Joiner Flourishing Pathway Blog Eleven - Feminism

In this blog we will explore JFP Principle 11 – While feminism has effected many positive changes to women’s lives, it has failed to consider how such changes have impacted infants; particularly in view of the way they are cared for in their earliest years, or demand status and respect for motherhood roles women want to undertake. In previous blogs I argued we have duties to children, so they can develop the foundations that enable them to flourish. That is, to be happy, healthy, and productive citizens. I’ve also outlined research which suggests it is mothers who are best situated to provide the primary care to their infants. To suggest that it ought to be women who forgo their autonomy in favour of spending most of their time with their infants appears as a retrograde step, in conflict with the prevailing expectations that women should return to work, compounding our dilemma. It is therefore appropriate that I investigate this tension through a feminist lens.

Historically Mary Midgley (1988) says, the ideal person in most philosophical deliberations throughout history was a man. She says

From the ancient hierarchical point of view (unchanged from Aristotle to Kant and beyond) … women themselves did not really matter. They were in effect an inferior kind of man, with no distinctive character of their own (p. 30).

Mary Wollstonecraft challenged this view and said in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792 that women were just as capable of exercising reason and virtue as men, but that they had been schooled to view themselves as incapable of little other than pleasing men (1792/1970, p. 51). She argued, if educated in the same way as men, women could be rational beings.

Despite some voices to the contrary, women continued to be viewed as emotional, sensual creatures who lacked innate reason, such differences being ‘natural, or biologically based’ (Hannam 2012, pp. 11-12). The idea that it was women’s biological difference that could account for the so-called deficiencies in women has had a lasting and pervasive legacy.

Women rightly rejected the notion of their inferiority. Though, even after women began to win the vote in early 20th century and progressed to win unconditional rights in many European countries in the 1940s to 1960’s, they still experienced restrictions to their social, political and economic positions (Hannam 2012, p. 76).

Nonetheless, there was a pervasive idea that women were generally happy. Hannam (2012) says ‘the image of the contented wife and mother, giving all her attention to housework, children and the care of her husband predominated’ (p. 77). This image came to be ‘increasingly at odds with the realities of women’s lives in the late 1950s and 1960s’, and, ‘as young women took advantage of the opportunities offered by an expansion in higher education they were less content than their mothers to accept a future bounded by domesticity’ (Hannam 2012, p. 78).

Betty Friedan (1983), in The Feminine Mystique, argued that the solution to women’s unhappiness at home was to take up meaningful employment (Friedan 1983). And women did. The rise of childcare allowed women to choose work over the traditional role of ‘housewife’, enabling them to enter what had previously been a male domain. Inbuilt in this move, was the assumption that the liberal account of autonomy - self-sufficiency and independence – did indeed represent ideal maturation to which women should also aspire. Women naturally wanted the kudos associated with working – status and respect.

However, bell hooks (she insisted in the use of lower case letters for her name) (1984) wrote in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre, that Friedman had failed to recognise she was basing her ideas on the experience of a

… select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women – housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life … She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife (hooks 1984, pp. 1-2).

hooks had a point. Friedman was talking from a point of view that suggested that all women could choose meaningful work, yet for many, paid work was anything but meaningful. Author Margret Benston (1997) also argued that working outside the home would not provide liberation, but would cause women to ‘simply carry a double work-load’ (p. 21). Many feel this remains true.

Yet, despite a diversity of views within feminism, Hannam (2012) asserts there were common elements within feminism, which sought

… to address imbalances of power between the sexes. Central … is the view that women’s condition is socially constructed, and therefore open to change. At its heart is the belief that women’s voices should be heard – that they should represent themselves, put forward their own view of the world and achieve autonomy in their lives (p. 7).

While I agree with Hannam’s assessment, that feminists strove to address ongoing imbalances of power and that women’s voices needed to be heard, I think the assertion that women’s traditional roles have been wholly socially constructed is not correct. Indeed, this idea has been detrimental to how femaleness is viewed and ignores that there are inherent biological differences between the sexes that do make fundamental differences to our lives.

One person who argued for difference was Carol Gilligan. Gilligan (1993) stated, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, that more recent characterisation by developmental psychologist Robert Kohlberg writing from 1963 - 1991 that female moral development was lacking was incorrect. Rather she argued, developmental theories were too narrow, failing to encompass a complete picture of human experience. Kohlberg’s view was that the principle of justice or detachment more often chosen by boys in ethical dilemmas, was superior to an ethic of attachment and concern for others’ welfare more often chosen by girls (1993, pp. 18-19) [1. see more detail below, after bibliography].

Gilligan’s exploration of these differences led her to conclude that typical male responses came from an hierarchical stance, whereas female responses were based in an ‘activity of relationship; of seeing and responding to need, taking care of the world by sustaining the web of connection so that no one is left alone’ (1993, p. 62). Gilligan argued that women had a different voice, not an inferior voice. This idea that women have a tendency towards a different orientation, one toward responsibility, while men tend toward a morality of rights (Humm 2013, p. 219), was a controversial one, inside and outside of feminist groups.

Following on from Gilligan’s ideas, some feminists rightly asked whether women should seek only to ‘enter a world that was defined by men and shaped by male values’; and argued ‘that ‘feminine’ qualities should be valued’ (Hannam 2012, p. 8). Hirschmann (2007) also argued, ‘care work needed to be recognized as socially valuable and afforded resources such as financial compensation and social recognition (p. 149).

I agree with Hirschmann’s view. There has been an ongoing failure to acknowledge that nurturing and caring have immeasurable worth. I also argue that it is the biological difference between women and men which have historically determined who stayed home to look after children and who went further afield to source resources for the family. It was and still is due to pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and women’s propensity to nurture which has largely determined who would look after children. This is still the case. It is the way such roles came to be viewed that has been socially constructed; not the role itself. It can be argued that feminism as well as men, failed to afford status to, and respect for, the roles women had been undertaking. This has not allowed women to attract respect, status, or financial remuneration for what ought to be valued and respected as crucial and valuable work. As neuroscience has shown, loving nurturing is critical to the positive wellbeing of the next generation.

How femaleness should be viewed, remains a vexed issue even within feminism itself. And sadly, at no time in the feminist discussions did anyone talk about possible consequences for infants with both parents moving into the paid economy. At the same time women have been ignoring their own desire to nurture and frequently their desire to have children as they make themselves fit into a system that grew around supporting a male work/life structure (see further discussion in additional Blog Feminism and Anne Manne – coming soon). How precisely motherhood is viewed is a topic I will turn to in the next blog. 

Bibliography

Benston, M 1997, 'The Political Economy of Women's Liberation', in R Hennessy & C Ingraham (eds), Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives, Routledge, New York, pp. 17-23.

Friedan, B 1983, The Feminine Mystique. 20th anniversary ed., Norton

New York.

Gilligan, C 1993, In a Different Voice : Psychological Theory and Women's Development Harvard University, Cambridge, Masachusetts

Greer, G 1999, The Whole Woman, Doubleday, London.

Hannam, J 2012, Feminism. [electronic resource], Seminar studies, Longman, Harlow, England.

Hirschmann, NJ 2007, 'Feminist Political Philosophy', in LM Alcoff & EF Kittay (eds), The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, Blackwell, Malden MA, USA, pp. 145-164.

hooks, b 1984, Feminist theory: From margin to center, South End Press.

Humm, M 2013, Feminisms. [electronic resource] : a reader, Routledge, Oxfordshire, England.

Midgley, M 1988, 'On Not Being Afraid of Natural Sex Differences', in M Griffiths & M Whitford (eds), Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy, Indiana University Press, US, Bloomington, pp. 29-41, via cat02831a (EBSCOhost).

Mill, JS & Stefan, C 1869/1989, On liberty; with, The subjection of women; and Chapters on socialism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

News, S 2014, "Bill Shorten is an economic 'girlie man"'says Mathias Cormann You Tube, 30/10/14, Sky News interview.

Wollstonecraft, M 1792/1970, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Gregg International Publishers, London.

[1] Essentially the test from which well-known and highly regarded Kohlberg came to conclude, that boys’ moral decision making was superior to girls’ – went like this. A woman was dying, but there was a very expensive drug that could save her life. Her husband pleaded with the pharmacist to allow him to give her the drug and he promised to pay it off as he was able. The pharmacist said no. The man stole the drug and administered it to his wife, saving her life. When asked what should happen to the man, the majority of the boys said the man needed to go to prison because he had broken the law, whereas girls tended to say that the situation was complex and the answer not clear as the man had only broken the law because it was the only way to save his wife’s life – such an answer, psychology text books concluded, was inferior.