ABSTRACT
There are at least four different feminisms: radical, Marxist, liberal and what Sylvia Walby (1990) calls dual-systems theory. Each responds to women’s oppression in a different way, positing different causes and different solutions. Radical feminists argue that women’s oppression is the result of the system of patriarchy, a system of domination in which men as a group have power over women as a group. In Marxist feminist analysis the ultimate source of oppression is capitalism. The domination of women by men is seen as a consequence of capital’s domination over labour. Liberal feminism differs from both Marxist and radical feminisms in that it does not posit a system – patriarchy or capitalism – determining the oppression of women. Instead, it tends to see the problem in terms of male prejudice against women, embodied in law or expressed in the exclusion of women from particular areas of life. Dual-systems theory represents the coming together of Marxist and radical feminist analysis in the belief that women’s oppression is the result of a complex articulation of both patriarchy and capitalism. There are of course other feminist perspectives. Rosemary Tong (1992), for example, lists: liberal, Marxist, radical, psychoanalytic, socialist, existentialist and postmodern.
