This paper will… 1. explain one of feminism’s most significant contributions to Western understandings of social justice: feminism’s disclosure of objects of justice. 2. consider whether a feminist approach to social justice is usefully described as a way of fleshing out the ideal of androgyny. “Objects of justice” are things that justice tries to distribute or protect. This includes things like rights, respect, burdens, punishments, opportunities, resources, recognition, etc. Central to justice is the notion of moral balance— a punishment should “fit” the crime. Two main branches of social justice: 1. Distributive justice: justifying state intervention in redistributing goods. (Focus of this writing.) 1. Political justice 2. Economic justice 3. Cultural justice 2. Corrective justice: determining principles for ”fitting” punishments & rewards. Feminists argue that Western philosophical justice has failed in these ways: 1. Tended to identify the various objects of justice in ways that are gender-biased. Specifically, failing to acknowledge the full range of privileges enjoyed by some, particularly men, and burdens imposed on others, particularly women. 2. Failed to credit the full range of contributions made by some groups, particularly women. 3. Failed to recognize the disproportion between the privileges, burdens, and contributions of men and women often results from choices by men and women made in a social context that systematically imposes unequal and unjust constraints. ### Feminism and the objects of political justice The final paragraph of the chapter is a nice summary: >Feminists thus argue that mainstream theories have offered inadequate and gender-biased accounts of the objects of political justice. These theories have ignored not only unjust constraints on women’s abilities to exercise their political rights, but also serious violations of such basic liberties as the right to bodily integrity. Mainstream theorists have also failed to recognize many political benefits enjoyed by men, including disproportionate power and authority in both public and private spheres. Finally, mainstream theorists have disregarded the numerous and substantive political contributions made by women. Feminist work on political justice… 1. Surfaces distinct political privileges enjoyed by many men and injuries suffered by many women. 2. Draws attention to political contributions made by women. 3. Identifies unjust and largely neglected social constraints that influence women’s politics. Despite formal political equality, women remain strikingly underrepresented in electoral politics. Feminists have identified a number of mutually reinforcing ways in which systematic inequalities restrict the political opportunities of women: - The vast majority of successful candidates come from a handful of elite professions such as law, which require high levels of education. - A military record is also helpful to candidates but this is often inaccessible to women as well. - Running for US Congress requires a great deal of money. And studies show that campaigns for white men tend to raise more funds. - When women are elected, they are likely to be excluded from informal political relationships. - Studies show that even those voters who consider themselves to be “open-minded toward women candidates” are less likely to vote for women with small children. Second-wave feminists identified everyday political injustices: Intense scrutiny of their appearance, sexual harassment, unequal division of domestic labor, etc. Liberal political theory responded to these everyday political injustices by categorizing them as personal, individual deficients and urging women to cope better. Feminists responded with the slogan “the personal is political”, which implied that many of these problems had systemic causes and it wasn’t enough to just ask women to cope better. The public/private distinction in liberal political theory has often operated ideologically to exclude many harms to women from the realm of political justice. However, when it is acknowledged that addressing women’s problems requires some social changes, liberal political theory does not usually category these changes in what Rawls calls the “basic structure” or “basic institutions” of society. >Even if women are not directly blamed for their “personal” problems, placing them within the domain of private morality means that tackling these problems is not a matter of justice and therefore not among a state’s first priorities. Women’s relative absence from formal politics is often mistaken as evidence that they are passive or apathetic. This view is challenged by pointing out how women have been extremely active in community life at the local level. There are at least two reasons why women’s political contributions haven’t been recognized: 1. Women have often avoided high-profile roles and instead supported male spokespersons. This leadership style is overlooked. 2. Women’s activities are often distinguished from politics proper by being called “community organizing.” ### Feminism and the objects of economic justice >To summarize, feminists do not argue that so-called women’s work, either paid or unpaid, is inherently unpleasant or degrading. Instead, they contend that the present social organization of this work is unjust for several reasons. First, this work is performed disproportionately by women, who are coerced to perform it by gender-specific social constraints that do not similarly coerce men. Yet men reap disproportionate benefits from this work, both as individual family members and as participants in male-biased institutions. Finally, the men and institutions that benefit from women’s unpaid family labor do not reciprocate, reward or even recognize the women who perform it. On the contrary, this work is unfairly devalued as menialand unskilled and the women who perform it are often despised precisely on that account. Those who perform the socially indispensable work of caring for dependent others, become themselves stigmatized as “dependent.” > >Thus do feminists contribute to our understanding of the objects of economic justice by offering expanded conceptions of economic burdens and benefits, costs and contributions, as well as by drawing attention to structures of social constraint that hitherto were unacknowledged. Feminists have made visible what was previously invisible in traditional theories of economic justice—despite being quite visible to most women. Feminists argue that most contemporary economic justice theories exclude many of the benefits enjoyed by men as well as the burdens carried and contributions made by women. The most egregious example of neglecting women’s economic burdens and contributions is the ignoring of unpaid work in the family and community. This includes sexual, emotional, and gestational labor which would command a high price if purchased on the market. It’s argued that men more than repay women’s domestic labor by their larger monetary contribution to the family budget. However, feminists respond that this economic exchange is quite unequal when measured in terms of time and energy rather than money. Moreover, men have more time & energy to contribute to their career. Marriage lengthens a man’s life but shortens a woman’s. Conventional economics defines concepts such as “self-sufficiency” and “dependence” in a gender-biased way. They ignore the facts that women’s caring work makes an indispensable social contribution while paid work is often socially counterproductive, even though it raises the GNP. (E.g. Making junk food advertisements for children.) The distinction between “entitlement” and “charity” serves an ideological function and is gender-biased. “Entitlement” positions the recipients as deserving while “charity” positions the recipients as dependents. Nancy Fraser argues that, in the US economy, the real free-riders are men who shirk care work and domestic labor and corporations who underpay workers. Individual economic independence is a fiction: >Socialists and anarchists have pointed out for over a hundred years that everyone’s knowledge and skills are derived from the stock created by the species, and that we all need the help of others in acquiring a share of it; moreover, most people’s economic contributions are made possible only by their participation in a larger economic system that coordinates the contributions of many others (Kropotkin 1987). For this reason, some feminists argue that the notion of economic self-sufficiency is an ideological fiction or illusion, what Eva Kittay calls a “conceptual chimera,” serving primarily to rationalize the privilege of those whose good fortune has placed them in a position to receive economic benefits in a market economy (Kittay 1999, 141). As Marx noted, economic justice does not mean equal contribution / distribution. Rather, it requires assessing people’s differing abilities and needs. But it’s hard to imagine this calculating out to women contributing more and/or receiving less. Women’s occupational choices are constrained by institutional or cultural factors. For example, “female” labor is usually devalued and women usually are burdened with domestic Labor and care work. ### Feminism and the objects of cultural justice >Feminist reflections on the objects of cultural justice run parallel to feminist work in political and economic justice, by revealing injuries to women that mainstream theorists of justice have ignored and by pointing to aspects of the culturally feminine that deserve to be revalued. The devaluation of women and the feminine is so deep-rooted in Western culture that it is often invisible to its members, with the result that feminists often appear to be challenging the natural order of things. For this reason, the struggle for cultural justice is in some respects the most difficult feminist struggle of all. ### Feminism and the objects of social justice Several linked themes run through feminist thinking about the objects of social justice: - Making visible the burdens and benefits of social cooperation. (E.g. Domestic labor) - Gender ”blindness” as bias. - Challenging masculine norms in every domain. - The interrelation and mutual reinforcement of justice. (For instance, just as the cultural devaluation of femininity rationalizes political and economic discrimination against women, so political and economic injustices to women also inflict psychological and emotional damage.) ### Androgyny James P. Sterba has argued that feminist justice is best characterized as androgyny. In 1992, Jaggar, resisted this characterization because: 1. The term suggests a mix of conventionally masculine and feminine characteristics within a single individual. It would be less misleading to instead use the term “genderlessness”. 2. The term “androgyny” focuses attention on changing people rather than changing social institutions. 3. Strategically, “androgyny” may scare people from feminism because it suggests a reconstruction of their personal identities. 4. “Androgyny” is incompatible with the views of some feminists. 5. Defining feminism as a commitment to androgyny would draw too sharp a line between feminism and other political intellectual traditions, obscuring continuities and interconnections. 6. It’s presumptuous to label people with terms that are not their own. The disadvantages to characterizing feminist justice as androgyny: 1. A negative definition of feminist justice may be easier for many people to accept than a positive one. Minimally put, feminism is a commitment to ending women’s subordination. 2. Since it is common to speak of individual men or women as androgynous, taking androgyny as the defining feminist ideal might even be thought to imply the possibility of individual liberation in the absence of systemic social change. 3. If the openness or vagueness of “androgyny” is its strength, it is also its weakness. The term does not even hint at many of the deepest contributions that feminists have made to Western understandings of justice. >For all these reasons, as well as for some of those that I listed in 1992, I continue to resist Sterba’s recommendation to define feminist justice as a commitment to androgyny. However, I do share his sincere and substantive commitments both to feminist justice and to a peacemaking model of doing philosophy.