What does socialist feminism stand for?

Engels' The Origin of Family, Private Ownership and State is a classic work often cited by socialist feminists. Socialist feminism believes that the root of women's oppression is the private property system, which is the social organization of economic order, and women are the labor reserve army in capitalist society. It advocates the combination of feminism and class struggle. Because the oppression and exploitation of women under the patriarchal clan system comes from the private property system, changing one side of capitalism and patriarchal clan system will lead to the change of the other side.

Socialist feminism believes that it is too narrow to distinguish different social groups related to the means of production only by "class", and women are also a class; It tries to explain the reality of women's oppression with the concept of "alienation", and thinks that the way to get rid of women's oppression is to overcome women's alienation and eliminate gender division of labor; Its ultimate goal is to make the division of male and female classes disappear in society; Its strategy of liberating women is the change of gender characteristics and fertility. Therefore, socialist feminism fundamentally opposes emphasizing gender differences between men and women. It advocates that there should be no feminist politics independent of all politics, and independent feminist politics must be a wrong generalization. He is even more opposed to the separatism of lesbians, believing that this separatism is based on the physiological differences between men and women.

In the debate about equality and justice, socialist feminism stands on the side of equality. It holds that women are systematically at a disadvantage in all aspects of life, which is not caused by personal ability, but by historical and social reasons. Therefore, to change the disadvantaged position of women, we should not only rely on personal efforts and so-called "fair competition", but also strive for legislation to protect women and various special measures to help the disadvantaged groups, so as to strive for an equal position with men. One of the main realistic requirements of socialist feminism is equal pay for equal work for men and women.