Companion to Feminist Studies. Группа авторов
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to the analysis of gender and sexual differences (Chapter 2). Author Sheila Greene begins with a discussion of Graeco‐Roman arguments about essential differences between women and men that positions men as superior by nature to women. Women's reproductive capacity has often been the basis for her construction as closer to “nature,” while men's presume greater intellectual capacity positions them as creators of culture and academic advancement. Greene traces the continuity of this framing over time and how it continues to be “deeply embedded in Western scholarship.” For example, contemporary biologically determinist approaches center the significance of genes, hormones, and brain differences in contributing to essentialist gender differences. Feminists have challenged these reductive approaches and point out the interaction of biological and other social, cultural, and environmental factors in shaping human diversity (see, e.g. Davis 2015; Fausto‐Sterling 2000; Keller and Longino 1996; Udry 2001).
In Chapter 3, Elisabeth Armstrong examines the development and divergence between Marxist and Socialist Feminism. Marxist feminism was articulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s by feminists who adapted Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism to incorporate the significance of women's unpaid labor in the home for supporting the economic exploitation of workers. Socialist feminism quickly followed as feminists engaged with analysis of patriarchy as a separate system of exploitation.
Chapter 4 provides a fascinating discussion of the origins and debates in “Radical and Cultural Feminisms.” Lauren Rosewarne examines the activism of radical feminists and radical feminist theoretical analyses from the late 1960s. She notes that one major tenet of radical feminism is that “women are subordinated … [as] an oppressed class; a sex‐class … caused by patriarchy.” She explains that “radical feminism aimed to dismantle not only patriarchy but each of the social, cultural, political, and economic structures that benefited from – and supported – male authority.” As noted above, feminists informed by both radical analyses of patriarchy and Marxist critiques of capitalism were in the forefront of developing socialist feminism.
Rosewarne outlines key tenets and critiques of radical feminism, then moves to discuss the difference between radical and cultural feminism. She defines cultural feminism as:
a theory which describes that there are fundamental personality differences between men and women, and that women's differences are special … Underlying this cultural feminist theory was a matriarchal vision – the idea of a society of strong women guided by essential female concerns and values. These included, most importantly, pacifism, co‐operation, non‐violent settlement of differences, and a harmonious regulation of public life.
(Tandon 2008, p. 52)
While radical feminism orients toward separatism and the elimination of the sex‐class system, “cultural feminism was a countercultural movement aimed at reversing the cultural valuation of the male and the devaluation of the female” (Echols 1989, p. 6, quoted in Rosenwarne in this volume). Alice Echols argues that “radical feminists were typically social constructionists who wanted to render gender irrelevant, while cultural feminists were generally essentialists who sought to celebrate femaleness” (ibid).
In Chapter 5, Bronwyn Winter describes three different approaches to materialist feminism, which builds on Marxist feminism in different ways. They are each associated with different geographic constellations of academic knowledge: French materialist feminism, British materialist feminism, and US materialist feminism. As she explains, “Gender, and the relationship of male domination that underpins it, are historically constructed and grounded in social relations, and are thus not fixed, but open to interrogation and change.” They all center “the material (social, economic), structural and ideological rather than (only) discursive or cultural underpinnings of these social relations.”
In Chapter 6, Rose M. Brewer highlights the significant theoretical and activist insights of Black feminist and Womanist epistemologies. She notes that these interrelated formulations have a long history that, in the US context, dates back to at least the nineteenth century. Both approaches center Black women's experiences and social justice. Womanist thought foregrounds and features Black culture and spirituality. Black feminist thought marks the significance of the positionality of the social actor in reflecting on how the social and political world shapes individual and social experiences.
In Chapter 7, Patricia Hill Collins expands on the contributions of Black feminist thought and critical race theory in her discussion of intersectional theory which emphasizes the ways in which gender, class, and race intersect to shape different women's experiences and the social structures that them. Collins is one of the key theorists whose analysis of Black feminist thought (1990) was foundational for articulating intersectional theory and analysis. In Chapter 7, she presents the theoretical perceptions and social activism that informs intersectionality including a clear explication of legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw's founding formulation of the concept by offering “a shortcut that built on existing sensibilities in order to see interconnections” between gender and race. It also offers a framework for deepening analysis to incorporate sexuality, class, and other dimensions of difference and power inequality. Collins (2019) argues that given the importance of intersectional epistemology, it should become a central framing within contemporary “critical social theory that keeps critical analysis and social action in play” (p. 3).
Chapter 8 explores the significance of the contributions to feminist epistemologies of “Queer, Trans and Transfeminist Theories.” Author Ute Bettray discusses the diverse origins and key premises of these interrelated approaches that theorize the fluidity of gender and sexuality, and challenge the binary and heteronormative approaches of other feminist frameworks. She concludes by discussing the ways in which transfeminism decouples feminine gender and female sex. She also emphasizes the significance of notions of queer space and time and deconstructive modes of queering “as a critical mode of the deconstruction of patriarchal, heteronormative, neoliberal late capitalism.” Bettray also examines transing as a process that “reveal[s] the socially constructed nature of categories and histories that can be reconceptualized in radically different ways.”
The final three chapters in Part II attend to the important insights drawn from the positionality of postcolonial, comparative, and transnational feminists. In Chapter 9, Umme Al‐wazedi explains that postcolonial feminism developed in reaction to the lack of attention to the dynamics of colonialism and empire in shaping postcolonial gender relations and global dimensions of inequalities, including “the hegemonic power established by indigenous men after the Empire.” Al‐wazedi argues that postcolonial feminism attends to the significance of caste, religion, and other dimensions of social, political, and cultural differences that shape the lives of non‐Western women.
In Chapter 10, Anne Sisson Runyan and coauthors compare approaches to feminism across different regions, which arose along with the expansion of regional governance and international non‐governmental organizations. Sisson et al. identify the resistance of activists and analyses of local conflicts, migrations, and economic shifts, as well as the diverse challenges and common themes in feminisms that are evident across regions. The authors highlight the importance of neoliberalism and the influence and resistance to Western feminism in shaping local feminisms that contribute to the “complex terrain of feminisms beyond binaries and borders.”
In the final chapter in this part (Chapter 11), Gul Aldikacti Marshall defines transnational feminism “as a theory developed against white Western feminism's notion of global sisterhood,