hooks says, "There is much evidence
substantiating the reality that race and class identity creates
differences in quality of life, social status, and lifestyle that take
precedence over the common experience women share."  What are the
common experiences that women share?  To what extent is hooks right in
saying that race and class make it difficult or impossible for women
to share common ground, even in terms of the feminist movement? hooks
is carefult to criticize Friedan without declaring her work to be
invalid or useless, but she is ver direct in claiming that Friedan
distorts women's issues.  Is hooks right?  In what ways do the
selections by Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf reveal the
problesm that hooks describes?  What would the importance of social
class be to Wollstonecraft and Woolf?  I will pay $5.00 per question.

Dear Rescuequeen, 

Thank you for your question. Your questions are answered in the order
of appearance in each paragraph.

In "Black Women Shaping Feminist Theory" (Online at
<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/Organizations/healthnet/WoC/feminisms/hooks.html>),
Bell Hook shapes a different epistemological and theoretical approach
in gender studies. The foundation of her approach are basically
Marxist: a conflict between oppressors and the repressed exists, and
in this case, Black women are discriminated, and their status as
oppressed in the feminist theory is neglected by the paradigmatic
epistemology, led by White women like Friedan.

White feminist theorists claimed that the status of being a woman is a
common experience that sets women apart from men, as repressed gender.
In a male dominated reality, women everywhere suffer violence,
financial and linguistic hegemony and other characteristics of this
reality. Women are discriminated when they are limited in their choice
of professions, in their share of power (in politics and the economy,
in particular, but also in religion or culture), and in their place in
the private sphere - the family.

However, in this essay, Hooks says, "There is much evidence
substantiating the reality that race and class identity creates
differences in quality of life, social status, and lifestyle that take
precedence over the common experience women share." In other words,
the common experiences abovementioned are less important than the
cultural and financial hegemony of the rich over the poor, the Whites
over the "People of Colour".

Hook claims, that race and class make it difficult or impossible for
women to share common ground, even in terms of the feminist movement.
She gives a pretty convincing example: when a woman is "emancipated"
according to the Frieden Et Al School, she goes to work - leaving
someone else - a Black or otherwise lower class woman, to care for her
house and family. The discourse is oriented, therefore, towards the
problems of the middle-class White women, not towards that of the
Black, lower-class women.

Though Hooks is careful to criticize Friedan without declaring her
work to be invalid or useless, she is nevertheless very direct in
claiming that Friedan distorts women's issues. This is the distorted
image of the middle-higher class lady, who emancipates herself by
consumption of material goods and services (nanny, cleaning-lady),
that are oppressive towards other women.

In a way, Hooks is very precise here. When the word "feminism" jumps
to mind, powerful, middle class women, dealing with issues of work and
power positions jumps to popular mind (see for example my search for
"feminism" in Google News brings up news about female soldiers, the
stereotype of radical feminists as "ugly" non-feminine women -
implying that a "real" feminist could be both attractive and a
feminist, etc.). The popular image of "power women" and feminists
addresses exactly this problem.

"Wollstonecraft and Woolf were extremely conscious of gender and
class, both in their writing as well as in their personal lives"
(Source: Robyn Kocher "Wollstonecraft, Woolf, and Weddings: Images of
Marital Confinement in the Fiction of Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia
Woolf" 2000 <http://www.albion.edu/english/Diedrick/Newberry2000/rkocher.htm>).
The link between class and gender-equality exists also in writings by
Mary Wollstonecraft:

"It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree
independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural
affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they
are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean,
and selfish. The preposterous distinction of rank, which render
civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants
and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class
of people." (See: Mary Wollstonecraft, "A Vindication of the Rights of
Women (1792)? <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wwollstonecraft.htm>).

For Mary Wollstonecraft, it is clear, because elf the lack of gender
equality, there is also no solidarity in the power-relations between
classes - women would express solidarity of each other only when they
are truly free of male domination.

See also: Brigitte Bechtold1 "More Than a Room and Three Guineas: 
Understanding Virginia Woolf's Social Thought"
<http://www.bridgew.edu/depts/artscnce/jiws/may00/bechtold.htm>.

I hope this answered your question. I searched the web and read some
books to reach the answer. Please contact me if you need any further
clarification before you tip/rate the answer.