Mill
‘what is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing - the result of forced repression in some directions and unnatural stimulation in others’
Prof Carol Gilligan
men and women tend to think differently when confronting ethical dilemmas
Pamela Grande Jenson
gender neutrality harms women by ‘impelling them to imitate men, by depriving society of their distinctive, contributions, or by letting them participate in society only on terms that favor men’ (male-identified)
Mary Daly
gyn-ecology - women are more in tune with nature because they menstruate and give birth - they are more inclined to protect the environment
Okin
Liberal theorists ignore gender by confining justice to the public realm.
Rawls and feminism: Okin argues that behind the veil of ignorance, agents would care about gender justice - Rawls’ principle, understood in terms of equality of opportunity, would rule out the way our current society perpetuates a sex-linked division of family responsibilities.
difference feminists against Rawls
agents behind the voi seem male-oriented - characterised by “rationality” and “disinterest”
Carol Hanisch
the personal is political
difference analysis of discrimination
it is discriminatory to treat people differently on grounds of sex. Problem: it is not discriminatory under this definition to have a selection process that ‘unintentionally’ selects more men than women
Mackinnon
Dominance Model of discrimination: discrimination should be conceived of in terms of power distributions in society. Ask us to consider the requirements of a job and how accessible they are to women e.g. long hours, sick days
Kymlica
restricting contraception and abortion leads to gendered division of labour, beauty standards, economic dependency on men etc.
Betty Friedan
the feminine mystique - recognised “the problem with no name” in the 1980s. Stereotypes and myths of domestic bliss deterred women from entering the public sphere. This led to high levels of depression and alcoholism in women. [difference analysis would ignore this]. She wanted to address these injustices through universal breadwinning giving women meaningful access to jobs at the same level/ degree as men (e.g. by providing state child care)
Saul
discrimination against primary care-givers: primary care-givers (usually women) cannot meaningful work/ succeed to the same degree as men because they require flexible work hours - they thus accept lower-paid jobs like clerical work/ sales/ service that offered - job segregation.
discrimination in divorce: women are unfairly disadvantaged in Divorce cases
Solution: care-giving parity - society should restructure so as to all care-givers to be just as able to be financially independent as non-care-givers e.g. part-time workers should be just as able to progress as full-time workers.
Munoz-Darde
the family shouldn’t be abolished (state run orphanages) - it interferes with emotional ties of the family which are not the business of the government. The abolition of state marriage would solve the problems of a sexual division of labour.
Russell against state-run orphanages
would encourage uniformity which is bad for democracy which requires pluralism and individuality
Shulamith Firestone
artificial wombs
Ti-Grace Atkinson
feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice
Marilyn Frye
separation of women from male-defined institutions
Juliet Mitchell
socialist feminist - capitalism needs to be overcome to address gender injustice because the gender system is created to maintain and sustain capitalism
Carol Pateman
Pateman interprets Hobbes ‘social contract’ - it is built on a pre-existing sexual contract (which is validated by the marriage contract) that places women as inferior to men. Women are equal in the state of nature but give up their power for protection when pregnant/ from rape (coercive contracts are valid threat of rape). Social contract can’t simply be expanded to include women it is fundamentally constructed around their exclusion.
Hrdy
holds that women possess stronger natural caregiving instincts toward infants and children than men do. But, she argues, citing evidence from both humans and animals, men also have such nurturing impulses. For both women and men, a key force in activat-ing caregiving impulses is spending time with babies and small chil-dren (Hrdy 1999: 209-13). If men do this, their nurturing instincts become just as strong as women’s. This suggests that if men were given encouragement to spend time with children, and if workplaces facilitated this, the apparent disparity between men’s and women’s desires to prioritize child-rearing would disappear.
Gayatri Spivak
Third wave feminist - white women do not have the right to speak for oppressed women of india