Feminist Perspectives on Power

Analytic
Cudd defines oppression in terms of four conditions:
I. The group condition (members are treated unjustly because of membership/ascribed membership to a social group);
II. Harm condition (individuals are systematically harmed as a result of such membership);
III. Coercion condition;
IV. Privilege condition (other groups gain from harming).

This area analyzes how oppression is as long lasting as it is, the answer here can be seen in the fact that members of oppressed groups themselves are co-opted through their own short-run choices to reinforce the long-run oppression of social groups, e.g. women are caring to avoid being anti-normal, but thus reinforce the stereotype.

Power as Empowerment
This area sees power as mainly not power-over, but power-to, a capacity to produce change. The understanding of power as domination is in itself a masculine definition of it. Women might want to be powerful in ways that are not dominant, but rather enhancing the power of others, e.g. motherhood.
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