Philosopher views

ALL SOCIAL STRUCTURES ARE OPPRESSIVE TO WOMEN

1. WOMEN FACE ECONOMIC OPPRESSION

Marilyn French, Feminist author, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN, 1992, p. 30.

The statistics presented at the United Nations Conference on Women in Copenhagen in 1980 remain true today: women do between two-thirds and three-quarters of the work in the world. They also produce 45 percent of the world’s food. But they are still granted only 10 percent of the world’s income and 1 percent of the world’s property—and part of that 1 percent masks male ownership hidden for tax purposes.

Marilyn French, Feminist author, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN, 1992, p. 47.

As of 1990, two women sat in the 100-seat Senate and there were 29 women out of 435 Representatives (6 percent). Here in the heartland of feminism where, we are told, women rule men, women have less voice in

government than in nonindustrial countries. In 1986, 151 women held posts in state cabinets—17.9

percent. In 1990, three women won governorships in the fifty states; they won 18 percent of state legislature seats; 54 hold state executive offices.
3. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Marilyn French, Feminist author, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN, 1992, p. 139.

Because many women cannot earn enough to support their children, they fall under the power of courts or social-service agencies which assume the right to dictate their sexual lives. Welfare agencies as a matter of policy used to deny financial assistance to a mother with dependent children if a man was found in her dwelling. Now courts are intruding on the lives even of women not dependent on welfare, imposing a sexual morality men do not follow themselves but require of women.
4. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN BUSINESS

Marilyn French, Feminist author, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN, 1992, p. 39.

Men exclude women almost completely from managerial positions. In Bangladesh and Indonesia, women hold 1 percent of such posts. In Norway and Australia, male managers outnumber females by 3 to 1. In the United States, women hold less than one-half of 1 percent of jobs in the highest echelons of corporate managers and only 3 percent of the top five jobs below CEO at all Fortune 1000 companies.
5. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN EDUCATION

Marilyn French, Feminist author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 491.

Once they are admitted, female students in particular continue to experience discrimination. They are slotted toward the humanities and away from “hard” science (the most prestigious area); they are judged by appearance and behavior far more than male students; they are subject to sexual harassment; and they must deal with a general pressure (within as well as outside them) against distinction in their work.
6. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN ORGANIZED RELIGION

Marilyn French, Feminist author, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN, 1992, p. 51.

All major world religions are patriarchal. They were founded to spread or buttress male supremacy -- which is why their gods are male. But there is nothing inherently patriarchal about the religious impulse; religious people define god in their own way, and under pressure from feminism, many churches are trying to eliminate the more egregious patriarchal elements from their symbology. In response to this, other churches have become more rigidly, even fanatically, patriarchal in a movement called fundamentalism.
7. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN MEDICINE

Marilyn French, Feminist author, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN, 1992, p. 133.

Women are the fastest-growing group infected with AIDS, but no research has been done on the effects on women of AIDS therapies. Woman-specific diseases like breast and ovarian cancer have not been studied nearly as thoroughly as male-specific diseases like prostate cancer and are more likely to be fatal. Cases of breast cancer have doubled since 1960; it now kills 44,000 women each year. Yet in 1990 NIH halted a major study of the disease on economic grounds. Only 13 percent of the $7.7 million NIH budget is spent on women’s health issues.

REVOLUTIONARY FEMINIST ACTION IS NECESSARY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

1. SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IS NECESSARY TO END PATRIARCHY

Marilyn French, Feminist author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 443.

Feminism is a political movement demanding access to the rewards and responsibilities of the “male” world, but it is more: it is a revolutionary moral movement, intending to use political power to transform

society, to “feminize” it. For such a movement, assimilation is death. The assimilation of women to society as it presently exists would lead simply to the inclusion of certain women (not all, because society as it presently exists is highly stratified) along with certain men in its higher echelons. It would mean continued stratification and continued contempt for “feminine” values.
2. UNIFIED FEMINIST POLITICAL ACTION IS NECESSARY FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

Marilyn French, Feminist author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 468.

This situation constitutes a quandary for feminists. Only by bringing great numbers of women with

feminist values into the institutional structure of the nation can women achieve a voice in the way this

country is run. Only by unified political action can women influence the course of the future.
3. GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS ARE NECESSARY FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

Marilyn French, Feminist author, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN, 1992, p. 17.

Many revolutions have challenged ruling elites since patriarchy arose, but feminism is the first ever to challenge patriarchy per se. In virtually every country in the world today, women are organizing small grass roots or professional political action groups. They are demanding to be treated as human beings with

rights: the right to keep their own wages, to keep their children after divorce, to own property, to education, to paid work at a wage sufficient to ensure that they can live independently, to a voice in public decisions, to marriage at choice, to bodily integrity. They are demanding men not feel free to beat, rape, mutilate, and kill them.