Feminism

LIBERAL AND RADICAL FEMINISM: A BRIEF COMPARATIVE STUDY

Rusli

Lecturer of STAIN Datokarama Palu, Central Sulawesi

Abstrak: Dalam sejarah pemikiran feminis, terdapat dua aliran arus utama yang berbeda baik dalam hal melihat akar penindasan atas perempuan maupun dalam metodologi pengentasan ketertindasan perempuan tersebut, yaitu feminisme liberal dan feminisme radikal. Dalam kaitan dengan komitmen, mereka memiliki kesamaan dalam kesadaran untuk membebaskan perempuan dari keterbelengguan, dan dalam melihat struktur masyarakat patriarkal sebagai sumber ketidaksetaraan perempuan. Sedangkan secara metodis, mereka berbeda. Perbedaan tersebut terletak pada cara mereka mendekati masalah. Feminisme liberal cenderung melakukan perubahan bertahap dalam sebuah sistem pemerintahan, sedangkan feminisme liberal melakukan perubahan yang revolusioner di luar sistem negara.

و فى تاريخ الفكر النسائي أو الأنثوي يوجد المذهبان الأساسيان المتفاوتان فى النظر إلى جذور الإضطهاد على النساء والفحص عن منهج القيام على رفعه وهما: حركة نسائية تحريرية (liberal feminism) وحركة نسائية جذرية (radical feminism). فهم فى نفس الشعور على تحرير النساء من قيود الضغط و فى الفحص عن بنيان المجتمع الأبوي كمصدر عدم التسوية للنساء. ولكنهم يختلفون فى قضية المنهج. فتقوم الحركة النسائية التحريرية على التغيير التدريجي فى النظم الحكومية. وعلى خلاف ذلك فتعتمد الحركة النسائية الجذرية على التغيير الثوري خارج الحكومة.

Kata kunci: feminisme liberal, feminisme radikal, ketidakadilan gender, patriarki

I. Introduction

The emergence of feminism is commonly a response to gender inequality. Women increasingly are aware of their positions in the private and public space, and of their unequal treatment by society. However, the frameworks women use to analyse gender inequality are different. Feminism is diverse, not one single theory. Different feminism has different theories since they are influenced by other philosophies. Liberalism, for example, has deep impacts of liberal feminism, whereas Marx’s ideas have very much influenced the socialist and marxist feminism. Radical feminism also, to some extent, took ideas from such liberalist thinkers as Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Stewart, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Therefore, each branch of feminism sets up different ideas and strategies.

This paper will theoretically compare two different branches of feminism, particularly focusing on the origin of women’s oppression and strategies that both branches of feminism irrespectively use to overcome the oppression.

II. Liberal Feminism

The word “liberal” usually refers to freedom of choice. It is very much related to political areas. Initially, this began with the fight for political rights in America. This is driven by the fact that women are treated differently in political life. They were hindered from political voting, and experienced political inequality. Therefore, liberal feminists attacked women’s lack of political equality and state interference in women’s reproductive freedom. Furthermore, in recent days, the movement has been directed at getting access to certain social services to ensure equality between men and women (Saulnier, 1996: 10).

The origin of liberal feminist ideas can basically be traced back to such thinkers as Mary Wollstonescraft, John Stuart Mill, and Harriet Taylor. They generally emphasized on the nature of rationality, that is, men and women have the same intellectual capacity. It is a matter of exercising their intellectual capability and resources.

Liberal feminism mainly focuses on women’s issues which are related to public realms (outside) rather than private issues (within). It is concerned with how to achieve equal position and treatment in society. Gender inequality and women’s oppression, according to liberal feminism, basically results from the fact that women lack opportunities to maintain equality with men in public realms.

This movement is motivated by the fact that society, charaterised by male domination in all spheres of life, undermines the value of equal rights by positioning women in the workplace according to traits associated with feminine personality, like nursing, teaching and carrying out clerical work. Women are often deemed as incapable of other jobs, which are linked with masculine personality. Therefore, they are denied access to power and public space. Women are still portrayed in terms of their reproductive and household roles. When they enter the workforce, for instance, they are more often paid less even though they perform the same job as men do. They are still treated as caregiver rather than as equal workers. This situation is cultivated by the false belief, which perpetuates women’s oppression and subordination, that women are considered physically and intellectually weak, and psychologically emotional, passive and submissive, rather than men who are perceived as rational, aggressive, active and logical human being. This stereotyping, of course, leads to gender inequality, such as in social, economic, educational and political life, and should be remedied.

This gender stereotyping has taken place for a long time. Therefore, liberal feminists have made every effort to eliminate these false beliefs and carried out a gradual change toward reaching full equality. As liberal feminism argues, if women are given the same opportunity as men and freedom of choice, they can maintain equality with men; it is, accroding to them, a matter of exercising individual power and resources (Wearing, 1996: 4). In short, it can be argued that the main purpose of liberal feminism is to achieve full equality of opportunity in all aspects of life, particularly education and work (Rowland and Klein, 1996: 658; Weedon, 1987: 4).

Liberal feminism believes that in order to achieve their aim, attempts should be made to overcome gender inequality. The most important thing is the introduction of legislation and an attempt to change attitudes. (Krieken, et.al., 2000: 658). In terms of legislation, liberal feminism was successful in outlawing sexual discrimination, rape in marriage, and sexual harassment (Saulnier, 1996: 21). This is proven by the legislation of the Anti Sex Discrimination Act in 1984 and the Civil Right Act in America. They also successfully fought for legal abortion, and liberalized divorce and child custody laws (Saulnier, 1996: 21)

In education, they have been struggling to make access to education equal for men and women. If women are granted a chance to develop their rational capacities, the extreme gaps will disappear. Men and women are essentially the same. Women’s nature is also not fixed. Therefore, it can be changed due to the fact that there is no essential femininity. It is a matter of opportunity, nothing more. As Wollstonecraft said, as cited by Saulnier (1996: 12), “If men and women were raised in a more androgynous atmosphere, and if women were provided access to educational opportunities similar to those afforded to men, distinctions between men and women would be eliminated”.

In economic life, the efforts are directed toward achievement of equal pay for equal work (Saulnier, 1996: 13). This becomes a slogan for female workers reforming the injustices and miseries which they experience in the workplace. Most frequently, the owners of the capital treat them unfairly, particularly pertaining to wage payment and working hours, by manipulating the ideology of femininity and motherhood. In the case of Indonesia, liberal feminists tend to focus on how to force the capitalists to give financial support to female workers in terms of menstruation and maternity leave, and how to increase the minimum standard of wage payment.

In politics, the strategy liberal feminism uses is to work within the political system and establish coalitions in order that women’s issues are covered in all spheres of life. They have been struggling for better representation in public offices. This effort has also been extended to support female and male candidates who favor women’s issues (Saulnier, 1996: 13).

In order to achieve their goals, organizations are established, in America, such as Emily’s List, which provides funds for female candidates, and The Fund for Feminist Majority, which lobbies for legal improvement for women. In Indonesia, there is also the Women’s Coalition for Democracy and Justice, which has the same tasks, that is, to support candidates who are concerned about women’s issues and lobby for legislation favorable to women.

Media and education are used as means of influencing public opinion. This feminism believs that media plays a significant role in bringing about changes by portraying men and women in traditional ways and by using non-sexist language. The methods they use, as Zoonen (1991: 36) said, are:

Teaching ‘non-sexist professionalism’ in schools of journalism; creating awareness among broadcasters and journalists about stereotypes and their effects; putting ‘consumer pressure’ on media institutions, especially on advertisers; demanding affirmative action policies of media institutions.

Another strategy could be to encourage women to behave like men or to guide them to demonstrate both masculine and feminine gender traits and behaviors. If women are all androgynous, liberal feminists argue, there will be no impetus to discriminate against someone on the basis of gender (Tong, 1995: 27-8). In addition, women are encouraged to play by boy rules, eg. thinking that establishment men could be possibly good for women. This is carried out essentially to liberate women from the cage of masculinity and femininity. In this regard, there are different responses.

Some liberal feminists support mono-androgyny in the sense that human being combines the best qualities of men and women (Tong, 1995: 31). For instance, women have traditional female qualities, such as nurture, compassion, tenderness, sensitivity, affiliativeness, and cooperativeness, along with traditional male qualities, such as aggressiveness, leadership, initiative and competitiveness (Tong, 1995: 31).

On the other hand, other liberal feminists support the development of multiple personalities (poly-androgyny), some of which are totally masculine, others totally feminine, and still others a mixture (Tong, 1995: 31).

In contrast to radical feminism, liberal feminism does not offer a radical critique to the family. The most important thing is how to change the system of the structure in order that women can get the same access to the economic and social world. This makes sense because if women have equal opportunities, the traditional structure of the family will automatically change.

For instance, the more educated the women, the more likely they get a good job. This, in turn, will lead to financially improve their privileged status. They argue that the decision to have family and children should be based on their freedom of choice as individuals. If they agree to have children, they must be responsible for caring and rearing the, (Weedon, 1987: 16). Even liberal feminism supports male spouses who permit a woman to be a feminist (Morgan, 1996: 5).

III. Radical Feminism

The word “radical” means “pertaining to the roots.” This makes sense because radical feminism concentrated on critically analyzing the roots of women’s oppression. Similar to liberal feminism, radical feminism also pays very much attention to identifying and critically analyzing gender inequality. The issues, which radical feminism puts forward, however, are slightly different due to the fact that they embarked upon from distinct starting point.

In contrast to liberal feminism that focuses on public realms rather than private issues, radical feminism focuses on women’s experiences, not only public issues, but also private issues. There is even famous adagium from radical feminism “personal is political” which means that what women think of as personal problems are actually political issues that have a basis in sexist power imbalances. All issues are women’s issues since no woman can walk down the street of live in their house safely without fear of violence done by men.

Therefore, all men, in this feminism perspective, are the enemy and should be undermined. Women are a social group that is oppressed by men and this oppression is the first and primary oppression prior to race or class. This is created through patriarchy, a system of structure, which is characterized by male domination over women. This structure includes law, economy, religion, and politics.

According to radical feminism, the roots of the oppression are not in the lack of opportunities as liberal feminism suggested, but they lie in male domination (patriarchy), or as the New York Radical Feminists believed, women’s oppression was rooted in psychological factors, that is the male needs to perpetuate his manhood by positioning women subordinate to men (Tierney, 1989: 311; Abott and Wallace, 1990: 12).

Patriarchy has two material bases: first, the economic systems which make it difficult for women to get paid labor, that is, domestic mode of production. Women in this system are exploited due to the fact that they do domestic jobs voluntarily for the husband, such as childcare, housework, emotional and sexual services. Second, woman’s body is manipulated by men to oppress women. As the system of law is male-dominated, woman’s body can be controlled easily through laws of reproduction and contraception. Woman’s body is also perceived as available for male pleasure, such as pornography, prostitution, rape and sexual slavery.

Unlike liberal feminism that undertake gradual change or reforms in overcoming women’s oppression or gender inequality, radical feminism sees revolution as the only way to abolish patriarchy. In accordance with the significance of this revolutionary change, Gerda (1986: 217) said:

Reforms and legal changes, while ameliorating the condition of women and an essential part of the process of emancipating them, will not basically change patriarchy. Such reforms need to be integrated within a vast Cultural Revolution in order to transform patriarchy and abolish it.

Because the roots of female subordination and women’s oppression are biological, radical feminists argue that it is necessary to carry out radically biological revolution by applying technology on contraception, sterilization and abortion (Tong, 1995: 73). This technology is likely to improve perfectly artificial methods of human reproduction (Tong, 1995: 74).

As a consequence, the need for the biological family as the basis of patriarchy will fade away, since family which is based on compulsory heterosexuality is seen as a key instrument of perpetuating the rationality of patriarchal hegemony. This is a very radical critique b radical feminism, which is a response to liberal feminism that does not offer a radical critique of the family.

Thus, in order to be liberated from male domination, the constraints of heterosexuality must be avoided by establishing a exclusively female sexuality through celibacy and auto-eroticism, or by creating their own community, such as lesbianism (Tong, 1995:5; Zoone, 1991: 37).

Women are also encouraged to cut off all ties with men and male society on the assumption that they are essentially different from men and not equal. Women’s nature is perceived as fixed, unchangeable. They usually become victims and the oppressed group in the “male society”, whereas men are the ruling class that tends to suppress women.

All men, from radical feminism point of view, have a power over women, and are aggressive by nature and morally superior. To cooperate with and maintain equality with men is, therefore, highly impossible. This notion that women are naturally different from men, is contradictory with liberal feminism which emphasizes the essential similarity between men and women.

In contradiction with liberal feminism which concentrates more on individual solutions to the problem, radical feminism sees it necessary to form a cohesive revolutionary group or sisterhood to abolish male power. This is based on the assumption that women basically have the same experience with other women rather than men, regardless of race, class, religion, or nationality. All women are vulnerable to violence doe by men over women, in the private sphere, such as domestic violence and rape in marriage, and in the public sphere as well. As Sonia Johnson said, cited in Rowland and Klein (1996: 18), “One of the basic tenets of radical feminism is that any woman in the world has more in common with any other woman regardless of class, race, age, ethnic group, nationality that any woman has with man.”

Like liberal feminism, radical feminism also perceives the media as a significant instrument to send messages about stereotypical, patriarchal, hegemonic values about women and femininity (Zoonen, 1991: 41). But, in contrast to liberal feminism which perceives media as a mechanism of social control in order to secure continuity, integration and the transmission of the dominant values, the media is intended to encounter patriarchal media which serves the needs of patriarchal society by distorting and devaluing women’s experiences. Their strategies are that they must create their own means of communication, in which ideas are generated from their group that works voluntarily without profit and shares responsibilites (Zoonen, 1991: 41)

IV. Conclusion

To conclude, the similarity between two branches can be traced back to their commitment to identify and critically analyse gender inequality. They both believe that gender is an inevitable consequence of sex diiferences. Gender inequality is constructed by patriarchal society which maintains its domination through instituions, such as law, politics, economy, and ideology like the ideology of femininity and motherhood. Both branches of feminism can be called “structuralist” since they focus mainly on social relations and structures as a source of gender and inequality.

The differences lie on analyzing the roots of women’s oppression and female subordination, as well as the ways used in approaching the this problem. Liberal feminism undertakes gradual change within the system, while radical feminism undertakes revolutionary change outside the system.

V. References

Abott, Pamela and Wallace, Claire, An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives, London, New York: Routledge, 1990.

Gerda, Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Krieken, R, et.al., Sociology: Themes and Perspective, Australia: Longman, 2000

Morgan, Robin, “Light Bulbs, Radishes and the Politics of the 21st Century” in Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed, Australia: Michael Spinifex, 1996.

Rowland, Robyn, and Klein, Renate, “Radical Feminism: History, Politics, and Action’ in Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed, Australia: Michael Spinifex, 1996.

Saulnier, Christine F., Feminist Theories and Social Work: Approaches and Applications, New York: the Haworth Press, 1996.

Tierney, Helen (ed), Women’s Studies Encyclopedia, Vol.1, America: Greenwood Press, 1989.

Tong, Rosemarie, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction, London: Routledge, 1995.

Wearing, Betsy, Gender: the Pain and Pleasure of Difference, Australia: Longman, 1996.

Weedon, Christ, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.

Zoonen, Liesbet van, “Feminist Perspective on the Media” in Mass Media and Society, edited by James Currant, et.al., New York, 1991