Liberal Equality and Feminism: the Implications of the Thought of John Stuart Mill.
Tallen, Bette Sharon
1980
Abstract
Feminism as a coherent political theory and practice has its roots in the liberal tradition. Liberalism, with its rhetoric about the rights of a citizen, held out great promise to all people when it spoke about the equality of men (defined as legal and civil equality, not political equality or equality of condition). It was a theory designed to protect men in their pursuit of property. Women, who were initially excluded from the world of liberal rights, focused on this question of equality and began to dem and to be included in this new arena of public rights. John Stuart Mill occupies a critical place in this formulation of feminist politics. He drew on many sources to arrive at a new vision of liberalism and a theory of feminism, especially the ideas of Plato. He transformed the concept of liberal rights and equality from a construct that ensured self-protection and property to an idealistic Platonic concept that stressed people's potentialities. Thus he added an ideal teleological dimension to liberal society, the development of truth. A progressive society had to foster individual and social growth and development, while at the same time preserving the institutions of social order. All this was ultimately to facilitate the development of truth. Mill applied this new concept of equality and liberty to women. Women were, for the first time, to be included in the public arena on an equal basis. This equality was not based on their accumulated property, but rather on their potential contribution to society. The vote was the most important instrument to bring about this individual development. But at the same time that he was advocating the extension of political and civil equality for women, he also wanted to strengthen the bourgeois institutions of marriage and the family. Mill's vision was that most women, after receiving political and civil equality, would not want to work outside the home, but rather, would be better wives and mothers. Only a few gifted women would work. His ideas were reflected in the nineteenth century woman's rights movement, especially in America. Feminists, when they argued for the extension of political and civil liberty for women, had to go beyond the liberal world of the fearful self-interested consumer. These women saw the granting of equality (especially political equality) not only as a significant achievement in itself, but as a vital tool to transform themselves and society. The contradictory world of liberal equality is what underlies and underscores the dilemma of political equality. On the one h and , people speak about the necessity for liberty and self-development, and on the other h and , they advocate reinforcing and stabilizing the very institutions that insured their inequality in the first place. But, the problems faced by feminists go much further than the public contradictions of liberalism. The institutions which oppress women (i.e., marriage and the family) are usually defined as outside the public realm. So the achievement of political equality when it was set in the context of the preservation of bourgeois family relations actually served to confirm their oppression. Women must learn to transcend both the public contradictions of liberal equality and the public-private character of their subjection in order to forge a truly feminist praxis.Types
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