''Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism'' is a 1978 anthology about

socialist feminism Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles ...

edited by

Zillah R. Eisenstein Zillah R. Eisenstein is an American political theorist and gender studies scholar and Emerita Professor of the Department of Politics at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York. Specializing in political and feminist theory; class, sex, and race politic ...

. The sociologist Rhonda F. Levine cites the work as a "superb discussion of the socialist-feminist position".Levine, Rhonda F. ''Legacies of the insurgent sociologist'' in ''Enriching the Sociological Imagination: How Radical Sociology Changed the Discipline'', Brill Press, 2004, 978-9004139923, p8 Levine goes on to describe the book as "one of the earliest statements of how a

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

class analysis Class analysis is research in sociology, politics and economics from the point of view of the stratification of the society into dynamic classes. It implies that there is no universal or uniform social outlook, rather that there are fundamental c ...

can combine with a

feminist analysis Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male poi ...

patriarchy Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males a ...

to produce a theory of how gender and class intersect as systems of inequality". "Eisenstein defines the term 'capitalist patriarchy' as descriptive of the 'mutually reinforcing dialectical relationship between capitalist class structure and hierarchical sexual structuring." She believes that "the recognition of women as a sexual class lays the subversive quality of feminism for

liberalism Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...

because liberalism is premised upon women's exclusion from public life on this very class basis. The demand for real equality of women with men, if taken to its logical conclusion, would dislodge the

patriarchal Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of Dominance hierarchy, dominance and Social privilege, privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical Anthropology, anthropological term for families or clans controll ...

structure necessary to a liberal society."Eisenstein, ''Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism'', cited in ''Feminism and Philosophy: Essential Readings in Theory, Reinterpretation, and Application'', eds: Nancy Tuana, Rosemarie Tong, Westview Press 1995, , p5

References

1978 non-fiction books English-language books Feminism and social class Feminist essays Patriarchy Socialist feminism Socialist works Works about capitalism {{fem-book-stub