Feminist philosophy refuses to identify the human experience with the male experience. Because Western civilization associates rationality is masculine and emotion as feminine traditional epistemologists have often concluded that women are less human than men. Feminist philosophy states unequivocally that reason and emotion are symbiotically related. A major challenge for feminist philosophy is to reconcile the pressures for diversity and difference with those for integration and commonality. [2]
For the male, woman is the “other”. But since to decline to be the “other” is to lose all its advantages, too, women have a special incentive to forgo liberty and become a thing. [1]
Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas and writings have provided the foundation for the feminist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Feminism takes on many forms, among which are:
Radical feminism Marxist feminism Liberal feminism
One force working strongly against the feminist movement would be that of gender stereotyping, particularly in advertisement. According to a study by Browne (1998), referring to advertisements:
Boys appeared in greater numbers, assumed more dominant roles, and were more active and aggressive than girls. The commercials containing both boys and girls, boys were significantly more likely to demonstrate and/or explain the product even when the product was not sex-typed. Girls were never shown using products designed for boys (e.g., guns or trucks), and no commercials showed boys using products targeted for girls (p. 6-7). General level reinforcement was observed at the level of body language and facial expression; girls were portrayed as shyer, giggly, unlikely to assert control, and less instrumental (p. 12).
In terms of the social learning theory, girls continue to see models of