Twentieth-Century Philosophies Feminist

Feminist philosophical work that emerged after Beauvoir's Second Sex was influenced by the women's movement and had a strong focus on issues of justice and equality. Feminist philosophers began by paying attention to women, to their roles and locations. What are women doing? What social and political locations are they part of or excluded from? How do their activities compare to those of men? What do women's roles and locations allow or preclude? How have their roles been valued or devalued? Because of the centrality of questions such as these, feminist philosophers grappled with political theories that would be adequate to such concerns.

Alison Jaggar's 1983 Feminist Politics and Human Nature provided an influential discussion of the various political theories feminists employed in efforts to argue for women's liberation. Jaggar delineated four primary frameworks: liberal feminism, which focuses on rights and equal access, and argues that the primary cause of women's oppression is laws and rules that limit women's equal access to educational, economic, and political institutions; Marxist feminism, which argues that at the root of sexist oppression is class oppression; radical feminism, which identifies patriarchy and male control over women's bodies, including sexuality and reproduction, as the cause of sexual subordination; and socialist feminism, which views economic and social institutions as interdependent and thus attempts to incorporate the insights of the class analysis of Marxism with the radical feminist critique of patriarchical social organizations.