Liberal Feminism: what it is, philosophical positioning and demands.

These are the characteristics of one of the most influential social movements of the 20th century.

In very general terms, feminism is a set of political and theoretical movements that struggle for the that fights for the vindication of women (and other historically subordinated identities) that has a history of many centuries, and that has gone through very diverse stages and transformations.

For this reason, it is usually divided into theoretical currents, which do not mean the end of one and the beginning of the other, but rather, as different experiences and denunciations of contexts of vulnerability have been incorporated over time, feminism has been updating the struggles and theoretical nuances.

After the "First Wave" of feminism (also known as Suffragette Feminism), which advocated for equal rights, feminists focused attention on how our identity is constructed based on the social relations we establish, especially through the distinction between public and private space.

The proposal at this time is that the vindication of women has to do with our incorporation into public life, in addition to promoting legal equality. This current is called Liberal Feminism..

What is and where does Liberal Feminism come from?

The 1960s and 1970s, mainly in the United States and Europe, saw the emergence of feminist mobilizations related to the New Left and African-American civil rights movements..

In this context, women were able to make visible their experiences of sexism and the need to organize among themselves, in order to share these experiences and seek strategies of vindication. Feminist organizations such as NOW (National Organization of Women), promoted by one of the key figures of this movement, Betty Friedan, emerged.

Likewise, at the theoretical level, feminists distanced themselves from the most popular paradigms of the time, generating their own theories to account for the oppression they experienced.. Thus, Liberal Feminism is a political movement, but also a theoretical and epistemological movement that has been taking place since the second half of the twentieth century, mainly in the United States and Europe.

At this stage, feminism appeared publicly as one of the great social movements of the nineteenth century whose repercussions connected with other movements and theoretical currents, such as socialism, since they proposed that the cause of women's oppression was not biological, but was rooted in the beginnings of private property and the social logics of production. One of the key antecedents to this is the work of Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex.

Likewise, its growth had to do with the development its growth had to do with the development of women's citizenship, which did not occur in the same way as in the early days of private property and the social logics of production.This did not occur in the same way in Europe as in the United States. In the United States, the feminist movement of the Second Wave brought together several social struggles, while in Europe it was more characterized by isolated movements.

In short, the main struggle of Liberal Feminism is to achieve equal opportunities based on a critique of the distinction between public and private space, because historically women have been relegated to the private or domestic space, which has meant that we have fewer opportunities in the public space, for example, in access to education, health or work.

Betty Friedan: representative author

Betty Friedan is perhaps the most representative figure of Liberal Feminism.. Among other things, she described and denounced the oppressive situations experienced by middle-class American women, denouncing that they were forced to sacrifice their own life projects, or in equal opportunities with men; which also promotes some differences in the experience of health and disease between one and the other.

In fact, one of her most important works is called "The problem that has no name" (chapter 1 of the book Mystique of Femininity), where she relates the displacement to the private space and the silenced life of women with the development of those with the development of those unspecific diseases that medicine does not finish defining and treating.

Thus, she understands that we construct our identity in correspondence with social relations and encourages a personal change in women and a modification of these relations.

In other words, Friedan denounces that the subordination and oppression that we women experience have to do with legal constraints which already limit our access to public space, and she offers reformist options, i.e., to generate gradual changes in these spaces so that this situation is modified.

Some criticisms and limitations of Liberal Feminism

We have seen that Liberal Feminism is characterized by the following characteristics fight for equal opportunities and women's dignity. and dignity of women. The problem is that it understands "women" as a homogeneous group, where equal opportunity will cause all women to claim our dignity.

While Liberal Feminism is a necessary and committed movement for equal opportunity, it does not question the relationship between that inequality and the social structure, which keeps other experiences of being women hidden.

That is to say, it is concerned with the problems of white, Western, housewife and middle-class women.and advocates equal opportunities in the public sphere, taking for granted that this struggle will emancipate all women, without considering that there are differences of class, race, ethnicity or social status that create different experiences in "being a woman" and with this, different needs and demands.

This is the origin of the "third wave" of feminism, which recognizes the multiplicity of identities and ways of being a woman in relation to social structures. It recognizes that the demands of women and feminisms are not the same in all contexts, among other things because not all contexts give the same opportunities and vulnerabilities to the same people..

Thus, for example, while in Europe there is a struggle to decolonize feminism itself, in Latin America the main struggle is survival. These are issues that have led feminism to constantly reinvent itself and to keep on fighting according to each time and each context.

Bibliographical references:

• Gandarias, I. & Pujol, J. (2013). De las Otras al No(s)otras: encuentros, tensiones y retos en el tejido de articulaciones entre colectivos de mujeres migradas y feministas locales en el País Vasco. ENCRUCIJADAS. Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociales, 5: 77-91.
• Perona, A. (2005). Postwar American liberal feminism: Betty Friedan and the refounding of liberal feminism. Retrieved April 16, 2018. Available at http://files.teoria-feminista.webnode.com.ve/200000007-66cbe67c5a/El%20feminismo%20norteamericano%20de%20postguerra%20Betty%20Friedan%20y%20la%20refundacion%20del%20feminismo%20liberal.pdf
• Heras, S. (2009). An approach to feminist theories. Universitas. Journal of Philosophy, Law and Politics, 9: 45-82.
• Velasco, S. (2009). Sexes, gender and health: theory and methods for clinical practice and health programs. Minerva: MAdrid
• Amorós, C. & de Miguel, A. (S/A). Feminist theory: from enlightenment to globalization. Retrieved April 16. Available at https://www.nodo50.org/mujeresred/IMG/article_PDF/article_a436.pdf