Table of contents
LECTURE 5 1
Robeyns: When will society be gender just? 1
Brighouse and Wright: Strong gender egalitarianism 5
Lewis: What instruments to foster what kind of gender equality? The problem of
gendered inequalities in the division of paid and unpaid work 8
LECTURE 6 13
Puwar: Dissonant bodies 13
Anderson, Chapter 3: Segregation, racial stigma and discrimination 17
LECTURE 7 22
Hankivsky and Jordan-Zachery: Introduction: Bringing intersectionality to public policy =>
Wrong reading 22
Hankivsky and Cormier: Intersectionality and public policy: Some lessons for existing
models 25
Fredman: Double Trouble: Multiple discrimination and EU law 31
LECTURE 8 32
Snow and Owens: Social movements and social inequality: Toward a more balanced
assessment of relationship 32
Holzhacker: National and transnational strategies of LGBT civil society organisations in
different political environments: Modes of interaction in Western and Eastern Europe for
equality 39
LECTURE 5
Robeyns: When will society be gender just?
1. The question of gender justice
People in the public debate and scholars disagree on whether society has become gender
just.
There are very few systematic studies that provide a satisfying answer to the nature and
extent of unjust gender inequalities.
Empirical studies that research gender inequalities are missing an underlying normative
conceptualisation of gender justice.
This chapter asks what we should conceive of gender justice. To do this we use:
- Conceptualisation of gender
- Principles of (gender) justice
- Sen’s Capability Approach
, 2. Conceptualising gender
Haslanger’s definition of gender:
- The social positions that men and women occupy
- Bodily features are markers for identifying people as men or women and justifying
their respective social positions; the social category ‘gender’ becomes projected on
the biological category ‘sex’
- But people are treated according their social position (gender) which have nothing, or
only tangentially, to do with their biological position (sex)
Four additional concepts:
- Norms:
- legal, social, moral; a person violating these will be sanctioned;
- many norms are gendered; although legal norms have been made gender
neutral, jurisprudence is still gendered;
- moral and social norms (gender norms) impose codes on
masculinity/femininity and what is appropriate behaviour for the genders; less
acceptable that a mother leaves her children in the care of other’s;
- gender norms affect distribution of wealth and power; if a woman is
more assertive in positions of power, she is perceived as aggressive.
But if she behaves more feminine she will be deemed unable for the
job
=> Violating gender norms causes social punishment while conforming
to gender norms but women in a structurally weaker position than men
- Stereotypes:
- women and men are subjected to gender stereotypes that operate at the
nonconscious level
- i.e. in their work professions; stereotypes in this regard affect our expectations
and evaluation of the work of men and women (including ourselves)
- evaluations lead to different treatment of men and women
- Valian says stereotypes are not wholly inaccurate, but they overgeneralise;
overemphasize differences when men and women are actually more alike
than they are different
- Each gender bias is small, but when they accumulate they result in significant
gender inequalities
- Identities
- Adopting gender non-conformist identities may result in lower material
well-being and a lot of pains from judgement
- Through socialisation, children are moulded into existing gender categories
which ultimately inform their gender identity
- Social institutions
- family, labour market, workplaces, media etc
- gendered in the sense that they take gender differences that are created by
gender inequality as natural and use differences as justification for inequality
- job requirements, for instance, assume that people are free from caring
responsibilities; however, women are more often delegated the responsibility
of caring for children and the elderly
- also, education is gendered in the differential way teachers respond to boys
and girls
,=> These all interact and steer men and women into different social positions
=> Gender is a complex multilayered phenomenon
3. Gender justice and capabilities
There are many ways to argue whether society is gender just; but here the approach is to
compare gender inequality between men and women on the dimensions of a person’s
capabilities which is the real freedom a person have to choose a life one has reason to
value.
The capability approach:
- interpersonal comparison
- the real or effective opportunities to do what one wants to do and be what one wants
to be
- Sen has criticised approaches that focus on material well-being; there are factors
other than this that influence whether people convert primary goods into what people
are able to do or to be
- Both gender and sex are such conversion factors
- Sex as a conversion factor: there certain capabilities which sex allow; i.e. for
a fertile woman to birth a child and for most men to do more demanding
physical work => mostly uncontroversial although some claim that these are
mostly gender differences
- Gender as a conversion factor: stereotypes and prejudice give women with
the same professional degrees lower chances at reacher leader positions
- The approach focuses on the material and non-material opportunity sets available to
people; also scrutinising whether the circumstances in which people choose from
their opportunity sets are just; norms and traditions will affect women’s preferences,
aspirations and choices
- The approach allows for an informational space for interpersonal comparisons
- It is not a theory of justice but a metric for interpersonal comparisons for the purpose
of justice
Nussbaum argues that every government should ensure that its citizens can enjoy a
minimum set of capabilities => Sen says there should not be a theorised set of capabilities,
rather a democratic process should decide what capabilities should include.
Author proposes a procedural method for selecting capabilities,which can be used to
generate a context-dependent list of relevant capabilities for the question of gender
inequality. List contains material and nonmaterial conditions physical health; mental
well-being; bodily integrity and safety; social relations and support; political empowerment;
education and knowledge; domestic work and non-market care; paid work and other
projects; shelter and environment; mobility; leisure; time autonomy; respect; and religion; but
is always a list-in-progress.
The capability approach to gender justice needs to specify the principles of justice that need
to be satisfied
4. Three principles of gender justice
, A society is gender just if, and only if, the following three principles are met:
a. Women and men’s capability sets should be the same. Differences are only allowed if
caused (directly or indirectly) by sex differences and those which cannot be rectified
by human intervention
- opportunity rather than outcome-based notion of justice; hence there can,
according to Robeyn, be gender justice without equal outcomes; unequal
outcomes should make us investigate the causes critically but also with an
open mind to biological differences
- when biological factors impact gender inequalities in capabilities it is only
when no human intervention can diminish this inequality that it will count as
just; gender factors are not just
- i.e. inequalities derived from women giving birth and breatsfeeding are
just when there are institutional mechanisms to diminish the inequality;
i.e. paid maternity leave, free access to lactation consultants
- i.e. there is differential life expectancy between men and women; if
this is caused by gender, then it is unjust and we must try to dismantle
them as much as possible
b. The constraints on choice from the capability set should not be structured according
to morally irrelevant characteristics, such as gender.
- some gendered social norms do create significant injustices; i.e. mothers are
expected to be the primary responsible parent; leading to discriminatory
practices towards moms who do not want to take up this role and men who do
- if gendered social and moral norms induce men or women systematically to
foreclose certain options, then these norms are unjust.
c. The ‘pay-offs’ of the different options in the capability set need to be justified and
should not be gender biased.
- pay-offs are understood broadly, both material and nonmaterial (i.e. respect
- jobs or other social positions that are numerically dominated by either women
or men should not systematically be rewarded lower pay-offs without any
plausible justification.
- i.e. studies suggest that some jobs are paid less because they are culturally
classified as “feminine”, and not because they are more pleasant and less
stressful => thus, it is a violation of this third principle
5. Conclusions
This theory combines the capability approach and additional principles of justice; the focus is
on people’s real freedom to lead the lives they have reason to value.
=>Different from other equality of opportunity models;
- also looks at non-material dimensions such as psychological well-being and respect
- takes intangible effects on people’s opportunity into account (social norms,
discriminatory practices)
- includes the constraints on choices; the fact that it is not enough that the genders
have the same options
Most empirical research suggests that most liberal-democratic societies are not yet gender
just. However, much progress towards gender justice has been made in recent decades.
