Assess the Contribution Made by Feminist Sociologists to Our Understanding of the Role Played by the Family in Society

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Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men, part of the debate includes that feminism is not always a unified body; there are many different types of feminist theories for example liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, post-modern feminism and Marxist feminism. All of these have contributed however the three types of feminists I will talk about are Marxists, liberal and radical feminism. To begin with, the main beliefs of liberal feminists are that all people are created equal therefore should be treated equal, they also believe that an equal opportunity and should be crafted with the women’s situations in mind and that oppression of women is not a structural feature of the capitalist economic system. They help understand the family because they say that life in present is an improvement on how things were in the past and they back this point up by identifying significant political and social changes. For example women gained the right to vote in the 20th century and rape in marriage was made a crime in the early 1990s. A liberal feminist, Jessie Bernard, sees the role of housewife as the key factor in limiting the potential of women. Bernard believes that marriage is particularly beneficial for men as they are more likely than single men to have successful careers, high incomes and high status occupations. However, wives are found to express marital dissatisfaction more frequently than men, since they gain least. The positive of liberal feminists are that in general the writers will have an optimistic view of the current position and future prospects of women in society and the family on the other hand the negatives of this view are that some of the social changes are proved to be incorrect for instance studies on the conjugal roles (the roles of the men and
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