[1] Materialist feminism understands sex and gender as social constructs[2] that are produced through reproductive exploitation and domestic subordination.
[4] The term materialist feminism emerged in the late 1970s and is associated with key thinkers such as Christine Delphy, Colette Guillaumin, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, and Monique Wittig.
However, Benston argues that without actual freedom from housework, it is likely impossible for true equality to exist in job opportunity.
[1] Marxist feminism is focused on investigating and explaining the ways in which women are oppressed through systems of capitalism and private property.
For materialist feminists, constructing a theory of patriarchy that reduces women's work to reproduction ends up reaffirming the patriarchal ideology.
[10] She argues that the domestic mode of production is the material basis of gender oppression, and that marriage is a labor contract that gives men the right to exploit women.
[14] Christine Delphy's contributions to materialist feminism have also been the subject of criticism, for example by Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh.
By focusing on capitalist relations combined with patriarchy, materialist feminism fails to include women of different classes, sexualities, and ethnicities.
She instead noted the ways that values of the family are different for black women and men, just as the division of labor is also racialized.
[16] Rosemary Hennessy comments on how there has recently been pressure to recognize the differences within the definition of "woman" and how this intersects with not only class, but race, sexualities, and genders.