Feminism
Introduction
We can distinguish between three concerns of feminism:
1. Feminism tracks the domination of women in a male-dominated society.
2. Feminism engages critically with the liberal public-private distinction. 3. Feminism, as a theory of difference and not equality, proposes an
alternative conception of justice.
Let's have a look at these three different, though complementary, outlooks in feminism.
1. The difference approach
• Until well into this century, restrictions on women's civil and political rights were said to be justified by nature: Women are naturally unsuited for political and economic
activities outside the home.
• Contemporary theorists view women as 'free and equal beings' and liberal democracies have progressively adopted anti-discrimination statutes that guarantee the equality of rights in the political sphere and the equality of opportunity in the economic sphere. Women have equal access to education, employment, political office, etc..
• The extension of rights and a sex-blind or gender-neutral society is supposed to solve the problems women face.
• MacKinnon calls this the 'difference approach' to sexual discrimination, for it views as discriminatory unequal treatment that cannot be justified by reference to some sexual difference (p. 379).
1. The dominance approach
• Yet, the difference approach is problematic. MacKinnon writes that "sex equality law has been utterly ineffective at getting women what we need and are socially prevented from having on the basis of a condition of birth: a chance at productive lives of reasonable physical security, self-expression, individuation, and minimal respect and dignity" (p. 378). Sex equality does not prevent women from the 'second shift' or 'double day', with women being disproportionately represented in low-paying, part-time work, which makes them economically dependent.
• The problem isn't any longer old-fashioned chauvinism. The problem is that jobs are designed for people who are not primary caretaker of children and can afford competing and working 10h a day. Women need not be discriminated against. The fact that they have to and perhaps also want to take care of children, auto-excludes them from most attractive and well-paid positions and relegates women to the low-paid sector.
• The problem is that society is sexist in its very foundations. McKinnon therefore proposes the 'dominance approach' to sex equality that seeks to ensure not only the absence of
1. The dominance approach and
theories of justice
• Many feminists argue that theories of justice interpret equality in ways that are incapable of recognizing women's subordination. Therefore we should give up interpreting justice in terms of equality. Yet, the dominance approach is also an interpretation of equality, though more complex than formal equality. • Is the dominance approach consistent with mainstream theories of justice? Communitarianism and
libertarianism could reject its premises. First claims that social roles are given, second insists on the employers' freedom to design jobs however they see fit.
• Can liberal theories adopt the dominance approach? MacKinnon argues that the dominance approach goes beyond liberalism, but Kymlicka believes that liberalism can accommodate much, if not all feminist concerns. Formal equality is not enough and the different, mostly hidden ways women are discriminated against and dominated in politics, society and the market can be countered, if, as Moller Okin argues, "Rawls's contractors would insist on a more complete attack on the system of gender differentiation, eliminating both the unequal domestic division of labor and sexual objectification" (p. 385).
• Yet, the dominance approach might require liberals to revise the private-public distinction and the relationship between justice and care.
2. Liberalism and the public-private
distinction
• According to liberalism, justice refers to the 'public' realm, whereas familial relationships are private and lie outside of the state's
competences. Therefore theories of justice continue to ignore relations within the family.
• Yet, as Carole Pateman writes, the "dichotomy between the public and the private is, ultimately, what feminism is all about" (p. 387). • There are two conceptions of the public-private distinction in
liberalism: (1) the distinction between the political and the social and (2) the distinction between the social and the personal. Neither
2. (1.) State and civil society
• This distinction equates the public with the state, and the private with civil society. And liberalism valorizes civil society, since it is the best expression of our freedom.
• One might think that the family is part of the civil society, yet liberalism conceptualizes civil society in abstraction of the family, as a realm that contains only adult men.
• Why do liberals not ensure that domestic life is organized along principles of equality and consent? One reason is that liberals inherited the traditional assumptions concerning the women's natural role.
• Yet, the liberal state-society distinction is in any sense based upon traditional gender roles.
2. (1.) State and civil society ( cont.)
Are there feminist grounds for rejecting the liberal state-society distinction, once it is no longer based upon the distinction between female domestic sphere and the male public sphere? There are some points of dispute:
• Feminists might endorse stronger policies of intervention in civil society in order to encourage the maintenance of certain social ties, including familial ones.
• Feminists may not share the liberal faith that freedom of speech and the press will counteract prejudice and stereotypes and so may endorse stronger government policies to fight demeaning cultural images of women.
• Feminists believe that active state policies are needed to challenge the problem of 'adaptive preferences' (the contented housewife), while liberals tend to think that individual rights and distributive justice are going to do away with the problem.
2. (2.) The personal and the social:
the right to privacy - the problem
• This second distinction, going back to Romanticism, separates the personal from the public, whereas the 'public' includes both state and civil society. Individuality is threatened not only by coercion, but also by the pressure of
social expectations and conformism. This second distinction is discussed under the heading of a 'right to privacy'.
• Yet, the right to privacy is interpreted by the US Supreme Court in terms of the privacy of the family. As a result, it has immunized the family from reforms
designed to protect women's interests - for example, state intervention that would protect women against domestic violence and marital rape, or empower women to sue for non-support, or officially recognize the value of domestic
labor. This way, the right to privacy reinforces the division between public and private.
2. (2.) The personal and the social:
the right to privacy - the solution
• In order to protect women's interests, the right to privacy must be extended to individuals and not to families. This becomes possible through the detachment of privacy from patriarchal ideas of family autonomy. Accordingly, "state action may be needed within the
domestic sphere to protect privacy and prevent abuse" and
"guarantee women (or children) a sphere for personal retreat from the presence of others, or from the pressure to conform to others' expectations" (p. 398).
• In conclusion, the "feminist critiques of privacy leave the liberal conceptions of privacy of private choice very much alive" (p. 398).
3. The ethic of care
• Women are since always supposed to have different modes of thought and feeling - more intuitive, emotional, particularistic dispositions. And in fact, women's supposed different nature is one reason for their discrimination.
• There is a strand in contemporary feminism, however, that argues that we should take seriously women's different morality. It is a mode of moral reasoning and a source of moral insight that is rational and public in scope.
• These feminist theories go back to Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice, 1982) who discovers that women reason in terms of interpersonal relationships and context, whereas men
tend to impersonal, abstract and universal reasoning in terms of principles. She labels women's morality as 'ethic of care' and men's morality as 'ethic of justice'.
• There is some controversy if this different voice really exists and, if it does, whether it is significantly correlated with gender. Another question is if a care-based approach to political questions competes with justice.
3. Ethic of justice vs. Ethic of care
The debate concerns the following issues:
1. moral capacities: learning moral principles (justice) versus developing moral dispositions (care)
2. moral reasoning: solving problems by seeking principles that have universal applicability (justice) versus seeking responses that are
appropriate to the particular case (care)
3. moral concepts: attending to rights and fairness (justice) versus attending to responsibilities and relationships (care).
3. (1.) Moral capacities
• Also for theories of justice moral dispositions are important. Even if justice
involves applying abstract principles, people do develop a 'sense of justice' only if they learn a broad range of moral capacities.
• Most justice theorists neglect the development of the affective capacities, since they suppose that the sense of justice and the sense of care is learned within the family.
• Yet, as Okin points out, if the family is itself gendered and children learn within the family about despotism and exploitation rather than equality and reciprocity, then the whole structure of moral development is built upon uncertain grounds. • Therefore, justice theorists have to accept the care theorists emphasis on moral
3. (2.) Moral Reasoning
Justice theorists are right in being universalist (insisting on principles) rather than situationist (responding to the complexity of a given situation). Why? • Not all contextual features are relevant to moral decisions. We need to
distinguish salient and irrelevant features of moral situations.
• Moral demands may conflict and we need principles to solve this conflict. • It is not clear that we always should try to accommodate conflicting
demands.
• We have limited resources for caring. We need moral guidelines for ordering our priorities.
3. (3.) Moral concepts
The distinction between 'rights and fairness' and 'responsibilities and relationships' can be construed in at least three ways:
1. universally versus concern for particular relationships
2. respect for common humanity versus respect for distinct individuality 3. claiming rights versus accepting responsibilities.
3. (3.1.) Universality versus
preserving relationships
For care theorists, morality requires responding to perception of need within the context of relationships and not the categorical imperative.
This is problematic, since the care ethics risks to exclude the most needy, since they are most likely outside the existing web of relationships.
Therefore, some care theorists expand the web of relationships to include all human beings. This is problematic:
• We lose the distinction between the particularity of relationship and the generality of principle.
• Moreover, imposing impartiality, attachment loses its moral relevance.
• The ethics of care leaves also unclear how conflicts of interests between the family/friends and distant others are to be resolved.
3. (3.2.) Respect for humanity and
respect for individuality
Justice neglects people's distinct individuality. It is concerned with the 'generalized other' rather than the 'concrete other'. Care responds to concrete differences
rather than our abstract humanity.
This contrast seems overdrawn in both directions:
• The ethic of care, once universalized, also appeals to common humanity.
• Theories of justice are not limited to respect for the generalized other.According to Okin, Rawls' theory of justice does not depend upon a disembedded and
disembodied being but requires that "as moral subjects, we consider the
identities, aims and attachments of every other person (...) as of equal concern with our own. We must develop considerable capacities for empathy and powers of communicating with others about what different human lives are like" (p. 408).
3. (3.3.) Accepting responsibility and
claiming rights
• Justice is concerned with rights, whereas care with accepting responsibilities. For Gilligan, care requires concern for welfare, whereas rights are essentially self-protective and selfish.
Yet, except for libertarians, theories of justice recognize positive duties concerning the welfare of others.
• Is there a difference in the kind of responsibility each ethic insists upon?
For care ethics whatever subjectively-felt hurt is immoral whether or not it is fair.
3. (3.3.) Justice as fairness: the
challenge
Why do justice theorists limit our responsibility for others to the claims of fairness?
• Some interests remain my own responsibility, otherwise we reward irresponsibility. We are responsible agents.
• Taking into account subjective hurts can hide oppression (see
exploitative and oppressive relations). Oppressors' subjective hurts have no moral weight, since they arise from unfair and selfish expectations. • Using subjective hurt as the basis of moral claims imposes too great a
responsibility for others. There seems to be no limits to our obligations to others.
3. (3.3.) The place for an ethic of
care
Care theorists counter that we need to distinguish a 'self-less' conception of caring from a 'self-inclusive' conception of caring. This is what distinguishes a 'feminist' ethic of care from a 'feminine' ethic of self-sacrifice.
Yet, how much autonomy can we claim for ourselves and how much reciprocity can we demand from others, without neglecting the subjective hurt of others?
Care theorists do not resolve this question by developing a system of abstract rules. Yet, autonomy requires that responsibilities are predictable and codified in advance. However, the assumption that subjective hurts give rise to moral claims is plausible if applied to our relations with dependants (children). A baby is not responsible for its needs and cannot be expected to attend its parent's welfare.
3. (3.3.) Care as a matter of justice
• The distribution of care is a matter of justice. Care is a moral
constraint on every life-plan. Practices of care should be seen as an obligation of citizenship.
• Ways need to be found that integrate public life and parenting.
Theories of justice too often ignore that we are adults who are care-givers for dependants.
• The real question is if we can meet our responsibilities for dependent others without giving up the more robust picture of autonomy, in
terms of setting of personal goals and the commitment to personal projects.
