Post date: Mar 8, 2017 8:26:22 PM
[These are some lecture notes I circulate for my introductory ethics course, from a module on care ethics. Posting for International Women's Day. The stuff up front is recommended media for context.]
Elizabeth Nyamayaro’s An Invitation to Men Who Want a Better World for Women (TED Talk) [ted.com/talks/elizabeth_nyamayaro_an_invitation_to_men_who_want_a_better_world_for_women]
bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), 1-12
Martha Rampton, “The Three Waves of Feminism,” Pacific (Fall 2008)
In 1881, Hubertine Auclert began publishing a monthly newspaper, La citoyenne [The Citizen], for the sake of “bringing about the equality of woman and man.”[1] She argued in favor of granting French women voting rights and full citizenship status. She also coined the term féminisme as a synonym for “women’s emancipation” and “women’s rights,” and the term féministe as a synonym for one who advocates for or endorses féminisme.[2] This terminology gained recognition beyond Auclert’s newspaper when, in May 1892, the Fédération Française des Sociétés Fémistes [French Federation of Feminist Societies] convened a conference designed to integrate various feminist groups.[3] This marks the first public mention of féminisme. By 1894, the English feminist debuted in Daily News, a London newspaper; the term feminism followed in 1895. The Spanish-language equivalents feminismo and feminista arrived in Argentina near the end of the 1890s, and these migrated north into the United States of America by the 1910s.
Because social movements change over time, the original meaning of feminism is an unreliable guide to what feminism is. So, too, are dictionary definitions, which conflate how people tend to use a term with what the term refers to. For example, according to Merriam-Webster, feminism is “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.” This is correct, but it ignores the interesting range of variation within the history of the feminist movement. It also misconstrues feminism as a belief rather than a political movement. bell hooks gives a better definition that suits our purposes:
feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.[4]
Sexism, in hooks’ sense, means valuing or treating members of one sex as inferior to members of another by virtue of their sex. For example, rules prohibiting women from serving as pastors or soldiers are sexist, as are beliefs that women ought to be subordinate to men in the domestic household and policies granting paid work leave to new mothers but not new fathers. Sexist exploitation refers to the benefits some receive from sexism that they would not receive in the absence of sexism. And oppression refers to the ways in which social institutions and norms facilitate and perpetuate sexist exploitation.
Scholars typically sort feminism into two varieties, liberal and radical. Liberal feminism aims to secure for women rights and opportunities equal to those of men by removing external causes of sexism.[5] Examples of liberal feminist concerns include:
- the right of women to own and control property, even when married (in contrast the notion of coventure, whereby women lose their rights to their husbands upon marriage);
- the right of women to vote (despite worries that women’s suffrage “means competition of women with men instead of co-operation” and “it can be of no benefit commensurate with the additional expense involved”);[6]
- the right of women to education, especially at the university level (in contrast to notions that women are innately incapable of advanced learning, that mental strain harms the female reproductive system, and that separate spheres for the sexes is divinely ordained);[7]
- the right of women to receive “equal pay for equal work” (in contrast to notions that differences in pay always track “unequal” work);
- the right of women to refuse sexual intercourse with their husbands (in contrast to “rape exemption” laws for married men, or laws that prohibit forced, but not drugged, marital rape);
- the right of women to drive cars or travel without a male escort.
Radical feminism, by contrast, aims to secure for women rights and opportunities equal to those of men by raising consciousness about (sexist) beliefs, stereotypes, and attitudes that inhibit women from being willing or able to empower themselves.[8] Examples of radical feminist tactics include:
- providing women with loans or skills to generate income for themselves;
- public awareness campaigns to combat women’s self-perception as weak or inferior;
- forming groups for women to share experiences and offer or receive solidarity;
- increasing representations in film and music of women as capable, autonomous, valuable, and meriting respect.[9]
These tactics are designed to empower women to advocate for equal rights and opportunities, exit or avoid abusive relationships, participate in public life and politics, resist pressures to forgo education for the sake of producing children, develop interests and concerns beyond their immediate family, develop a sense of self-worth, and so on.
There is a tendency to conflate liberal and radical feminism with misandry (contempt for men). hooks argues that the charge of misandry is misplaced, writing (to an American audience) that feminism
is not about being anti-male…. [T]he problem is sexism…. [A]ll of us, female and male, have been socialized from birth to accept sexist thought and action. As a consequence, females can be just as sexist as men. And while that does not excuse or justify male domination, it does mean that it would be naïve and wrong-minded for feminist thinkers to see the movement as simplistically being for women against men…. [W]e are all participants in perpetuating sexism until we change our minds and hearts, until we let go of sexist thought and action and replace it with feminist thought and action.[10]
Even if some women hate men, and even if some of those who hate men are feminist, hook is saying that it would be uncharitable to confuse hating men with striving to end sexism.[11] She is also denying that being a feminist involves blaming men for sexist exploitation or oppression. She is saying, instead, that being a feminist involves blaming sexists (or sexist institutions) for those things, regardless of whether they are male or female.
Given this understanding of feminism, we can say that an ethics is feminist insofar as it tends to facilitate or advocate for the end of sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. For example, John Stuart Mill argues that
the legal subordination of one sex to another–is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; [and] it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on one side, nor disability on the other.[12]
This is a feminist argument, because it advocates against sexism and sexist exploitation. Insofar as Mill’s utilitarianism, as a general ethical orientation, lends itself to such arguments, it is a feminist ethics.
Those who advocate and endorse caring as central and fundamental to a life well lived typically position care ethics as a feminist ethics, as well. Care ethics arose through better attention to the experiences of women: first in “private” domains such as home and family, and subsequently more “public” domains such as business and politics. So there is a close historical association between care ethics and feminism.[13] Care ethics also prioritizes the kinds of activities that tend to be marginalized or ignored in sexist societies. Whence Virginia Held, a leading contemporary care ethicist, writes,
We are continually being presented with images of the humanly new and creative as occurring in the public realm of the polis, or the realms of the marketplace or of art and science outside the household…. But the activity of creating new social persons and new kinds of persons is potentially the most transformative human activity of all. And it suggests that morality should concern itself first of all with this activity, with what its norms and practices ought to be, and with how the institutions and arrangements throughout society and the world ought to be structured to facilitate the right kinds of development of the best kinds of new persons. The flourishing of children ought to be at the very center of moral and social and political and economic and legal thought, rather than, at present, at the periphery, if attended to at all.[14]
By virtue of arguments such as these, care ethics lends itself to feminist arguments against the exploitation or oppression of those who bear the brunt of caring responsibilities at home or through their work.
[1] Quoted in Carolyn J. Eichner, “La citoyenne in the World: Hubertine Auclert and Feminist Imperialism,” French Historical Studies 32.1 (2009), 63-84 at 63.
[2] There is an enduring myth that another French philosopher, Charles Fourier, coined the term féminisme in the 1830s. There is no evidence for this, and historians identify an 1896 edition of the Revue Encyclopédique as the origin of the mistake. See Karen M. Offen, European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 183-184. Fourier was a utopian socialist, and this mistaken association between féminisme and Fourier might help to explain a tendency to characterize feminism as a form of socialism—even though Fourier himself rejected the equality of men and women.
[3] One of the central concerns at this congress was Article 340 of the Napoleonic Civil Code of 1804: “La recherche de la paternité est interdite” [The search for paternity is prohibited]. Féministes argued that, just as French law allowed for investigations of maternity, it ought to allow for investigations of paternity; also that men and women should bear equal legal parental responsibility toward their children. Given contemporary tendencies to associate feminism with “pro-abortion” politics, it is worth noting that some members of the congress recommended that cities create shelters “for nursing mothers and pregnant women,” for the sake of reducing abortions—a procedure some characterized as second in moral depravity only to infanticide. See Anna Cova, “French Feminism and Maternity: Theories and Policies, 1890-1918,” in G. Bock and P. Thane (eds.), Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s-1950s (New York: Routledge, 2012), 119-137 at 120-121.
[4] bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), 1.
[5] This is ‘liberal’ in the sense of liberation (from constraint), not in the sense of politically progressive. The contrast with liberal feminism is some form of rights- and opportunities-based sexism, marked by rejecting the notion that women and men ought to have equal rights and opportunities. Insofar as “conservative” feminism endorses that sort of equality, it counts as a version of “liberal” feminism, even if “conservative” and “progressive” feminists disagree on details about the meaning of “equal.”
[6] Josephine Marshall Jewell Dodge, writing “Vote NO on Woman Suffrage” in the 1910s for Household Hints, a pamphlet by the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.
[7] See Joan N. Burstyn, “Education and Sex: The Medical Case Against Higher Education for Women in England, 1870-1900,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117.2 (1973), 79-89; Burstyn, “Religious Arguments Against Higher Education for Women in England, 1840-1890,” Women’s Studies 1.1 (1972), 111-131.
[8] This is ‘radical’ by virtue of endorsing a “radical” revision of society, in the sense of a revision that changes the fundamental institutions and structures of society (rather than one that alters individual attitudes or laws). It is not ‘radical’ in the sense of advocating violence or revolution—although some radical feminists do that, too.
[9] For more, see Andrea Cornwall, “Women’s Empowerment: What Works?” Journal of International Development 28 (2016), 342-359.
[10] bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), viii-ix.
[11] In some circumstances, it might be appropriate to have contempt for people who are sexist. Insofar as sexism is immoral, it seems reasonable to think that especially egregious instances might deserve contempt. Moreover, “mainstream” versions of feminism typically advocate for sex-neutral rights. Parental rights are a good case in point: courts typically award custody rights to mothers during divorce proceedings. Judging that this is sexist, mainstream feminists typically advocate for laws that allow parents to “share equally in their children’s upbringing, thus allowing women to participate more fully in the world of paid work from which they have long been excluded” (Nancy S. Erickson, “The Feminist Dilemma Over Unwed Parents’ Custody Rights: The Mother’s Rights Must Take Priority,” Law and Equality 2.2 (1984), 447-472 at 447).
[12] John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter 1, paragraph 1.
[13] See Stephanie Collins, The Core of Care Ethics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 7.
[14] Virginia Held, “Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 Supplement (1990), 321-344 at 336.