Liberal Feminism

First published Thu Oct 18, 2007; substantive revision Mon Sep 30, 2013

Liberals hold that freedom is a fundamental value, and that the just state ensures
freedom for individuals. Liberal feminists share this view, and insist on freedom for
women. Liberal feminism conceives of freedom as personal autonomy—living a life of
one's own choosing—and political autonomy—being co-author of the conditions under
which one lives. Liberal feminists hold that the exercise of personal autonomy depends
on certain enabling conditions that are insufficiently present in women's lives, or that
social arrangements often fail to respect women's personal autonomy and other
elements of women's flourishing. They hold also that women's needs and interests are
insufficiently reflected in the basic conditions under which they live, and that those
conditions lack legitimacy because women are inadequately represented in the
processes of democratic self-determination. Liberal feminists hold that autonomy
deficits like these are due to the “gender system” (Okin 1989, 89), or the patriarchal
nature of inherited traditions and institutions, and that the women's movement should
work to identify and remedy them. As the protection and promotion of citizens'
autonomy is the appropriate role of the state on the liberal view, liberal feminists hold
that the state can and should be the women's movement's ally in promoting women's
autonomy. There is disagreement among liberal feminists, however, about the role of
personal autonomy in the good life, the appropriate role of the state, and how liberal
feminism is to be justified.

Liberal feminists hold that women should enjoy personal autonomy. That is, they hold
that women should live lives of their own choosing. Some offer “procedural” accounts
of personal autonomy (MacKenzie and Stoljar discuss these, 1999, 13–19). These
accounts suggest that to say women should enjoy personal autonomy means they are
entitled to a broad range of autonomy-enabling conditions. On this view, the women's
movement should work to identify and promote these conditions. Identifying these
enabling conditions requires careful attention to the particular ways in which autonomy
deficits are produced in diverse women's lives. Procedural accounts avoid judging
directly the substance of women's choices or the arrangements that ensue. The
following list of enabling conditions is representative.

Being free of violence and the threat of violence: Violence and the threat of violence
violate women's dignity; they make women do what others want or reduce women's
sphere of activity to avoiding harm. In some cases violence fractures the self and takes
from women their sense of self-respect (Brison 1997). The feminist literature on violence
against women documents the particular role that violence and the threat of violence
play in unfairly disempowering and limiting women (Cudd 2006, 85–118).

Being free of the limits set by patriarchal paternalistic and moralistic laws: Patriarchal
paternalistic laws restrict women's options on the grounds that such limits are in
women's interest. Think for example of laws that limit women's employment options on
the grounds that taking certain jobs is not in women's interest (Smith 2004). Patriarchal
moralistic laws restrict women's options on the grounds that certain options should not
be available to women because morality forbids women's choosing them. Think for
example of laws that prohibit or restrict prostitution or abortion, or laws that favor
certain kinds of sexual expression or family forms (Cornell 1998; Brake 2004). Together,
patriarchal paternalistic and moralistic laws steer women into socially preferred ways of
life. These are unfair restrictions on women's choices, on the liberal feminist view,
because women's choices should be guided by their own sense of their self-interest and
by their own values. (But see Chambers (2008, 203–231) for liberal feminist uses of
paternalism.)

Having access to options: On the liberal feminist view, women are entitled to access to
options (Alstott 2004, 52). Women's access to options is frequently and unfairly restricted
due to economic deprivation, in particular due to the “feminization of poverty” (Pearce
1978; see also Cudd 2006, 119–154). Other sources of unfairly reduced options for
women are stereotyping and sex discrimination in education and employment (Smith
2004; Rhode 1997). Such stereotyping and discrimination affects some racial, ethnic
and cultural groups in particularly pernicious ways. Liberal feminists also point to the
way cultural homogeneity unfairly limits women's options (Cudd 2006, 234), for example
when culture assigns identities and social roles according to sex (Okin 1989, 170ff; Alstott
2004; Meyers 2004; Cornell 1998, x; Chambers 2008).

Some emphasize the importance of internal, psychological enabling conditions as well,

for example the ability to assess one's own preferences and imagine life otherwise
(Meyers 2002, 168; Cudd 2006, 234–235; MacKenzie 1999). Without the ability to assess
the preferences on the basis of which one makes choices, and the ability to imagine life
otherwise, one can't meaningfully be said to have options other than affirming the
status quo (see also Chambers 2008, 263–4). These internal enabling conditions are
related to the external ones. Violence and the threat of violence, stereotyping and
discrimination, material deprivation, and cultural homogeneity all can have the effect
of closing down reflection and imagination.
On this view, the women's movement should work to identify and promote autonomy-
enabling conditions. Identifying these conditions requires careful attention to the
particular ways in which autonomy deficits are produced in women's lives. On the
liberal feminist view, the state has an important role to play in promoting these
conditions (see sections 1.1.4, 1.2.1, and 1.2.2). But there is much that cannot be done
by the state (Cudd 2006, 223). For example, while the state can refrain from blocking
such endeavors, women themselves must develop new “alternative emancipatory
imagery” (Meyers 2002, 168), and fashion new ways of being a woman and new kinds
of relationships through experiments in living (Cudd 2006, 234; Cornell 1998).

1.2 Political Autonomy

Some liberal feminists emphasize the importance of political autonomy that is, being
co-author of the conditions under which one lives. Some use contractualist political
theory to argue that the state should ensure that the basic structure of society satisfies
principles of justice that women, as well as men, could endorse. Others argue that the
democratic legitimacy of the basic conditions under which citizens live depends on the
inclusion of women in the processes of public deliberation and electoral politics.

1.2.1 Distributive Justice

Some liberal feminists, inspired by John Rawls' contractualist liberal theory of justice
(Rawls 1971; 1993), argue that the state should ensure that the basic structure of society
distributes the benefits and burdens of social cooperation fairly, that is, in a manner that
women as well as men could endorse (Alstott 2004; Baehr 2004; Bojer 2002; Lloyd 1998;
McClain 2006; Okin 1989; Thompson 1993; for an overview of feminist responses to
Rawls, see Abbey 2013). They argue that the basic structure currently distributes benefits
and burdens unfairly, in part due to the gender system, or the patriarchal nature of
inherited traditions and institutions.

As Rawls puts it, the basic structure of society is: “The way in which the major social
institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of
advantages from social cooperation. By major institutions I understand the political
constitution and the principal economic and social arrangements…Competitive
markets and the monogamous family [are] examples of major social institutions… The
basic structure is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so profound and
present from the start. The intuitive notion here is that this structure contains various
social positions and that men born into different positions have different expectations of
life determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic and social
circumstances. In this way the institutions of society favor certain starting places over
others” (Rawls 1971, 6–7).

Rawls argues that the fairness of the basic structure of society may be assessed by
asking what principles representatives of citizens (parties) would choose to determine
the distribution of primary goods in society if they were behind a “veil of ignorance”
(Rawls 1971, 12). The veil of ignorance blocks from the parties knowledge of their place
in society: for example their socio-economic status, religion, and sex. (Rawls does not
include sex in A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971), but adds it in “Fairness to Goodness”
(Rawls 1975, 537).) Susan Okin proposes we “take seriously both the notion that those
behind the veil of ignorance do not know what sex they are and the requirement that
the family and the gender system, as basic social institutions, are to be subject to
scrutiny” (Okin 1989, 101).

Rawls argues that parties behind the veil of ignorance would choose two principles: a
liberty principle providing for the “most extensive total system of equal basic liberties
compatible with a similar system of liberty for all;” and a principle of equality requiring
equality of opportunity, and permitting inequalities only if they are to the benefit of the
least well off (Rawls 1971, 302–303).

Okin argues that the “gender system” violates both the liberty and equality of
opportunity principles because by effectively assigning roles to citizens according to sex
it circumvents citizens' “free choice of occupation” (Okin 1989, 103). On Okin's view, this
means that in a just society “gender could no longer form a legitimate part of the social
structure, whether inside or outside the family” (103). None of the institutions of the basic
structure, including the family, could assign roles according to sex.[2] It is common to
argue that the state, educational institutions, and workplaces should not assign roles
according to sex. But Okin argues that this applies to the family as well. Gender
blindness must play the same role in the family that it plays in these institutions. In Okin's
words, there must be “congruence” between the principles that govern these
institutions and those that govern family life (21). That is, families must be just.

Okin offers a second argument to support the claim that families must be just. Rawls
explains that a society based on his two principles of justice can be stable because
within it citizens develop a sense of justice (Rawls 1971, 453ff). For our purposes consider
that citizens must develop the conviction that citizens generally are due the rights of
equal citizenship. Okin argues that when children are raised within unjust families,
families which lack “equality and reciprocity,” and are characterized by “dependence
and domination,” they are not likely to develop the requisite sense of justice (Okin 1989,
99–100; see also McClain 2006, 73–84). Instead, girls and boys and may grow to believe
that women are not entitled to equal citizenship. Therefore, if the society governed by
Rawls' two principles of justice is to be stable, families must be just.

What can and should the state do to ensure that gender no longer forms a “part of the
social structure, whether inside or outside the family” (Okin 1989, 103)? Okin endorses
measures for the workplace, for example state subsidized daycare, parental leave, and
flextime (176, 186). These accommodations make it possible for women and men to
choose against traditional roles. She also recommends protecting from vulnerability
those women who do choose traditional roles by making them entitled to half of their
spouse's paycheck (181). But Okin does not think that the state should stop at
increasing the voluntariness of women's choices and compensating for disadvantage.
She argues instead that the state may and should promote a particular ideal of family
life. She tells us that the state should “encourage and facilitate the equal sharing by
men and women of paid and unpaid work, or productive and reproductive labor”
(171). Accommodations by employers may be understood, then, not only as a way of
making options available to women, but as a way of encouraging the sharing of paid
and unpaid work by spouses. Another way the state may encourage such
egalitarianism is through autonomy-promoting education, especially for girls (177). To
be sure, Okin argues that what is desired is a “future in which all will be likely to choose
this mode of life” (171, my emphasis). But the fact that many people currently don't
choose it does not mean, for Okin, that it is not an appropriate goal of state action
(172). (There is a substantial literature on Okin's use of Rawls' theory of justice. See for
example Reich and Satz 2009. See also Liberal Feminism Works.)

Other feminists apply contractualist political philosophy inspired by Rawls to the

problem of justice for women but draw slightly different conclusions from Okin. S.A.
Lloyd (1998), Anne L. Alstott (2004) and Linda C. McClain (2006) each argue that a
basically Rawlsian contractualist argument supports the claim that the current
disadvantages women suffer as a result of their shouldering a disproportionate share of
the burdens of social reproduction must be remedied by state action. All three endorse
many of Okin's policy proposals (Lloyd 1995, 1332; 1998, 218; Alstott 2004). But they
reject Okin's claim that the state should promote a particular substantive ideal of family
life (Lloyd 1995, 1340–1341; Lloyd 1998, 218; McClain 2006, 78). Alstott writes: “The
egalitarian family is, even in principle, a troubling ideal. Strictly equal sharing seems
unduly constraining, not merely because families today deviate from the idea, but
because free people might want to organize their lives differently” (Alstott 2004, 113).
Other liberal feminists have voiced similar concerns. Ann Cudd worries that state action
intended to promote gender fairness and foster women's autonomy could impose a
homogenizing conception of the good life, and stifle the very reinventions of self and
experiments in living that women's liberation requires (Cudd 2006, 209, 223; see also
Wolf-Devine 2004). Elizabeth Anderson writes: “The plurality of conceptions of the good
that are likely to survive in a world in which the state has done all it can be reasonably
and justly expected to do will include a host of unreasonable conceptions of the good,
some of which may well be patriarchal. In the face of such injustices, liberals counsel
feminists to redirect their claims from the state to those promulgating such
unreasonable conceptions of the good, and to redirect their activism from a focus on
state action to other domains, including civil society, churches, and the family. I think
this counsel is wise, which is why I am a liberal feminist” (Anderson 2009, 131; see also
141–144).

A substantial liberal feminist literature engages this tension between associational liberty
and possible state action aimed at remedying the way the current distribution of the
burdens of reproduction disadvantages women. Much of this literature draws on both
the liberal tradition within feminism and feminist work on caregiving (Barclay 2013;
Bhandary 2010; Brighouse and Wright 2008; Engster 1995, 2010; Gheaus 2009, 2012;
Gornick and Meyers 2008; Hartley and Watson 2012; Lloyd 1995, 1998; Robeyns 2007;
Gheaus and Robeyns 2011; Wright 2008).

1.2.2 Public Deliberation and Electoral Politics

Some liberal feminists, who emphasize the importance of political autonomy—that

women be co-authors of the conditions under which they live—focus in particular on
participation in the processes of democratic self-determination. These processes
include both political deliberation in the many arenas of public political discourse, and
electoral politics. Liberal feminists hold that the conditions under which women live lack
legitimacy because women are inadequately represented in these processes. They
hold that this political autonomy deficit is, in large part, due to the “gender system”
(Okin 1989, 89), or the patriarchal nature of inherited traditions and institutions, and that
the women's movement should work to identify and remedy it.
Attempts to increase women's participation in public deliberation and electoral politics
confront a vicious circle of women's exclusion. The gender system leads to women's
being underrepresented in influential forums of public deliberation, including in elected
law-making bodies. For example women have less free time to engage in public
deliberation because of the double-burden they carry of paid and unpaid labor; sex
stereotyping leads many to think that women (especially women from particular ethnic
and cultural groups) are less capable of leadership than men; the behavior called for in
agonistic public deliberation and electoral politics is understood to be masculine; issues
of particular interest to women are seen as personal and not political issues; women
lack power in the many institutions (like churches, universities, and think tanks) that
influence political debate, etc. But when women are underrepresented in these forums
and law-making bodies, it is unlikely that the justice of the gender system will become
the subject of public conversation or its dismantling a target of legislative action.

Some liberal feminists explore ways to escape this vicious circle. Because women are
excluded from important forums of public deliberation and electoral politics in complex
ways, remedies must address a variety of problems. Justice in the distribution of benefits
and burdens in society would go some way towards enabling women to access forums
of public debate on equal terms with men (Okin 1989, 104). But cultural change is
necessary as well if stereotypes about women's abilities are not to interfere with their
participation, if women's needs and interests are to be understood as legitimate claims
on democratic power, and if men's dominance in institutions of influence is to be
overcome. Seyla Benhabib argues that the women's movement, along with other new
social movements like the gay and lesbian liberation movement, has begun this work
(Benhabib 1992). While much of this change is cultural and must come about through
civic action, the state has a role to play. Linda McClain argues that all children must
receive civic education—to equip them for democratic citizenship—including
instruction in women's equality (McClain 2006, 81). She also argues that the state may
use its persuasive power to put traditionally excluded issues, like violence against
women or the dilemma of balancing work and family, on the agenda for public
deliberation (78).

Others take on the vicious circle of women's exclusion by recommending legal

mechanisms for the inclusion of women in electoral politics (see Rhode 1994, 1205–1208;
Peters 2006; Phillips 1991). Some suggest that legal mechanisms for including those who
have been systematically excluded may be justified as remedies for the unjust
disproportionate political power enjoyed by others (Phillips 2004, 6–10). Suggested
mechanisms include targets or quotas for women (and other underrepresented groups)
on party slates, or proportional representation in elected bodies. Karen Green, for
example, argues for “guaranteed equal representation of both sexes in parliament”
(Green 2006). There is diversity of opinion, however, among liberal feminists about the
justice and efficacy of such mechanisms (Peters 2006; see also Rhode 1994, 1205).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-liberal/

Liberal feminism does not oppose nature to culture or individuality to society, but rather
sees the ability to achieve autonomous personhood as dependent on social conditions.
This insight underpins liberal feminism's attitude to the status of women: to form as
rational agents, humans have to be provided with social safeguards such as education
and the vote.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9248.00008?journalCode=psxa

Liberal feminists argue that society holds the false belief that women are, by nature, less
intellectually and physically capable than men; thus it tends to discriminate against
women in the academy, the forum, and the marketplace. Liberal feminists believe that
"female subordination is rooted in a set of customary and legal constraints that blocks
women's entrance to and success in the so-called public world". They strive for sexual
equality via political and legal reform.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_feminism

Liberal feminism aims for individuals to use their own abilities and the democratic
process to help women and men become more equal in the eyes of the law, in society
and in the workplace. By organizing women into larger groups that can speak at a
higher level, lobbying legislators and raising awareness of issues, liberal feminists use
available resources and tools to advocate for change. As such, they stand in contrast
to Marxist or socialist feminists who believe the democratic process itself needs to be
changed.

For instance, what would you do if someone at work repeatedly made inappropriate
remarks to you or your coworkers? Would you speak with your supervisor? Would you file
a complaint with the company's human resources department? If the company did not
comply with harassment laws, would you seek legal representation or speak out
publicly against the company's lack of compliance?
If you'd been in the workforce prior to the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, you might
have sought out other people in your community who had experienced the same thing
or voted for someone supporting legislation to prevent sexual harassment. Or, perhaps
you would have kept working for the same company, hoping for a promotion and the
authority to change its corporate culture over time.

https://study.com/academy/lesson/liberal-feminism-definition-theory-quiz.html

Liberals hold that freedom is a fundamental value, and that the just state ensures
freedom for individuals. Liberal feminists share this view, and insist on freedom for
women.

Liberal feminism conceives of freedom as personal autonomy—living a life of one's own

choosing—and political autonomy—being co-author of the conditions under which
one lives.

Attempts to increase women's participation in public deliberation and electoral politics

confront a vicious circle of women's exclusion. The gender system leads to women's
being underrepresented in influential forums of public deliberation, including in elected
law-making bodies. For example women have less free time to engage in public
deliberation because of the double-burden they carry of paid and unpaid labor; sex
stereotyping leads many to think that women (especially women from particular ethnic
and cultural groups) are less capable of leadership than men; the behavior called for in
agonistic public deliberation and electoral politics is understood to be masculine; issues
of particular interest to women are seen as personal and not political issues; women
lack power in the many institutions (like churches, universities, and think tanks) that
influence political debate, etc. But when women are underrepresented in these forums
and law-making bodies, it is unlikely that the justice of the gender system will become
the subject of public conversation or its dismantling a target of legislative action.