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Bilkent University
Department of Political Science
POLS 208
Liberal Feminism and the Dichotomy of Public and Private Spheres
Submitted by: Handan Bezci
97039500
Cenk Umit
95012340
Submitted to: Banu Helvacioglu
Robin Turner
26.3.1999
The dichotomy between the private and the public has been the main issue of feminist writing and political struggle for almost two centuries; “it is what the feminist movement has been all about” (Pateman, 1989:117). Feminist criticism has been e has been essentially directed at the separation between the public and private spheres in liberal theory and practice.
There is an extremely close relationship between feminism and liberalism. The roots of both have come from the concept of individualism as a general theory of social life, both dealing with equality and both opposing arbitrary power. However, even though liberalism and feminism share a common origin, there has been opposition between them over the past two centuries. Feminist criticisms of liberal definition of the public and the private have varied in the different phases of the feminist movement. Feminists and liberals disagree about where and why the dividing line should be between the two spheres, or whether it should exist at all (Pateman, 1989:118).
Feminism is often seen as “nothing more than the completion of the liberal or bourgeois revolution, as an extension of liberal principles and rights to women as well as men” (Pateman, 1989:118). The demand for equal rights has always been an important part of feminism and the one liberal feminists emphasize most. Anne Phillips tries to distinguish between the public and the private spheres according to which sphere deals, and should only deal with, what kinds of issues. According to Phillips (1991:93), politics is about public decisions that take place in a public space, and she refers to politics as “ministers and cabinets, parliaments and co, parliaments and councils”. According to her, under the title of public opinion, the concept can go beyond this to take in the media, political culture, and schools. “But politics is not a question of who looks after the children and who goes out to work, or of who addresses the meeting and who makes the tea, these are private affairs” (Phillips, 1991:93).
Liberal feminists claim concerning equality of sexes in the public and the private spheres is relevant to liberal theory because according to this theory every individual should be equal before the law. Liberal feminism simply extends this principle into the private sphere. However, the question remains as to whether the liberal feminists analysis is possible in practice.
Liberal theory of the public and private spheres
Classical liberals assumed that the family, with the male as the head, is biologically determined, and justice only refers to the relationships between families (Pateman, 1980: 22-4, in Kymlicka, 1990:247). Fathers are representatives of families, and the social contract they speak of deals with relations between families. Justice refers to the public realm, where men deal with other men. They viewed familial relationships as private, governed by “natural instinct and sympathy” (Kymlicka, 1990:248). Liberals refuse to interfere in the family because they see the family as the centre of the private sphere. The e private sphere. The liberal right to privacy
encloses and protects the personal relationships of the home, the family, marriage, motherhood, procreation, and child rearing; thus any liberal interfering in the family would mean going against the concept of the family as the centre of private life (Jaggar, 1983:199 in Kymlicka, 1990:250).
The Athenians sacrificed private liberty benefit of political life; liberals view politics as protecting their private life. Liberalism constrains modern liberty by sharply separating the public power of the state from the private realm, putting strict limits on the states ability to intervene in the private realm (Kymlicka, 1990:251). The liberal goal of private life was not to protect the individual from society but to avoid political interference in society. Liberals “rated social life the highest form of human achievement and the vital condition for the development of morality and rationality”, while politics was reduced to “the harsh symbol of coercion necessary to sustain orderly social transactions” (Wolin 1960:363, 369, 291; cf. Holmes 1989:248; Shwartz 1979:245 in Kymlicka, 1990:252).
Kymlicka (1990:252) asks the question “why did liberals, who opposed ascriptive hierarchy in the realm of science, religion, culture, and economics, show no interest in doing the same for the domestic sphere?” He gives the explanation that male philosophers had no interest in questioning a sexual division of labour from which they benefited, and thus thought that domestic roles were biologically fixed.
Liberals believe in the right to privacy. However, this right deals with families and not individuals; thus the state will not interfere in the couples relationship within the household, and the individual within the household cannot claim the right to privacy (Kymlicka, 1990:259).
Liberal Feminism
Modern feminism originates in the eighteenth century, when women could not vote, seemed unsuited for education, and were excluded from many occupations. Legally, they were regarded at the same level of children, and married women could not own property of their own (Bryson, in Eatwell:193). During the eighteenth century there were many important theorists who did point out the inequality of women, and whose ideas have and whose ideas have contributed