What is Marxist feminism?

Traditional, or liberal, feminism is
concerned exclusively with issues pertaining to gender. Perhaps the earliest womens movements
were ones concerned with womens suffrage (i.e. right to vote) and reproductive issues (access to
birth control and abortion). Another major focus of womens movements was money €“ specifically
womens ability to own property and to work in the same jobs as men for equal pay. A more
theoretical strand of feminism became concerned with ideologies of oppression. Marxist feminism
related the oppression of women as a gender to the more general oppression of various
disempowered groups including those marginalized by race and poverty. For Marxist feminists,
gender inequality is one of many manifestations of the inherent exploititiveness and inequality
inherent in capitalism, and the consider these rectifiable only by change in the entire system
of oppression, not by incremental changes such as affirmative action within an inherently
hierarchal and oppressive system.