C

The term icon literally means an image or a statue; it is used in a specific sense to refer to a woman who is a conspicuous symbol of success in ways that challenge conventional assumptions of femininity; often used in association with Madonna the singer, not the Virgin Mary, who is, of course, an iconic image of conventional femininity. Ideologies of domesticated femininity are being reworked as production, and to a lesser extent services, are restructured. Althusserian thought has been important in socialist feminist discussions of ideology shaping understanding of the way in which patriarchy operates, at all levels of society, to reinforce women's oppression. Several theorists have related the process of identity formation to the social conditions of late-modernity or postmodernity. An important area of feminist literary theory has been an examination of the ways in which men and women read as well as produce texts.