A 5-minute read | sociological perspectives, condensed
Full study notes: Feminism, elsewhere on histpology.co.uk.
“The personal is political.”
— title given to Carol Hanisch’s 1970 essay by editors Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt
Hanisch’s 1970 essay said that private problems, such as doing all the housework or living with a controlling partner, are not personal failings. They come from a society built around men’s interests.
In a nutshell
Feminism is a structural, conflict perspective. It grew out of the women’s movement of the 1960s to 1980s, known as second-wave feminism. Like Marxism, it argues society is built to benefit one group, here men, rather than resting on values everyone shares.
Feminism’s central idea is patriarchy: a system in which men dominate through the family, work, culture, religion and the state. Feminism is not one theory. This read splits it into four strands: liberal, radical, Marxist and difference/black feminism. All four agree women are disadvantaged. They disagree about why.
Each strand reacted to the one before it: liberal feminism blames law and attitudes, radical feminism blames patriarchy as a system, Marxist feminism blames capitalism, and difference/black feminism argue all three generalised from white, middle-class women’s experience.
| Key terms |
| Patriarchy: a system in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women, a term popularised by Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1970). |
| Sex and gender: sex is biological difference between men and women; gender is the roles and behaviours society attaches to being masculine or feminine. Feminists argue gender, not sex, explains most inequality. |
| Second-wave feminism: the feminist movement of the 1960s-1980s, focused on legal equality and challenging patriarchy in public and private life. |
| Triple shift: Duncombe and Marsden’s (1995) term for women doing paid work, housework and emotional labour all at once. |
| Matrix of domination: Patricia Hill Collins’ (1990) term for how race, gender and class interact, rather than simply adding together. |
| Strand | Core claim | Key thinker | Main criticism |
| Liberal feminism | Inequality comes from outdated laws, socialisation and prejudice. Reform, not revolution, fixes it. | Somerville (2000) | Too optimistic. Ignores capitalism and patriarchy itself. |
| Radical feminism | Patriarchy is the deepest, most universal form of oppression, rooted in men’s control of women’s bodies. | Millett (1970); Firestone (1970) | Treats “men” and “women” as fixed, uniform groups. |
| Marxist feminism | Women’s unpaid domestic labour props up capitalism, not just men’s interests. | Benston (1969); Barrett (1980) | Cannot explain patriarchy in societies that were never capitalist. |
| Difference/black feminism | Mainstream feminism generalised from white, middle-class women’s experience. | Collins (1990); Mirza (1997) | Risks splitting feminism into too many separate viewpoints. |
Table 1: The four strands of feminism at a glance.
Evaluating Feminism, fast
- Strength: concrete legal change, the Equal Pay Act 1970 and Sex Discrimination Act 1975, followed directly from feminist campaigning.
- Strength: measurable inequality persists. The UK’s median gender pay gap for full-time workers was still 6.9% in April 2025 (ONS).
- Strength: concepts like the triple shift (Duncombe and Marsden, 1995) and the matrix of domination (Collins, 1990) spotted real patterns other perspectives missed.
- Weakness: Judith Butler (1990) argues the category “women” is itself a social construction, undercutting the basis for one shared theory.
- Weakness: Angela McRobbie (2009) argues popular culture now presents equality as already achieved, making feminism feel unnecessary to some younger women.
- Weakness: postmodernists reject any single grand narrative, including patriarchy, as too simple an account of a messier reality.
| ANALYSIS — AO2 | EVALUATION — AO3 |
| Comparing the strands, radical and Marxist feminism give the deepest structural explanations, while liberal feminism’s reforms have produced real, measurable change without ending inequality. Difference feminism corrects both for ignoring race and class. | The 6.9% pay gap in 2025, fifty-five years after the Equal Pay Act 1970, supports feminism’s central claim that inequality is structural rather than just outdated attitudes, even though the strands disagree on the exact mechanism. |
| Key Takeaways |
| “The personal is political,” the title given to Hanisch’s 1970 essay, still sums up feminism’s central claim. |
| The UK’s gender pay gap (6.9% for full-time workers, ONS, April 2025) is current, exam-ready evidence that legal equality has not produced full practical equality. |
| No single strand, liberal, radical, Marxist or difference, gives a complete answer alone. Each corrects a gap in the strand before it. |
| Feminism’s biggest unresolved challenge is Butler’s (1990) argument that “women,” the category it organises around, is itself socially constructed. |
| Check your understanding |
| 1. Explain, using one named study, why liberal feminists are optimistic about progress towards gender equality. You could: use Somerville (2000) and name one specific piece of legal or social change she points to. |
| 2. Overall, how convincing do you find feminism as an explanation of gender inequality in society today? You should: draw on at least two strands from this read, use the 2025 pay gap evidence, and end with an explicit judgement. |
Specification links: AQA 7192 3.1.1 (Education), 3.2.1 (Culture and Identity), 3.2.2 (Families and Households), 3.2.5 (Beliefs in Society), 3.2.7 (The Media), 3.3.1 (Crime and Deviance), 3.1.3/3.3.2 (Theory and Methods).