Critical and Feminist Theory
Abstract
There are many theories exploring social, political and economic models of society. According to their findings, inequity being inevitable and necessary, is manifested in all societies at all stages of historical development. With the help of inequality, society encourages more educated and talented individuals to engage in necessary but difficult occupations. On the other side, a strong social polarization - the division of the population into poor and rich in the absence of a significant middle stratum, which is the basis of an economically stable and developed state is one of the most acute. Strong social stratification reproduces the system of inequality and injustice, in which the opportunities for independent self-realization and social status enhancement are limited for a fairly large part of the population. Can humanity be completely freed from social inequalities? How permissible are the boundaries of existing inequalities? Feminists and critical theorists made a considerable contribution in the research of inequities in different domains of people life.
Critical and Feminist Theory
While emphasizing different aspects of social inequity, both theories concentrate on the imperfections of the existing system and the need to change it.
Differences between Critical and Feminist Theory
In the broadest sense, critical theory develops a broader overview of a large number studies starting from notions of rationality, progress and social engineering up to power and ideology. The feminist perspective is much more specialized and restricted and criticizes traditional philosophy, science, literature created from the point of view of socially privileged men.
Representatives of critical theory consider the class to be a cornerstone of the social scale while feminist theorists use sex and gender as the main object their analyses and don`t emphasize the questions of class, race, and ethnicity.
After a number of social research works, critical theorists identified social means used to replace the interests of all employees by the interests of the ruling class. As for the feminist theorists, they focused on how the interests of men had been presented to be universal, ignoring the concerns of women.
Some researchers point out that feminist theory focuses on the concerns of a small group of white women belonging to the middle class and willing to get to better paid and by accessing managerial and professional jobs. This leads to a question of power change from men to women and has less in common with global issues related to the class society with its organizational models that assume the permanence of hierarchy, division of labor, class differences, etc.
So, feminists rather tend not to criticize the essence of system, but to change its power poles offering women with new opportunities and privileges that traditionally belonged to men.
Similarities between Critical and Feminist Theory
In fact, both approaches focus of existing inequalities and inequities and assume that any social institution or organization strives to preserve inequality, seeing in it as an ordering principle, without which it is impossible to reproduce social ties and integrate a new one. The same property is inherent in society as a whole.
Representatives of …
