Within the enormously varied and fluid field of feminist social/political philosophy and political theory, several foci can be identified: analyses of women's oppression; explorations of differences among women and their implications for feminism; critiques of political philosophers and retrieval of little-known women philosophers; reanalyses of central concepts in political philosophy; analyses and recommendations on practical political issues.

A Common Theoretical Basis for Feminism?

Whether there is anything that cuts across these different areas of work and the varieties of theoretical perspectives is not entirely clear. If feminism is to have a common basis it would seem necessary to say that whatever the disagreements, all agree that women are oppressed, or at least subordinated to men, and that to eliminate this requires not only legal changes of a kind that have mostly been achieved in the developed world, but more...