Socialist Feminism
Because of these observed discrepancies in Marxist feminism, a movement developed to bridge Marxism with feminism while incorporating a social movement to include socialist and Women’s Liberation groups (Jurik 1999). This eventually became the socialist feminist school of thought, which emphasizes that both capitalistic economic inequality and the existence of patriarchy are the core underlying causal factors for women’s subordinate role in society (Jurik 1999).
For socialist feminists, the basis of inequality lies in the actual acquisition of material goods. This branch of feminism contends that there is a connection between class structure and the oppression of women and that men maintain power in society because they engage in the world of work, being employed in the tangible workforce that produces specific remuneration for their efforts. Their production of goods and services translates into material wealth that is directly owned and controlled by the male rather than the female. This is compared with the traditional role of the female, who is stereotypically limited to work within the domestic arena. Domestic work seldom receives a specific form of remuneration within most family households and is undervalued by society when it is completed as a choice of vocation. This, along with the fact that women have not been conditioned to engage in the production of goods and services throughout much of history, provides men with power over women. This power comes by way of material production.
Another important aspect of socialist feminism is the rejection of biology in determining gender. According to socialist feminists, social roles are not inherent, and this means that both male and female roles can be pliable if there is sufficient social incentive to make changes in socialization and conditioning. Because socialist feminists do not attribute differences to physiology and emphasize a social basis for such differences in ability and opportunity, they make a specific point to challenge the basis of capitalism and the inherent forms of patriarchy that exist in most societies. Similar to the views of radical feminists, socialist feminists believe that although women are divided by class, race, ethnicity and religion, they all experience the same oppression simply for being a woman. Thus, according to socialist feminists, true equality can occur only through the complete elimination of all class and gender distinctions. This would then mean that women would need to be in all spheres of social involvement in numbers equal to their male counterparts. In fact, the mere distinction between male and female is contrary to socialist feminism, since any true sense of equality would essentially consist of a completely nongendered society. With this view in mind, there would then be a basic unigender, where male and female distinctions would not even exist.
It should also be noted that other class distinctions would also be eliminated if a true socialist feminist view of society were to be formed. This means that economic distinctions would be removed, just as with any form of socialist government or social structure. Thus, wealth would be equally distributed among all members of society. Inherent in this would then be the lack of distinctions based on race and other criteria, since all members would have equal ownership of material goods. This would, by default, create a society in which all members would have equal power on an individual basis. At the macro level, this society would need to ensure that distinctions among groups did not exist. In essence and in its purest form, there would be no racial or economic categories. This demonstrates the broad view of socialist feminism and underscores the fact that it stands in direct contrast to much of the capitalistic thought of many Western industrialized nations.