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Relationship between Female and Male in traditional way.

Abstract: This article has focused on the relationship between feminist

thought and gender issues in its theoretical premise and in historical
context inclusive its contemporary trends. Feminism as ‘ism’ is global
phenomena and has emerged both as concept and ideology and a
movement in the background of inevitable necessity to emancipate
self from the domination and exploitation by the social, political,
economic and cultural processes where ‘male’ apparently had and has
been ruled the processes. The gender as a theoretical concept has been
in the agenda of feminism but not the prior to be more precise primary.
Gender as a concept refers to the cultural construction erected on the
difference of sex which is purely biological and refers to males and
females. Therefore, it is needless to emphasize that feminism and gender
both have not phenomena that went through similar canonization though
the relationship between the given are intrinsic so is inseparable.However,
the history of thoughts both with regards to feminism and gender reveals
that being the phenomena universal having a profound implications
of human life. This relation has not been systematically explored, neither
been it is drawn attention of scholars the extend of necessity. This
article has made a mere attempt to draw attention of both academics and
practitioners rather it is infeasible to explore it within the scope of an
article.

Introduction: Feminism as a movement for the emancipation and liberation

from the exploitation in all forms and terms and manifestations at global
and local scale has been consistent in its meaning, both form and content,
while feminist thought that has laid theoretical foundations of this
global movement has different focus on issues inclusive women
movement. Thoughts had emerged and moved to the diverse stream of
concepts and in contemporary thinking, thoughts encompassed new areas
and issues. It is emerging and reemerging in terms of school of thoughts
and accommodating all ancillary disciplines that are helping the thinkers.
Therefore, the diverse theories of feminist thought are to be brought at
sight.
Feminism like most broad - based philosophical perspectives,
accommodates several species under its genus. Of prominent feminist
thought the followings are to be highlighted:Liberal feminism, Marxist
feminism, Radical feminism, Psychoanalytic feminism,Socialist
feminism,Existentialist feminism, Postmodern
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feminism, Black feminism and Ecofeminism. As of Rosemarie Tong
(1992) ‘the feminist theory is not one, but many, theories or perspectives
and that each feminist theory or perspective attempts to describe women’s
oppression, to explain its causes and consequences, and to prescribe
strategies for women’s liberation’. Therefore, a brief presentation will be
useful in understanding the diversity of thoughts and most
significantly the unity in diversity of thoughts of feminism.
A discussion on gender, of course, would follow but, at the outset
thoughts would have an age for the discussion as it incorporates
issues on gender.

Liberal feminism, as concept and perspective, receive its classical

formulation in Mary Wollstonecraft’s(1975) A Vindication of the Rights
of Women and in John Stuart Mill’s(1970)The Subjection of Women. Its
main thrust, an emphasis still felt in contemporary groups such as the
National Organization for women, is that female subordination is rooted
in a set of customary and legal constraints that blocks women’s
entrance and /or success in the so-called public world .Because society
has the false belief that women are, by nature, less intellectually and /or
physically capable than men, it excludes women from the academy, the
forum, and the market-place. As a result of this policy of exclusion, the true
potential of many women goes unfulfilled. If it should happen that when
women and men are given the same educational opportunities and civil
rights, few women achieve eminence in the sciences, arts and professions,
then so be it. Gender justice, insist liberal feminists, requires us, first, to
make the rules of the game fair and ,second, to make certain that none of
the runners in the race for society’s goods and services in systematically
disadvantaged; gender justice does not also require us to give the
losers as well as the winners a prize.

Marxist feminists think it is impossible for anyone, especially women ,to

obtain genuine equal opportunity in a class society where the wealth
produced by the powerless many ends up in the hands of the powerful
few. With Friedrich Engel, they claim that women’s oppression
originated in the introduction of private property, an institution that
obliterated whatever equality the human community had previously
enjoyed (Engels.F, 1972).In The German Ideology, a corroborative works
of Marx and Engels, written in Brussels in 1970, in the contribution to
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, written in 1973 ,Marx
extended ‘the theory of class’. As of him, classes are groups that have
different economic condition of life that compelled them to live
separately from each other and who have different modes of
life. In this context, it will be relevant to note that in The
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Manifesto of Communist Party ( a corroborative work of Marx and
Engels ), it was emphasized that history of humankind is the history
of class struggle (Marx-Engels,1972).In this theoretical premise Marx has
written that before everything life involves eating, drinking, clothing,
habitation and many other needs. Therefore, the first act is to create
mode to fulfill this needs. Further, in his ‘theory of Alienation’ and
political writings and especially, his concept of anthropogenesis, he has
extended his understanding that in the long pre-historic time, a process
is Tangible where the basic means have been the hunting and
gathering. Marx has extended the theoretical premise of modality, while
Kathleen Gough(1975 )has extended the concept “men the hunter, women
the gatherer” and a division of labour is tangible here. Women are
supposed to gather, take care of home and reproduce while men are
the symbol of power and authority and the provider. This theoretical
position of Gough has been scrutinized thoroughly by feminist
theoreticians. However, position of Marx in the class society starts from
slavery Patricians and Slaves, Feudalism, Surfs and Aristocrats , capitalist
bourgoise and wage labourer)and the central question of liberation of
women from exploitation is infeasible. Therefore, he proposed that a
socialist party ( a society free from exploitation ), the liberation of women
could be ensured in all terms.

Radical feminists (Millet,Kate,1970) agree that it is the patriarchal

system that opposes women , a system characterized by power ,
dominance , hierarchy , and competition, a system that cannot be
reformed but only ripped out root and branch. It is not just
patriarchy’s legal and political structures that must be overturned; its
social and cultural institutions(especially the family, the church and the
academy) must also go. One of the radical feminist writers
(O’Brien,Mary,1981) themes is the effect of female biology on women’s
self-protection, status and function in the private and public domains. It
is important to distinguish this feminist inquiry from the anti-feminist
dictum that biology is woman’s unfortunate and unchanging destiny.
When conversations say that biology is destiny, they mean that (1)
people are born with the hormones, anatomy, and chromosomes of
either a male or a female; (2) females are destined to have a much
more burdensome reproductive role than are males;(3) male will, other
things being equal, exhibit’ masculine’ psychological traits(for example,
‘assertiveness, aggressiveness, hardiness, rationality or the ability to think
b logically, absolutely and analytically, ability to control emotion’)
whereas females will, other things being equal, exhibit ‘feminine’
psychological traits ( for example,‘gentleness ,modesty , humility,
supportiveness, empathy, compassionateness, tenderness, nurturance,
intuitiveness,
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sensitivity, unselfishness’); and (4) society should preserve this natural
order, making sure that its men remain’ manly’ and its women
‘womanly’. Radical feminists Have no interest in preserving the kind
of ‘natural order’, or biological status quo, that subordinates women to
men. Rather, their aim is to question the concept of a ‘natural order’
and to overcome whatever negative effects biology has had on women
and perhaps also on men. Initially preoccupied with the enslaving
aspects of women’s biology and psychology, most radical feminists
came to view women’s biology (especially their reproductive capacities)
and the psychology that flows from it as potential sources of liberating
power for women. What is oppressive it not female biology per se, but
rather that men have controlled women as childbearers and childreaers.
Not all radical feminist focus on the biological origins of women’s
oppression, however. Most of them focus instead on the 3ways in
which gender (masculinity and feminity) and sexuality (heterosexuality
versus lesbianism) have been used to subordinate women to men .And
many espoused a nurture theory of gender differences according to
which masculine and feminine traits are almost exclusively the product
of socialization or the environment. They insist that male power ,in
societies such as ours, is at the root of the social construction of
gender. At first, many radical feminists believed that in order to be
liberated, women must escape the confines of heterosexuality and
create an exclusively female sexuality through celibacy, or lesbianism.
Alone, or with other women, a woman can discover the true pleasures
of sex. More recently ,some have argued that no specific kind of
sexual experience should be prescribed as the best kind for a liberated
women.
Sexuality also plays a crucial role in psychoanalytic feminist theory.
For them the centrality of sexuality arises out of Freudian theory and
such theoretical concepts as the pre-Oedipal stage and the Oedipus
complex. Psychoanalytic feminists find the root of women’s oppression
embedded deep in her psyche. Originality , in the pre-Oedipal stage, all
infants are systematically attached to their mothers, whom they
perceive as omnipotent. The mother-infant relationship is an ambivalent
one, however, because mother at times gives too much -her4 presence
overwhelms- and at other times gives too little- her absence
disappoints. The pre-Oedipal stage ends with the Oedipus complex, the
process by which the boy gives up his first love object, mother, in
order to escape castration at the hands of father. As a result of
submitting his id(or desires) to the superego (collective social
conscience), the boy is fully integrated into culture. Together with his
father
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he will rule over nature and women, both of whom contain a similarly
irrational power. In contrast to the boy, the girl, who has no penis to
lose, separates slowly from her first love object mother. As a result, the
girl’s integration into culture is incomplete. She exists at the periphery
or margin of culture as the one who does not rule but is ruled,
largely because ,as Dorothy Dinnerstein(1977) suggested, she fears her
own power, because the Oedipus complex is the root of male rule, or
patriarchy, some psychoanalytic feminists suggest that it is an invention
of men’s imagination-a psyche contraption that everyone, especially
women, should escape.

But Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1974), probably the key
theoretical text of twentieth-century feminism, offered an existentialist
explanation of women’s situation. She argued that woman is oppressed
by virtue of ‘Otherness’. Woman is the Other because she is not-man.
Man is the Self, the free, determining being who defines the meaning of
his existence, and woman is the Other, the object whose meaning is
determined for her. If woman is to become a Self, a subject ,she must,
like man transcend the definitions, labels, and essences limiting her
existence. She must make herself be whatever she wants to be.

The task of weaving these several strands of feminist theory together

seems to have been taken up most effectively by socialist feminists. In
Women’s Estate, for example, Juliet Mitchell (1974) argued that women’s
condition is overdetermined by the structures of production(from
Marxist feminists), reproduction and sexuality (from radical
feminists),`and the socialization of children (from feminists).Woman’s
status and function in all of these structures must change if she is to
achieve anything approximating full liberation. Furthermore, as Mitchell
made clear in her later book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, woman’s
interior world(her psyche) must also be transformed (as emphasized by
psychoanalytic feminists), for without such a change, improvements in
her exterior world will not liberate her from the kind of patriarchal
thoughts that undermine her confidence (as emphasized by existentialist
feminists).Alison Jaggar (1983) insisted that what is unique about
socialist feminism is its concerted effort to interrelate the myriad
forms of women’s oppression. He used the unifying concept of
alienation to explain how under capitalism, everything (work, sex, play)
and everyone (family, friends) that could be a source of women’s
integration as a person instead becomes a cause of her disintegration.
He further insisted that there are only complex explanations for female
subordination. Once again, the emphasis of
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socialist feminism is on unity and integration, both in the sense of
integrating all aspects of women’s lives and in the sense of producing
a unified feminist theory.

But these attempts to find integration and agreement ,to establish one
specially feminist standpoint that could represent how women see the
world have not gone without challenge. Postmodern feminists regard
this whole enterprise as yet another instantiation of “phallocentric”
thought. It is not feasible because women’s experiences differ across
class, racial, and cultural lines. It is not desirable because the One and
Truth are philosophical myths that have been used to club into
submission the differences that, in point of empirical fact, best describe
the human condition. Although postmodern feminists refusal to
construct one explanatory theory may threaten the unity of the feminist
movement, and pose theoretical problems for those feminists hoping to
provide us with an overarching explanation and solution for women’s
oppression, this refusal adds fuel to the feminist fires of plurality,
multiplicity, and difference. What postmodern feminists as diverse in
thinking as Helene Cixous (1981), Luce Irigaray (1981), and Julia
Kristeva (1982) offer to each woman who reads them is an
opportunity to become herself.
The black feminists think that feminism has addressed women as
homogeneous category. So in America black women thought that this
approach is not conducive to address the problem of a specific group
including American black women. Therefore, they thought that they will
write their own history by themselves. On the other hand, their approach
is to avoid the traditional feminist way. It means that it is not necessary
to be anti-male because if black women has to pursue their own interests
they may need the support of male. Black feminism refers to a variety
of feminism which are identified by their opposition to the RACISM
and SEXIM encountered by Black women. In its various forms it
undertakes a sustained critique of the racism and ETHNOCENTRISM
of white-dominated systems and practices including feminism.
Politically ,the term Black is linked primarily with a vision of a Pan-
African Black IDENTITY in Africa and in the diaspora.But in Britain
it is also used more generally to indicate a political identity that is
non-white, and until recently Black feminism functioned as generic term
for non-white feminism.

Ecofeminism is first coined in 1974 by Francoise d’ Eaubonne who

called upon women to lead an ecological revolution ( Merchant 1992 ).
Although
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rejecting some elements in what has become known as ‘deep
ecology’,which rejects reformist piecemeal policies to deal with
pollution or resource management in favour of a new holistic
philosophy, ecofeminists share the wider radical ecology preference for
revisioning ‘interrelationships around humans-in-nature’(Merchant
1992,rather than placing humans above other living things.Over time
ecofeminists have organized important actions against what are seen as
ways of organizing PRODUCTION which threaten biological and
social REPRODUCTION. Ecofeminism is a movement which promotes
patriarchal stereotypes of nature in earth mothers. Is it a movement
only for white women or hope for addressing global environmental
problem? As a concept ecofeminism refers to the fact that women are
treated as nature because nature reproduce while men are considered
as culture. In this conceptual framework women are being conceived as
nature and reproduction while men are who control the nature. And this
way ecofeminism opens a new dimension as to how women are
subordinated and secondary; men are the dominant and primary.
However, some feminist theorists worry that an overemphasis on
difference may lead to intellectual and political disintegration. It is a
major challenge to contemporary feminism to reconcile the pressures
for diversity and difference with those for integration and
commonality. The schools that have been given above are partial and
professional as to the episteme of feminism, each school provides its
own perspective inclusive methodological strengths and weaknesses.
However, these schools intersect on the issue of women oppression,
`repression, and suppression and how the schools address the issues are
vital.

We are surrounded by gender lore from the time we are very small.
Gender is embedded so thoroughly in our institutions, our actions, our
beliefs, and our desires, that it appears to us to be completely natural. It
is precisely because gender seems natural, and beliefs about gender
seem to be obvious truth, that we need to step back and examine
gender from a new perspective. As a result, some gender scholarship
does as much to reify and support existing beliefs as to promote more
reflective and informed thinking about gender. In this wider perspective,
the vital question is to be explored- are gender and feminist theories
synonymous?

The question of Self and Other has been constructed in feminism. Self
has been
created from a common experience of exploitation by the Others who are
males.
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Here a dichotomy stands and antagonism visible among Self and
Others. But in case of gender it is the cultural constructed erection
based on different sexes which is the biological phenomena. And how
these constructions have been erected in case of female, it is the basic
‘concept of feminity’, ‘concept of motherhood’, ‘concept of
womanhood.’ So a female body organism has been culturally
constructed and females should maintain seclusion and she will think
how to be a good mother. Her aspects of life cycle starts from menarch to
menopause and all are constructed. She will be taught-how to take
care of the house of the husband- not of her own and she performs
the role of a wife ,then the entire reproduction process which is
culturally constructed. If reproduction is biological phenomena,
reproduction behaviour is culturally produced .Behaviour
shows that females takes not only antenatal care but sexuality and
sexual behaviour with husband and parallel to this -how to take care of
father-in-laws including brother-in-laws etc. The crucial question is that
a full-fledged woman is conditioned with motherhood. In reverse to
this , the question of infertility is profoundly implicated phenomena of
cultural construction of gender. It is not the question whether the woman
is infertile or the husband is infertile. The issue of infertility will
inevitably be attached to woman and her identity of woman will be
stigmatized ( Oakley 1972 ). Then the question comes how good home-
maker she is ?The issue of women suppression inclusive violence against
women are also intrinsic to the question of gender as dowry is
attached to this .Failing of not fulfilling this may allow all kinds
of oppressions including verbal abuse and even divorce. On the other
hand, the concept of masculinity when man is the owner, decision-
maker, provider and is the authority. Whether ones are not cultural
construction that have been erected are maintained by the
society. Patriarchy presumably, patriarchal ideology not only plays a
role for women oppression but it forms a system of attitudes, norms,
values and beliefs. These values are maintained and transmitted
not only by the male but the female as well. The relation between
mother-in-law and daughter-in-law seems to be an example of the set.

Given this terrain of vastness and the magnitude, it could be assumed

that certain theoretical questions must be explored in order to gain
insights into not only of the relationship between feminism and gender
but the broader social processes start from the state, kinship and to the
smallest unit of the society, the family. These questions are as Redcliffe
Brown (1914) found that every human being at the same time is an
individual organism and a person as Brown thought is in the role
that an individual organism assumes. This
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assumption process of role is not limited to a new role in course of
life but changes and transforms the roles as well. A girl grows from a
daughter, a sister, a cousin to wife, then mother, mother-in-law, grand-
mother and further. Same is the case with the boy. These roles are not
limited to kinship but extended to social milieu, a student ,a social
worker, a political leader, a teacher, a member of the club, member of
the local government institutions and many others. Besides everyone is
an individual in terms of personality, choice, erudition and different
skills. Along with this, a society either it is local or global is not
homogenous, neither in terms of economy, political power and
authority, formal educational exposure, social stratification and individual
psyche. And most importantly class-consciousness, of course, is
resource-based. The question of ethnicity, sometimes, may be language,
may be nationality, religion and sense of self-definition. Therefore, the
basic theoretical question is all women are homogenous, and same
with the men. It is needless to conceive that answer to these questions
is unexplored. In this great diversity the essence of ‘Asian women,
Arab women, Western women, Oriental women, etc are not theoretically
defendable. Neither could be defended women within a single family.
Second pivotal question is : are the relationships between males and
females univocal? Ample of literatures, may , have not be found with
regards to addressing the question. But the author of the article stands
for the theoretical premise that relationship is not universal. When
young couples get married, the nature of relationship is one type
which changes over the time as their roles are transform from a
husband-wife to the parents, parents-in-laws, and grand-parents. So the
dynamics of their relationship is transformational, changeable and has
motion. Therefore, over simplification of gender relationship may not be
insightful. A much deeper look is expected to discern these
relationships. And in this process, individuality, exposure to society,
education, resources, power and authority will have implications on the
relationship. The role of a teacher if it is defined, responsibilities are
outlined, power and authority is defined. Then whether it is a male or
female in ideal situation, it is expected that both should play the role
of a teacher in almost similar way without individual varieties.
However, the essence should be, would be, or ought to be that both
male and female are human beings. Theories and thoughts not only put
dichotomy between males and females but rather search means and
ways, to recognize this humanistic perspectives and worth for the
betterment and harmony of the relationship .And of course, the social,
political, economic and cultural systems that impede this harmony
should be addressed and resolved by using all means. That is in the
position of human being as a species.
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Conclusion: This article has made an attempt to have a deeper look
into the thoughts of feminism and feminism as theoretical, social,
ideological and political movements. And the issue is gaining its
momentum in course of time. It has introduced the basic ideas of
different schools of feminist thoughts and has found that more
diversity exists in thoughts, however, unity in diversity does also exists.
The writings have also drawn an understanding about the concept of
gender and concluded that the relationship between gender and
feminist theories has tremendous possibilities for exploration of each
other which would not only supplement each other’s conceptualization
but will have outstanding and implications on the relationship between
the schools of thoughts. The article does not claim that it could
explore the gamut of entire relationship rather it has not intended to
do so but it has drawn attention to those who are thinking about this
and are engaged in practice as theorists. The streams and trends of
these are stretching through boundaries of human knowledge.