Politics and Feminism: An introduction

Description

This book addresses the question of gender and feminism in western political theory and practise. It provides students with both the theoretical and historical underpinnings of womens exclusion from politics, and the feminist response to this exclusion. This book begins with preliminary definitions of the terms politics and feminism, exploring how each term intersects with, responds to and grows out of the other. The first chapter provides an overview of the development of the basic dualities in the history of western political thought: the identification of men with the world of reason, order, culture and public life, and women with the world of nature, emotion, desires and private life. The next two chapters explore how these dualities have defined politics and the feminist critique of that construction. The second half of the book is a history of feminism seen from the perspective of its own evolution.