Just like people, feminists come in all shapes and sizes, despite the fact that all feminists believe that men and women should be treated as equals and have access to the same opportunities, how should a society achieve this is where you find varied schools of thoughts within feminism.
There are two schools of thoughts that are very distinct (honestly just very easy to understand and a good conversation starter.) They are 1) Radical feminism and 2) Realist feminism (that is what I call them)
Radical Feminism
The fundamental belief of these feminists is that the current system is designed to oppress women and no amount of incremental change is going to make up for what almost a half of the global population is subjected to.
They believe that capitalism feeds in and off of patriarchy, let me illustrate this by using the following example -
Imagine a couple working in the silicon valley, both of them are highly and equally educated, work at the same company and get paid the same, get promotions at the same rate, spend nearly the same amounts of hours working, etc. With time they decide to start a family. What happens next is that the woman needs to take a leave, a maternal leave. While the man is working. The woman needs to tend to her child and manage household work, while the man is working. As the child grows up, the man and the woman both realize that it's much easier for the woman to run childcare related errands as she is familiar with what her child needs. So, she needs to manage taking time off from work to attend to doctor's appointment, soccer practice, PTA meetings etc.
Meanwhile, the man's working hours have remained the same if not increased. Naturally, the man gets more promotions than the woman and earns more than her. What happens now is that over a period of ten years despite the fact that both the man and woman started off at the same point, they end up with huge pay disparities because the woman's biology forces her to de-prioritize her work.
In light of this situation, a European country decided to give paternal leaves for new fathers that they could not cash in or use some other time. This forced new fathers to take the leave and spend time in childcare. This time was also useful to train fathers to do household chores and become equal contributors to what is known as the 'second shift' where people are subjected to more working hours after their offices.
Naturally, over ten years, the disparity is seen in case one got divided for case two. Where both the man and the woman in the European country spent equal amounts of working hours and contributed equally to the household chores.
However, when the European man compared himself with the man from the Silicon valley he realized that the Silicon valley man was at an advantage by not contributing to household chores.
This realization glorifies having gender roles. The European man must think that had his wife supported him more, he could have managed to earn more and provide for the family more.
Using this as an example, Radical feminists illustrate that capitalism, where higher working hours are rewarded by economic development is designed to be patriarchal.
Realist Feminist
Realist feminists understand that uprooting the entire socio-political structure is probably not realistic, given the current political climate that tends to be right-ist. So they argue that having recognized that enforcing gender roles implies that there are additional responsibilities on a woman shoulder that she must take care of, she needs to work harder, is held to a higher standard to get the same respect as her male counterparts, women should be given privileges.
The metric used to decide whether an employee gets a promotion should be sensitive to whether the employee is a man or a woman and female employees should have a more relaxed evaluation criterion.
The counterargument to this solution of female oppression is that it enables incompetent employees to rise up the ladder which becomes a threat to the organization. It instils disrespect in the male employee psyche and this solution does not even consider women that represent more marginalized communities like black women, trans women, homosexual women etc.
So, what now?
We discussed that one school of thought is a critic on the current system but uprooting capitalism is an unrealistic solution (as the people that have the power to uproot capitalism are the ones benefiting from it) and the other school of thought seems unfair to the male counterparts and hence would have low acceptance.
Where do I stand in this chaotic, incomprehensible, unforgiving structure?
I had heard a stand-up comedy show where the comedian had said
We should all be like racists. Racist people do not go around telling people they are racists, they do not read about racism, they go about their day with racists ideologies in their minds, passing racist comments and doing racists things.
I like to extend this quote to feminism and I couldn't agree more (except for the 'don't read about racism/feminism' bit). As a feminist, I think I too would like to go about my day being a feminist, not trying to convince people why I am one and they should be too, reading about it, just putting my foot down for human rights whenever needed, going about my day giving unsolicited feminist opinions, not hoping sexism to disappear in a fortnight, not abusing misogynists 😇
Yes, as individuals I believe we do have the power to make things move, but until then I'd like to do whatever little I can to make the world a little more bearable place to live in.