Liberal Feminism: What It Is, Philosophical Positioning And Demands

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

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 complaints of contexts of vulnerability over time, feminism has been updating the struggles and the theoretical nuances.

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

The proposal at this time is that women’s demands have to do with our incorporation into public life, in addition to promoting legal equality. This current is called Liberal Feminism

What is Liberal Feminism and where does it come from?

The 1960s and 1970s, mainly in the United States and Europe, saw feminist mobilizations emerge 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 these experiences and seek strategies for vindication. For example, feminist organizations such as NOW (National Organization of Women) emerged, promoted by one of the key figures of this movement, Betty Friedan.

Likewise, and at a theoretical level, feminists distanced themselves from the most popular paradigms of the moment, generating their own theories that account for the oppression they experienced Therefore, Liberal Feminism is a political movement, but also a theoretical and epistemological one 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 women’s oppression was not biological, but rather It was based on the beginnings of private property and the social logic 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 happen in the same way in Europe as in the United States. In the latter, the Second Wave feminist movement called for several 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 fact that we have fewer opportunities in public spaces, for example, in access to education, health or work.

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 that middle-class North American women experienced, denouncing that they were forced to sacrifice their own life projects, or have equal opportunities with men; which also promotes some differences in the experience of health and illness between people.

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 nonspecific diseases that medicine does not finish defining and treating.

Thus, it 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 limit our access to public space, therefore, it offers reformist options, that is, generating gradual changes in said spaces so that this situation is modified.

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, the relationship between this inequality and the social structure is not questioned, which keeps other experiences of being women hidden.

That is to say, deals with the problems of white, Western, housewives and middle-class women and advocates for 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 construct different experiences in the ” being a woman” and with this, different needs and demands.

This is where the “third wave” of feminism comes from, where the multiplicity of identities and ways of being a woman in relation to social structures is recognized. It 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 stay in the fight in accordance with each time and each context.