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Social Stratification

Notes Convention in 1848 marked the birth of women’s rights movement which among other things
called for female suffrage. Women were granted the right to vote in the US Constitution in 1920.
In UK though franchise was extended to women in 1918 for a decade they did not exercise equal
voting rights with men. Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1972) was the
first text of modern feminism which campaigned for women’s right to vote/ female suffrage.
Wollstonecraft claimed that if women gained access to education as rational creatures in their own
right the distinction of sex would become unimportant in political and social life. John Stuart Mill
in collaboration with Harriet Taylor in “The Subjection of Women” (1970) proposed that women
should be entitled to the citizenship and political rights and liberties enjoyed by men. It indicts
traditional arrangements of work and family as tyrannizing women and denying them freedom of
choice (Mandell, 1995 : 6). Thus, liberal feminists believed that female suffrage would do away
with all forms of sexual discrimination and prejudice. Walby contends that “first wave feminism
was a large, multi-faceted, long-lived and highly effective political phenomenon” (Walby, 1997 :
149).
Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” marked the resurgence of liberal feminist thought in the
1960s and is often credited as stimulating the emergence of ‘second wave’ feminism. She referred
to the cultural myth that women seek security and fulfillment in domestic life and that their
feminine behaviour serves to discourage women from entering employment, politics and public
life in general. In “The Second Stage” (1983) Friedan “discussed the problem of reconciling the
achievement of personhood by making it possible to open up broader opportunities for women in
work and public life while continuing to give central importance to family in women’s life which
has been criticized by radical feminists as contributing to ‘mystique of motherhood”(Heywood,
2003 : 254). Therefore, liberal feminism is essentially reformist and does not challenge the patriarchal
structure of society itself. Critics suggest that the liberal reforms to increase opportunities for
women, prohibit discriminations and to increase public consciousness of women’s rights have not
been shared equally by all women because these changes have not addressed issues of socially
structured inequalities (Mandell, 1995 : 8). Thus, while the first wave feminism ended with winning
suffrage rights the emergence of second wave feminism in 1960s acknowledged that political and
legal rights were insufficient to change women’s subordination. Feminist ideas and arguments
became radical and revolutionary thereafter.
Marxist Feminism : Marxist feminist believed that both subordination of women and division of
classes developed historically with the development of private property. Frederick Engels in “The
Origin of Family, Private Property and the State” (1884) stated that with the emergence of private
property, women’s housework sank into insignificance in comparison to man’s productive labour.
‘The world historical defeat of the female sex with the establishment of capitalism based on
private property ownership by men did away with inheritance of property and social position
through female line’ (also see Bhasin, 1993 : 24-25). Thus maternal authority gave place to paternal
authority and property was to be inherited from father to son and not from woman to her clan.
The bourgeois families which owned private property emerged as patriarchal families where
women were subjugated. Such patriarchal families became oppressive as men ensured that their
property passed on only to their sons. Therefore bourgeois family and private property as a
byproduct of capitalism subordinated and oppressed women.
Marxist feminists unlike the radical feminists argue that class exploitation is deeper than sexual
oppression and women’s emancipation essentially requires social revolution which will overthrow
capitalism and establish socialism. Engels believed that “in a socialist society marriage will be
dissolvable and that once private property is abolished its patriarchal features and perhaps also
monogamy will disappear”. Therefore Marxist feminists like many socialist feminists connect
structural changes in kinship relations and changes in the division of labour to understand women’s
position in society. They argue that it is not women’s biology alone but, private property and

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