Two Perspectives of Liberal Feminism

DOI Web Site

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • リベラル・フェミニズムの二つの視点
  • リベラル フェミニズム ノ フタツ ノ シテン

Search this article

Description

In this paper I argue for two claims: that liberal feminism can adequately capture the critical insights of the second-wave feminism so as to rescue the latter from its own self-defeating tendencies; and that the internal tension between the liberal and feminist perspectives of liberal feminism generates important issues that must be addressed to reinforce feminism and to deepen liberalism. In the fist section I defend the first claim by showing the following points. The second -wave feminist critique of the public/private dichotomy is based on the doctrine that the personal is political, which must be complemented by the liberal tenet that the personal is personal for everyone, in order to protect against “private” and social pressures the autonomy and equal status that women have as individuals. The anti-essentialist deconstruction of gender, another secondwave feminist insight, must be coupled with the liberal commitment to critical morality based on justice and human rights to get out of the trap of comprehensive deconstructionism that undermines the feminist reformative vigor. In the second section I substantiate the second claim by comparing Ayako Nozaki's conception of liberal feminism and mine. Nozaki attempts to reconstruct liberalism from a feminist perspective by incorporating Hannah Arendt's conception of equality and Amartya Sen's capability-based approach to distributive justice into her theory. I argue that her feminist concerns can be more adequately captured and defended from a liberal perspective in which the universalistic idea of justice and resource-based approach to distributive

Journal

Keywords

Details 詳細情報について

Report a problem

Back to top