The main enemy

Dot-Com Women Entrepreneurs in the UK

“…However, 1984) found that only five per cent of the men in their study embarked on a venture without relevant experience whereas 50 per cent of the women in the survey did so -a finding that contradicts the above assertion. Why then do a majority of women embark on ventures in the same sectors in which they are employed?…”

“…In the main, this line of reasoning maintains that men desire to hold on to their positions of power and privilege within the society and therefore they devise biased hiring policies that discriminate against women (Hartman, 1979). This male power at work is enforced through the home when men refuse to participate in domestic activities making it more difficult for women to engage in the labour marketplace on equal terms (Delphy, 1984).…”

Feminism and the contradictions of oppression

“…In the sex-class system, men benefited from patriarchal beliefs and practices which ensured that women serviced their needs, raised their children and were excluded from political and economic power. Christine Delphy (1974) differed from many radical feminists in arguing that sex-classes existed alongside social classes in the marxist sense, but she still maintained that in order to be liberated, women had to develop consciousness of their interests as a class, and to struggle against men and against the organization of patriarchy.…”

Men, masculinities and the material(-)discursive

“…These include those focusing on biology (Firestone, 1970), the domestic mode of production (Delphy, 1977(Delphy, , 1984, kinship patterns (Weinbaum, 1978), family (Kuhn, 1978), economic systems (Eisenstein, 1979;Hartmann, 1979), 'the politics of reproduction' (biological reproduction, care of dependent children and care more generally) (O'Brien, 1981(O'Brien, , 1990, 'sex-affective production' (the production of sexuality, bonding and affection as core processes of society) (Ferguson & Folbre, 1981;Ferguson, 1989), sexuality (MacKinnon, 1982(MacKinnon, , 1983, and various combinations thereof. In different ways, such approaches tended to either analyse the relations of economic class and gender relations in employment, the family, sexuality, or draw parallels between economic class and gender/sex class, or highlighted intersections of class/gender/race as materially foundational, or focused on materialism as gendered reproduction or highlight the materialism of the body.…”