Feminist political theory
There are no strict necessary and sufficient conditions for being ‘feminist’, due both to the nature of categories and to the myriad developments, orientations and approaches within feminism.
What frequently distinguishes feminist political theory from feminism broadly is the specific examination of the state and its role in the reproduction or redressing of gender inequality.
[5] In addition to being broad and multidisciplinary, the field is relatively new, inherently innovative, and still expanding; the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that "feminist political philosophy serves as a field for developing new ideals, practices, and justifications for how political institutions and practices should be organized and reconstructed.
[2] Some key primary texts include: Christiane de Pizan's 1450 "The Book of the City of Ladies", which was written in praise of women and as a defense of their capabilities and virtues in order to combat against misogynist male writing.
[11] Radical feminism argues that at the heart of women's oppression is pervasive male domination, which is built into the conceptual and social architecture of modern patriarchal societies.
[2] Thus came to be Catharine A. MacKinnon's famous line, “Man fucks woman; subject verb object.”[12] Radical feminists argue that, because of patriarchy, women have come to be viewed as the "other" to the male norm, and as such have been systematically oppressed and marginalized.
[14] The strongest forms of radical feminism argue that there can be no reform, but only recreation of the notions of family, partnership, and childrearing, and that to do so in a way that preserves women's dignity requires the creation of women-only spaces.
Socialist feminists consider how sexism and the gendered division of labor of each historical era is determined by the economic system of the time, largely expressed through capitalist and patriarchal relations.
[19] In the 1970s, the impacts of post-World War II technological development led many women to organize against issues from the toxic pollution of neighborhoods to nuclear weapons testing on indigenous lands.
This grassroots activism emerging across every continent was both intersectional and cross-cultural in its struggle to protect the conditions for reproduction of Life on Earth.
An example of such related scholarship is Eileen McDonagh's book The Motherless State which explores how socially feminized "motherly" attributes have been stripped from modern governance models.
One facet of the debate involves intersectionality and whether women from different racial and cultural backgrounds have enough in common to form a political group.
[27] Intersectionality arguments claim that the multifaceted connection between race, gender, and other systems that work together to oppress while allowing privilege are vital and must be considered in the political sphere.
[30] This field addresses how women lead differently than their male counterparts in political careers, such as legislators, executives, and judges.
