Feminist social and political philosophy

The earliest feminist philosophers examined gender bias in traditional social and political institutions. By asking the question “Who benefits?” they showed how mostly unspoken practices of gender-based exclusion and discrimination favoured the interests of men. Much of their analysis concerned sexual and family relations, which were then considered private or personal matters that could not (or should not) be addressed by political means. Accordingly, with a fine disregard, they adopted the rallying cry “The personal is political.”

The traditional political philosophies of liberalism and Marxism generally ignored sexual and family issues; in contrast, feminist philosophers made them the focus of political theory. Eventually three major schools of feminist political theory arose, each emphasizing a distinctive subset of issues: liberal feminism, socialist feminism, and radical feminism.

Liberal feminists—e.g., Susan Moller Okin—pointed out the many ways in which gender discrimination defeats women’s aspirations, and they defended reforms designed to make women’s equality a social and political reality. Noting that differences in the ways in which girls and boys are raised served to channel women and men into different and unequal social roles, they advocated gender-neutral forms of education and child rearing. They particularly focused on protecting and extending the rights that enabled women to pursue self-chosen goals, such as reproductive rights (including the right to legally obtain an abortion) and rights to full educational and economic opportunities.

Whereas liberal feminists applied the core liberal values of freedom and equality to address women’s concerns, the socialist feminists Alison Jaggar and Iris Marion Young appropriated Marxist categories, which were based on labour and economic structures. Criticizing traditional Marxism for exaggerating the importance of waged labour outside the home, socialist feminists insisted that the unpaid caregiving and homemaking that women are expected to perform are equally indispensable forms of labour and that the sexual division of labour that assigns most domestic work to women is exploitative. They also objected to the double day of work that burdens most women who have children and who work outside the home. Likewise, they condemned the economic dependency and insecurity of stay-at-home mothers and the low salaries of child-care workers.

Last, the school of radical feminism turned women’s attention to sexuality and to the disparities of power that pervade heterosexual relationships in patriarchal cultures. According to radical feminists, male heterosexuality objectifies the female body and makes the domination and degradation of women a source of erotic stimulation. Such assertions were the basis of Catharine MacKinnon’s and Andrea Dworkin’s campaigns in the 1980s and ’90s against sexual harassment and pornography. Likewise, those assertions provided the basis of Marilyn Frye’s endorsement of separatist feminist practices.

Liberal, socialist, and radical feminism continue to challenge standard philosophical assumptions about the scope of politics and the nature of justice. Yet, arguably, each of them rests on a flawed conception of gender. As Elizabeth V. Spelman, María Lugones, and Judith Butler claimed, none adequately takes into account the ways in which gender is influenced by and interacts with sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, age, and ability, and none explicitly addresses how those factors affect the needs of diverse groups of women. Moreover, as Uma Narayan argued, none comes to grips with the complexities of advancing women’s rights internationally or with the obstacles to coordinating feminist agendas in a globalized economy. Much current work in feminist social and political philosophy—specifically in black feminist theory, queer theory, and feminist human rights theory—takes on these urgent problems. Yet, despite advances in these fields, controversy persists between Luce Irigaray’s view that gender is an ontological reality and Judith Butler’s contention that it is an ontological illusion.

Feminist ethics

Whereas feminist social and political philosophy arose from consciousness-raising groups, feminist ethics was initially developed by women who were or had been full-time homemakers or mothers and who felt excluded (and in some cases offended) by the women’s movement’s emphasis on dismantling barriers to professional careers for women. These women’s moral worlds were less concerned with rights and justice and instead revolved around caregiving and maintaining networks of relationships. Inspired by Carol Gilligan’s work on care ethics, early projects in feminist ethics shifted the focus of ethics from relations between citizens or strangers to close relationships rooted in emotional attachments, including friends, lovers, and mothers and children. In those intimate relationships, the parties respond to each other as unique individuals, not merely as typical human beings. Although they are vulnerable to each other in many of the same ways that strangers are, they are far more vulnerable to insensitivity, indifference, unkindness, and the threat of abandonment. Moreover, personal relationships are not always reciprocal. Because one of the individuals may be temporarily or chronically dependent on the other for sustenance, the other may shoulder a greater share of the burdens of the relationship. In those contexts, then, moral reciprocity is not reducible to equal respect or equal contribution.

The focus on interpersonal morality showed that general moral rules, which some traditional ethical theories strove to develop, were rather crude instruments for conducting a moral life. Consequently, feminist ethical philosophers—notably Sara Ruddick, Virginia Held, and Annette Baier—sought to explicate virtues and values suitable to everyday sociability. They questioned the tenability of basing moral relations on an implied social contract—in which individuals promise to behave morally toward others on the condition they behave morally toward them—and they demonstrated the critical role of trust in establishing an environment conducive to moral interaction. Although they did not repudiate the rational calculation of consequences in evaluating actions, they saw empathy and emotional responsiveness as vital to moral judgment. That general approach came to be known as the ethics of care.

Because the demands of caregiving often prevented women from pursuing other projects and goals, striking a proper balance between caring for others and caring for oneself became a key problem for feminist ethics. In work since the 1990s—e.g., by Margaret Walker—the concerns addressed by the ethics of care have been reframed in sophisticated accounts of the social processes through which individuals consolidate their moral identities, enter into and sustain relationships, and negotiate responsibilities.