Liberal Feminism: what it is, philosophical position and claims

In very general terms, feminism is a set of political and theoretical movements who fight for the vindication of women (and of other identities historically subordinates) that has a history of many centuries, and that has gone through stages and transformations very diverse.

That is why it is usually divided into theoretical currents, which do not represent the end of one and the beginning of the other, but rather, having incorporated different experiences and denunciations of contexts of vulnerability with the passage of time, feminism has been updating the struggles and the theoretical nuances.

After the “First Wave” of feminism (also known as Suffrage Feminism), which advocated equal rights, feminists focused attention on how our identity is built based on the social relations that we establish, especially through the distinction between the public space and the private.

The proposal at this time is that the claim of women has to do with our incorporation into public life, in addition to promoting legal equality. This current is called Liberal Feminism..

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What is Liberal Feminism and where does it come from?

The 1960s and 1970s, mainly in the United States and Europe, saw the rise of feminist mobilizations related to the New Left and the African-American civil rights movements.

In this context, women managed to make visible their experiences of sexism and the need to organize among themselves, to share those experiences and look for strategies of claim. For example, feminist organizations such as the NOW (National Organization for Women) emerged, promoted by one of the key figures of this current, Betty Friedan.

Likewise, and at a theoretical level, feminists distanced themselves from the most popular paradigms of the moment, generating their own theories that accounted for the oppression they experienced. For this reason, Liberal Feminism is a political movement, but also a theoretical and epistemological movement that has taken place since the second half of the 20th century, mainly in the United States and Europe.

At this stage, feminism appeared publicly as one of the great social movements of the 19th century whose repercussions connected with other movements and theoretical currents, such as socialism, since they proposed that the cause of the oppression of women was not biological, but was based on the beginnings of private property and the social logics of production. One of the key antecedents in this is the work of Simone de Beauvoir: the second sex.

In addition its growth had to do with the development of women's citizenship, which did not occur in the same way in Europe as in the United States. In the latter, the Second Wave feminist movement called for various social struggles, while in Europe it was more characterized by isolated movements.

In short, the main struggle of Liberal Feminism is to achieve equal opportunities based on a critique of the distinction between public space and private space, because historically women have been relegated to the private or domestic space, which has meant that we have fewer opportunities in the public space, for example, in access to education, health or the job.

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Betty Friedan: Representative Author

Betty Friedan is perhaps the most representative figure of Liberal Feminism. Among other things, she described and denounced the situations of oppression experienced by American class women. average, denouncing that they were forced to sacrifice their own life projects, or in equal opportunities that the men; which also promotes some differences in the experience of health and illness between them.

In fact, one of her most important works is called "The problem that has no name" (chapter 1 of the book Mystique of Femininity), where she relates the displacement to the private space and the silenced life of women with the development of those non-specific diseases that medicine does not finish defining and treating.

Thus, she understands that we build our identity in correspondence with social relationships and promotes a personal change for women and a modification of these relationships.

In other words, Friedan denounces that the subordination and oppression that women experience have to do with legal restrictions that from the outset they limit our access to public space, before which, she offers options reformists, that is, to generate gradual changes in said spaces so that this situation is modify.

Some criticisms and limitations of Liberal Feminism

We have seen that Liberal Feminism is characterized by fight for equal opportunities and the dignity of women. The problem is that it understands "women" as a homogeneous group, where equal opportunities will make all women claim our dignity.

Although Liberal Feminism is a necessary movement committed to equal opportunities, it is not questions the relationship between that inequality and the social structure, which keeps hidden other experiences of being women.

That is to say, addresses the issues of white, western, housewife, and middle-class women, and advocates equal opportunities in the public space, assuming that this fight will be the one that emancipates all women, without considering that there are differences of class, race, ethnicity or social condition that build different experiences in "being a woman" and with this, different needs and claims.

From there comes the "third wave" of feminism, where the multiplicity of identities and ways of being a woman in relation to social structures is recognized. Recognizes that the demands of women and feminisms are not the same in all contexts, among other things because not all contexts give the same opportunities and vulnerabilities to the same people.

Thus, for example, while in Europe there is a struggle to decolonize feminism itself, in Latin America the main struggle is survival. These are issues that have led feminism to constantly reinvent itself and to stay up in the fight according to each time and each context.

Bibliographic references:

• Gandarias, I. & Pujol, J. (2013). From the Others to the Non (s) others: encounters, tensions and challenges in the fabric of articulations between groups of migrant women and local feminists in the Basque Country. CROSSROADS. Critical Journal of Social Sciences, 5: 77-91.
• Perona, a. (2005). Postwar American Liberal Feminism: Betty Friedan and the Refounding of Liberal Feminism. Retrieved April 16, 2018. Available in http://files.teoria-feminista.webnode.com.ve/200000007-66cbe67c5a/El%20feminismo%20norteamericano%20de%20postguerra%20Betty%20Friedan%20y%20la%20refundacion%20del%20feminismo%20liberal.pdf
• Heras, S. (2009). An approach to feminist theories. Universitas. Journal of Philosophy, Law and Politics, 9: 45-82.
• Velasco, S. (2009). Sexes, gender and health: theory and methods for clinical practice and health programs. Minerva: Madrid
• Amorós, C. & de Miguel, A. (Y/A). Feminist Theory: From Enlightenment to Globalization. Retrieved April 16. Available in https://www.nodo50.org/mujeresred/IMG/article_PDF/article_a436.pdf