UNDERSTANDING OF POWER

Understanding of Power

Understanding of Power

According to the lady perspective, the feminist perspective, which is also a conflict theory, began to develop in the 18th Century. Women campaigned for the right to vote. This process was not successful until the First World War. A second wave of feminism developed in the late 1960's representing women looking to eradicate gender inequality. The three main divisions of feminism are Liberal, Radical and Marxist Feminists. Liberal Feminists are consistently looking to change the system in order to bring about equality between men and women; they look at the political and educational systems and protest for change (Gerth 2006 33). Radical Feminists are extreme, as they believe that society is patriarchal, women are purposely oppressed for the benefit of men. The Marxist Feminist's also believe that society is patriarchal, though the state that this is because of capitalism.

According to the case, as the feminist theory did not take form until the 19th century, the classical sociologists such as Marx and Durkheim saw no place for women within stratification theories. All previous theories were centred on male positions within society.

The lady must know that feminists are continuously trying to break away from gender issues though they have developed different ways of doing it. Liberal feminists have been successful in changing laws such as the equal pay act of 1975 (Hutcheon 2008 41) but they are criticised for not doing enough to break down the barriers between politics and gender issues. Radical feminists are extreme in the sense that they want to break free from a patriarchal society completely, they are not willing to accept equal rights. Marxists feminists bring women into the stratification theory, as they believe that social class is "the principle factor affecting relationships between men and women". They support the Ideas of Marx and their perspectives can be criticised in the same way. It could be argued that the split of feminism, with such extremes amongst them, shows the perspective to be weak.

The lady can be criticised in the sense that although they are trying to bring women in to the structure of stratification, they ignore other factors of the feminist perspective in the workplace such as sexual discrimination and equal pay issues, some women who are employed in the same positions as men, receive a lower rate of pay.

Regarding the perspective of the lady's husband, Social action is as Weber states, "action that takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course" (Haralambos & Holborn, 2000, p1051). In order to explain social action Weber looks at subjective meaning which he explains through Verstehen. He develops two types of Verstehen (understanding), observational and explanatory. With Observational Understanding, an individual may observe an action and apply superficial meaning to what the action means. Explanatory understanding shows an individual trying to understand the motives behind the action, or as stated in Haralambos, put yourself in the shoes of the person you are explaining (Gould 2007 ...