SOSC 2350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Classical Liberalism, Class Discrimination, Essentialism

• School: York University
• Department: Social Science
• Course: SOSC 2350
• Professor: Amelie Barras

Document Summary

A group of political and social philosophies concerned with the experiences and status of women: especially social, political, and economic gender-based inequality. Seek to expose and oppose the structures of discrimination and oppression of women in society. Large and diverse social movement: roots in struggle for women"s suffrage (right to vote) 1st wave, 1960s civil rights movement: women"s liberation- 2nd wave, 1990s-present: critical feminisms (post-colonial)- 3rd wave. Draws our attention to opposing pairs in classical liberal thought: rational-irrational, active-passive, thought-feeling, reason-emotion, culture-nature, objective-subjective. Law is male , that is (supposedly) objective, rational and principled. Feminist legal theory is concerned with revealing and combating gendered structures of discrimination and oppression in the official legal system. Types: liberal feminism, radical feminism, feminist critical legal theory. Gendered difference is natural: men and women are essentially different, this difference is rooted in their biology, essentialist. Rights and responsibilities of men and women ought to be treated in light of this.