Liberal feminism emerged as part of liberalism: a political and intellectual doctrine promoting the ideals of equality of opportunity and
the notion that individuals had certain rights. These included the right to liberty, the right to some say in who ruled them, and the right to pursue their own interests to achieve happiness — as long as this did not deliberately harm others. Liberalism was a child of the Enlightenment which occurred in eighteenth-century Europe. The Enlightenment was a major break with former ways of thinking based on tradition. It involved liberal thinkers such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean — Jacques Rosseau. Central to this new intellectual understanding of the world were the ideas of reason and progress. Previously it was thought that society should be organized in the same way as in previous generations (according to tradition). But new thinkers proposed instead that it was time for social life to be determined by rational principles. In order for humanity to progress, it was argued, old beliefs had to be put aside. The light of science must be shone into the dark corners of ignorance and superstition. This decline in superstitious and religious belief is a process that Max Weber has described as ‘disenchantment’ (Weber, 1968/1921; 1981/1927). If reason was to rule then old privileges could no longer be so easily justified as ‘god-given’ and, in the context of marked social changes, political upheaval followed. In the United States of America a war was fought to secure independence from British rule, and the resulting Declaration of Independence (1776) encapsulated many of the new ideas about individual rights to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. Shortly afterwards in France (1789), a revolution overthrew the monarchy and began principally the path to democracy. Other European and western nations were much affected by these events. Prior to the Enlightenment only men of property had political rights — Principally the right to vote — in these nations. Gradually, during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, voting and other rights were given to more of the population. But despite the protests of eighteenth-century women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, women (along with children, and indigenous and enslaved peoples) were not included.
Wollstonecraft’s famous (1985) Vindication of the Rights of Woman was first published in 1792 and applies the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment to the situation of women. Wollstonecraft firmly supported the new emphasis on reason and used it to argue that women were the equals of men and the law should recognize them as such. Hers is a liberal call for independence — a call she applies to women, unlike others at that time. She is harshly critical of common and learned opinions about women’s inferiority. Many books by ‘great men’ (and she names Rousseau) she thought aimed ‘to degrade one half of the human species, and render women pleasing at the expense of every solid virtue’ (Wollstonecraft, 1985: 104). Most of her argument is directed at demonstrating that women are creatures of reason and should have access to education. Through education, she thought, would come emancipation.
More recent liberal feminists follow Wollstonecraft in tending to accentuate the similarities between women and men, arguing that because women are fundamentally rational beings, like men, they should have the same opportunities and rights. Liberals believe that these rights can be obtained by reforming the present system, especially through changing legislation via democratic parliamentary channels. Current feminists arguably operating within the liberal tradition include Naomi Wolf and Martha Nussbaum (see Beasley, 2005).
Liberal feminists are mostly criticized for assuming that women can advance by being more like men and that this can be achieved via reform within the system. Such feminists tend to value competition, individual ambition and advancement through work in the public sphere. As Chris Beasley (2005: 34) puts it: ‘[i]f liberal feminism were a shirt it would probably be pinstriped and have shoulder-pads. It dresses for success’. However, some of these criticisms suggest that such qualities are simply ‘male’ and inevitably bad. Liberals would disagree, saying that women are capable of succeeding in the ways men have succeeded and this shows that such qualities do not belong to men and that things can change. They might suggest that if women enter the public world this will bring subtle alterations so that aggressive competition and other arguably less desirable features of the public sphere might become less valued. But usually, it is true that liberal feminism seems to assume that women have to fit into the present system, rather than that system changing. This provokes other feminists to criticize them for not going far enough in their demands. Evans (1995: 15) says liberal feminists can be understood as merely wanting women to have more chance of securing social rewards (for example, high paying jobs) given out in a hierarchical way. Liberals do not often seem interested in reorganizing how social rewards are distributed. Such an interest in reorganizing the social system in order to achieve a fairer distribution of social ‘goodies’ is what distinguishes socialism from liberalism.