16 - Barth and feminism

Summary

Some years ago, the feminist critic Heidi Hartmann wrote an influential article entitled, 'The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism'. It was a brief against the easy assumption that feminism had natural and ready ties to Marxist theory, and that any feminist who thought the 'woman question' through to the end would become an 'historical materialist' - as Marx styled his own theory - and subsume the women's struggle into the class struggle. Hartmann hoped to put an end to such easy alliances; and a feminist approaching this chapter might hope to do the same. Feminism does not appear to be headed for a happy marriage to Karl Barth. Though comfortable in the presence of socialism, Barth was filled with misgivings about feminism. In the Church Dogmatics, Barth refers to feminism rarely, and then grudgingly. He appears suspicious of feminist claims to equality with men and reluctant to take up feminist theory into the work of dogmatic theology.