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Okin on Justice, Gender, and Family

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Joshua Cohen
Joshua Cohen*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA
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Extract

Susan Okin has written an important book on justice and the family. Animated by the experiences that contemporary feminism has sought to articulate, and guided by a principled hostility to the subordination of women that continues to disgrace American life, she argues that the current ordering of domestic life in the United States is unjust and that its alteration ought to be made a matter of public policy.

Families, according to Okin, are not havens in an otherwise heartless world. Instead the current division of domestic labor marks them as the centerpiece of a broader system of inequalities between men and women. Justice condemns those inequalities and commands their remedy through the transformation of our domestic practices. Because the division of domestic labor is so fundamental to injustice, we need in particular to ‘encourage and facilitate’ (171) equal sharing by parents in the responsibilities of child-rearing, and in the more quotidian chores that provide the material foundation of modern domesticity.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 263 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

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References

1 While the implications of the book are not limited to the United States, Okin does focus throughout on this case.

2 In the title of her book and throughout, Okin uses the singular ‘the family.’ I do not think that this is simply a matter of terminology, but rather that it reflects the least attractive aspects of Okin’s substantive position (see below, 281). In any case, given the diversity of forms of domesticity, I think that it is preferable to use the plural.

3 Alternative formulations refer to the ‘abolition of gender’ (104), and ‘the disappearance of gender’ (105).

4 I take the term ‘linchpin’ from Okin, 6, 14, 170.

5 For the purposes of exposition, I draw sharper lines than closer examination would reveal. For a recent discussion of critical feminist perspectives that is more attentive to the range of debate and to the complexities and shadings of alternative views, see Rhode, Deborah L. ‘Feminist Critical Theories,’ Stanford Law Review 42 (1990) 617-38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See also her ‘Reason and Feeling in Thinking About Justice,’ Ethics 99 (1989); and Like, Thinking a Woman,’ in Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference, Rhode, Deborah L. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press 1990) 145-59Google Scholar.

7 On multiplicity, see Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One,’ and ‘When Our Lips Speak Together,’ in This Sex Which is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1985), chs. 2, 11.

8 For recent statements of and explorations of this view, see Spelman, Elizabeth V. Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon Press 1988)Google Scholar; Fraser, Nancy and Nicholson, Linda J. ‘Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter between Feminism and Postmodernism,’ in Feminism/Postmodernism, Nicholson, Linda J. ed. (New York: Routledge 1990), 19-38Google Scholar; and Harris, Angela ‘Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory,’ Stanford Law Review 42 (1990) 581-616CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For a brilliant account of the phenomena that more generic forms of feminism miss, see Crenshaw, Kimberle ‘Beyond Racism and Misogyny: The Case of 2 Live Crew,’ Boston Review 16, 6 (1991) 6, 30-3Google Scholar.

10 The point of my qualification (‘as a general matter’) will become clear later on (see below, 281-2). Certain aspects of Okin’s view do suffer from overgeneralization, but these aspects are, I think, inessential to the main line of argument.

11 See, for example, Kammerman, Sheila B. and Kahn, Alfred J. Child Care, Family Benefits and Working Parents: A Study in Comparative Policy (New York: Columbia University Press 1983)Google Scholar; for discussion of some policy issues in the context of current transformations in labor markets, see Feminization of the Labor Force: Paradoxes and Promises, Jane Jenson, Elisabeth Hagen, and Ceallaigh Reddy, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988), esp. Part 3.

12 For a contrasting view, see MacKinnon, Catharine A. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1989), ch. 10Google Scholar.

13 For discussion of Lochner era conceptions of the economy as a sphere of private ordering, the partial rejection of those conceptions in post-New Deal constitutional law, and the potential implications of a more comprehensive rejection for contemporary conceptions of family and sexual equality, see Sunstein, Cass ‘Lochner’s Legacy,’ Columbia LAw Review 87 (1987) 873-919CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Book Review: Feminism and Legal Theory,’ Harvard Law Review 101 (1988) 826-48.

14 Okin does not use the term ‘reasonable.’ But she does emphasize the plurality of understandings and she indicates as well that not all understandings need to be accommodated (see 174-5). I use the term ‘reasonable’ to cover all the conceptions that do need to be ‘admitted for consideration’ (174), and to suggest a rationale for setting certain views (e.g., extreme traditionalist views) to the side.

15 In one passage, Okin refers to the difficulties of ‘balancing freedom and the effects of past choices against the needs of justice’ (172, my emphasis). Putting the issue of balancing to the side, this formulation is misleading. Okin’s account of justice emphasizes the importance of finding terms of order that are (roughly speaking) acceptable from the point of view of each citizen. As a consequence, the need to accommodate ‘freedom’ must be counted among the requirements of justice. Freedom is not a value separate from justice that must be balanced ‘against the needs of justice.’

16 Okin generally refers to her own views as ‘humanist’ or ‘egalitarian.’ While nothing much turns on terminology, I prefer the term ‘egalitarian liberal’ because it directly captures the important role in her view of choice and diversity, as well as substantive equality.

17 The notion of acceptability does play a central role in Rawls’s theory of justice. But it appears not to play a similar role in, for example, Dworkin’s formulation of egalitarian liberalism. See his ‘Foundations of Liberal Equality,’ Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. II (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1991).

18 See, for example, MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory, esp. parts 2 & 3.

19 The basis for a response to this criticism is suggested by Okin’s remark at 174-5 about restricting the range of views that need to be ‘admitted for consideration.’ For discussion of the role of such restriction in reconciling consensus, diversity, and substantive equality see my ‘Moral Pluralism and Political Consensus,’ in The Idea of Democracy, David Copp, Jean Hampton, and John Roemer, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press forthcoming).

20 Nozick discusses the idea of self-ownership in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), 171-2.

21 Okin does briefly mention (87-8) two alternatives to the self-ownership formulation of libertarianism. One is a ‘variant of Aristotelianism,’ while the other is welfarist, emphasizing the efficiency of market coordination. But she does not discuss variants of libertarianism which emphasize the supreme value of (negative) liberty.

22 Full self-ownership, in the sense explained in the text, is not a common assumption in the liberal tradition. Locke, for example, rejected it in favor of the idea that God owns us, and derived his moral prohibitions against slavery and political absolutism precisely from the restrictions on our self-ownership. Grotius, by contrast, did think that people own themselves, and so accepted the legitimacy of both slavery and absolutism.

23 See The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1960), 89-91; and Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. 2, The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1976), 9-10.

24 The argument that follows is my account of Okin on Nozick. She does not present such an explicit statement of the difficulties in his views.

25 This is an instance of the same general principle that underlies (5) — that two people cannot fully own the same thing.

26 There are other styles of feminist criticism, and I am here concerned only with the particular approach to criticism advanced by Okin.

27 See Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 287-97, and Okin’s remarks at 80.

28 See Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 172.

29 See ibid., xiv. His discussion of the meaning of life (50-1) is not a plausible explanation.

30 Ibid., 172

31 For a recent rejection of this thesis, see Jaggar, Alison M. ‘Sexual Difference and Sexual Equality,’ in Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference, Rhode, Deborah L. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press 1990) 239-54Google Scholar.

32 Sandel, Michael Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982), 33Google Scholar

33 I am concerned here principally with the use that Okin makes of Chodorow’s view, not with that view itself.

34 For Chodorow’s own qualifications, see her Introduction to Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press 1989). For discussion of Chodorow’s view, see, for example, Gottlieb, Roger ‘Mothering and the Reproduction of Power: Chodorow, Dinnerstein, and Social Theory,’ Socialist Review 77 (1984) 93-119Google Scholar; Young, Iris ‘Is Male Gender Identity the Cause of Male Domination?’ in Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory, Trebilcot, Joyce ed. (Totowa: Rowman and Allanheld 1983) 129-46Google Scholar.

35 In fact, Okin’s account of the reproduction of gender focuses mainly on the expectations and identity of women. She does not present a sustained account of the advantages that flow to men from the gender system — whether sexual or economic — or of the uses of power to sustain those advantages.

36 I of course do not mean to suggest that a conception of domestic justice can neglect to consider what is best for children. This is plainly a central issue, but not one that can safely be addressed by a mechanical application of one speculative piece of psychology.

37 The attractiveness of exit could be improved by appropriate divorce laws. But as Okin emphasizes, current divorce law typically reinforces the disadvantages of women.

38 For a review of debates on these issues, see Walby, Sylvia Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1990)Google Scholar, chs. 2, 3.

39 On the persistence of segmentation in the face of a system of family policy that does much of what Okin proposes, see Ruggie, Mary ‘Gender, Work, and Social Progress: Some Consequences of Interest Aggregation in Sweden,’ in Feminization of the Labor Force, 173-88Google Scholar. On part-time work, see Bakker, Isabella ‘Women’s Employment in Comparative Perspective,’ in ibid., 16-44Google Scholar.

40 Some would say ‘always.’

41 I would like to thank Larry Blum, Uday Mehta, Cass Sunstein, and Judith Thomson for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.