Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 13-14

All these efforts to 'add' the 'woman question' to existing social theories or paradigms fail to grasp the true historical thrust of the new feminist rebellion, namely its radical attack on patriarchy or patriarchal civilization as a system, of which capitalism constitutes the most recent and most universal manifestation. Since practically all the above-mentioned theories remain within the paradigm of 'civilized society', feminism, which in its political aim necessarily wants to transcend this model of society, cannot be simply added onto, or fitted into some forgotten niche of these theories. Many of us who have tried to fill those 'blind spots' have finally found out that our questions, our analyses put this whole model of society into question. We may not yet have developed adequate alternative theories, but our critique, which first started with those lacunae, went deeper and deeper till we realized that 'our problem', namely the exploitative oppressive men-women relationship, was systematically connected with other such 'hidden continents', above all 'nature' and the 'colonies'. Gradually a new image of society emerged in which women were not just 'forgotten', 'neglected', 'discriminated' against by accident, where they had 'not yet' had a chance to come up to the level of the men, where they were one of the several 'minorities', 'specificities' which could not 'yet' be accommodated into the otherwise generalized theories and policies, but where the whole notion of what was 'general', or what was 'specific' had to be revolutionized. How can those who are the actual foundation of the production of life of each society, the women, be defined as a 'specific' category? Therefore, the claim to universal validity, inherent in all these theories, had to be challenged.