject. Although French feminism had a signicant impact on feminist thought, it is the work of Judith Butler that has been the denitive inuence in postmodern feminism. The publication of Butler’s Gender Trouble in 1990 brought postmodern feminism to the forefront of feminist thought. Although Butler builds on the theories of Derrida, Foucault and the French feminists, her version of postmodern feminism is distinctive. Butler’s thesis is that gender, the identity of ‘woman’, is a ction. She asserts that there is no essential subject, ‘woman’, but, rather, that this subject is created and maintained by the actions that are dictated by the concept. ‘Woman’ exists because women act in accordance with this identity; there is no essence of ‘woman’ beyond the acts that constitute gender identity. Butler’s book hit the feminist community like a storm. Its most immediate impact was to question the viability of feminist identity politics, a politics united around the concept ‘woman’. The implications of Butler’s argument were clear. If there is no ‘woman’, then ‘women’s liberation’ makes little sense. What Butler advocates in lieu of feminist identity politics is ‘gender trouble’: engaging in actions that subvert gender identity. If ‘woman’ is created by the acts that dene gender, then acting subversively will destabilize that identity. Such acts were Butler’s prescription for feminist politics. 103  SUSAN HE KMAN The theoretical implications of Butler’s work are similarly revolutionary. Butler’s theory is the radical culmination of a trend that began with radical and psychoana- lytic feminism: the turn away from biology and essences and towards language and meaning production. Radical and psychoanalytic feminism emphasized how ‘woman’ is constructed by the meaning structures of our society. Butler takes this one step farther by arguing that ‘woman’ herself is a ction. For Butler it is not the case that there is an entity, ‘woman’, that is shaped by social meanings. Rather, there is no there there: ‘woman’ is a ction produced by the actions that constitute gender. The identity ‘woman’ is quite literally created, not shaped or inuenced, by the discourses that dene it. Postmodern feminism has generated an ongoing controversy in the feminist community. Its defenders claim that the radical approach of postmodernism is precisely what feminism needs. Postmodern thought has revealed the dualistic, hier- archical and gendered structure of modernist thought. It has also revealed that unless we dismantle those dualisms that gendered hierarchy will remain in place. Thus, they argue, it is only by employing postmodern strategies that feminists can successfully challenge patriarchy. The critics of postmodernism have criticized it from two direc- tions. First, some feminists have argued that by declaring ‘woman’ a ction postmod- ernism destroys the possibility of a feminist politics and, for that matter, feminism itself. If there is no ‘woman’, then there can be no women’s liberation. Both ‘woman’ and ‘liberation’ are anathema to postmodernism. They conclude that the nihilism at the heart of postmodernism is inappropriate for feminism, a movement that, by de- nition, must focus on improving women’s lives. How this dispute will be resolved is not yet evident. A distinctive take on the question of politics, however, has emerged in a recent movement among younger feminists: ‘third-wave feminism’. ‘Third-wave feminism’ is dened primarily by its rejection of theory and organized political movements. Third-wave feminists, women in their twenties and thirties who have grown up in a feminist era, are not interested in taking sides in the theory wars of their mothers’ generation. Nor are they interested in developing a theory or politics of their own. Rather, they are concerned with living feminist lives in today’s society. Third-wave writings focus on differences between women, the different ways in which women today negotiate their lives as feminists. But what emerges from these writings is not a new theory of differences but descrip- tions. These writers argue that there is no one answer to the question of how to live as a feminist. Rather, each woman must confront the unique problems of her particular life. Theories only get in the way of this task. A second criticism of postmodern feminism has come from another direction: the ‘new materialists’. Feminist new materialists such as Karen Barad and Elizabeth Grosz criticize postmodern feminism for focusing exclusively on language and precluding any discussion of the material. Although they agree with the postmodern feminists that language constitutes our reality, they also claim that it is not language alone that does so. The new materialists want to bring the material, particularly the materiality of the body, back into the equation. They argue that language, material elements, the technological and a host of other factors intersect to constitute our 104  FE MI NI SM reality. Feminist new materialists focus on discussions of women’s bodies and the effect of toxins, environmental forces and medical practices on those bodies. These feminists do not so much repudiate postmodern feminism as expand its scope. Their approach opens up new horizons in feminist analysis and successfully counters the linguistic constructionism of the postmoderns. Finally, another approach that has become prominent in recent feminist discus- sions is that of intersectionality. Intersectional analysis begins with a simple point that has complex implications for feminist analysis: it is not gender alone that consti- tutes our identity as women, but the intersection of gender with an array of other factors such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class and ableism. Feminists who adopt an intersectional approach, such as Nina Lykke and Kimberlé Crenshaw, analyse the intersection of these elements in various aspects of society, studying the complex interplay of diverse factors. Instead of focusing exclusively on gender, intersectional feminist analysis looks at the impact of race, ethnicity, class and other factors on the constitution of gender and, conversely, how gender structures these factors. This approach has at the same time immensely enriched and complicated feminist analysis. It is difcult to look at the conjunction of these elements in combi- nation rather than at a single factor in isolation. But looking at an array of factors gives a more complete picture of the structure of society and the complexity of the elements that constitute it. Feminism in the early twenty-rst century is not a monolithic movement. Feminists disagree on many issues encompassing the full range of theory and practice. Despite these differences, however, a number of signicant commonalities unite contem- porary feminism. First, most feminists agree that the subordination of women in our society cannot and has not been eradicated by political and legal means alone. Securing the vote and legal equality has not produced an equal societal status for women. In order to achieve this equality other strategies must be employed. Second, most feminists agree that the subordinate status of women is a product of the meanings associated with ‘woman’ in our society. It is because ‘woman’ is dened as irrational, closer to nature, more emotional and dependent that women occupy an inferior role in society. Addressing these issues, however, is much more complex than changing laws. Altering societal meanings entails employing strategies that must permeate every aspect of society. Feminists must ght their battles everywhere, not just in the political arena. Third, most feminists agree that we must emphasize and continue to explore the differences between women. Focusing on the difference between men and women was a useful strategy at the beginning of the feminist movement. But most feminists now agree that treating ‘woman’ as a monolithic category does more harm than good. We need to recognize and examine the differences between women as well as the other differences that constitute identity in order to create a feminism for all women. The challenge for feminism is to continue to promote the cause of women without losing sight of the differences between them. Feminists must nd a common ground that does not presuppose a homogeneous concept of ‘woman’. Feminism has been and continues to be at the forefront of contemporary critical theory. How society produces and maintains the distinction between men and women 105  SUSAN HE KMAN is one of the central elements, if not the central element, of meaning production in society. The concerns of feminism are thus closely linked to the concerns of critical theory. These two movements will continue to inuence each other as each explores new issues and problems in the contemporary world. FURTHER READING Alaimo, Stacy and Hekman, Susan (eds) (2008) Material Feminisms, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. A collection of articles that covers the major topics addressed by the new materialism in feminist studies. Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London: Routledge. The denitive statement of postmodern feminism. Findlen, Barbara (ed.) (1995) Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation, Seattle, WA: Seal Press. A collection of third-wave feminist writings. Gilligan, Carol (1982) In a Different Voice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The inuential argument for women’s different moral voice by a psychoanalytic/difference feminist. Hekman, Susan (1990) Gender and Knowledge, Cambridge: Polity Press. An overview of the relationship between postmodernism and feminism. hooks, bell (1989) Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Boston, MA: South End Press. An argument for a black feminist position. Lykke, Nina (2010) Feminist Studies: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology, and Writing, New York: Routledge. An overview of the intersectional approach that encompasses the diversity of topics covered. MacKinnon, Catharine A. (1977) Feminism Unmodied, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The radical feminist position against pornography. Spelman, Elizabeth (1988) Inessential Woman, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. An argument for acknowledging the differences between women. 106